by T. M. Catron
But she couldn’t deny that ever since she began working in the mine, everybody treated her differently than they used to. After Daddy died, people treated Alice as if she would break. Now they treated her as if she were made of steel, unbending and hard and without feelings. In some ways, their attitudes were an improvement. But Alice couldn’t help but feel a little resentful at the sudden shift in her treatment.
Alice left the store, her feet taking her out onto the sidewalk but her mind taking her down a darker road. She ran smack into Charlie Satchel on the sidewalk.
“Sorry! Oh, hey Alice,” he said. His blue eyes took in her appearance. “Didn’t recognize you.”
Alice glanced around, looking for an excuse to get away. She didn’t want Charlie to see her covered in coal. “Hey,” she finally said.
Charlie and Alice had been friends since birth, almost. His father was the town doctor. And since the town only had one school for all the grades, she had seen him almost every day of her life. During summers, they used to play hide-and-seek in the cornfield on the Peters’ property.
“Got my letter,” said Charlie, standing up straighter. Charlie had been a year ahead of her in school. He’d just graduated and was off to join the Army.
He was taller than Alice, with long legs and long arms. Brown hair he had combed back with pomade. Alice thought he looked nice.
“Going to Basic in three weeks.”
“That’s great, Charlie.” Alice’s gut twisted. He really was leaving. She didn’t know how she could stand Charlie getting out of Springwater when she wasn’t. And then he’d travel the world, just like they’d talked about when they were kids, and she wouldn’t.
But they weren’t kids anymore.
“Hey, listen,” he began, shifting on his feet like he had something else to say.
“I got to go, Charlie.” Alice didn’t know what he was going to say, and she didn’t think she could stand knowing. “Been a long day.”
“Oh, ummm, yeah.”
She turned to walk down Main Street with her paper sack of food. Charlie stared after her a minute.
He hadn’t said anything about her birthday. Maybe he didn’t remember, either.
Maybe if she’d given him half a chance . . .
Chapter 2
FOUR STREETS DOWN, A RIGHT turn, five streets more, a left, then a mile out of town, following the line of the valley to the south.
Alice’s little shack sat in the back of her uncle’s property, down a tree-lined lane, next to a cornfield. She opened the door and locked it behind her. The place had electricity, and an indoor bathroom, tacked onto the side ten years ago for renters. Granted, the only light in the house came from a single bulb hanging over the stove. But it worked.
After showering and scrubbing off every last bit of coal, Alice heated up her soup on the stove and turned on the radio, hoping for Elvis or Johnny. Patsy Cline was singing instead. Alice hummed the tune as she lifted her soup and sat on the edge of the twin bed that was pushed up against the back wall. Metal springs creaked under her.
Three years.
Three years, and she’d have enough money saved to get out. Maybe go to Charleston, or further north. She’d always wanted to see New York City. She glanced at a faded postcard picture that was pinned above her headboard. She thought the city looked beautiful with its tall, gleaming buildings and streets teeming with people. Maybe they liked to hire women there. Give them a decent wage without giving them a hard time about it.
Or maybe she’d die before that happened, in the coal, like Daddy.
The radio crackled and hissed. Alice reached over to the tuner to adjust it. When she touched the knob, the static got louder. She moved her hand away, fascinated by the way her presence affected the dial. A teacher had once told her it was because she had her own electricity flowing through her body. She wondered if that was true.
The light over the stove flickered. Alice glanced at it, but it returned to normal. She’d just finished scooping out the last pea from her bowl when the bulb went out with a pop. A last spot of light lingered on the filament before fading out and leaving Alice in darkness. The radio went silent, too—dead. She moved to the window opposite the stove to peek out the lace curtain.
The moon had risen above the mountains, half-full and half-covered by wispy clouds. The cornfield looked disturbed, like a storm was brewing and blowing the stocks. Maybe a lightning strike had taken out the power line leading to her shack. But Alice hadn’t heard any thunder. So maybe it was the wind.
She opened the window, expecting the cool air that always came before a storm. Instead, the lingering, moist heat of the day entered the room and clung to her skin. She leaned on the sill and stuck her head out. No wind. But the crops still waved around in all different directions, like something was zig-zagging through the field.
Whatever it was, it was big.
Alice groped her way to the kitchen sink and dug around beneath it for a flashlight. She flipped the switch. Nothing happened. She tapped it twice with her hand, and it flashed on.
She went out on the front step to shine her light on the field, into the tall corn. The thrashing had to be coyotes chasing a deer. Funny, she hadn’t heard their yipping cries. For that matter, she hadn’t heard anything all night. She swept the light over the field and up toward the main house, looking for the familiar glow of the kitchen light. Nancy would be sweeping and scolding Ray for stopping off at the honky tonk before coming home.
But the lights were out at the house, too. And it was quiet.
Alice turned off the flashlight to let her eyes adjust to the night. The corn kept swaying, swishing, rustling, back and forth, back and forth. A dense cloud passed over the moon, blocking out the remaining light. Alice turned to the left, toward town. Usually the streetlights along Main cast a yellow glow on cloudy skies. Tonight, though, the darkness to the north was complete.
The power was out everywhere—no sense in walking back into town to buy another bulb. Alice switched on the flashlight and turned to walk into the house, pausing for one last look at the cornfield.
A cloud of smoke hovered over it now, blowing toward the trees behind the mountain. When the light touched it, it stopped moving.
And turned.
Don’t be dumb, Alice told herself.
But she couldn’t deny the smoke had changed direction. She followed its movement with her narrow beam of light. Now that she looked at it properly, it didn’t really look like smoke. More like a great black snake winding and turning above the corn. Or a fluttering black blanket, rolled up in its middle.
Heading right for the shack.
Alice dropped the light.
The beam fell with it, crawling down the corn stalks of the outside row, lighting up the individual dirt paths between. The flashlight bounced off the step, landed in the dirt with a clink, and turned off.
Alice jumped down to retrieve it, her hands fumbling for the switch. But the darn thing had come to pieces when it landed. She reached into the tall grass under the step to get them, hoping a copperhead wasn’t using the cover for a bed.
The corn began swishing again. Louder now. Closer.
Alice grappled around in the dark, looking for the battery.
That thing was leaving the cornfield. Get inside.
Alice gave up trying to find the pieces and jumped back onto the step. Without looking back, she hurled herself into the shack and locked the door behind her.
Her heart pounded in her throat. What was out there?
Outside, the clouds broke up around the moon, and the area surrounding the house grew a little lighter. Her back against the door, Alice cast her eyes around the room, working to catch her breath, ashamed for being scared.
Then a lone coyote called out over the valley, sounding like the wail of a crying child. Alice jumped, her heart jumping too. But everything else stayed quiet. After another minute, she gathered the courage to go to the window.
The field was darker than
before. But then, the field was always dark at night. What was different? The coyote had hushed. So had the field. Alice couldn’t help but think that the smoke was still blowing toward the house.
But she didn’t smell it. If the field had been burning, she would have seen something. So maybe it wasn’t smoke. Maybe it was a trick of the light, or a stray mountain mist. Alice tugged the window down, anyway, and locked it for good measure. Whatever it was, it wasn’t going to get in the house.
She sat on the bed, leaning back against the wall, facing the room. Her body was weary from her day’s labor, but she couldn’t shake the image of that shadow moving toward the flashlight beam. She sat there for a long while, pinching herself to stay awake, picking at the frayed edge of the quilt.
An hour passed without a change. Eventually, Alice allowed her eyes to close, her head to rest against the wall. In a few hours, she’d meet Ray out on the lane, to walk into town with him for work.
The shadow had probably been mist from the mountain, playing a trick with her eyes. Nothing to be scared of. She lay her head on her pillow, her body sinking into the thin mattress.
Then, from far away, a man screamed.
Chapter 3
ALICE BOLTED OUT THE DOOR, her bare feet scattering the gravel of the lane. If something was in the cornfield, she was going to find Uncle Ray. But the sounds of a scuffle ahead brought her up short. One flashlight lay in the road. Another was swinging around, like someone was trying to get a hold of it. A man screamed again. This time she recognized it—half-squeal, half-squeak—Jimmy.
“I was just going home! Promise, Boss!”
“Your house ain’t down this way, Jimmy,” Ray said. “This wouldn’t have nothing to do with that thrashin’ you got from Alice today, would it?”
Alice hurried toward them. On the road, Uncle Ray stood holding Jimmy by the hair, pressing a flashlight directly into his eye.
“Alice,” Ray said. “Glad you’re here. Jimmy’s got something to say to you.” He jerked Jimmy around. Jimmy whimpered and tried to grab Ray’s wrist. “Are you gonna say it, son, or you gonna make me throw you in the Pit for a couple of days?”
The Pit was an abandoned section of the coal mine, the site of the first collapse after the mine had opened. Three men had died. The Springwater miners believed ghosts of those dead men haunted that room.
“NO,” Jimmy said.
“Then say it.”
“I . . . I’m sorry, Alice, for givin’ you a hard time.”
“And?”
“It won’t happen again.”
Ray let Jimmy go, throwing him away as if he were a possum that’d been eating his garbage. Jimmy scrambled to his feet and looked at both of them. Spittle ran down his chin. He wiped it on his sleeve.
Alice almost felt sorry for him—almost.
“Well, go on,” Ray said. “Git.”
Jimmy turned and jogged off down the dark road.
Ray shined his light toward Alice, studying her. “You alright today?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t yes, sir me. You’re not alright. Come on up to the house.”
He lit the way back to his and Nancy’s place, a white-washed two-story close to the road. The power was still out. Ray chuckled to himself as they stepped up onto the dark porch. “Jimmy never was good at much but makin’ trouble.”
“How’d you know about the shovel?”
Ray grunted. “Saw the whole thing.” He looked at her again. “You did good, kid. Real good.”
Alice smiled, the first one all day.
“Why’d you run up the lane, anyway?”
“Heard someone yell.” She didn’t want to tell him she’d been spooked well before that. “Hey . . . Ray.”
“Yeah?”
“You notice anything weird tonight, in the corn? Right after the lights went out.”
“No. Why?”
Alice shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe it was Jimmy tryin’ to scare me.”
“I ran into Jimmy out here on the road, standing at the top of your lane. Good thing, too. He’s no good. You listen, Alice: anything else happens at all, I want to know.”
“But—”
“Anything. Don’t go trying to settle everything on your own. These boys are hard-headed as mules.” He spat into the dirt off the side of the porch. “But don’t let ’em bully you, neither.”
“You want me to quit?”
“You want to quit?”
Alice squared her shoulders. “No, sir.”
“Good. Then don’t quit.”
With a hum, the lights came on inside the house. Nancy came to the door, watching the pair of them through the screen. “What’s going on out there?” she barked.
“Just givin’ Alice here a word of advice.”
“Well, come on in and get your supper. Kids ate an hour ago and are already in bed. Let Alice go home.”
Ray took a deep breath, ready to argue.
Alice shook her head. “I’m going. Borrow that flashlight?”
Ray handed it to her.
On her way back to the shack, Alice checked the surrounding trees more than once. But Jimmy was gone. The weird shadow was gone. The world was normal.
***
Jimmy Mans walked down the road, rubbing his scalp where Ray had nearly torn out his hair. That stupid Alice. If Ray hadn’t come up when he did, Jimmy would already be at Alice’s door.
What he was going to do when he got there, he didn’t know. Billy Loggins had bought Jimmy a beer and told him Alice needed a good scaring, but he’d been vague about what it would take to do it. Jimmy had thought it was a good idea—up until he’d run straight into Ray on the road. What was the old man doing out there, anyway?
A light blinked on down toward town. The electricity was back on, then. The road where Jimmy was standing was dark though. And he’d left his flashlight back in front of Ray’s house.
He scowled again and kept walking. Ray had no right to give Alice a job. Loggins had reported him to the company. He’d said that a man who let a girl work in the mine couldn’t be trusted to take care of his crew. That he was showing a lack of good judgement.
Jimmy stopped again. He could cut down through the fields and forget about walking on the stupid road. Roads were for sissies. In his bitter mood, he didn’t think about the consequences of taking a shortcut through a field at night. He was used to the darkness, anyway. It didn’t bother him—he was a miner.
He huffed and turned right, off the road and into another cornfield. He and his mama lived in a little one-bedroom place at the edge of town. Jimmy slept on the couch.
He was saving enough money to buy her a real house, right up by Main Street. Just next door to Mercer. The smug grocer was always looking down his nose at Jimmy’s mother because she sometimes paid her grocery bill late. That was partly Jimmy’s fault—he stopped in at the bar too much after work. But no more. Tonight had been the last time. Next week, he’d be able to hand over his entire check to Mama, and then they’d start saving for that house. That the house wasn’t for sale didn’t bother Jimmy. If he had enough money, he could buy whatever he wanted.
His sour mood brightening a bit at this thought, Jimmy pushed his way through the tall corn. It was a shortcut he’d taken plenty of times, though usually with some kind of light. When he was a kid, he used to . . .
Someone was standing in the row ahead of him, a lone, dark figure blocking the path. Jimmy stopped walking. “Who are you?”
“Where’ve you been, Jimmy?” It was Charlie Satchel. Jimmy recognized the voice.
“Out walkin’, not that it’s your business.”
“I followed you.”
“What?”
“I followed you. You went down to Alice’s house.”
Jimmy sniffed. The air smelled of fertilizer. “Maybe I did. She said I could come ’round any time I wanted.”
The whole town knew Charlie had a crush on Alice. Jimmy couldn’t resist trying to make him a little jealous
.
“You stay away from her. She’s better’n you.”
Jimmy reddened, although in the dark Charlie wouldn’t be able to see just how close to the mark he’d got. “Alice is the one who better stay away from me. She’s the one taking good jobs away from the men. She ain’t got nothing but trouble coming her way.”
Charlie moved closer. Jimmy took a step back, raising his fists. He could just make out Charlie’s nose in the moonlight. One punch was all he’d need to dirty up those clothes a bit. It was time to see if the doc’s boy bled like common folk.
Charlie chuckled. “You wouldn’t dare. I could have you fired.”
“Not because you’re anybody. Just your daddy. You ain’t nothing without him.”
“Maybe. But you better leave Alice Peters alone all the same. If something happens to her, what are people going to believe when I tell them I saw you at her house?”
“They’re gonna wonder why you were there, too. You ain’t so big, Charlie Satchel, now get outta my way before I break your nose.”
Charlie laughed again, but stepped back. He didn’t move out of the row, though, and Jimmy had to push over to another one to get by. He kept one hand up, expecting Charlie to throw a punch while he wasn’t looking. But when nothing happened, Jimmy left him in the corn and hurried toward home.
Halfway down the row, he heard movement in the stalks behind him. He turned. “Don’t think you’re gonna sneak up on me, Satchel.”
Something big hit him round the head. Jimmy pivoted on his foot, reeled back, and fell down into a corn stalk. It bent under his weight. His hearing went dull, and he struggled to stay upright.
It didn’t do any good.
The last thing Jimmy remembered was golden light, followed by crushing darkness.
Chapter 4
THE NEXT DAY BEGAN JUST as any other day. At 5:00am, first shift filed back onto the bus. Alice yawned and found a seat by herself. Ray checked off everybody as they came in. Loggins crawled into the driver’s seat and started the bus.