The Coal Tattoo

  “I’ll help you all I can,” Easter said. “You know I will.”

  “No, I want this baby to know you as his mother,” she said, and wondered why she knew it was a boy. “I’m not ready and I won’t do right by him.”

  “Yes, you will, honey,” Easter said. There was a lightheartedness in Easter’s tone, as if she was amused by Anneth’s worries. She put her hand on Anneth’s back and held it still there. “You’ll be a good mother.”

  Anneth stood. “I won’t!” she said, louder than she intended. She coveted the confidence in Easter’s face, wished that she could believe in herself as much as her sister did. In many ways Easter was stupid and naive. Could she possibly believe that everything worked out for the best, that all things happened for a reason, considering what had happened to her own baby? Anneth couldn’t understand why Easter wanted to keep up this charade. Easter had had her own crisis of faith; she knew what it was like to have doubt. Easter knew as well as anyone that some things just didn’t work out and that was the way it was. That was the way life was. Anneth wished her sister could admit this now.

  “What if Bradley comes back, though, Anneth?” Easter said, looking up at her. “What will you do then?”

  Anneth held her elbows in her hands. “He’s not coming back,” she said. “He’s been gone three months and I haven’t heard a word from him. I can’t even write to him to tell him about this baby because I don’t have his address. It was stupid of me, to think this could all work out, to think that I could love somebody I only knowed two days.”

  “We can find out where he is. We can fix all that.”

  Anneth squatted back down and rested on her knees. The ground was warm. “Some things can’t be fixed, Easter.” She spoke slowly, feeling as if she was assembling the words in her mouth just before they came out.

  “You don’t want to find him, because you’re afraid of the reasons he hasn’t written to you. Either he’s dead or he’s just put you out of his mind. All we’d have to do is call the army recruitment office to find out where he is.”

  Anneth looked up at her, a look that told Easter to stop talking. “Now I’m asking you, Easter. I’m asking you to stick by me through this, and when I have this baby, I want you to take him. I want you to raise him just like your own and I’ll go about my life and be a good aunt. It’s the best for both of us. You were the one who was meant to be a mother.”

  “If I was meant to be a mother, God would have given me a child.”

  Anneth took Easter’s hands. “Maybe this is His way of giving you one.”

  THEY WALKED DOWN the path holding hands, something they hadn’t done in years and years. Easter could remember the last time vividly: the day of Serena’s funeral. They had gone up to the field to comfort their grief and had come back down completely changed. It was as if they had left their childhoods behind on the mountain. They had both been thinking of themselves as women for a long while by that time, but Easter knew that day—which seemed so very long ago, ages almost—that they really were grown now.

  Back at the house, Easter stood in the yard and raised her hand when Anneth backed out of the driveway and drove away without looking back.

  She felt drunk with the possibility of having a child. She went into the house and started supper. El would be home soon and she wanted to tell him this news over food. That was the best way to give tender information, at the kitchen table. She breaded pork chops and set them to frying, then stirred up a corn bread batter and fried that, too. The sizzling was a comforting sound, the smells of good food filling the kitchen. She sliced the ripe tomatoes she had picked that morning and couldn’t help herself: she doused a slice in salt and ate it greedily, the red tang filling her mouth in an explosion of taste so good that she could barely contain her satisfaction when she swirled the juice around in her mouth. Already she was thinking of how it would be to stand here at this counter and turn to see a little baby sitting in his high chair behind her, smiling up at her as he waited for her to finish supper and tend to him again. Or maybe he would be crying and reaching his arms toward her and she’d hold him on her hip the whole time she cooked, a little dance they’d do in the kitchen as she moved around taking skillets off the stove and setting the table. She’d sing to him as she did this, and her movement would be so soothing to him that just when the food was all ready, he’d be asleep, his head laid upon her shoulder, his lips slightly parted. She had dreamed of that so many times.

  She knew that it was crazy, knew that it was impossible that all of this could work out as Anneth believed it could, but Easter shook all that away. She let herself visualize the possibility of joy. She didn’t want to think about the many ways this could all become complicated. It made sense, in a roundabout way. Anneth wanted to give her the biggest gift she could, a sacrifice she could make for Easter. And at the same time, Easter could make a sacrifice for her, to raise the child she would carry for nine months.

  Twenty-nine

  Making Plans

  AS IT TURNED OUT, Anneth liked being pregnant. Her first trimester had been uneventful, although everyone had told her that she would be miserably sick. Women were always giving her advice, always telling her about their own pregnancies and labors and childbirths. She didn’t understand why her swelling belly seemed to give people permission to talk about all these very private things. But she did enjoy their chattering, the fussing that they did over her. Even at three months her belly was especially large, and because of this her customers at the café treated her differently than they ever had before. Now when businessmen came in they didn’t eye her as she walked away, or flirt and wink. They pushed out the extra chairs at their tables and told her to sit down while she took their order, hesitated to ask for more coffee when their cups ran dry. All her life, people had watched her when she crossed a street because they enjoyed the way her dress hugged her hips, the way her long legs sliced beneath her skirt. Now they smiled at her with respect, as if you had to be a good person to get pregnant. She knew this was not true.

  Some people were rude enough to come right out and ask her who the father was, but she would not say. She enjoyed carrying this secret with her, knowing that people were wondering.

  Everyone tried to help her out. Sometimes she came home to find that Easter had sneaked in and cleaned her apartment for her, the floors swept, the furniture smelling of lemon polish, the dishes all stacked neatly within the cupboard, the boxes of food all turned face-out in the pantry. She immediately set everything askew again. She jerked open her dresser drawers to find that Easter had folded up all her clothes. She ran a hand through her panty drawer and made the bath towels hang unevenly on the rack, let the dishes pile up in the sink again without even running water over them. Unlike Easter she had never had a desire for order in her life.

  When she was alone she sat in her apartment without turning on a lamp and let the night seep into each room. Often the blue glow of the television was the only light. She spread a quilt out over herself and watched the war news and simply remained still. Each day she seemed to be growing more and more unlike herself and began to see that the reason she liked being pregnant was that it gave her a reason to be still. She could do nothing now, without feeling guilty about it, and this was a great comfort. Sometimes she dozed off and right away she had short, muted dreams. She saw Bradley standing on the overlook, pointing to the strip mine on the ridge opposite them. “I can’t understand that,” he had said. “Tearing up the land that way.” She often awoke with a start, thinking that she would find him leaning over the bed, peering down at her.

  Yet each night she felt herself sinking further and further into a melancholy that she had no control over. Nor did she desire control over it; perhaps if she just gave herself over to that heavy feeling that settled over her entire body, she might drift off into a long sleep that would take her away from everything.

  That included Glenn, who started to show up more and more. She didn’t know why he wanted her, but he
did. She lay on the couch and watched television and he sat there holding her feet in his lap, running his thumb over her ankles.

  “You ought to marry me, Anneth,” Glenn said one night. “It’s not right for a woman to be pregnant and not married.”

  She sat up and folded her legs beneath herself. “You’re living in the past, Glenn. It’s almost nineteen sixty-nine.”

  “That don’t matter,” he said. He had a way of looking right at her when he spoke that she hated. It was like he was studying her all the time. And she still hadn’t gotten over that flicker of rage that had passed over his eyes when he had found out she was pregnant. He hadn’t said anything, but it was obvious that he felt betrayed. “It’s still not a proper way to bring a child into the world.”

  “I don’t give a damn what nobody thinks,” she said. She started to add, Besides, I love Bradley. Not you. Never you. She bit her tongue, though. There was no use being outright cruel to Glenn. At least he was there. “Why would you want to marry a woman who’s carrying another man’s baby anyway?”

  “Because,” he said, “I care for you.”

  “Well, I’ve tried not to lead you on, Glenn. I like to go out dancing with you and all, but not—not anything like that. You’ve been a good friend to me, but that’s all.”

  She thought he might never stop staring at her but finally he turned his head and got up stiffly. He grabbed his hat off the coffee table, righted it on his head, and took his jacket from the coat-tree by the door. “If you need anything, just call me,” he said, and left without another word.

  When Glenn was gone she felt incredibly alone. She didn’t know why; his presence didn’t mean that much to her. But she found that she couldn’t stand being in this apartment anymore. It reminded her too much of Bradley, as bad as she hated to admit that to herself. There were not many people who could look at a couple of rooms and see that their greatest love affair had played out in such a small space, but hers had. Less than three full days and one drive and this little apartment were the extent of the only romance that had ever really meant anything to her.

  She threw a few things into her overnight case and drove toward Easter’s.

  With each curve in the road toward Free Creek the baby shifted and swayed, as if dancing in anticipation of being at Easter’s house. Perhaps he already felt a connection to that old place, just as she did. She turned on the radio and twisted the knob until she found a station playing “Piece of My Heart.” She loved the way Janis Joplin screamed out those words. She began to sing along and felt the blues lifting off her shoulders a bit as her headlights washed over the dark trees of autumn. The closer she got to Free Creek, the better she felt, and she wondered if it was this closeness to home or simply the music that was healing her.

  The baby rolled over again, causing her to put her hand over her belly. She wondered why women had this instinct, to comfort the baby anytime it made some sort of motion. Maybe this was maternal instinct taking over: the baby moves and the mother rushes to comfort it, to make sure it’s all right. She patted her belly to the beat of the song, knowing that she loved the baby already. Loved the way he curled into her bladder, kicked at her kidneys. Easter had said that giving birth to him would change her forever, but he had already changed her. For the first time in her life she felt as if she was worth something. But each time this overwhelming feeling of love came over her, she told herself that she wasn’t good enough for this child.

  THE MORNING AFTER Anneth had shown up at their house late in the night, Easter awoke to find that El had gotten out of bed before her. She smelled coal burning in the stove and knew that he had recently stoked the fire. The creaks in the floorboards sounded very loud on the quiet. She looked into the extra room and saw Anneth was asleep. Easter stepped in and studied her as she lay in the gray shadows of the room. Anneth had taken clothespins and fastened the curtains together so the room wouldn’t be bathed in sunlight as soon as dawn hit. She had always done this when she lived here, and Easter realized that it was a little quirk she missed.

  Anneth looked so beautiful lying there. She was one of those people who woke up looking exactly the way they had gone to bed, a hair barely out of place, no lines on her face. Easter put her hand on Anneth’s arm, felt her cool skin. She pulled the quilt up to Anneth’s neck and looked at the rise of Anneth’s stomach beneath the covers. Life stirred within, such an amazing thing that Easter couldn’t fathom it. That was the reason, Easter realized, that people continued to believe in God despite the horrors of the world: because miracles were still constantly on display. Things didn’t get much more miraculous than a baby’s being carried around in a woman’s belly and then being delivered one day. She could have stood there and watched Anneth sleep forever—hers was such a peaceful, undisturbed rest, a kind of tranquillity that Easter had really never known, with her vivid dreams every night. She closed the door, feeling as if she had been spying on her sister. It was an intimate thing to watch someone sleep.

  Easter looked outside and saw no sign of El. She could tell by the morning’s blue haze that it was cold. The trees had been at their height of color yesterday, but today they stood bare and black limbed as if they had shed all their leaves in one night. She pulled on a coat and slipped her bare feet into El’s work boots.

  The autumn air was so cold that it felt like a cleansing water. She knew he was in the shed out back even before she saw the crack of yellow light around the door. She pulled open the door and found him putting together the crib they had bought when she was pregnant. That seemed to be ages ago, another lifetime.

  He looked up from his work and turned with the screwdriver clenched in his hand like a weapon.

  “El,” she said. She tried to interpret the way she said his name. It sounded to her like an expression of wonder or amazement. She hoped that it didn’t hold the tone of pity, although she was sure that that was why she had decided on saying his name. He did look pitiful there, bent at this task not only of assembling a crib but also of nudging along a dream they had both shared for so long.

  She stepped up into the shed and pulled the door closed behind her to keep out the cold. She moved toward him quickly and put her arms around his waist, laid her face against his chest.

  “It doesn’t seem right,” he said, “to be planning on taking a baby from Anneth. But in a way it makes perfect sense. Sometimes I think we’re crazy to even consider this.”

  “The best things that happen in life rarely make good sense,” she said. She spoke quietly because she didn’t want to break the morning silence that existed outside. It seemed that even the creek had stopped its incessant gurgling. She felt as if she and El might have been the only people in the world. Maybe they and Anneth in there sleeping and no one else. That wouldn’t be so bad.

  “I just want to do the right thing,” El said. “Just whatever’s best for this child.”

  “I know it,” she said. “Me, too.”

  “But I don’t know what is best, and I don’t want you getting hurt again.”

  “God knows all things,” she whispered, and for the first time in many years, she actually believed this when she said it.

  Thirty

  Something Ancient

  THEY STOOD ON the mountain with their arms interlocked, their jaws tightening against the cold, their eyes hard and unblinking. Paul was working at the sawmill, El had just left to go on the road, and the dozers had come too unexpectedly for anyone to join them. Israel and Lolie and lots of other people down in Free Creek had promised to stand against the company with them, but it had all happened too quickly. So there was only Anneth, Easter, and Sophie.

  The men had already cut down the bigger trees to make way for a road up the mountain. But there was still the brush and the felled trees, and here was a dozer that shook with life as it sat there at the foot of the mountain, waiting for the order to go forward. It would push aside the limbs and pull out the stumps until it reached the summit, where the real work would begin. B
ehind the dozer sat a red Ford pickup with ALTAMONT MINING COMPANY painted on the door. Easter could see the silhouettes of two men sitting in the truck, smoking cigarettes and moving their heads as if they were caught up in a passionate debate. Behind them was a coal truck, a Mack truck with headlights like big round eyes that looked strangely evil. Easter thought it might have been present simply to suggest a bigger threat. The company had known they would face resistance.

  Easter wondered what the driver of the dozer thought of them. Here was Anneth, seven months pregnant but looking as if she could sit down and have the baby at any moment. Sophie, who was not more than five feet tall even with her beehive hair. And Easter herself—could he see that the grief of the last few years had thinned and weakened her, had cleaned her completely out? Or could he make out that this same grief had made her stronger, had made her more adamant than ever to fight for what was hers, to keep alive all of her family that she could? Did he see in all three of the women’s faces that they would not surrender their land? Easter looked at the driver sitting up there—his face dark and unrecognizable because of the morning’s new sun behind him—and knew that there was no way he could realize that Sophie had the courage to kill anybody that crossed her family, despite her thin wrists and kind eyes. And there was no way he could fathom the rage that Anneth was able to un-loose when the need arose.

  It seemed more likely that he saw three women and found this laughable. He tapped the gas, and a metal lid lifted on the exhaust pipe to allow three blasts of black smoke to burst out onto the morning air. The lid closed again and it rattled there atop the pipe, with thin wisps of smoke seeping out around its edges.

  The doors of the Ford came open and the two men stepped out, flicking their cigarettes off into the woods. The women held one another’s arms more tightly, pulling themselves together into a whole. As the men came closer, Easter felt the mountain behind her, its presence so big and real that she thought she could feel it breathing, something ancient and alive.