by Chris Cander
They were endless, the questions.
“Can I be a astronaut?”
“Yes,” Lidia said, taping down the corners of the foil. “Of course you can. And you can soar through the blue sky and into the dark and see the moon and the stars.”
Gabriel’s face grew serious and he put his tiny fat hand on her shoulder as she worked. “Because I don’t want to be a miner like Daddy.”
Lidia looked up. “Why?”
“I don’t want to go to the mine.”
She spread the piece of tape into place and then rocked back onto her seat and sat down cross-legged.
“Why don’t you want to go to the mine?”
“It’s dark there. And there’s rocks. I saw it.”
“When did you see it?” She sat down and pulled him into her lap. “Did Daddy take you there?”
Gabriel wadded a bit of foil and furrowed his brow. “No. I went there.”
“Where, exactly?”
“Where we go in. Remember?”
Lidia breathed deeply. This wasn’t the first time she’d heard Gabriel tell of something she didn’t remember. “No, I don’t remember,” she said.
Gabriel picked up one of the pipe cleaners Lidia was going to use to represent a telescope that would photograph the far side of the moon. “I don’t ever want to go to that place again.” He climbed off her lap and turned to her. His face was grave, his hazel eyes dark.
She reached out and took the pipe cleaner from him. “Why not?” she asked, slow and without looking up, ignoring the use of “again.”
“I don’t want to fall again.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“It was dark like in the sky,” he said. “We were running and then I fell.”
“Oh no.” Lidia searched her memory for some forgotten event, a walk Danny might have taken him on, a time they’d gone out in the dark. But the only thing she could remember that seemed remotely relevant were the stories she’d heard about the mine explosion, what, seventeen years ago? Gabriel knew nothing of that. Hardly anybody ever discussed it anymore. Maybe he’d overheard one of the older men talking at the barbershop or the hardware store sometime.
“Remember that?” he asked.
“No,” she shook her head. “I don’t.”
“Yeah. And I was in it.”
“You were?”
“Remember?”
Lidia shook her head no.
“Yeah, and those people helped me, remember?”
Gabriel patted the tin against the box.
Lidia, with a knot in her stomach, asked, “What people?”
Gabriel reached out and took the roll of foil and unrolled a long stretch of it, which crumpled in his inexperienced hands. “The dead people.”
She took a slow breath and handed him a piece of Scotch tape. “Do you know what ‘dead’ means?”
With the tip of his tongue poking out, he taped the foil down. Then he stood back and looked at it, and looked at his mother, and nodded.
Lidia took a pair of scissors and stabbed a hole into the rectangular head of the box. She twisted the blade until she had enough clearance to cut a small circle around the jab. When she was finished, she struck the blade once more into the box a few inches over and twisted and carved an identical orb. She lifted the foil-covered box and placed it on top of Gabriel’s serious face. His dark eyes peered out of the holes at her.
“Do I look like a astronaut?”
“Yes,” she said, quiet. “Exactly like one.”
“I’ll fall into the sky and see the moon and all the stars.”
Lidia pressed the box down a tiny bit farther and made a few adjustments to the foil and pipe cleaners while he watched her through those two circles, quiet as an owl inside a tree hollow. Halloween was just four days away. She wanted to be certain his costume was just right.
November 6, 1968
Coming down the mountain from Alta’s cabin, Gabriel had seen a duck peel away from the flock overhead. Their V-pattern of flapping white stood out against the bright blue and cloudless migratory path, and he had pointed upward and asked Lidia why they were flying that way. She was explaining that it was easier to fly one behind the other instead of flying alone, when one of them veered inexplicably off. “She’s going away!” he said, “Get her, Mama! Tell her to go back!”
Lidia and Gabriel were close to the railroad tracks that ran the length of the town of Verra, parallel to New Creek. Theirs was a shortcut, away from the train station and shops, an alternate path from the camp houses up to Whisper Hollow, where Alta lived. Gabriel skittered down the last sloping bit onto the train tracks. “Gabriel!” Lidia shouted. “Be careful!” She’d told him a hundred times not to jump onto the tracks without holding her hand, in case a train came suddenly roaring down upon them. “But you can hear them coming, Mama,” he always replied.
“You can hear anything if you’re paying attention, Gabriel,” she would answer. “But we’re not always paying attention.”
He ran the flat shoulder along the two sets of tracks without taking his eyes off the lone duck in the sky. “Tell her, Mama!” he called.
Lidia ran after him, picking her way over fallen rocks and flung bits of coal. She was slowed by her basket, heavy with produce from Alta’s garden and another rolled-up watercolor of a rainbow trout Gabriel had painted for Danny. “Gabe! Slow down!”
Without looking back, Gabriel came to an abrupt stop ahead of her. He pointed at the sky. The duck had changed its trajectory and rejoined the formation. The other ducks shifted their positions to absorb it back into the flock. Lidia looked up to where Gabriel was pointing and, in so doing, lost her balance and tripped on a rail spike, which turned her ankle and sent her sprawling a few feet behind her son. She cried out at the lightning bolt of pain.
Gabriel turned at the sound of her falling and sprinted to her. “Mama!”
She slowly heaved herself to a sitting position, fighting the searing sensation in her ankle, her eyes wide with shock. When she tried to stand, she fell back from the pain. “I think it’s twisted,” Lidia said aloud, though not particularly to Gabriel, who crouched down and tried to tug her upward. “I can’t walk on it.”
Gabriel knew his mother to be wary. Even at just over three years old, he already had begun to push her constant pleas for caution into the background. Slow down, be careful, watch out became nothing more than lullabies. He had never been hurt by any of his own running or jumping or wandering, but, more significant, he had never seen her hurt. The sight of her crumpled on the tracks, betrayed by her unquestioned strength, was unprecedented. He panicked.
“Mama!” he screamed.
“Shhh, Gabriel. I’m right here. Just give me a minute.” She closed her eyes and breathed slowly.
“The train!” Gabriel looked up and down the tracks. Nothing was upon them, but he knew, suddenly, that they had to move. He grabbed her arm with both hands and pulled. “Mama, come on!”
“Just a minute,” she whispered. Her ankle was starting to turn an ugly shade of purple, dark like an eggplant, under the hiked-up hem of her pants.
Gabriel looked around for someone to help them. They were on the west side of town, out of view, although they could see other people crossing the tracks farther down. Kids, mostly. There wasn’t much up Whisper Hollow besides St. Michael’s, the cemetery, and a few residences, so there wasn’t a lot of traffic going perpendicular to the rails.
“Lady!” Gabriel shouted. Lidia looked up and saw him running again, this time to an older woman bent inside a heavy wool dress who was walking across the tracks about thirty feet away. “Lady!” He went right up to her and pulled on her hand, tugging her toward his mother. The woman resisted, clearly confused by the child’s sudden appearance, the alarm in his voice. Though she appeared not to want the bother of whatever was the matter, when she saw Lidia splayed against the tracks, she allowed Gabriel to lead her where he wanted her to go.
“Are you all right?” Myrthen a
sked when she got to Lidia. Gabriel dropped to his mother’s side and took her hand in his.
“It’s my ankle. I turned it.”
“Can you walk?” Myrthen clasped her hands together as though in prayer, not being the type to reach out. Lidia thought she recognized her from somewhere, but had never seen her up close before. Though lined with age, her face, Lidia noted with surprise, looked astonishingly beautiful under her black shawl.
Lidia shook her head.
“Well, I can’t carry you,” she said with obvious impatience. “I’ll have to find someone who can help you up. Do you live far?”
“Just up at Cinder Camp.”
Myrthen nodded. “I’ll get someone. You stay put.” She turned and walked toward town but without any apparent quickness to her step. Struck into obedience by Myrthen’s cold calm, Lidia watched her go.
Myrthen eventually returned with a strapping and bearded man they didn’t know who introduced himself as Grizzly Wroblewski, a man who worked with Lidia’s father. After inquiring about the injury and performing a quick examination of her ankle, he announced that he would first carry her home, then go back to town and send the doctor to her. Grizzly turned to Myrthen and asked if she wouldn’t mind accompanying them, because he couldn’t carry the girl and her basket and son all together. He needed an extra pair of hands, and besides, it wouldn’t be appropriate for him to take Lidia home alone.
Myrthen sighed and nodded. Grizzly picked up Lidia’s basket and hung it over his meaty forearm, then scooped her up and cradled her like a baby. Taking Gabriel reluctantly by the hand, Myrthen pulled her dark shawl close around her face and picked up an efficient pace behind Grizzly’s giant strides.
They arrived at Lidia’s house and Grizzly placed her on the couch with her feet propped up on pillows. He asked Myrthen to get ice from the freezer and make a compress for Lidia’s ankle. It was swollen and bruised, but Grizzly didn’t think it was broken. He said he’d go back and ask Doctor Bartlett to come around, and meantime would Myrthen be able to stay until Lidia’s husband got home?
She looked at him flatly. “I’ve got to be back for five o’clock Mass.” Reaching into a deep woolen pocket, she withdrew a watch face and her rosary beads. “I’ll stay, but only for another twenty minutes.” She turned to Lidia. “Will your husband be home by three-thirty?”
“His shift ends at three. He always comes straight home.” Lidia recognized her now. She remembered her from St. Michael’s, the few times she’d had to go. The woman played the organ.
“I’ll wait then. You go on, Mr. Wroblewski. I’ll tell Father Timothy of your kindness today.”
Grizzly closed the door behind him, and Myrthen sat down on the edge of a chair. She looked around the living room, lighting her gaze like a fly on objects around the room: the floral couch, the lace curtains, the Charleston Sentinel opened to the sports section, the child-drawn watercolors taped to the wall, the framed death announcement propped up on top of the Magnavox. She didn’t even realize that Gabriel was standing next to her until he reached out and touched the rosary beads she worked in her fingers.
“Gabriel!” Lidia hissed. “That’s not polite!”
Myrthen jumped.
“What’s that?” Gabriel asked.
She looked down at the beads as though she’d never seen them before, then pushed them into her pocket and sat back deeper into the chair.
“What is your name, little boy?”
“Gabriel.”
Myrthen raised an eyebrow. “Angel of the Lord,” she said. “Interpreter for Daniel the Prophet, bringer of the word of Truth.”
Gabriel tilted his head to mirror hers and blinked his eyes. “The word of Ruth?” he asked in a languid voice, as though waking from a dream.
Myrthen gasped and shot forward in her chair, nearly colliding her face into his. “What did you say?”
Gabriel reeled backward several steps until he bumped into his mother’s swollen ankle, which rested on the rolled edge of the couch. “Oh!” Lidia cried out.
“Sorry!” Gabriel said, first to his mother and then to Myrthen. “Sorry.” He was so startled that he plunged himself against his mother, burying his face in her sweater and sobbing.
“It’s all right. Shhhhh,” Lidia said, and then looked at Myrthen. “He didn’t mean anything.”
Myrthen cleared her throat, adjusted herself on the chair. “I apologize. I thought he said …” She shook her head. “Never mind.”
Gabriel lifted his head and looked up at Myrthen with pink-rimmed eyes. “I wasn’t talking about that.”
She blinked at him several times. Her face grew very pale. “About what?”
Lidia interrupted. “I’m sorry, Mrs. — ?”
“It’s Miss. Miss Myrthen Bergmann.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Bergmann. Sometimes he says things that are … confusing. But he doesn’t mean any harm by them.”
Myrthen stood abruptly up. “ ‘Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him,’ ” she said. “Proverbs. Your family is Catholic, is it not?” She jutted her chin toward the crucifix on the eastern wall of the room.
“My husband’s mother was. And my parents. Danny and I don’t … attend services.”
Myrthen raised one sharp eyebrow. “You owe it to your child to take him to church. You’ll want to lead him to salvation. A child like this,” she said, turning to look him over, “especially a child like this needs to learn communion with God.” She turned back to Lidia. “And you should unburden yourself as an example.” Myrthen glared at her, as though measuring the freight and strain of her sin.
Lidia pulled Gabriel closer.
“Father Timothy hears confession on Saturdays and also thirty minutes before Mass on Wednesdays and Sundays at St. Michael’s,” she said.
“I don’t know.”
“We are all of us sinners, child. You think your Lord doesn’t know? Of course He does.” Lidia’s face burned as Myrthen spoke. “But the Heavenly Father can take away the sins of the world. Even those of which we cannot bear to speak. And you will be forgiven.”
She thought of Gabriel’s eyes, how they matched her brother’s exactly. Of Danny, and how proud he was of this, his only and ill-begotten son. It was as though Myrthen had already heard the confession that screamed wordlessly, constantly, in her mind.
“What happened?” Danny slammed the door behind him and slid to where Lidia lay sprawled on the couch as though into home base.
Gabriel looked up from where he lay coloring on the floor, picked up his picture, and ran headlong into Danny, who tousled his hair and picked him up.
“She was trying to go to Heaven,” Gabriel said.
“What’s that, slugger? Who’s going to Heaven?”
“Gabriel and I were walking home from Alta’s. He was chasing a duck and I was trying to catch him,” Lidia said.
“See?” Gabriel said, and pointed at his picture. A wavy Crayola vector of what looked like flattened-out 3s flew across the blue construction paper. A single one wilted off course, away from the others. “She was almost there.”
“Is that right?” Danny asked, raising his eyebrows, but it came out more as an ending than as the beginning to a conversation. He roughed the boy’s hair again, but more gently — almost reverently — as though not to disturb whatever was happening underneath.
“Anyway,” Lidia said. “I tripped crossing the tracks and here we are.”
Danny released Gabriel, who lay back down to finish coloring. “Grizzly Wroblewski met me on the way out of the pit. He was going to find Doc Bartlett. He should be here soon, I’d expect,” Danny said, sitting down next to her. “I ran all the way.”
Lidia looked up at her husband. “Thank you,” she said. Coal dust darkened the lines on his face, making him look much older than twenty. She felt responsible for that.
“What do you need?” Danny asked her. “What can I do?”
“I’ll be fine. It’s jus
t a little swollen. I’ll be all right.” She pushed herself upright, trying to hide the pain that strangled her ankle. “I’ll be up to put dinner on in a bit.”
“Oh no. You’ll stay put.” His face was grave.
“Funny. That’s just what she said.”
“Who?”
Lidia shook her head. “She said her name was Myrthen Bergmann. She was crossing the tracks after I fell. Gabriel found her and brought her and then she got Mr. Wroblewski and walked us home.” She looked away. “She was quite strange.”
“How so?” he asked.
She waved her hand in a gesture of dismissal. “No, that was rude of me. She was very kind to help us.” Lidia shifted again.
“Myrthen Bergmann. That name sounds familiar. I think she’s relatives with that no-account Liam Magee. You know, the electrician who caused that explosion back in ’fifty? In the Number Seventeen?”
Lidia nodded. Her own parents had taken in the widow and infant son of one of those fallen miners. Lidia was only a little more than two years old. The woman, whom Lidia’s mother recalled over the years as being a child in grown-up clothes, was so bereft she just sat at their kitchen table clutching her baby so tight he cried, saying over and over, “It ain’t so it ain’t so it ain’t so.” Finally Lidia’s mother made contact with the girl’s people in Kentucky, and a long-faced aunt and uncle came within the week to collect them. Mining coal was like challenging the Reaper to a duel every shift. Most times, the miners won. But those times they didn’t, the tragedy scythed a notch out of the town’s soul. Nobody wanted to remember, but they never could forget. Lidia wondered now whatever became of that girl-mother and her pink and squalling baby. He’d be eighteen years old by now, if he were still alive.
“Nobody talks about it much except the old-timers,” Danny said. “They mention it every once in a while, but quiet, like it’s bad luck or something. I tried to ask your daddy about it once, but he didn’t seem to be much in the know. Or else he didn’t want to talk about it. He must have been around twenty-six, twenty-seven when it happened, and he got foreman when he was, what, thirtysomething? So he’d have known.” He thought for a moment. “ ’Course he’d have known.” Danny scratched the top of his head, raked his hair back off his forehead. “Must’ve had his reasons not to want to talk about it, I guess.”