The Evening Hour (15 page)

Chapter 12

Lacy turned onto a back road that Cole had never been on before. He was not used to being a passenger. Sara Jean sat between them, snapping grape gum.

They were on mining territory. Up ahead were gates, fencing, and a security guard outpost that was empty. Lacy pulled in front of a small pond with a fountain spraying streams of water; the sign next to it said “Heritage Coal: Safety Is Our Way of Life.”

“If you were to take a drink out of that fountain, you'd probably be dead by tomorrow morning,” Lacy said. As she continued driving, they passed several ponds of green water, then began going up hill.

“You ever get caught?”

“Once or twice. But I just tell them I'm looking for a family cemetery. There isn't anything they can do about that.”

“Yeah,” Cole said, deciding not to mention Justin's story about bulldozing the graves.

Sara Jean blew a bubble, quickly sucked it back in. “I can't believe you never been up here before.”

“Well, I've got other things to do.”

She looked at him with her large brown eyes and said nothing. He still felt uncomfortable around her. She was a know-it-all kid.

“Michael came with us. He's putting this in his book. He interviewed Mom and me.”

Cole was getting tired of hearing about Michael. He'd seen him a few times at the Wigwam, interviewing people, notebook in hand. He still wanted to talk to Cole about his “situation,” but Cole held the details of his life close to his chest like a hand of aces. Or more likely, a bluff.

Lacy followed the curve until they came to a grassy plateau, then killed the engine. Cole looked around, disoriented. “This is a mountain?”

“This is what's left.”

Except for a few clusters of scraggly trees and shoots of crown vetch, it was barren, like a golf course that had not been watered in a long time. Lacy told him it had been mined a couple of years ago, and now it was supposedly restored. Cole had seen his share of old strip sites, but this was enormous. He turned in a circle, trying to understand. His granddaddy had told him,
The mountains carry secrets.
This mountain would have reached at least five hundred more feet into the sky, with steep hills, narrow valleys. But the valleys had been filled with what used to be the mountain, so now everything was level, like a hayfield that spanned about a thousand acres.

“After they blow it up, they're supposed to make it look like a mountain again,” Sara Jean explained. “But they never do it right.”

“Fish and wildlife land they call it,” added Lacy. “That's what this is supposed to be.”

They could see all around, the little houses and zigzags of roads down below, and miles away, mountains rose to the sky.

“I think we live over in that direction.” Lacy pointed. “But I get confused up here now, it's all so different.”

Cole walked over to a line of scrubby pines that stood no taller than his shoulders. There were no other trees, no animals, no birds. It was eerily quiet. It looked to him like something he'd seen on TV. A savanna, another country. A trail of gray rocks snaked nearby. “Used to be a stream,” Sara Jean said.

“You see the grass? It's hydroseed. Chinese lespedeza. Spray-on grass,” Lacy said. “They do that when they have a politician or somebody coming in to take a tour.” Her breath turned to smoke when it hit the air. “The trees only live for a few months. They can't survive without topsoil.”

“Topsoil takes thousands of years to form.” Sara Jean stood in front of Cole with her arms crossed, like a teacher. “Pretty soon the whole state's gonna look like this.”

“No, we'll stop it, hon,” Lacy said, but Sara Jean did not look convinced. She had anxious eyes, like an old woman's.

The emptiness stretched out like a gigantic canvas, and darkness seemed to rise from the valleys, the thin silver light turning a deep velvety gray. Sara Jean pointed, and Cole followed her outstretched arm to an enormous Christmas tree standing alone on a knob.

She ran over to it and called out triumphantly, “It's not growing. It's just sitting here.”

As Cole and Lacy walked toward it, loops of colored lights suddenly blinked on, like hundreds of little eyes. On top glowed a white shining star.

“What the hell?” Cole said.

“They have it on a timer. The electricity is running from one of their power sources.” Lacy's voice rose. “You can see it from down below. That's why they put it up here, so it shines all the way into the valleys.”

“Well, it is pretty.”

Lacy just looked at him. “What?” he asked. “What did I say?”

“It's not gonna look pretty anymore, not after I'm through with it.”

“Hey,” Cole called after her. She ignored him, heading in the direction of the pickup, and when she came back, he saw the glint of a pistol in her hands. “Where did you get that?”

“I keep it in the glove compartment.”

“What in the world for?”

“Protection.” She patted Sara Jean on the head. “Baby, cover your ears,” she said, and Sara Jean pulled down her knit cap.

“Now what are you gonna do?” Cole chided.

“What do you think I'm going to do.”

“Lacy, come on.”

Even in the growing darkness, he could still see the details of her face and last night flashed in his head, her hands on his chest, her tongue flicking his nipple.

“Listen, either you just keep on going the way you're going, or one day, something changes,” she said. “If you're lucky, you'll have a moment.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

She waved the pistol. “They ruin our land and water, and now they have the nerve to put up a Christmas tree, like they're being good neighbors?”

“Shooting it up ain't gonna to change anything.”

“No, but it'll make me happy.”

She told them to stand back. She held the gun in both hands, but hesitated. Cole didn't think she would do it. She glanced at him, then at Sara Jean.

“Come on, let's just go,” he said.

But she set her eyes on the tree again, raised her arms, and fired off three rounds. The gunshots rang out like a song over the emptiness. Bam, bam, bam. The twinkling lights shattered in the sky like fireworks. Sara Jean was laughing, jumping around. Lacy stood there staring at the gun in her hands, looking as surprised as Cole felt. He waited for what she would do next.

“Okay, let's go,” she said, sounding nervous.

“You sure you're ready? You don't want to put a few more holes in it?”

He took the gun from her shaking hands and clicked the safety. Her eyes were wide and scared, but she also looked exhilarated. He could feel her trembling.

“Look at the stars,” Sara Jean said.

They all looked up. “I've never seen so many,” he said. Nothing stood in the way of the night and the millions of stars glistened like the hearts of the dead. He wrapped his arms around Lacy and said in her ear, “Damn, you are a hell of a good shot,” and she said, “Honey, you don't even know the half of it.”

He woke up in her bed, blankets tangled around his bare legs. The watery morning light shone through the thin curtains and he looked out the window at the first snow of the season. It made him feel sad. He watched Lacy sleep, and wished he could watch himself sleeping. Maybe he would look like a different person, maybe he would learn something about himself.

He did not belong here. But it was a Sunday morning and he had nowhere else to be. He fit his hand between Lacy's legs, squeezing her thigh. She murmured something and he unwrapped a condom and she lifted her hips. The snow continued to fall, large spinning flakes. She was half awake. She put her hands in his hair, kissed his face. He saw her eyes open, he saw falling snow.

After she fell back to sleep, he got up and padded into the kitchen. He looked outside at his pickup, slowly disappearing under white. The coffeemaker gurgled and wheezed. He felt like an impostor. He didn't know who he was pretending to be.

“Smells good.” Lacy walked in, wearing a white bathrobe, and she put her arms around him. “You feel good.” She smiled up at him, happy; he did not want to hurt her.

“You hungry?” she asked.

“A little.”

“There's not much here, but I'm going shopping today. I promised Sara Jean I'd take her to Walmart. You should come.”

The thought of walking around with Lacy at the mega-store where Terry Rose worked was not his idea of a fun Sunday afternoon. “I can't, I've got stuff I have to do.”

Lacy turned on the tree lights and they nestled on the sofa and drank coffee and the cat jumped on Cole's lap and curled into a tight ball. The room smelled like pine and all things good.

“This is the first Christmas without Denny. I want to make it nice for Sara Jean.” She squeezed his knee. “Why don't you come over on Christmas Eve? We'll make caramel corn, watch movies.”

Her eyes were steady and wanting, and he looked away, said he'd try. The cat purred and he scratched behind its ears and stared at the tree and thought about the Christmas lights that Lacy had shattered into millions of pieces. The light that had filled her, the glint in her eye. When he laid out the changes to his life, all of it made sense: Quit dealing. Go to school. Get a better job. Live in a house with a wife and child. Take care of his grandmother. All of this was waiting for him under the tree, and here was Lacy, offering it to him. But thinking about it made his heart beat fast, his mouth turn dry. There was no turning back. He did not love Lacy Cooper. He did not know if he'd ever known love.

He drained his coffee and said he better hit the road, but when he turned to look at her, the disappointment on her face made him pause. He hesitated. “I guess I could get a few things at Walmart.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. We'll grab a bite at Pizza Hut or Micky D's, whatever Sara Jean likes.”

“Good luck,” Lacy said, rolling her eyes. “She's got in her head that she's a vegetarian. I think it's Michael's influence.”

“What, you mean he's a vegetarian?”

“Yeah.”

“I never heard of a guy being a vegetarian.”

“Do you know
any
vegetarians?”

He grinned. “I guess not.” Then he said, “Why the hell is he always around?”

“He cares about this place. He's a nice guy, Cole.”

“I never said he wasn't.”

“Yeah, but you got a look on your face.”

“It's a look of hunger. Let's go get Sara Jean, see if we can't tempt her with a Big Mac.”

Lacy kissed him, but her eyes were wary. “You're one confusing boy.”

“You're mixing me up with somebody else. I'm just a simple Dove Creek boy.”

“Oh, honey,” she said, shaking her head.

Lacy's parents lived on the north side of Stillwell in a small run-down house, close to the road. They'd lived in the mountains all their lives, but sold their place when the noise from the mining nearly caused her mother to have a nervous breakdown. “I think Mom always wanted to live in town, anyway,” Lacy said. “But it broke Daddy. He was a rank-and-file coal miner for thirty years. He's got the dust in his blood.”

She wanted Cole to meet them. “It'll only take a couple of minutes.” Then the front door opened and a thin, hunched-over man waved at them.

“Dad's seen you now. Anyway, you better come in.”

“Shit,” Cole muttered, cutting the engine.

It took longer than two minutes, but was not as bad as Cole was expecting. Her father was nice enough, in a silent country sort of way, and her mother offered him jelly-filled doughnuts until finally he took one just to quiet her. He couldn't stop staring at her. She was as big as Virginia McGee at the nursing home, if not bigger, ensconced in a La-Z-Boy, her calves as thick as fence posts, rolls of fat jiggling with the slightest movement. Her hair, cut in a bob, was the same color as Lacy's. Like honey. Her lips were painted pink.

Sara Jean sulked when she realized that Cole was going with them. But when she started to complain, Lacy shot her a look and she shut up. Cole shoved down another doughnut and thanked her mother and shook her father's hand, and then they were out the door.

Sara Jean, in a mood, sat between them, and Cole gave up trying to talk to her and concentrated on the snowy road, the doughnuts sitting like a damp sponge in his stomach. The light snow spread across the brown hillsides like cobwebs. He clicked on the radio and an old AC/DC song came on. It was going to be a long drive.

“Can we turn this?” Sara Jean finally decided to talk.

“What do you want?”

She named a station, and he fiddled with the dial. “What, you like this rap shit?”

“Hip-hop,” she corrected him.

“Turn it down,” said Lacy. “I can't hear myself think.”

At least now the kid seemed happy. Cole looked over at Lacy and told her that her parents seemed nice. “What did you think of my mother?” she asked, eyebrows raised.

“Nice.”

“Big?”

He grinned. “Well, yeah.”

“She was always on the heavy side, but it wasn't till the last few years that she ballooned out. I tell you, it scares me, I don't want to look like that.”

“Girl, I don't think you have anything to worry about.”

“You'd have to roll me around everywhere.”

For some reason, this struck them, and they couldn't stop laughing. When Cole pulled into the parking lot, wiping his eyes, even Sara Jean was giggling.

But as soon as they walked inside, the mood was crushed by blaring Christmas music, beeping registers. “Hidy, welcome to Walmart,” said the greeter, who looked like a senior-citizen Boy Scout, various buttons, like badges for good deeds, pinned to his uniform.

Lacy pulled Cole aside, said she needed to shop for Sara Jean. “Can you take her around? Don't let her spend all of her money.”