Coal Black Blues (3 page)

“There hasn’t been a single customer today.”

Neil glanced around the store. “Since you don’t have much to sell, isn’t that a good thing?”

She shrugged both shoulders. “I remember this as a busy place, so I thought people would stop by to see when we’ll open. Maybe things have changed and they all go to town.”

“Some do or they stop out at the highway, but most will come back, when you’re up and running. I doubt very many know you came back to stay and run the store. You might not remember, but people don’t always put out a welcome mat for strangers, not until they get to know them.”

“I’m not a stranger, though.”

Neil shook his head. “Caroline Reaburn wasn’t a stranger but you’re Caro Carrington, aren’t you?”

Caro.
The name her former husband preferred to use because he believed it was more posh than old-fashioned Caroline. Dylan called her that and so did their circle of friends, most of which proved to be
his
friends, not hers when everything unraveled. Surprised Neil knew and more than a little stung, she said, “No, I’m not. That’s Dylan’s choice, not mine. I never liked it and I had my name restored when we divorced. It’s Caroline Reaburn.”

His grin stretched out and made his worry lines recede for a moment. “I like the sound of that, honey. Just make sure people know and they’ll trade here. Are you keeping the name?”

“Jim’s Place?” she said. “I thought I would. Why? Do you think I shouldn’t?”

Neil pressed his lips together in a way she remembered. “I don’t rightly know,” he replied after a pause. “I can see where it might be good to keep the name, but Jim’s gone and you’re here so it might be better to give it a new name.”

“Like what?”

He snapped his fingers. “I thought of one just now. What do you think of Carrie’s Corner?”

She instantly hated it and then she liked it because of the alliteration and the folksy name.

“No one ever calls me Carrie but you.”

“Does that matter?”

“I suppose it doesn’t.”

“So are you going to use it?”

Caroline had already decided she would but aloud she said, “I might. I need to think about it, get used to it. If I do, everyone coming in will want to call me Carrie.”

“That’s bad?”

“It’s different.”

“Don’t you like the name?” His voice shifted tone and she realized he wasn’t as certain as he had once been. Or, maybe not as confident as she had always believed he was.

She touched his cheek with one hand, her fingers folded back. “I do when you use it, because it’s personal, but I’m not sure how I’d feel if a lot of people called me Carrie.”

Neil covered her hand with his and held it in place. “It would be okay and still special when I do, wouldn’t it?”

He sounded uncertain so Caroline sought to reassure him. “You know it would, Neil. So, all right, it’s Carrie’s Corner. It’s catchy and easy to remember.”

And so, she thought, it begins.

Then, Caroline wondered what—the store, her life, or something with Neil and didn’t know.

Chapter Four

The first hard frost etched patterns on the thin, old window panes and turned the lawn to silver. Caroline woke chilled despite the layer of patchwork quilts, and if it hadn’t been re-opening day at the store, she would have reached for an extra blanket and burrowed deeper. Instead, she rose, pulled on thick wool socks before descending into the kitchen. Coffee banished most of the chill, and after she ate a hasty bowl of instant oatmeal, she decided she could face the day. Since she’d indulged in a long bath, choosing to soak in the old claw-foot tub instead of using the attached shower, before bedtime, she dressed in jeans and a red sweatshirt. Red, she and Neil had decided, should be the official color of Carrie’s Corner. The new sign she had commissioned from a local sign painter wouldn’t be ready for another week, but word of the change in name had spread.

Late Friday, with most of the goods in place on the shelves and in the coolers, there had been a steady trickle of customers. A couple of them bought gas, the others sodas or candy bars or chips, more curious, she’d thought, than anything else. Neil, weary and black-faced after his shift in the mines, had stopped at the store, promising to be on hand early to help her with the official opening.

“I’ll be here by five,” he had told her, buying a packaged sandwich and a bag of cheese puffs for what she suspected must be his supper.

“Neil, I can manage if you want to sleep late.”

His gray eyes, hard as the coal he dug from the earth, had met hers. “I never do, Carrie, and I’ll be here unless you don’t want me to be.”

“I do.” And she did, very much. “It’s just that you look so worn out.”

“I live tired,” he replied, his quick grin brightening his grim face for a moment. “I’ll see you in the morning, girl.”

Before she could say more, he had gone and she had stood at the counter, idle, watching his truck taillights diminish before vanishing into the dusk. Caroline waited on a few more customers and closed for the night. She had fashioned a light supper from a can of soup and some crackers, aware as she ate it that her food had been warm when Neil’s hadn’t. Then she’d taken a long soak in the tub with scented bath salts and retired early although she hadn’t been able to sleep until late. Her mind had brimmed with all the many things possible to go wrong and thoughts of Neil.

At the store, she unlocked the door, turned on the lights and the fuel pumps, and made coffee in the industrial size maker. Caroline did a quick walk through, checking each tiny detail and judged it as ready as it would ever be. The old black Kit Kat clock on the wall worked once she’d replaced the batteries, the eyes darting sideways and the tail switching back and forth the way it always had. As a child, she had loved the vintage timepiece and she thought customers would enjoy it. She yawned as the hands marked five AM, early by her standards, but she wanted to be open so miners on the way to work could stop before their shift began at six. If she could stay open until midnight, which she hoped to do, Caroline would have to hire dependable help, and soon.

Caroline tasted the coffee, found it delicious, if strong, added some sugar, and sipped it, waiting for customers. Neil arrived around a quarter past, dressed in well-worn overalls and a flannel shirt. Beneath the harsh fluorescent lights, he appeared haggard with dark, puffy circles beneath his eyes, but he shot her a huge grin. “Good morning, Carrie. It looks like it’s gonna be a beautiful day.”

She peered into the dark. “How can you tell?”

“Look at the mountain tops, girl, they’re golden.”

Sunlight dappled the highest hills with brilliance. Although still dark in the valley, dawn had arrived. The words of an old ballad her grandmother used to sing her to sleep with ran through Caroline’s mind,
down in the valley, valley so low, hang your head over, hear the wind blow.
“They are,” she replied, too nervous to enjoy nature’s beauty. “Want some coffee?”

“Sure.” Neil handed her a well-worn travel mug. At the coffee maker, she removed the lid and frowned at the interior.

“When did you last wash this thing?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Coffee’s hot so I figured it didn’t matter.”

“It’s filthy!”

Caroline carried it to the counter and sink behind the counter. She scrubbed it out and shook her head as the old coffee stains and grime vanished. Then she filled it, adding sugar and handed it to him.

“Thanks. You make great coffee, strong and hot the way I like it.”

He drank it faster than she could have, but then she preferred to let her coffee cool to drinking temperature. By the time the first bona fide customer arrived, Neil had finished three cups. He eyed the cupcake and snack racks with interest, prompting her to ask, “Didn’t you have any breakfast?”

“Nope, I hardly ever do. I roll out of bed, take a shower, get dressed, drink some coffee, and head to the mine.”

“Don’t you get hungry?”

“Sure, but I don’t want to take the time to fix anything. If I do, it’s just a bowl of cold cereal. I use the time to pack my lunch and I eat part of it at first break.”

“Go grab something,” Caroline said. “Neil, no wonder you look like hell.”

With surprise, he asked, “Do I look bad?”

She nodded. “They should put your picture next to the word “exhaustion” in the dictionary. If you don’t get enough sleep or eat when you should, it’s no wonder. There should be some sausage biscuits with the sandwiches in the cold case. Help yourself, my treat.”

While Neil wolfed down a pair of biscuits, Caroline rang up fuel purchases, sold multiple cups of coffee and plastic bottles of milk, and a lot of miscellaneous items. Although there was no other store closer than the interstate, it surprised her that people would buy bathroom tissue, maxi pads, over-the-counter remedies, and motor oil at a convenience store. Her prices were higher than a discount or grocery store, but she made a mental note to lower them if possible. Gouging the people she grew up with wasn’t part of her plan.

The morning passed more quickly than she had imagined. A good number of the Coaltown community turned out to make a purchase or just greet her. More than expected called her by name and remembered her as Jim’s niece. A few eyed her with the distrust and suspicion mountain folks often carried toward outsiders.

Tall and gaunt, Old Man Trevor glared at her as he paid for his two cans of chewing tobacco. “I don’t recollect you, girl,” he said in his thin voice. “But I heard tell that you’re Jim Reaburn’s niece.”

“I am, Mr. Trevor,” Caroline replied. “I lived here until I was seventeen, and after my daddy was killed in an accident, my mother moved to Maryland. I came back to visit my grandparents, though, who ran this place and Uncle Jim.”

“Well, I cain’t recollect you.”

Neil appeared and leaned on the counter beside the old man. “Carrie lived three doors down from me,” he said. “I’m Neil Mc McCullough. Her daddy was Tim Reaburn and he drove a coal truck till it skidded off the edge of the road in bad weather. I’m a miner, too, like you were.”

He spread out his hands, darkened with coal dust in every line, hands that would never wash clean no matter what. If he left the mine tomorrow, Caroline thought, his hands would mark him forever. Old Man Trevor peered down and after a few moments, he bobbed his head in acknowledgement.

“I see that, young man. Are you Jasper’s boy?”

“That’s me.”

“I thought you went off to the Army to be a soldier.”

Neil’s face darkened but his tone remained level when he replied. “I did but they sent me home after I got hurt.”

The elderly man nodded. “Home’s the best place. These mountains are all I’ve known and all I ever wanted to know.”

He shifted his attention to Caroline. “It’s a good thing, missy, you opened this store back up. I remember it all my life. I came here with every penny I found to buy me some candy, and my wife, she brought her eggs here to sell way back when. Weren’t you gone from here, too?”

Tears formed into a knot and filled her throat but she forced the words out around it. “I was. But like Neil, I came home.”

And, it hit home that if she had stayed married, she never would have.
It adds one more reason why I’m glad Dylan and I ended things, because this is where I belong.

“Good thing,” Mr. Trevor said with a nod of his head. “This community needs this store and we need young people like you, missy. Gotta have young blood or this place will end up almost forgotten.”

Caroline knew he spoke truth. She had already noticed there were far more senior citizens than young people and that many of the places she remembered were closed or gone. It had been one of the catalysts behind her desire to run the store. If the Midway Store—or Carrie’s Corner—became vacant, it would leave a rip in the fabric of the community that little could mend.

A line had formed behind the old man and snaked back into the aisles. Caroline used her head to point it out to Neil and he maneuvered Mr. Trevor away from the cash registers where he could talk awhile longer without hindering other customers. She waited on two middle-aged mamas who bought a candy bar and soda each, then a trio of teenage boys who doubled up on mega-size bags of corn chips and dip, a miner dressed like Neil in clean overalls who picked up several quarts of motor oil, and a young girl who couldn’t be more than twelve who bought a can of infant formula. Caroline hoped it was for a sibling, not a child.

There was a brief lull before the store filled up with noon-time shoppers who chose sandwiches from the cold case, soda pop, pickles, and every kind of snack the store carried from cupcakes to cheese crackers. Two different customers asked if she sold hot dogs and Caroline resolved to look into buying the kind of cooker she’d seen in other convenience stores. By midafternoon, the bread shelves were almost bare, she’d sold most of the milk, and customers continued to arrive. Caroline hadn’t had a spare moment to eat lunch or do more than sip a little Pepsi and she doubted Neil had either.

He emerged from the storeroom with several cases of soda riding on his left shoulder and deposited them at the front of the store. “There,” he said as he put them down to replace those already sold. “I’ll bring out the rest of the milk but we’re slap out of bread until Monday. How late did you plan to stay open?”

“Until midnight,” Caroline said. Her feet ached deep to the bone and her weary body craved rest. A dull headache added to her general discomfort. “I don’t know if I’ll last, though.”

His eyes focused on her as he leaned both palms against the glass topped counter. “You okay?”

She nodded. “I’m just tired and I know you must be, too.”

“Yeah, I’m beat. But I’m used to it. You can’t open the store at five every morning and work ’til midnight, then do it all over again.”

Caroline snorted. “I’m figuring that out the hard way, Neil.”

“You’re gonna have to hire some employees or change the hours.”

“I was thinking the same thing, but I don’t even know where I’d start looking for anyone to hire.”

“Lots of people round here need jobs.”

“So do I put a “Help Wanted” sign in the window or what?”

Neil moved his hand until it touched hers. “I wouldn’t, unless you’re not picky, Carrie, because if you do that, you’ll have a lot of unsavory people who want a job in here. There’s plenty of good folks here, but we’ve got our share of potheads, drunks, meth addicts, thieves, and anything else you can imagine. I can suggest a few possible people, if you like.”

Her headache ratcheted up several degrees. “Sure,” she said. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“It won’t be too hard. If you’re planning to be open from five AM until midnight, divide it into three six-hour shifts, hire at least six people to rotate, two per shift to alternate schedules. You’ll be here more than they will, I imagine.”

“I can take day shift.”

He shook his head. “Not every day of the week, or you’ll get run down and wear yourself out. You need one employee on every shift for now, later maybe two. I’ll help you as much as I can, but I have to work too and I won’t be much good after working all day in the mine.”

Caroline rubbed her forehead with one hand. “I know, so all right. I’ll hire some people but let’s get through this day first. What time is it now?”

“Quarter ’til five,” Neil said. “Before long, business is going to pick up before nice folks head for home or a bigger town to spend their Saturday and before the drunks turn out in force.”

“I don’t have any liquor for sale, not even beer. You said it wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“And it wouldn’t be, but they’ll get hungry after they’ve been drinkin’ and here’s where they will come, honey. Why not close at six tonight? You know I’m tired and so are you.”

“I am,” she admitted. “And I’ve got a headache. All right, I’ll close at six. What about tomorrow?”

Neil waved his hand toward the bare shelves. “You need to restock and a lot of stuff won’t be here until the delivery trucks show up Monday. You might as well take the day off, Carrie. Do you want some aspirin or something?”

“Ibuprofen would be better.”

He brought her the tablets, taken from the small stock of over the counter meds, and a fresh soft drink. “Thanks, Neil,” she said, with a soft tone. Caroline pressed the cold soda can against her forehead. The sensation was soothing and she shut her eyes for a few seconds, savoring it.