The Hollow Ground: A Novel (4 page)

“Good to see you, Mother,” Daddy said.

Ma pointed at me and accused, “She’s
your
grandmother. Say something.”

“Hi, Gram,” I said. I took Brother’s hand. “Brother,” I said, “this is Gram.” Brother looked at Gram as if he expected snakes to slither out her ears.

Gram held a cigarette to her mouth and inhaled deeply, looking with distaste over first me, then Brother. “Who on earth else would I be?” She briskly turned, craning her head back over her hump, to say, “Come on and keep your voices down. Gramp’s napping.”

Up the stairs we went, Daddy and Ma pushing me and Brother in first. Inside the porch was a sofa and a bunch of wicker furniture that we walked quickly past to reach the living room where we found an orange plaid couch smothered in plastic and a variety of ceramic statues and doilies perched on the bureau and end tables.

Gram smashed out her cigarette in an ashtray shaped like a swan. “And don’t you let me catch anyone smoking inside,” she warned. “Gramp’s lungs can’t handle it.” With her finger she swiped at the dresser top and then held her blackened finger up with disdain. “Just so you know, this filth ain’t my fault. Blame all that flushin’ and drillin’, that’s who to blame. Not a woman this side of town can keep her house clean.” Gram clomped into the kitchen and washed her finger in the sink, leaving us to stand huddled in the entry between the two rooms, not certain where to settle.

“Well, Dolores,” Gram said to the pink and purple violets lining the little shelf above the sink. “I’m lettin’ you come stay in my house. You think you’d be the first to say somethin’. To thank me at least. Not to mention ’pologize for not speakin’ to me all these years.”

“Apologize?” Ma said, snorting a laugh.

“Now, now,” Daddy said. “Past’s past, right, Mother?”

“Can’t argue with that!” Gram exclaimed.

Daddy looked at Ma, his brow creased in that firm look that often worked on her.

“Past sure as heck is past,” Ma agreed as if the words were meaningless.

Daddy clapped his hands. “Now that’s taken care of, let’s get unpacked.”

Gram pointed at me from where I stood in the entrance to the hall. “Girl, how old are you?” I hesitated and Gram said, “My Lord, are you a nincompoop?”

“Eleven,” I said.

“Right on the verge,” Gram said, as if I were about to hurl myself into a pit of evil. “Ain’t fittin’ for a girl that age to share a room with her brother.”

“She’ll share with me,” Ma said and grabbed my arm, hustling me through the living room and down the hall. When we reached Daddy’s old room that he’d shared with dead Uncle Frank, she pushed me in ahead of her and then loudly shut the door. As soon as we met eyes, we burst out in giggles. Then fingers to mouths, we shushed each other.

The room was fairly small, the walls painted the pale blue of a winter sky. Beneath a window was a dresser and to the right of that a desk. Up against the opposite wall were bunk beds. Ma sat down on a little wooden chair, lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. From the proud glint in her eye as she exhaled, she was probably imagining she blew the smoke right into Gram’s face.

On a shelf above the desk were sports trophies and photos of Uncle Frank as the county fair king, the dairy king, and of him holding the trophies that sat dusty on the shelves. I looked over the photos, having never seen a photo of Uncle Frank before. He didn’t look like Daddy at all. Daddy had shiny black hair, but Uncle Frank was blond with a half smile that made him look like he had something on you, like he knew something you didn’t. A devil-may-care smile, Ma called it. He was taller and broader than Daddy even though he was two years younger.

“People said he should have been a movie star,” Ma said, “but I never thought he was
that
good-looking.”

I’d often imagined Uncle Frank growing up with Daddy, going to work with Daddy in the mine, but he’d looked different from how he did in these photos. But as soon as I tried to remember how I used to picture him, I couldn’t anymore.

Craning her head around, Ma took in the shelf of photos and awards. “Jesus Christ. Like a shrine to him,” she muttered. “This is where they had us sleep after we was married. Can you believe that? Newlyweds in bunk beds! I still can’t believe it.”

Ma put out her cigarette by smashing it against the bottom of a paperweight and we unpacked what clothes we had into the dresser and closet. “Don’t go making this out worse than it already is,” Ma said, pointing at my mouth, which had slumped into a permanent frown. “We couldn’t fit Lady Maribel in the car,” she repeated yet again, referring to my porcelain-headed doll with the chipped nose that I’d had forever and that Ma had made me dump in a donation box. “And they got a library right here in town. I bet they got all the books Auntie bought you anyways. Don’t you think I miss what I had to leave too?”

Ma twirled some of her hair around her finger and then nibbled on the end like a little girl. She talked about the favorite quilt and tablecloths she’d had to leave behind. “You might not see it now but we’re lucky. We didn’t have much to begin with. Imagine if you had a dozen dolls and a dollhouse and a doll carriage. You’d be missing
all
them, not just one busted-up doll and some books.” Ma stuck her tongue out at me to get a laugh. She always had a backwards way of looking at things that made you think different.

Daddy and Brother moved their boxes into the basement where they’d be sleeping on an old fold-out couch. “It won’t be that bad down there,” Daddy said to Brother about the basement. “It’ll be like we’re camping out or something. We’ll make a game of it, you’ll see.”

We were all seated on the plastic-covered furniture in the living room and Brother started pounding at his head with his fist.

“What’s wrong with this child?” Gram said.

“Nothing!” Ma said with a twitter at her mouth. Brother was going to be left back this year and his teacher wanted him to go see a psychotherapist, something we weren’t supposed to tell anybody in Barrendale. Ma thought another year of kindergarten was just plain stupid and we all thought head shrinks were for sissies.

Daddy stood up and brushed at his pants as if they had a bunch of invisible crumbs stuck to them. “Want to say hi to Gramp?” he asked in such a way that we knew we’d better lie or not answer.

“Don’t you be botherin’ Dad,” Gram said. “He’s ’cuperating and you don’t want to see his temper.”

“We’re not bothering him, Mother. We’re saying hello.”

Gramp sat in an old worn-out wing chair in the corner of Gram and Gramp’s bedroom, his feet resting on an upside-down wastepaper basket. I remembered him as a big bulky man but this person was so bony and slender he seemed almost hollow inside. The skin at his cheeks and jaw sagged like a bloodhound. Asleep, he leaned forward and the tip of his tongue stuck out from his mouth and dribbled drool down his chin. His snores were rough and shook his whole body. One of the snores was so loud it shook him awake. He gagged and spit a blob of phlegmy gunk into a tin can between his legs, kept there for that very purpose.

The smell in the room was a mix of beer sweat, chewing tobacco, and pee. Overlaying those smells was the cloying sweetness of rosewater that Gram kept in a dish on her dresser. I thought back to the wooly mothball smell that had clung to Auntie and reckoned how much better that smell was to stinky rosewater.

As we stood in front of Gramp, Brother quietly whimpered, probably thinking Gramp was part monster, or part curse. As I stood there, I thought Gramp looked a million years old. He was older than Gram and had had another wife and family long ago. But that wife along with his twin baby girls were whooshed away in a flood. The fact that Gram, Daddy, and dead Uncle Frank were his second family was almost unbelievable to me, except that I knew it to be true.

I squeezed Daddy’s hand and he squeezed back as he repeated to Brother, “What did I tell you about crying? What did I say?”

Pointing at Brother, Gramp said, “Boy ain’t … make it…’fraid … Grampa … cripessakes.”

“Little dope’s got his father in him,” Gram chimed in from the door. “You were as much of a baby at that age, Adrian.”

“But Brother looks like Ma,” I said and this made everyone laugh, which hurt my feelings since I’d meant it seriously and I didn’t see anything funny about it.

Gramp wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Boy know … family curse?”

Even though Brother could be shy, he got a mean streak in him when he was made fun of. His little Ma eyes got big and glossy and his mouth pouted red. He took a step toward Gramp and said, “I know it comes from you.”

Daddy reached to slap him, but Gramp waved him off. “Curse come … great-great-grandpa.” Gramp turned his head into his shoulder to smother a cough, then he continued. “Molly Maguire. Know they were?”

Brother clammed up and tilted his chin, same as Ma did when she felt insulted. I went on to brag about the Mollies, the people who fought for the rights of the Pennsylvania Irish mine workers by viciously attacking anyone who took advantage of them.

Gramp nodded, pleased, and I felt my cheeks flush with pleasure. Gram leaned against the door frame, arms folded. “Brownnose, this one.”

Gram and Gramp laughed. Worse, Ma and Daddy laughed too and I felt my eyes sting with hurt and betrayal.

Gramp gripped the armrests, trying to catch his breath. Some sun managed to streak through the curtained window and warm his forehead before getting shadowed out by Gram as she crossed the room to stand by Gramp. “You rest, John,” Gram said. “I’ll tell it.” And Gram went on to tell about the priest, Father Capedonico, who told his parishioners in Centrereach that the Mollies did evil. “What that idiot priest was thinkin’, I’ll never know. ’Course the Mollies attacked him. What did he think they’d do? Thank him? So they waited for him one night and beat him and then you know what that priest did?”

Gram waited for Brother to answer but he turned his head stubbornly to the wall. Gram flicked his ear with her finger and Brother swatted at her hand like it was a fly. “Well, then,” Gram continued, “I’ll tell you what he did. He not only cursed your great-great-granddad and the other men who did the attack, but he cursed all of Centrereach. ‘In a hundred years,’ he said, ‘not a single building will stand.’ And with the fire they got burnin’ there now, that part of the curse is comin’ true. All you needin’ to come here is proof of that!”

Gram looked at Daddy for confirmation, but Daddy hadn’t taken his eyes from Gramp. The look on his face recalled how he’d looked when he’d stood on Auntie’s back porch and stared out at the pit that had swallowed her.

Gram placed her hands on Brother’s shoulders as if she expected him to turn tail and bolt. “But there’s a second curse too,” she added.

Gramp puffed and wheezed as he pointed from himself, to Brother, to me, then Daddy. “We’re only ones alive … got curse … in our bones.”

Gramp leaned back, breathing heavy and Gram fussed over him, but he waved her aside. Grunting, he leaned forward until his face was on level with Brother’s. “Thousand time over—” Gramp launched into a coughing fit so hard he brought up blood.

Daddy finished for him. “Thousand times over your sins will be revisited on your descendants. That was that priest’s curse.” Daddy leaned toward Brother and wagged his finger. “But the Mollies did what they had to. Don’t you ever forget that. They tried to make a wrong situation right. You can never judge a man bad for that.”

“Ain’t that the truth!” Gram declared and placed her hand on Gramp’s shoulder, stroking him like a cat. “The thing to remember, boy, is the curse makes us strong. Other folks just live their lives with nothin’ out to get them. But we live knowin’ somethin’s out there waitin’ to pounce.” Gram tapped the side of her head. “And it keeps us sharp. Keeps us on our toes. Almost protects us in a way!” She grunted out a laugh and slapped Brother on the arm to get him to laugh too.

But Brother didn’t make a sound. He leaned up against Daddy’s leg and his lips scrunched like he had a bad taste in his mouth. I wanted to hug him but I knew Daddy would get mad that I coddled so I just said, “But the curse usually doesn’t strike little kids, so you don’t got to worry about it till you’re all grown-up.”

Brother’s eyes widened, trying to search out the trick since I’d teased him so often about the curse being the boogeyman in his closet.

Gram sighed as if in agreement. To Ma, she said, “Don’t know why you two ever moved back to Centrereach.”

Ma tsked her tongue and left the room, leaving us all to share an awkward silence as we listened to church bells play in the distance. When they finished Gram said that they were playing for the funeral of George Malozzi, one of Gramp’s old buddies, another survivor of the disaster. “We stopped in at the wake earlier. That’s what Dad’s restin’ from.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Daddy said. “He was a good man.”

“Not many … survivors left,” Gramp said, shutting his eyes.

“The survivors of the disaster,” I told Brother, showing off still with how much I knew. “The disaster Daddy was hurt in.”

Gram continued, “Not everyone who should have showed at the wake did. ’Course the fire is what’s on people’s minds nowadays.” Gram walked out and Daddy turned toward the window that framed part of a catalpa tree and a rickety old shed.

“I told Frank to get the men out that day. Told him it was a mistake.” Daddy leaned with his bad arm on top of the bureau and his face went ugly with the memory.

“Hindsight twenty,” Gramp said, opening his eyes with a sort of wince.

Daddy didn’t speak for several moments. His jaw worked like he was chewing something gummy. Then carefully he said, “It wasn’t hindsight
then
. At the time, it was foresight.”

Three

It took forever for the sun to finally set on our first day in Barrendale and I was glad to be given the task of helping Gram get supper ready, eager to get the meal over so that Ma and Daddy could go to bed and take with them all the unease they pretended they didn’t feel.

I stood at the counter and peeled carrots, glancing through the window every now and then. Dusk seemed to be creeping up the hill, swallowing the last bits of light still drifting around the house. The front lawn where Daddy was pacing grew steadily darker and you could actually see the air turn bluer and bluer. In between the trees you could also see part of West Mountain glowing red and that red glow along with the blue air made an eerie backdrop to Daddy as he paced and smoked a cigarette. He didn’t normally smoke and from the taut way he held his body I could tell his thoughts were onto something bad.