by Rachel Simon
In August, a couple months after we got to be friends, these two guys start in on us. Right away, they come three times a day, order Pepsis. They pull their money out in balls from their pockets, it’s all wrinkled. I like the tall one, Lion. His eyes are green, his hair’s blond, and it’s got a good, strong wave that carries it like a thick rope down the back of his neck. When he gives me his money, he slides his fingers slowly over my palm like it’s cat fur. I look at him, smile, let out air through my mouth. He nods once, quick.
The other guy, Johnny, is scrawny-looking, but Jeannine tells me she likes him. I don’t know why, all he does is laugh and his hair falls in his face. One of his eyes keeps drifting off to the side like it keeps remembering it’s got somewhere else to go. But who knows about these things.
They start asking us stuff like how old we are and where we live. The taller one does the asking. Jeannine blushes, puts their Pepsis on the tray. The smaller one watches. She looks up at him every few seconds, bites her lip. I answer questions for us both.
Then today before her shift, her brother — the manager — comes up to me. I been watching you, he says. Be careful what you do with my sister, she’s real young. Hell, you were born older than she is now. I won’t say you can’t hang out together, but keep an eye on her, OK? I don’t want nothing bad happening.
Yeah, I say. I can’t believe she puts up with this crap, but I don’t tell him that.
He must’ve seen it coming, because at dinner the guys ask us what we’re doing after work. I feel Jeannine look at me. Nothing, I say, and glance at her. She nods, eyes wide. The big one says, So let’s go for a ride, what do you think? Sure, I say, great, fine.
Her brother sees them waiting in the parking lot at closing. When Jeannine’s in the kitchen, he says to me, Remember what I said.
Don’t worry, I say, Control is my specialty, it’s where I get straight A’s.
In the ladies room, we change to miniskirts and sandals. She curls her hair, I mousse mine, and we go out. It’s still hot and sticky, the kind of weather that makes you want to pull your skin off and fan it back and forth so you can cool down.
Lion shows us their car, a ’71 Chevy. The hubcaps are smeared with mud, the bumper sticker reads: ROCK ’N’ ROLL ANIMALS. I get in front because Lion’s driving.
The radio blasts out soon as he turns the key. I look at him from the side. This way I can see his cheek, between his ear and his lips, where it makes a smooth valley. I want to reach over and skate my fingers down that valley, down his neck.
But I don’t. I gotta watch out for Jeannine.
We turn off the highway when we hit the end of the strip and head out to farmland. I don’t know this area. I say, You guys live here? Naw, Lion says, we live over in Trucksville, we just like cruising around. We found this place we want to take you to. Ever hear of Magnet Hill?
No, I say.
That’s ’cause we just named it, he says. Right, Johnny?
M-m-m-m-m-agnet Hill, yeah, Johnny stutters from the back. He beats out the drum parts to the song on the radio, fast, it sounds like he’s running. I glance over my shoulder. Him and Jeannine are sitting close, not looking at each other.
You brothers? I ask Lion.
Yeah, he says, think I’d hang out with him if we wasn’t? He laughs, and so does Johnny. Johnny sucks in when he laughs, like the Burger King door when it closes too fast.
We drive down roads I’ve never been on, up and down hills, into woods, past fields and barns. Everything twists around. I lose track of direction, I keep waiting to hit the Susquehanna or the mountains so I can figure it out.
The radio’s up real loud and they pass around a joint. Lion and me say lots of stupid things. I ask about his name, and he says it’s because of his hair and also he’s not afraid to do anything, anything at all. He winks at me. Then he faces the road again and says, Why d’ya think Johnny’s called Johnny?
I don’t know, I say, Scotch, right? He doesn’t answer, they both just laugh. Jeannine squeaks out a tiny giggle, I can’t tell what she thinks is funny, maybe it’s just the pot.
Finally we come to this place between two hills. The land scoops in like it’s a hammock with a fat man in the middle. At the tops of the hills are trees, but where we are, in the center, it’s just grass or weeds. With the moon on so bright, it looks like frost. The sky around the moon is dark, I can see a million stars, and the roach has gone out in my hand.
This here’s Magnet Hill. Lion turns off the car.
We sit there. The crickets sing away. I wait for Lion’s hand to sneak up my leg or for Johnny to make some crack.
But no one does anything. We sit and wait. And when it happens, it’s not what I ever thought.
What happens is the car starts rolling up the hill — backwards. The motor’s not even on and it’s moving. It’s like something’s sucking it up, slowly, like we’re in a straw. We didn’t start it, we can’t stop it, we just gotta go along.
Jeannine says the first thing she’s said since we got in the car. She says, What’s going on? She sounds real scared.
Lion holds his hands up to show her they’re not on the steering wheel. See, he says, Magnet Hill. Next to her, Johnny laughs. The car moves faster and faster up the hill, like whatever’s sucking us is getting stronger and stronger. It makes Johnny laugh more.
Then Jeannine starts saying, I don’t like this. When does it stop? There could be another car over the hill. Why is this happening?
It’s OK, Lion says, no one else hangs out here.
I don’t like it, I don’t like it, she says. I think, Yeah, I don’t like this either. Only I’m not going to say it.
Air blows through the window, strong, then weak, then strong again. It feels like it’s kicking my face.
We gotta pull over, I say, Jeannine’ll flip. Lion gives me this look, I rub my hand over his knee and inside near his thigh and he hits the brakes.
The car jerks fast and we stop. I feel like we’re still moving, like you do when you get off the roller coaster. My ears are ringing.
God, what was that? Jeannine says, breathing hard.
God? Johnny says. God’s pulling the str-r-r-r-r-ings on our car.
What? I ask Lion.
Pfff, he says, brushing the air with his hand, Johnny’s nuts. That’s all.
It is pretty weird, this hill.
That old mine up there makes it happen, Lion says.
There’s a mine up there? I say. I didn’t know we’d gone so far. They got cars going underground?
No, it’s a strip mine. They don’t work it anymore.
It’s got magic, Johnny says.
Lion looks sideways at me, smirks.
Let’s go see, I say.
Yeah, sure, Lion says. He turns on the car, shuts off the radio, makes a U-turn. I look back at Jeannine. Johnny’s got his arms around her, watching her. She’s looking at me. Her eyes look slanted, like she’s Chinese. They make me feel like I shot her. I turn back around.
At the top of the hill we pull onto this dusty road I didn’t see before. We go for a while through woods, the leaves hang so thick over us I can’t see the sky. We drive till we come to a clearing where the hills around us are cut open. By the moonlight you can see the dirt in them is striped — dark light dark light — like slices of layer cake. In the middle of the clearing, on flat ground, there’s rusty trucks and broken-down scaffolding and huge mountains of something that looks like sand. Everything sits there, real quiet, like a picture of the world before people, when there was nothing but hairy elephants and giant rocks.
We drive around the piles of sand. What’s sand doing here? I ask.
It’s not sand, Lion says, it’s culm banks from the coal.
I laugh and say, Come banks?
He laughs and says it again. Leftover junk, he says, they call it waste, and it’s no good, they’d flush it down a toilet if they had one big enough.
What color is it? I say. You can’t tell in the dark.
Then he turns off the car. We sit there and look out the front window.
Let’s climb one, I say.
Sometimes it’s like quicksand. Sometimes people fall in and never come out.
We’re quiet for a minute. Then I say, Let’s go for it.
Wait, Jeannine says.
I get out of the car, slam the door, walk over to the largest pile. Behind me I hear a door open. Lion comes up from behind, puts his arm around my shoulder. We stand in front of a pile, I have to tip my head back to see to the top. The moon’s right there, balancing on the tip of the mound, and it’s like if you climbed to the top you could touch it.
I put my foot on the culm. I expect it’ll be soft like sand. But it’s hard. Hard as rock. Maybe it’s been sitting around too long. Maybe it needs to be walked on.
I’m going up, I say, and I step away from Lion.
After a few seconds, he follows.
We should feel it out before we put our feet down, he says.
Yeah, I say, stepping higher, fast as I’d walk stairs.
We don’t have to go all the way, he says.
I know, I say, fixing my eyes on the top.
The air’s cooled off. In the moonlight, the culm doesn’t look gray, it looks white. When I glance at my sandals, I can’t tell where my feet end and the culm begins, that’s what color it is.
The pile’s steep and we’re getting up high, higher than the trees. Lion’s breathing heavy, I listen and I hear that I am too. Also I hear voices, down on the ground, in the car. They go loud then soft then loud again, like ambulances when they’re far away.
This is easy, Lion says, if I’d known this, I would of gone up here sooner.
It’s cake, I say. Nothing to it.
I’m feeling my lungs fill up with night sky. I look at him. He’s sweating, some of his hair sticks to his cheeks. I turn away, close my eyes for a second, breathe in deep. I touch my face, and I’m not sweating, not at all. When we get to the top, I’ll take his hand and put it on my face. He won’t even know it’s summer.
I’m just about to say, Race you to the top, when from down below I hear Get out! real loud. It’s Jeannine’s voice. The car door slams, the engine roars up.
We turn and look as the car screeches away, around the piles of culm, down the road into the woods. Dust flies everywhere, and as it settles, there’s Johnny, sitting in the dirt. Even from this high up we can hear him wail like a baby.
Hey, Johnny, Lion calls, taking a couple steps down, what the hell happened?
She thr-r-r-r-r-ew me out! he says.
Ha! Jeannine’s learning. I smile.
You all right? he shouts.
Yeah, Johnny whimpers.
He’s all right, I say, and I put my hand on Lion’s arm. She probably went to get beer. Let’s keep going.
Lion glances at me, then shouts down, She say she’d come back?
She said she never wanted to see any of us again.
She never what? She has my car!
He starts running down the hill, in steps so big I think his legs’ll split apart.
I stand and yell after him, I’m staying up here.
Suit yourself, he says without breaking his stride.
At the bottom, he runs to Johnny, picks him up off the ground, puts his arm around him. They bend toward each other and talk low.
Who cares. They’re a pair of idiots. It’s good Jeannine finally learned something. No more little girl crap. She couldn’t of done it without me. She’s driving home now, tomorrow she’ll say thanks. I’ll hitch back, I’ll find my way, I’ll make it somehow. I always do. But — she left me without my purse in God-knows-where. I don’t even know what county I’m in.
I turn to face the top of the pile and start climbing again. The culm sparkles, I hadn’t noticed that before, it’s made of little black diamonds. I step hard. I’m gonna check the world out from the top, make this night worth something. My feet slap down, the boys talk below, crickets are everywhere.
Then, no warning — my foot breaks through the hard crust and sinks in, up to my thigh. My other leg bends, at the knee, my hands push out in front of me, I gotta keep myself from falling in, keep myself back.
For a second I forget to breathe.
Then I realize it’s not sucking me in deeper, it’s not pulling. It’s holding me, tight, like I’ve fallen into the finger of a giant glove. The funny thing is, it’s not cold or prickly. I can’t feel it at all — it’s as if the culm and my leg are the same thing.
I try to lift myself up, push with my hands. But nothing happens. It’s like trying to pull a tree out of the ground.
The moon hangs over my head, high, big. I stop and twist around. The boys are still there. I don’t want them to see me stuck like this, but if I don’t call out, they might leave without me, and I’ll be here all night.
And then they turn from me and start walking away, walking back toward Magnet Hill. I stop and hold perfectly still. They follow the tracks Jeannine made when she took off. She’s gotta be miles away by now, hands gripping the wheel, no looking back. Not even for me. Not even thinking of me. Sweat runs down my face, soaks the ends of my hair. I wipe my eyelids, my face, shake out my wet hands. When I open my eyes, it takes a second to find Lion and Johnny. They’re almost into the woods. My chest unlocks like a trap door, and I feel something I’ve never felt before.
Hey, Lion, I call out. Hey, guys.
They stop moving. Back here, I yell. Lion turns and tugs at his brother, then points up the hill at me.
Come back. Please. I need you, I shout, waving my arms. And I mean it for the first time in my life.
Launching the Echo
They don’t want to look. They’re not even interested. On one side of us a rock cliff stretches like a gigantic wall toward the sky, and on the other side a river twists a mile below the edge of the road. I point out the car window. “Look, girls,” I say to my daughters. “Look at the icicles! Look at how fast the river’s flowing!” But they sit back, all three of them, even the infant, and cross their arms, and sigh.
“Why’d you turn the radio off, Mommy?” This is the oldest one talking. When they are trapped in the car, the radio is what matters, that and a storybook for her, a thumb for the middle one, and my breast for the baby.
“I had to,” I tell her.
“But why?”
“Too much interference.”
“How long till the sound comes back?”
“About thirty minutes.”
“No!” the two older girls cry. “Aaaa!” the baby adds.
Every week, the same conversation. This keeps our minds off what we drive away from on the weekends. What we drive away from is my second husband, the father of the baby. I’ve come to realize he is not the best man to live with. He stews in his Krishna consciousness, praying to his shrine, dressing the deities before he goes to bed. He waits for me to come home Sunday nights to pick his clothes off the floor and make his lunch for the week. But he is a little better than the man before him, the father of my middle girl. I never married that one. He helped around the house, though he made more work in the process; the philosophy of recycling guided his every move, and so he refused to allow paper products, such as bathroom tissue, to be delicate about it, in the house. But I must admit that both men were better than my first husband. In my memory, he has a snout, to facilitate barking. If I disobeyed his instructions — written in list form when he left for work — he would punish me by staying out until his girlfriends brushed on their morning make-up and skipped off to school.
I believe my girls do not know that I have a weakness for bad men. They certainly do not know how easily the touch of a man’s hand on my skin and the sight of his eyes when I feel he loves me can eclipse my common sense. All they know is that there have been a few daddies in their lives, and that money is necessarily preceded by “not enough.” And that the daddy who is there now, who I have finally asked
to leave but who probably won’t unless I throw him out physically, responds to them with little more than silence.
And so, every weekend, I drive. I pack the cooler, bundle the girls up, strap them into their kiddie seats. I set up the oldest girl with Dr. Seuss and coloring books, the middle one with hand puppets, and the baby with an assortment of plastic toys. Then I click on the radio and we roll onto the highway, and in four hours we are at my mother’s house, where there are no men.
After the radio scatters to static, we sing songs. “Jingle Bells” was number one on this hit parade for a while. Then “Rudolph,” and then “Yellow Submarine.”
Today the last remains of winter are melting. Streams of water course down the cliff icicles like tears. The ice upstream has broken up, and the river splashes wild as it finally bursts out of the restraints of cold weather. I watch the world around me, crack open the window, and inhale cool air, the smell of clean dirt. The older girls play in the back. The infant fidgets beside me, calling out her favorite and only word, “Aaaa.”
I start them into “This Land Is Your Land.” They know the words. It comes easily and fast. We’re going along, the baby’s aaaaing right with us, we sound just great — and in the middle of the chorus I realize that their lead has drifted away; I have stopped singing.
“What’s the matter, Mommy?” the oldest says as the ribbon of their voices begins to fray.
I barely hear her at first. The faces of my husbands and lovers are parading by the windshield, along with memories of resolutions I made, then broke. Always, I seize the first hand that offers to haul me out of a pit, then cling to that hand until it tosses me into the next pit. And then, beaten down and empty, I eagerly reach out for more of the same.
“Mommy, are you OK?” the middle one says. “Why are you crying?”