Harlan County Horrors (11 page)

“
There’s little point in going to school anymore, not for me.”
Ernest slouched, hands in his pockets. His shoe dug into the dirt
and overturned a rock.

“
Oh, I see.”

“
Anyway, we’d just settled down into our favorite spot and
cast our lines when we noticed an odd stink.”

“
It always smells odd ‘round these parts.” Minnie sucked her
teeth.

“
Yeah, but this was like moldy game. So we got up to check it
out. The odor got worse behind this bend in the creek where the
water pools a little deeper. When we stooped down, this body bobbed
up. Half of its head was chewed away. It was bloated and swollen,
like a big leech with blood still oozing down its face…” his voice
trailed for a moment while he squirreled together another reserve
of composure. “It stared at us with its one good eye. I swear it
looked like it was grinnin’ at us.”

“
Who was it?”

“
Don’t know.”

“
Couldn’t be from around here, then. What’d you do after
that?”

“
We ran. Twisted my ankle somethin’ fierce. Didn’t want to go
straight home on it.”

“
And your uncle?”

“
He went home.”

“
And you left the body? I wonder if we should call the
sheriff.”

“
Yes ma’am…I mean, no ma’am.”

“
You know what I think? I think you and your daddy’s fool
brother got to playin’ too rough, you hurt your ankle and your
belly got to grumblin’ and it was all the excuse you needed to stop
here.” Minnie stood up, revealing a picture of Jesus on her faded
T-shirt, and tossed a cigarette butt into a thatch of dirt. “You
boys and your fool notions. Look at you. Chest all puffed out
without an idea of where to go. There is real darkness in the world
we have to guard against. No sense conjurin’ up some for no good
reason. Come on inside.”

The
thick door clattered shut, the lock busted; not that it mattered:
the home was long past caring if anyone robbed it. Swatches of
paint, lacquer scabs of corrosion, flaked away. Patterned with a
swirl of feathers, the curtains covered windows whose glass didn’t
quite fit. Minnie cast her eyes about for a place to sit, obviously
self-conscious of how much stuff cluttered up her home. Plaster
praying hands clasped toward the heavens beseeching an unseen God
sat above the doorframe. Jugs of drinking water gathered in parade
formation along the floor. Yellowed newspapers were stacked in the
corner. Jars of preserves lined the shelves alongside oil lamps. A
beautiful fanned-out turkey tail was mounted on the wall. She lit
up another cigarette and sank into her couch, whose inner sponge
burst through the threadbare material.

“
You gonna call a doctor?” A flicker of fear underscored his
thin, tremulous voice.

“
You see a hospital around here? You doctor yourself or go
without.”

He
winced when she grabbed his ankle. “It hurts.”

“
Have a shot of physic.” Minnie poured a couple of tablespoons
worth of a clear liquid from a Ball jar into a metal coffee
cup.

He
sniffed at the moonshine and offered a questioning raise of his
eyebrow.

“
It’s either that or I hit you upside the head and tell you to
hush up.”

Ernest downed the liquid the same way he took cod liver oil:
he pinched his nose and tossed it back to have as much of it as
possible bypass his tongue. The liquor burned his throat, and an
unbidden gasp gave way to a flood of coughs.

“
That hit the spot.” Tears welled in his eyes; his face
flushed to a mild red.

“
You taking to the mines tomorrow?”

“
Yes, ma’am.”

“
Won’t be your ankle ailin’ you ‘fore too long.”

Minnie’s father had died of died pneumonia when she was a
young girl. Since then, she’d become a true root woman. Gesturing
for Ernest to lie back and pull up his shirt, she lit a candle and
placed it on his chest. He anxiously eyed the wax melt and pool,
waiting for the molten liquid to land on his belly. She turned a
glass over it and dimmed the flame. The sting of onion juice as she
dripped it on him caused him to blink his eyes.

“
You really are scared, boy,” Minnie said.

“
Just got a bad feeling is all.”

“
Some of us were born more sensitive than others. I know that
I always trust my feelings. Sometimes they know things your head
ain’t quite ready to know. Iffen I had to guess, you just startin’
to wake up to your calling, your true life, is all. These hills are
all I know, but they bury secrets as well as anywhere else.” After
inspecting her handiwork, she patted him on his shoulder. “There,
you all fixed up. Now you’re ready to go home.”

The
sign for Bob’s Creek teetered on a rusted metal arrow pointed
toward a hollow gravel road that looked like the bottom of a creek
bed. The town—more like a wide spot in the road—sat within a cradle
of hills, the clouds poured along the tree line like smoke from the
rest of the world erupting in flames. Bob’s Creek was one of those
places where people hid, though not especially well. A fox lay
flattened in the middle of the road, its brains spilled into the
pavement. Crows picked at the soft bits in his mouth. Ernest
thought it a waste of some perfectly good stew meat.

Uncle Russell had been like another father to him. Had been
out hunting with his brother, Ernest’s father, Gene, up on
Daggett’s Ridge the day he met Momma. Though they weren’t real
quick with strangers, they took her in as part of the family.
Apparently family didn’t mean as much as it used to: Uncle Russell
had moved in with Ernest’s other uncle’s wife in a trailer of their
own further down the hill. Ernest picked up a stone and threw it at
the trailer. The metallic thump sent him darting out of
sight.

Ernest’s dog, appropriately named Dog, stared with mild
disinterest, not lifting its head. A skullcap of black fur matched
a similar splotch on his back on an otherwise white body. Their
home trailer was tucked into a corner of the dirt lot. The
headboard from a twin bed leaned against it, as did a plastic
reindeer with buckshot in its side. Firewood was piled at one end
of it while wasp nests dangled from strings on the other end. A
cross made out of preserved flowers sat on a rotted stump with the
word “Grandpa” splayed beneath it. Ernest spat on it as he trundled
past.

Rough and tumble and full of hope, his little brothers, much
younger than he, played without a moment’s care. John and Mark,
named from books of the Bible, often left Ernest feeling like the
odd apostle out. John wore only blue jeans, his feet buried in
earth as he ran a fire truck into a mound of dirt. Mark, who’d left
one side of his overalls unfastened and drooping off his shoulder,
paused at the wooden steps and stared at an overturned
truck.

Laundry—consisting of overalls and thick shirts—bowed the line
from a tree to the trailer and shaded Gene Mayfield as he tinkered
with his still. Other than the creases in his forehead, he had a
smooth, jowly face. A cigarette was nestled behind his ear, though
he hadn’t smoked in over a decade. A reminder of who he used to be,
it doubled as a constant test of himself. His left hand missed a
thumb, though it wasn’t immediately evident past his long fingers.
He had been born in the house, delivered by a horse doctor, and had
never been beyond the hills and proudly declared so.

“
Got your chores done?”

“
Yes, sir,” the boys answered as a Greek chorus of innocence
percolating mischief.

“
We got no sorry people around these parts. We ain’t goin’ to
fool with ‘em.” Poppa turned to Ernest. “What about you? You ready
for tomorrow?”

“
Yes, sir.”

“
I
know you don’t feel all good about this, son, but a man’s got to do
right by his kin. Muck is in your blood. Minin’ was good enough for
your grandpa, good enough for me, and good enough for
you.”

“
I
know, sir.” The mine would one day kill him, as it had his
grandfather and as it chewed away at his father.

“
All right then.” The words had an air of finality to
them.

Not
self-reflective by design or intent, Ernest he knew he wasn’t
destined for much. He didn’t dream of becoming a doctor or lawyer.
Not a president or astronaut. He knew his place and wasn’t about
trying to upset the natural order of things. A lesson hammered home
by Grandpa, he knew he had to be about his family first. Maybe his
kids would be good enough to go to school.

As
if sensing commotion, Faye Mayfield came around from tending her
garden out back and gave a gruff wave to the boys. They ducked into
the kitchen only to bound out the door moments later eating ketchup
sandwiches. Ernest sat on the porch, content to watch the boys play
tin can alley. Faye leaned over him—her eyes, cold and grey, tired
but strong, echoed a face fraught with worry—and placed a
sympathetic hand on his shoulder.

“
Where have you been?”

“
Fishin’ with Uncle Russell.”

“
That man never was much good, but he’s kin.” She offered him
a sandwich, but he waved it off. “Only yesterday, you were swimming
in the water hole. A chubby little thing, your britches pulled
up.”

“
Momma, I’m fit to work and we need the money. It’s a fine
job. Good enough for Grandpa, good enough—”

“
I
know, I know.” Ernest knew he didn’t have to explain it to her,
though he tried to hide the bitterness in his voice. “Momma, you
ever get the feelin’ like you…I don’t know…just didn’t fit
right?”

“
These are good men. They done real good by us.”

“
I
know, but sometime I just feel called to somethin’ else,” he said,
though his place was beneath the earth. Muck was in his
blood.

“
You should listen, then. At least hear yourself
out.”

Dog
started to howl as if it talked to the dead.

Sleep eluded him, as it often did. His thoughts drifted down
to a place of blackness, and like a line cast into a pond only to
be pulled out again, his mind stirred in a fitful approximation of
rest. A dark swirl of ideas and images passed for dreaming: a
waking paralysis, a glimmer of grey floating above the deep waters
of his thoughts.

The
morning was already hot, the air thick with the promise of rain.
Spun with his own momentum, an inexorable foreboding pulled Ernest
into its spiral as he and his father pulled up on their mule and
wagon. The mine at Bob's Creek was technically across the main road
and up the hollow at Mary Helen. The previous mining company had
quit its operations after carving out all of the easy coal. The men
knew they were doing little better than scavenging now, but
desperate times—and a desperate company that pressured its managers
to not let any complaints or regulations irregularities climb any
higher than plausible deniability allowed—called for desperate
measures.

A
two-room shed doubled as a washroom, consisting of a shower room
and a dry room; street clothes and work clothes left to dry dangled
from hooks above them, dozens of lynched bodies suspended from
chain nooses. Mining belts, wool socks, gloves, steel-toed boots
and headlamps with names emblazoned on the sides stocked the
shelves. Only once Ernest had changed into his gear did the initial
trepidation wear off enough for him to face the mine.

The
high voltage cables and the roof bolts heavy with rock dusting made
for a forbidding entryway. However, Ernest felt his fear a healthy
one. Electricity, dust, gas, explosives, machinery accidents; there
were a lot of ways to go. The shaker conveyer advanced the coal, a
tongue lolling out of the mouth of the mine shaft. Thick black
glasses hooked around the jutting ears of Dewey Elkins, his face
black with soot except for his eyes and teeth. His face was a
filigree of wrinkles and forlorn crags; black gaps winked along the
bottom of his smile. A slug of brown spittle from his mouthful of
chew stirred the cicadas. Next to him sat Kenny Jenkins, the lone
Negro of the bunch, swapping sandwiches and exchanging jokes. Dewey
remarked for all to hear that he “didn’t trust a man who ain’t a
little black,” obviously his favorite joke describing his
friendship with Kenny. With his thick sideburns and easy smile,
Kenny surveyed Ernest, then the men exchanged furtive
glances.

“
Don’t worry, son,” Gene reassured him. “Sometimes new folks
make us a mite testy. When you’re down in the mine, your life
depends on the man next to you. So they need to know they can count
on you. They’ll come around to you.”

“
I
guess.” The men’s cool reticence didn’t bother Ernest. He wandered
past the men as he strapped his gear back on.

“
It’s not so bad,” Kenny said without facing him, as if
talking to the cave walls. A massive individual, his broad
white-toothed smiled dispelled any quiet menace about
him.

“
You get used to it?”

“
I
won’t say that. But my family’s gotten used to food on the table
and jobs’re scarce ‘round these parts.”

“
I
just wanted more.”

“
I
know, kid.” He walked toward the elevator. “The muck
calls.”