by Lauren Wolk
“Who’s that?” he asked Ian back at the bar.
“That,” said Ian, “is Mendelson. The man I told you about this afternoon.”
“The firefighter.”
“The firefighter,” Ian sighed. “After a fashion.”
Mendelson had a good voice. He put the rest of the singers to shame. But he sang with his eyes closed, clearly unconcerned with the reaction of the audience, attentive only to the words he was singing and, perhaps, the way the microphone trembled in his hand, the way the sound came back to him from the walls, the way it feels to sing a song you love.
Later Joe watched Mendelson return to his stool at the bar, pick up his drink, light a cigarette, and stare into the middle distance. He was alone. He talked to no one and no one talked to him. After a while he got up, put some money on the bar, and walked out. Before the door had shut behind him, his drink had been cleared away, his stool occupied, and the sound of his voice purged by a fat man who had a twang like a banjo and could barely sing for hiccups.
Anthony Mark Mendelson had at one time been known as the Centurian, the finest wrestler in his corner of Kentucky and for a hundred miles beyond. Had he been an indifferent competitor, less able, less ambitious, he might have spent some of his youth exploring other arts. But he was a great wrestler, and that was enough.
Wrestling is an odd sport, not quite fighting, not quite not. A quiet sport, but for the grunting and the slap of flesh. An unflattering, unglamorous business, memorable for the sight of buttocks, of tendons rigid as machinery. But to wrestlers, it is a sport like no other. Its roots twine back through the ages, touch Olympia, blend the salt of dead champions and live boys, herald the unaided, unadorned, unqualified virtue of might. Throw in nicknames like Gibraltar, Pretzel, the Centurian, and wrestling becomes, to even its youngest and its most ungainly participants, a secret society, closed to outsiders, sacred and sublime.
When too many pulled hamstrings, too many displaced joints, too many hernias forced Anthony Mark Mendelson to give up the sport he loved, he continued to think of himself as the Centurian. Tony was not such a bad name. He had always liked it. But to settle for Tony seemed like a surrender. He had wanted to wrestle for the rest of his days, even bald and incontinent, and he was angry to have been denied this intention. He was a disappointed boy who gradually became dissatisfied with nearly everything about his life. Nothing sat quite right. So, at the age of eighteen, what he could change, he did. His hair, his habits, his name. When he left high school, he became Mendelson. Period. It sufficed.
After high school he joined the army, learned all there is to know about intimidation and a great deal about engineering, missed Korea by a handful of years, and—both too old and apathetic—skipped Vietnam. Working for a mining company suited him better, was far safer, more lucrative, more satisfying: in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania, he commanded all manner of men and machines.
He had a fondness for big dogs, small women, meat of any kind, and country music. Each Christmas he traveled home to see his senile mother, his sister and her brood, old high school friends. Some had once wrestled with him, and he was pleased to see them approaching their middle years flabby and slow, while he was still as muscled and fit as a young dog.
When he was thirty-five, Mendelson was called back to a site he had once worked for a short while before its closure. A fire had taken hold in the Belle Haven mines, and Mendelson had been nominated to contain it.
Mendelson had never fought a mine fire before. He’d observed a few, monitored the long, tedious struggle to extinguish them, and therefore welcomed the explicit instructions he was given by the committee of his colleagues, local officials, and fire specialists too busy with other mine fires to take on this one. “Dig a trench,” they told him, and told him how. And so he did.
Things might have gone well for Mendelson, had he not still thought of himself as the Centurian. The aging miners who lived in Belle Haven knew its mines better than their own backyards, and they were waiting for him when he arrived. “Here’s where you want to dig,” they told him, uninvited. “Go deeper than that,” they said, catching wind of his instructions. “Farther south,” they said. “Dig fast, or it’ll run right away from you.”
To which he replied, lighting a cigar, squinting at the lot of them, very aware of his youth in the face of their decline, “I know my business. Get on with yours.”
Although they had thought themselves more concerned with their town than their reputations, the miners were silenced by their pride, by their desire to see what this young stranger was made of. Each morning they would arrive to watch the digging of the trench. They would sit in their old trucks and drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, condemn. When the work crew broke for lunch each day, the miners found their fingers itching for picks and shovels. To a man, they longed to leap from their trucks and raise a ruckus, demand a greater effort from the uninspired crew. They were afraid of this fire and what it might someday do. But their pride was formidable. And so they sat quietly in their trucks and watched the goings-on like predators picking out the weakest, best candidate for a chase. But Mendelson would not run.
Day after day, their eyes upon him, Mendelson came to realize that he felt younger and stronger than he had since his wrestling days. Each morning he checked in with his advisors in Harrisburg, gave them a progress report, sought their allegiance, which they pledged. “You’re doing fine,” they said. “Right on schedule.” It was easy for him to ignore his doubtful audience. Even easier to feel inspired by their lack of faith. He often paused in his work to picture their retreat, the fire cut off, the trench more daunting than a wall.
On the day that the trench was due for completion, Mendelson woke earlier than usual. He shaved carefully, dressed silently, walked to the diner next to the Randall Inn, where he was staying, and had eggs, sausage, home fries, toast, three cups of coffee, and, on his way out the door, a banana. Driving over from Randall, he sang his favorite songs and smiled a lot. He was happy. Everything had gone well. He’d done a good job. Soon he’d be headed somewhere else.
Old memories came up out of their black space as Mendelson crossed the boundary onto Belle Haven land. He had worked hard, as a boy, to earn his own pocket money, enough to pay for a yearly baseball, perhaps a comic book now and then, more likely food, which was sometimes scarce at home. He charged a dollar to tend a grave, turn the topsoil each spring, dress it with forest mulch, plant new grass and flowers as ordered. For another dollar, he would keep it tidy all season. For a buck and a half he would shovel a load of coal down a chute and into a coal cellar. He walked dogs when no one was home to tend them, split firewood, painted fences, ran errands. Sometimes he took home a licorice whip for his little sister, but mostly he spent the money on himself. He had, after all, done the work.
Even then, work had felt good, but not like the big work he did now. The way the earth trembled when his machines smacked it, the way he could point and the men would simply go, do what he told them to do: these things made him feel so strong that his work was his pleasure. He was good at what he did.
It was only seven o’clock when Mendelson arrived at the trench, but everything was white and hazy with August sun. The dew on the field grass looked like flint sparks. Sometimes, when Mendelson was the first to arrive, deer stood grazing at the edge of the far woods. But he had lingered over his substantial breakfast and was not so early this morning. Instead of deer he found his crew waiting for him in their trucks, which was odd. The old Belle Haven miners were all standing at the edge of the trench, looking in. This, too, was unusual.
Like a moose facing an onslaught of wolves, Mendelson was suddenly sorry that he had loaded his gut.
“What’s wrong?” he said as his men joined him.
One man crooked a finger and, turning, led Mendelson toward the trench. The others stayed where they were.
It was not such a big trench. By all estimates, the fire should have been confined to one main tunnel at the extreme n
orthern end of the Belle Haven mines. North of that there was too much granite for mining or, everyone supposed, a mine fire to spread. There were other, parallel tunnels to the east and west of the fire, but so far they were cold and empty and, everyone supposed, far enough away to be safe. It was to the south that the danger lay. On its way toward Belle Haven, the burning tunnel eventually intersected with the other tunnels. Once the fire reached this intersection, it would spread east, west, and carry on south toward the western edge of town. Mendelson had dug the trench well north of this intersection, to cut the fire off before it could contaminate the entire grid. So, although it was deep, and it sloped gradually up at either end to accommodate bulldozers and trucks, the floor of the trench was only about as large as a basketball court. The burning mine tunnel lay just beneath this floor. This was to have been the day when they would hit the tunnel, slice right through it, scoop out a gap where they’d made their cut, plug both portals with clay, and thereby prevent the fire from traveling any farther south. Once they had contained the fire, they would go back to its origin and begin pumping in water, or fly ash, or maybe just seal off that end, too, let the fire suffocate. These had been their intentions.
Mendelson looked down into the trench. At first he saw nothing. Rocks, clay, occasionally a squiggle of coal. Then, from the floor of the trench, he noticed an exhalation.
It was simply a small puff of smoke, and Mendelson suddenly imagined some mythic figure—Paul Bunyan or perhaps a breed of insect-man—sleeping on his back just beneath the dense soil, snoring smoke from his muddy lips in puffs like the one Mendelson had seen from above. In a moment there was another small exhalation. He waited. Another. The fire had come too quickly. And there was nothing for it now but to turn away from the sight.
The miners stood a few feet away. For all his years of training—as a wrestler, then a soldier, then an engineer—Mendelson was not able to still a momentary spasm that moved like ill wind across his face. The miners, seeing it, at once forgave him for his inadequate trench. Their pity rose clearly in their eyes.
“Fuck off,” Mendelson said, and left them standing at the edge of the trench.
They were, for the second time, thoroughly offended by the anger that Mendelson had acquired in his youth and tended ever since. They were not, now, inclined to be so tolerant.
“No call to be rude,” one of them said, more mildly than he felt. “We warned you this would happen. Nobody’s fault but your own.”
“When you’re ready for a second go, let us help,” another said. “We know about this mine.” But he did not try to hide the contempt or the fear that he—that all of the miners—were feeling.
Mendelson never even bothered to look back. He got into his truck and drove to Randall, called his superiors in Harrisburg, told them the bad news, and then spent the rest of the day in his motel room, thinking about how to go at the fire next.
It was what he would spend part of every one of the next dozen years doing: thinking about the fire, plotting, planning, swearing promises, wondering about the endless possibilities that waited underground.
And for those dozen years, it would be the habit of the people of Belle Haven to treat Mendelson with a mixture of pity and loathing. To shy away from him, set him apart, at best offer him the packaged friendliness generally bestowed on strangers. Those who tried harder got no thanks for their trouble.
This was why, whenever Mendelson made his infrequent trips to the Last Resort, for reasons he himself could not quite articulate, he drank alone, sang only to himself, and always went home thirsty.
Chapter 14
An hour after arriving at the Last Resort, Joe realized he was enjoying himself. He’d met some people, had some beer, come to like the look of girls in hats, and heard some of the best jokes he ever hoped to hear.
“I got another one,” Ian said, twisting with glee. “Two guys are on safari when one gets bitten by a snake, right on the end of his manhood. Falls to the ground, writhing with pain. Yells to his buddy, ‘Quick! Get help! Get a doctor! Run!’ So the other guy runs like hell until he reaches a village, finds the doctor, tells him what happened. ‘First,’ the doctor tells him, ‘you have to make two cuts, like a cross, where the snake bit him, and then suck out the venom.’ Back the guy runs, just as fast as he can. When his friend sees him coming, he says, ‘Thank God. Did you find a doctor?’ ‘Yep,’ says the other guy. ‘Well, what did he say?’ says the first. His friend looks at him, shakes his head, says, ‘Sorry, but you’re going to die.’ ”
Joe was laughing, his heels on the rung of his stool, turned so that he could watch four young women belting out “Stand by Your Man,” when he felt a current of clean, cool night air pour over him. He turned toward the door of the Last Resort and saw Rachel step inside, Angela with her, both of them smiling.
He had not given her a thought for hours now. He did not know her last name, her politics, or whether she liked to dance. But he remembered that she had a small, crooked scar on the back of one wrist—her right wrist—and that her ears were unpierced. The sight of her made him feel as if he’d smelled lilac for the first time. She looked as if she were made out of forest: her hair and eyes, even her skin, fashioned from different strains of wood, different shades of brown from almond to bay, but each of them rich and smooth and polished. She made him wish he were an artist, or a father, or a gardener capable of raising up out of rawness something so refined.
She frowned when she saw him. Then Ian called her name, she saw that the two of them were together, and she laughed out loud. The sound of her came tumbling through the motley chaos of the barroom. And in a moment she was by his side.
It seemed quite mysterious to Joe that in the hours he’d spent away from Rachel she’d somehow latched on to his soul. He now suspected that it had been she who had led him to the Queen Anne’s lace that grew alongside the stream. She who had prodded him out into the unmown fields where the cicadas screamed for summer and the hawks killed with grace. She who had lured him into his simple companionship with Ian and, now, into an unkempt bar, which for all its shortcomings promised to be the site of his undoing.
“Now I know what’s so special about Thursday nights in Belle Haven,” he said blandly, his breath shallow. “I thought Angela wanted you to set her hair or something.”
“Oh, I get it,” Rachel said, smiling wrathfully. “Bingo. Tractor pulls. Church socials. Home perms. Boy, Joe, you sure got us pegged.”
“Now, now, Rachel, cut the boy some slack,” Angela said, waving at the bartender.
“For the love of Pete,” Joe spluttered. “You are without doubt the most thin-skinned woman I have ever met.”
“Thin patience,” Rachel said coolly. “You have a habit of making things a little harder for yourself, Joe. Go easy. Try to think before you speak.”
“Fair enough.” He sighed. “Buy you a drink?”
“All right,” Rachel said, willing, it seemed, to speed the water under the bridge.
It wasn’t until Joe took out his wallet to pay for their drinks that he remembered his budget. “To hell with it,” he muttered to himself, anchoring a twenty under his empty bottle.
It took a while for him to feel as cavalier about a turn in the spotlight. “You want me to be a what?” He laughed, choking on his beer.
“A Pip,” Rachel repeated. “You and Ian. You don’t even have to sing. Just do that rolling thing with your hands. Angela and I’ll do the rest.”
After several drinks and much persuasion, he finally agreed. “I’m going to regret this,” he said through his teeth. And when, a few minutes later, Amelia called out, “Rachel, Angela, Ian, and Joe. Come on up here, now. The midnight train to Georgia’s movin’ on out,” they had to drag Joe off his stool.
“Wait a minute,” he bawled when Amelia handed him a microphone. “I thought I didn’t have to sing.” But Rachel, holding the other microphone, only smiled. The band began to play. Angela laid her palms on her lean hips, tapped her booted to
es. Ian trotted first to one side, then the other, hands rolling. He was making trainlike noises. “Whoo. Whoo. Whoo.”
“L.A.” Rachel sang, rather badly,
proved too much for the man.
He couldn’t make it, so he’s leaving a life he’s come to know.
He said he’s going back to find what’s left of his world.
The world he left behind, not so long ago …
Angela made a fair echo as Rachel sang. Ian stumbled around behind them, botching the lyrics and grinning. And Joe stood silent, rooted, watching the three of them in astonishment.
He could find in them no vestige of modesty or even self-awareness. They were immersed in the song, right from the get-go, all smiling, all having the time of their lives. As they warmed to the song, Joe noticed in the eyes of the onlookers an amused admiration for his companions, derision for himself.
I am smarter than any of these people, he reminded himself. Richer. Better. Pretty soon I’ll be gone. I’ll never see any of them again as long as I live.
And with that, he surrendered to the moment, gave himself up to fate, and began, slowly, to dance.
It would take him years to reach the conclusion that had he not been such a bred-in-the-bone snob, he would never have allowed a song, a woman, a run-down watering hole called the Last Resort to pierce the thick muscle of his heart and lay their claim. He would never have let his laughter reach up into his eyes. He would never have danced, sung, celebrated as he did that night.
Later, when Rachel and Angela left the men at the table to sing alone together, Joe wondered at the song they had chosen. But he felt inexplicably close to tears as they sang “Moon River,” a song he had never really listened to before, a song that first silenced the people in that bar, then gently warmed their throats, brought them up off their stools singing, sent them slowly out into the night air dancing, closed Rachel’s throat and made her stand there and cry while Angela wrapped her arms around her, singing as if her heart were breaking.