The Evening Hour (23 page)

“Who are you?”

He told her his name and she said, “Freeman, from Rockcamp?” He said yes, and she said she knew his grandfather. “Holy roller.”

“Yep.”

“Your mama the one that left?”

“That's her,” he said. “She's back.”

Someone coughed. He looked up. Sara Jean and Lacy were at the door. “Hey,” he said. “Come on in.” He looked at Blue. “You got visitors.”

Sara Jean got right in her face. “It's Sara Jean,” she said loudly.

“I know who it is. I ain't blind.”

Cole turned to go, and Lacy, still in the doorway, moved out of the way. Then she said, “Hey, Michael told me what you did up there.”

He turned, waiting.

“How you helped those people. How you wouldn't let Trip take their pictures. That was good of you.”

He shrugged. “It wasn't anything.”

They stood there looking at each other, then at their feet. It felt awkward between them. He did not want to think of Lacy and Michael talking about him.

“You better go in and visit,” he said.

“Okay. See you around?”

“Yeah, I'll see you.”

Every day there was another funeral in Dove Creek. Cole read the announcements in the paper or saw the signs on church billboards, and although he recognized most of the names—a few people he'd gone to school with, a customer's boy—the only person he knew well was Arie Webb, whose sludge-covered face he saw every night when he tried to drift off to sleep. Her blind sister, Janice, had been moved to an institution up in Charleston. He wondered what had happened to Arie's stash. Just when it seemed like things were quieting down, he heard that his customer Taylor Jones, the Iraq vet, had shot himself. Cole did not go to any of the funerals. Everything was fucked up. Several of his suppliers had been displaced; they had been moved into the nursing home or were living with their kids. Those who had not even been in the path of the flood were also nervous, afraid they would be next. He did not know what to tell them. He went to see them, but the visits were different now. And his customers were even worse, jumpy and paranoid. Everyone in the county was on edge, like they'd just realized that one day they would die.

Chapter 17

He carried in Blue Tiller's supper tray.

“You should be in the dining hall with the others,” he told her. “There's no reason for you to be eating in bed.”

“I don't like it out there.”

Blue had already gained a couple of pounds. She liked the chocolate Ensure. “I never had that before,” she said. “It's good.” She was getting stronger, but her breathing would never get any easier; the tiny air sacs inside her lungs were swollen like wood ticks, fat with blood.

“It would be good for you to talk to people.”

“I talk to you.”

“Yeah, you do.” Every day she told him stories. She told him how she and her husband George used be roving picketers, going from one mining site to another, fighting for the union and for blacklung benefits.

“It used to be all about the union, but people don't care about that anymore.”

“It's too hard now,” Cole said. “They all got busted up.”

“When I was a child, the coal companies sent in thugs. With guns. My daddy was an organizer, and one day they broke into our house. Mama got out her shotgun. Made them put back every piece of furniture they overturned. The union was everything. We all came together, black and white.”

“You ought to talk to Mabel Johnson. You two could swap stories.”

“Mabel,” she said. “Yes, she's a good woman. I know her.”

“She's here. You could go talk to her. Socialize.”

But Blue wasn't listening. “Do you know what we did when they started the strip-mining? We held them off by laying down in front of the bulldozers. A bunch of women. And illiterate men with shotguns. The police was always on the side of the coal companies, and they dragged us away like dogs. But we fought them tooth and nail.”

“It's different now,” he said.

She shook her head, disappointed. “Boy, tell me when I can get out of here.”

“That's not for me to decide. You got to talk to the doctor.”

She dipped the spoon into a bowl of applesauce. “There's that meeting tonight.”

“You're in no condition for that.”

“You going?”

“I guess so.” His grandmother had already called twice to remind him.

“I used to wish the sky would crack wide open or the mountains would fall, thought that was the only way to wake people up, get them to see,” Blue said. “Well, now we've got that. We've got poison in the water. Still it ain't enough.”

“People are scared,” he said. “They don't know what to do.”

She stared at him with ice-blue eyes. “You still don't know who I am.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was there when you was born.” Behind all the wrinkles and lines and harsh edges, her face was tender. “I was there.”

At first he laughed her off, but the longer he looked at her, the more he thought she was telling the truth. “What are you talking about?”

“You thought you were born in a hospital? You was born at home.”

“I guess I never thought about it.”

“I remember every baby I delivered. I delivered babies all over Dove Creek. Never had none of my own. But I delivered them, I remember every one.” She eyed him. “You were the only one I saw born with the caul.”

“What's that?”

“Comes from inside your mother. It covers the face, like a veil. It's a good omen.”

“Didn't do me any good.” He looked at her hard. Her old hands the first that ever touched him. “So were you there when she ran off?”

She stopped chewing. “Honey, she never run off.”

“Hell yes she did.”

“Well, yes, she left. But she didn't have much say in the matter.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your granddaddy. He couldn't forgive her. He was shamed by her. His daughter getting in trouble like that. It was different back then. He took you out of her arms, then drove her to the bus station.”

“What?”

“You didn't know?”

Cole stared ahead at the beige walls. Beeping machines and muffled TVs echoed from other rooms.
Naked I came out of my mother's womb; and naked I shall return thither; the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away.
He looked again at Blue. She was focused on the food, chewing loudly, smacking her lips. Pork chops, mashed potatoes. He wondered if she was crazy. She noticed him looking at her.

“Well, you turned out all right. Didn't you?”

He forced a laugh. “Hell, I don't think so.”

“That's just your granddaddy talking.” She pointed the fork at him. “Can't you get me some salt? There's no taste to this.”

Later, as he drove over to the high school, dressed in his scrubs, her words continued to ring like tiny bells in his ears. It was a strange feeling, like looking at an old picture of himself that he did not recognize.

Cars and pickups filled the parking lot, like on ball game nights. A group of middle-aged men congregated outside the double doors, and Cole stood there for a while and listened to them talk. One of them had shaky hands; another couldn't stop blinking.

“Did you hear what kind of emergency plan they had in place? Some fool was supposed to stand there with a bullhorn.”

“I'll tell you what their emergency plan was—run like hell.”

The oldest of the group, a man with a beard and thick wrinkles under his eyes, looked at Cole. “What do you think, son? What do you think of all this?”

He hesitated. “I don't know. Seems pretty bad.”

“Ain't nothing pretty about it,” the man said. “It's bad. Plain bad.”

Cole was surprised by the large turnout. He'd heard Lacy complain about the permit hearings, when only about a dozen would show up, but tonight there were close to three hundred people in the auditorium. Newscasters, cops, men in suits, and the familiar tragedy-stricken faces. He saw a few of his suppliers, a few customers. Near the front was Lacy Cooper, her arm around Sara Jean. Ellen's fiancé was in uniform. Trip with his camera. He saw Michael in the first row, his notebook open. In the back a group of young hippie types, out-of-towners, held signs: “People Not Profits,” “Heritage Murderers,” “Coal Keeps West Virginia Poor.” The room was stuffy; he shucked off his flannel jacket and looked around until he spotted his mother and grandmother.

His grandmother moved her coat and purse from the chair next to her. “I didn't know if you were coming or not.”

“I said I'd be here.”

Ruby wore a denim skirt and low-cut blouse, her face sparkling with makeup, her hair pinned back.

“What are you all dressed up for?”

“I want to look decent,” she said. “In case I get on TV.”

The mayor, whose son worked for Heritage, walked to the front. “Folks, we're running a little late. I apologize, I know you're eager to get this show on the road. We'll start in about fifteen minutes.” He told them to help themselves to the punch and cookies.

There was a buzz in the room, shifting in seats, moving around. Ruby went out for a cigarette. “I'm on pins and needles,” she said.

His grandmother unwrapped a stick of Juicy Fruit and broke it in half. She seemed hopeful. She'd been going to meetings, coming home with pamphlets and books. Cole was not surprised, but the rest of the family did not know what to think; they lived too far away to understand, to have felt that terror in their bones. None of them had shown up tonight. He and Ruby and his grandmother were on a team, the three of them. Whenever they were around others, his grandmother would bring up how Cole had driven them up to Thorny Creek to help out, or she bragged about how he'd cared for his grandfather and stuck by the land, half-truths turning into one story in her head. The rest of the family still thought of him as a fuckup, the same way they thought about his mother.

She offered him a half of the stick of gum and he folded it in his mouth and bit into instant sweetness. “Blue Tiller is over at the nursing home,” he said.

“That's what I heard. She's all right?”

“She's pretty weak.”

“She almost got your granddaddy to speak at one of them meetings against strip-mining a long time ago. But you know how he was, didn't feel right preaching politics.” She snapped her gum. “I wish he would have. Maybe we could have stopped all this.”

Cole wiped his sweaty palms on his pants legs. He wasn't sure how to start his question. Maybe he should just skip it. His grandmother was chatty and wound up about the meeting, and he didn't want to ruin her mood. But when she paused to catch her breath, he spoke up. “Blue told me that she delivered me,” he said quickly. He stopped and tried to sound more casual, nonchalant. “She delivered me,” he said again. “At home.”

“That's true.”

“That's not all she told me.”

She raised her eyebrows. “What else did she say?”

His words came out in a rush: “Granddaddy made Mom leave. That's what she said. It wasn't her choice. Nobody ever told me that before.”

For a few seconds, there was no reaction. The smell and taste of the chewing gum reminded him of being a kid. He could see the story in her eyes, but she would not let go. “Honey, he made some mistakes,” she said.

“How come Ruby never said anything?”

“Maybe she doesn't want you to think bad of him. It was a long time ago, a hard time.”

“Where did he send her?”

“She was supposed to go to Kentucky, to stay with his kin.”

“But she didn't go.”

She shook her head. “No. She went her own way.”

“You never said anything,” he accused.

“I don't like to think about all of that.” She put her hand on his knee. “I just can't.”

A man said they were ready to begin, and people took their seats. Cole felt a lump in his throat. Maybe there was nothing else to say.

His mother was one of the last to return, squeezing in front of people. Cole noticed how men checked her out. She'd been just a kid, he thought. Pretty, and scared. A newborn baby squalling in her arms. He'd always imagined her riding off in a fast car, not driven to the bus station by her father. He chewed his gum fiercely, the flavor already gone. His grandmother's gnarled hand remained on his knee.

A group of men in slacks and button-down shirts sat at a long table in front of the room. They were Heritage men, including the vice president. Cole saw the engineer that had been hitting on his mother at the Eagle, and he hissed, “Look who's up there.” Ruby saw him. “That bastard.” There were also lawyers and representatives from federal and state government agencies. Plastic bottles of clear drinking water from some mountain spring in the Alps sat before them. The old man behind Cole said, “Vice president, huh? The president too busy?”

“Busy destroying somebody else's mountain,” someone else shot back.

The VP thanked them for coming. He was stocky and bullish, with dark hair combed to one side. He told them that there was no denying that this was a terrible disaster, but that Heritage would do its best to clean up and find homes for those who had been dislocated. He assured them that Heritage was a responsible and fair company. He was no outsider. He was born and raised down in Bucks County, he told them, he understood.

“You ruined us,” a woman in the audience shouted. “We lost everything.”

The VP paused, but when he continued, he sounded calm and clear. He used words like
community
,
restoration
, and
reclamation.
The crowd was not impressed. Glazed eyes, hardened faces. Some were teary-eyed, a few cried. What they'd seen up there had changed them. People trapped in their homes. People hanging from trees. Black poison dribbling out of mouths. The images playing and replaying in their heads. They'd seen and touched and felt the horror, and now they were supposed to continue on with their lives.

Sweat dotted foreheads and necks; women fanned themselves with their hands. The heat was smothering, and Cole wondered why they did not turn down the thermostat, unless this was what they wanted—they were trying to make the crowd uncomfortable, to break them. A few walked out. Sighs of disgust. His grandfather had never lost a crowd like this. The old man had believed in every word he said. But the man who was talking did not appear to believe in anything. His eyes were like mirrors. He dodged questions about the law, about culpability. He used the word
neighbor
again and again.

Lacy Cooper got up and stood at one of the microphones that were set up in the aisles. “Where would you like us to go?”

“Well—”

“Because from the looks of things, you're taking over. And you don't care how you get rid of us.” She went on to name the chemicals that were in the sludge, and recited numbers and statistics, and read a list of the company's other violations. She was articulate and smart, and when she finished, the crowd applauded and shouted support.

But after it quieted down, the VP responded in the same even tone. “Ma'am, I know how this must look. But you have to understand, we are terribly shocked and saddened. We will help all of you, each and every one.”

“If you want to help, it seems to me you should leave us alone,” she said.

The man went on to speak about how Heritage was a part of the community, until the activists in the back began to shout out facts about job rates and the economy: the mining machines had taken the place of hundreds of jobs, and this was one of the poorest parts of the country, even though the coal companies made billions. Then the mayor stepped up to the microphone and said it was time for a break.

“I'm about to roast,” Cole's grandmother said.

Cole needed a smoke. He followed Lacy and Sara Jean out, but lost sight of them in the crowded hallway.

“Hey, Cole.” Michael held out his hand, and Cole shook it. A hand that had touched Lacy. It was cool, strong.