Sister Mine (28 page)

Chapter Twenty-Six

T
HE SOUND OF TIRES
on gravel wakes me. It wakes E.J., too.

We've fallen asleep on the couch. Some time during the night he got up and got a blanket for us. We're wrapped up tight in it. The garage is cold but we have a delicious amount of body heat trapped inside our cocoon.

We both sit up in unison. I can barely see him in the dark, but somehow I can make out the concerned expression on his face.

“That's Lib's truck,” he says.

“You know the sound of his truck?”

He gets up and pulls on his jeans.

“What time is it?” I ask him.

“Almost three.”

He stops on his way out to give me a quick kiss. I take this as a good sign.

“I'll be right back,” he says.

I wait until he's gone out the back door, then I wrap myself in the blanket and go open a window so I can eavesdrop.

Lib's standing next to his truck.

The grass behind him is covered with a silver frosty dew that glimmers softly in the blurred moonlight like metal shavings spilled across the yard.

E.J. picks his way across the gravel drive in his bare feet. He forgot to take a shirt. I pull the blanket tighter. Just looking at him makes me colder.

“What's going on?” E.J. asks.

Lib looks from E.J. shivering in nothing but his jeans to my car sitting in his driveway in the middle of the night but makes no comment.

“I'm sorry about this,” he says. “I know you gotta go to work in a couple hours.”

Lib's better dressed for the weather. He has on a camouflage hunting jacket and a pair of heavy boots.

“I thought I could wait until tomorrow to tell all of you. That was my plan. I thought we could all get together at Jimmy's place and have a meeting. But it's driving me crazy. I can't sleep. I can't talk to Teresa about it because she's a woman and she can't understand what I've got to say.”

He reaches inside his coat pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. He hands one to E.J. and lights it for him before lighting his own.

“The lawyer called. We heard back from Cam Jack today. If we go through with the lawsuit, he's going to declare bankruptcy and close the mines.”

They stand in silence. I watch the orange tips of their cigarettes rise and fall away from their mouths.

“I went and talked to him. The lawyer. He kept going on and on about Cam Jack's mines and what he's going to do with his mines and how he's choosing to operate his mines. And I started to get really pissed. I swear I was seeing red. His mines. The man's never set foot in a single one of them. I'm the one who's spent my life inside Jojo. I'm the one who knows her. He may own her, but she's not his.”

E.J. smokes and nods.

“And he'd close her. I'm sure he would. He'd close her just like that. He doesn't care. He doesn't care about the men who are gonna lose their jobs and he also doesn't care about her. She doesn't want to sit around useless. Her and Beverly. It's gonna happen one of these days but it's not fair to do it to them already. They've both been through a lot.”

Another bout of silence passes between them. E.J. must be cold but he won't show it in front of Lib. Lib must know E.J.'s cold but he won't embarrass him by asking if he is.

Lib shifts his weight from one foot to the other and looks up at the sky. No stars tonight. No moon. Only a layer of clouds that makes the night seem wrapped in gray gauze.

“The whole time we were trapped down there,” he says, “I never had a bad thought about her. I never blamed her. I never hated the mine.”

E.J. continues nodding.

“What do you think we should do?” Lib asks.

“Doesn't sound like you want to close your mine,” E.J. replies.

“Our mine.”

“You have to remember I'm slightly biased here because I'd like to keep my job.”

“The lawyer's estimating we could each get a couple hundred grand from the sale of the equipment. That's about six years of your salary right now.”

E.J. finishes his cigarette and tosses it onto the stones.

“I've been doing this job since I graduated high school. I've bitched and moaned about Cam Jack just like everyone else does. How he makes a fortune while we take home a lousy fifteen dollars an hour. How we haven't had a raise in almost ten years now. How our health benefits have been cut and our 401(k)s slashed to hell.

“And it's all true and I suppose it's not fair and maybe there are people out there who got the time to dwell on it. But what it all comes down to for me is this: I love my job, and I figure it's better to get screwed doing a job I love than to get amply rewarded doing something I hate.”

“So what's your vote?” Lib asks him.

“Fuck him. I got better ways to spend my time than sitting in lawyers' offices and courtrooms.”

“Amen to that.”

They shake hands. E.J. claps Lib on the back.

“Get some sleep, boss.”

“I'll do that. And what about you? What are you getting tonight?”

He doesn't answer right away. I can't see his face so I don't know if he's smiling.

“An education,” he says.

He remains standing calmly in the middle of the driveway with his hands in his pockets until Lib's taillights wink out of sight around a bend in the road, then he races back inside the garage, cursing the stones tearing at his bare feet.

“Jesus, it's cold,” he says, trying to take his jeans off while he hops up and down to get warm.

“You spying on us?” he asks me.

“Yep.”

“What do you think?”

I walk over to him and wrap his naked body up in the blanket with me.

“I think Jojo's a lucky girl.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I
WAKE FROM A TERRIBLE DREAM.
In it I'm wandering through a field full of flowers as tall as I am with faces of girls and halos of sharp purple petals that cut like knives when I brush against them. Their eyes and mouths are open in frightful expressive pain, but they make no sound and I sense they can't see.

Snuffling, filthy hogs and emaciated, iron-eyed cows are feeding off them, leaving behind bloody scars as they tear leaves from their thick writhing stems ending in ropes of twisted fleshy roots clutching the muddy topsoil.

I try to scare off the cows and pigs but nothing will make them leave. I scream and shout. I clap my hands. I kick at them. I try to drag them away. I find a big stick and beat at them. They're immune to everything I try.

Suddenly I understand that it's too late and the impervious livestock are telling me not to waste my time. The plant-girls are already dead, yet somehow alive and suffering horribly, but no one can help them so no one should care.

The dream leaves me disoriented, and I'm not sure where I am when I wake up.

My head still hurts from being pistol-whipped. I reach behind my ear and gingerly touch the knot there, and notice E.J., fully dressed and whistling, standing not far from me, clamping the lid onto his dinner bucket.

I look up at the faintly lit sky through the window and a small surge of panic passes through me as I realize he could be late for his shift.

“What are you doing?” I ask him.

“Hey. I tried not to wake you.”

“You're going to be late.”

He shoves a last bite of toast into his mouth and washes it down with a gulp of coffee.

“I'm fine. I think I know by now how much time I need to drive to my job.”

“Are you sure you're not going to be late?”

He takes a step toward me.

“What's wrong with you, Shae-Lynn?”

I get up, slip into his T-shirt from last night, and move past him to his dinner bucket. I pick it up in order to hold it out to him. The weight is so familiar, even though I haven't held one for twenty years.

“I could've packed it for you.”

“I've been packing it for myself for twenty years. It's okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“Hey,” he says gently and takes the pail from me. “You don't have to take care of me that way. You want George to make you some bacon?”

“Why? Are you saying I can't cook?”

“For Christ's sake, what is with you?” His voice turns rough. “I know you can't cook. I can't either. That's why we have George.”

I like the way he said “we.”

“I thought you'd be in a good mood this morning,” he goes on. “I thought last night would've settled you down.”

“Settled me down? Is that why you did it? It was some kind of public service. Maybe if E.J. bangs Shae-Lynn it'll settle her down.”

He slips on his coat and grabs his pail.

“I don't have time for this.”

“You mean you don't have time for me. You mean I'm not worth it,” I rip into him as I run after him heading for his truck. “Maybe if I was twenty-five and blond maybe then you would've woke up and needed to fuck me instead of jumping up off the couch and running to pack your lunch and leave…”

He whirls around on me and silences me with a look.

“Oh, yeah. And maybe if I was a senator or a ball player or some fucked-up teenaged prince you wouldn't have slept through me getting up off the couch and you'd be prancing around in a harem girl costume for me right now serving me beer out of a solid gold pitcher.”

“Harem girl? You want a harem girl?”

“No, I don't want a harem girl. I live in the real world. I have a real life and a real life is having a job and having to get there on time. Real life is having your old boss come by at three
a.m.
and wake you up and then going back to bed and getting the daylights fucked out of you by a girl you've loved your whole life and then falling fast asleep and oversleeping so you're running late and don't have time to wake her up and fuck her again before you leave.”

“Are you saying I don't live in the real world?”

He looks frustrated enough to hit me but instead he turns his back on me and stares out at the horizon. Most of the clouds have cleared away. The sun has yet to make an appearance from behind the mountains, but the indigo night is beginning to fade into a predawn pinkish blue. Soon the remaining tatters of clouds will be lit from underneath and the sky will look smeared with peach butter.

“You want to fight,” he says flatly. “You love to fight. I don't want to fight.”

“You mean you don't want me.”

He shakes his head but won't look at me.

“I want you. I don't want your crap.”

I watch him walk away from me and drive off into a pink chrome sunrise before I go back inside the garage to get dressed.

I stop at the Snappy's on my way home.

I buy one of every snack cake on their shelves along with a couple bags of chips and a box of Lucky Charms cereal.

I open the cereal while I'm sitting in the car in the parking lot and start picking out the marshmallow pieces and popping them into my mouth between sips of a steaming cup of coffee while I think about E.J.

He's stepping into his coal-stained coveralls and pulling them up over his long underwear right about now. He's putting on his knee pads, pushing his feet inside his steel-toed rubber boots, and slipping on his rain gear and his leather tool belt with his name and social security number inscribed on a brass plate. He's grabbing his battered helmet with a peeling American flag sticker on the back and going outside to have a final smoke before heading into the mine.

It's the same helmet he wore when he was trapped. It made it out with him, and he won't wear another.

I think about my politician, my Frenchman, my prince, my third baseman, my Marine, my farm boy, and all the others. I never knew how any of them spent their days, and I didn't care as long as they stayed safe.

I've followed E.J. down into the cold black depths of Jojo before it sinks in that he said he's loved me all his life.

I close up the box of cereal and rip open a pack of RingDings before I start my car.

Sometimes I can be a real left-laner.

         

THE DAY PASSES
at a snail's pace. I have a fair amount of business but my thoughts don't move at all. They're parked at the foot of two large hills of depression: one formed from regret for the way I treated E.J. this morning and the other formed from the dread I feel over what's going to happen tonight between Clay and Cam and me.

I think about not going tonight and pretending my conversation with Cam Jack never happened, but I know Cam will make good on his threat and see Clay on his own if I don't bring him. I've thought about packing up my few belongings and Gimp and hitting the road so I never have to face Clay again, but I know I can't do that either. I've thought about sitting down with Clay and calmly discussing the truth about my childhood and the choices I made during my teen years that led to my pregnancy, and my decision to have a baby and keep the identity of his father secret from him, but the thought of doing this is what makes the idea of packing up my car and running away so appealing.

I keep telling myself I shouldn't be upset by the thought of Clay finding out. I have nothing to be embarrassed or ashamed about.

I told Cam Jack I was going to have his baby. I didn't keep this information from him. He was the one who rejected me and his unborn son. He was the one who told me he never wanted to hear from us. He was the one who said he'd deny having been with me. Again he threatened to blackball my dad. He said I was a slut. Said the baby probably wasn't his anyway. Said I was a greedy, lazy little hillbilly who was only after his money.

At the time I didn't care about justice. I knew in a fair world he should have been financially obligated to help support his son and should have been a father to him, but I also knew I didn't live in a fair world.

I didn't care about revenge either. I understood the futility of a poor nobody teenaged girl trying to publicly expose a rich powerful man and cause a scandal. I knew it wouldn't work. I knew that people like Cam Jack always bought their way out of problems, always managed to turn the victim into the culprit.

But I did care that he thought I was lazy.

He showed his true colors to me, and I was convinced Clay and I would be better off without him in our lives. My only interest was protecting Clay. I did what I thought was right. My motives were pure and noble. So why am I afraid?

Because now, with twenty-three more years of life behind me, I'm not so sure I was so selfless. Did I make this decision thinking of Clay's best interest or my bruised pride? Did I deprive my son of the possibility of ever knowing his father simply because his father called me names?

I'm afraid Clay isn't going to understand, because I'm not so sure I understand anymore either. And if he doesn't understand, I don't know what I will do.

A mother's love is not warm and cuddly like a soft blanket as it's popularly portrayed. It's a fierce, rabid love, like having a mad dog living inside you all the time. If it's rejected, it can't be locked away and left to slowly starve to death over time, but has to be yanked out immediately and murdered.

I don't know how any woman survives this.

It's almost four in the afternoon and I still haven't found the nerve to call him when I get a call from him.

“Hi, Mom. Do you have a minute? I could use your help with something.”

“Sure,” I answer with my heart in my throat.

“I'm out at Meade Mercer's place. He called about this little girl beating the crap out of one of his dogs with a big stick. Fortunately I was in the area so I could take care of it and prevent it from becoming something much bigger than it needs to be.”

I laugh.

“You're always in the area, Clay. Do you realize that? We're going to have to put it on your tombstone: Here lies Clayton James Penrose. Beloved son and deputy. Fortunately, he was in the area.”

He doesn't respond, and it suddenly occurs to me for the first time since he became a deputy and started always being in the area that maybe he's in the area because of me. Could he be keeping an eye on me?

“When I asked her what her name is and where she lives so I can take her and her brother home she said she didn't have to tell me,” he goes on. “She gave me your business card and said to contact you instead. I think she wants you to act as her lawyer.”

He pauses.

“Does any of this make sense to you?”

“Yes, I know who she is.”

“Great. Who is she?”

“Why don't you let me take care of it? I can be there in ten minutes. I don't want to break cabbie confidentiality.”

Meade Mercer has a skinny, crooked, sprawling farm that's been carved out of several hundred wooded acres on either side of Route 12 about ten miles to the east of Jolly Mount proper. His cows are precariously scattered on steep green hillsides along with an occasional gnarled, wind-warped tree and a couple of retired, shaggy workhorses.

The barn and the house are almost completely stripped of their original white paint. A sprinkling of flakes is all that remains, but it clings stubbornly to their gray weathered sides like a bad case of wood dandruff.

Meade is standing with Clay next to the road at the bottom of the driveway leading to his house. He's wearing a blue and gray checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a pair of gray work pants, shiny at the knees, stained with a half dozen substances ranging from cow's blood to axle grease.

I've known Meade since I was a little girl. I used to bring Shannon over here to play with his barn cats.

He takes off his ball cap when I get out of the car and start walking toward them. He's bald and has a face like a big, pale raisin.

Fanci's leaning against Clay's cruiser with her arms crossed belligerently across her chest. Kenny is sitting inside their red wagon holding the dog-beating stick across his lap.

A big brown mutt with a square jaw and red-rimmed eyes lies in the grass, panting, about twenty feet away from us. He looks more exhausted than injured.

“What happened?” I ask.

Meade takes out a handkerchief from one of his pants pockets, wipes the top of his head with it, and puts his cap back on.

He spits a brown stream of tobacco behind him and enlightens me.

“That little girl over there beat the bejesus out of Roger with a stick, that's what happened.”

“I assume Roger's the dog.”

“Course.”

“I think she might be afraid of dogs,” I tell them confidentially.

“A kid who's afraid of dogs might hit a dog once to get him to go away. She beat the bejesus out of him. I had to stop her,” Meade explains.

“Who is she?” Clay asks me.

“Her name's Fanci. That's her brother, Kenny. They're Choker Simms' kids.”

Both men look at her. Both of their faces remain impassive. I can't see Clay's eyes behind his sunglasses or Meade's eyes hidden in the shadow of the bill of his cap but the way Meade's chewing slows down and the way Clay clears his throat show more sympathy than a flood of words from most men.

I walk over to Fanci.

She has on her glittery plastic shoes and a pair of tight sweatpants in a satiny turquoise material that's been snagged in a lot of places and a matching zip-up jacket with a racing stripe. Her nails are painted silver and she's wearing silver eye shadow, too.

“Kenny's afraid of dogs,” she tells me.

“No, I ain't,” Kenny pipes up.

“A dog bit him once and now he's afraid of them,” she explains.

“A dog bit me once,” he confirms, “and now she's afraid of them.”