Strange as This Weather Has Been, page 15
Jimmy Make graduated in May of’ 86. I went with him to his senior prom, me twenty-one years old, and Jimmy Make carries the picture still. His arms circling my waist, him behind me and even shorter than usual because of my heels so it looks like he’s trying to see over my shoulder, and a backdrop of electric blue drapes. That summer, the one Bant wasn’t quite two, he couldn’t find a job at all, and we spent it like we had the summer before, or even happier than the summer before, at least for me, because him finally being out of school made us more legitimate, made me less ashamed. He’s going to grow up now, I thought. Now he’s going to grow up.
For the first time, the three of us did things together.We took Bant to the Firemen’s Carnival in Watson. We even drove all the way to the New River Gorge one day, like a vacation, and I can still remember Jimmy Make picking her up out of her stroller, putting her on his back, telling her, “I’m your motorcycle, girl,” as he jogged her to the lookout. The love settled down a little, but as it did, it vined into me deeper and wider. I felt the vine itself thicken.
Then the Sunday of Labor Day weekend he showed up all full of himself, and at first he wouldn’t tell me why, him leaning cocky against a porch post with his ankles crossed, his big beautiful teeth grinning across his face. Finally he said, “I got me a job working in the pulpwood,” then he swooped down and grabbed Bant up. “I’m takin you-all out to dinner tonight.”
The work his outfit got that year was two counties north and east of here, which meant he rode two hours each way every day to get there and back. Which meant I started going two or three weeks at a time without seeing him at all. He did start giving me a little check, and god knows that helped, but then when he did come over, he was too tired to stay long, and more than once he fell asleep on me with us sitting straight up. I’d have been more understanding if it had just been the work that kept him away, but he spent a lot of his free days and nights partying with his high school friends, just like he’d always done, only before, without work, he’d had time for them and us both. “Well, he’s only eighteen,” Mom said one afternoon when we were stacking wood, and I knew what she was getting at. “I wasn’t a parent yet when I was eighteen,” I hurled right back. “And single,” said Mom without missing a beat. That made me so mad I grabbed Bant and took off.
Since that sleety February night, marriage hadn’t come up once, at least not between me and him. Each of us had our reasons, I guess, and mine was that by staying single I could still hold onto a little bit of myself. I loved him, but I didn’t want to marry him, and I’d made sure we were much, much more careful after Bant. I loved Bant more dearly than I’d thought a person could love, but no way did I want a second one.
That year passed rough. Yeah, we had more money, but me and Mom still worked hard in the woods, Daddy just got worse, and I only saw Jimmy Make about every other week. I tried hard not to let it get to me, I reminded myself that of course he had to work, and a part of me knew Mom was right about the not getting married. But to get through the absences, through his distance even when he did come around, I had to pull back.
In July and August of that summer, he went over a month without even calling. The longest he had ever gone. Then one Saturday afternoon, right about the time I started resigning myself to being abandoned for good, he left a message with Mom that he’d be up at two o’clock.
He was late. I started waiting in the living room, then I moved on out to the porch. A full hour went by past the time he’d said. I was madder than I could remember being at him, but even so, I found myself clear out in the yard where I could spot him at a farther distance. And then I was mad not only at him, but at myself, and running under all that anger, a bruised vein of fear and hurt, making the anger even more desperate. Thirty minutes more and I couldn’t any longer hold still. I was raging down the Ricker Run towards the turnaround place, and I got to the bridge just as Jimmy Make was pulling in.
He unfolded himself out of that car he had then, runty little orange Ford Fiesta, and I swear, I could smell the beer on him clear from the bridge. I waited for what strategy he’d use on me, he only had two, act all cheerful like hadn’t nothing happened, or act all hangdog like he’d already beat himself up so no need for me to. He sauntered over towards me, rolling on his feet, hands sunk in his jeans pockets and head cocked to one side like he knew that was cute, and I saw it was cheerful he’d picked. He got within a couple feet, spread his arms out to catch a bridge cable on either side, and then I saw the tiredness pressing behind the cheerful, a kind of thinness to the skin under his eyes, but I knew the tiredness could be a hangover as easy as it could be work. He swung forward from his waist to give me a kiss, his chest swelling out in his white muscle shirt, and I shotsurged so full of hate, and love, and hurt, and want, I felt tears loosen under my eyes. But I hardened them back, and ducked his mouth.
“What the hell are you doing, drinking early in the day and then coming up in here late?” I hissed. “When your daughter hasn’t seen you in over a month and asking for you every other day?”
He stumbled back then, restuck his hands in his pockets, pretended he hadn’t been after a kiss at all. “Aw, Lace, now. I ain’t been drinking.” He was still grinning, but I could see he was sidling towards mad. “I just had me one beer on the way over,” and he threw his thumb towards the car like there were full cans on the floor would prove him honest.
A hundred comebacks flitted through my head, and my fist balled up to smack him, but all I did, quieter than I expected, was say, “When the hell are you gonna grow up? When the hell?”
Then the grin was gone and away, and he thrust his hand in his hip pocket and pulled out a check. “Here’s grown up for you.” I could feel him just this side of furious, I could feel him holding it back. “Calm down, now, baby, why you always gotta ruin what little time we got?”
“You spend more time with us and less getting drunk, and we’d have more than a little.You pathetic babified fuck.”
Then I pushed past him and into the turnaround and then I was charging up Yellowroot Creek. I could not resist it, I hated myself for it, but I had to go, and at the least, I didn’t want to be following him. I could hear him, feel him, scuffling along after me, we were both moving fast and not talking, our twin breaths, rushing, and the terrible rip in the middle of me, wanting to slap him, then wanting him, period. I fell once, he didn’t move forward to help me, I picked myself up and plunged on. And there we went, fighting each other without words while at the same time searching for a place to have sex, yeah, that was that year in a nutshell. Of course the first swimming hole was just foaming with a whole slew of little kids, Mr.Williams’s grandchildren visiting, and him and Sam Kerwin and some other parents watching them, and I knew me and Jimmy Make passing would give them one more juicy thing to talk about, but I didn’t care. Then when we were still a good five minutes from the Hemlock Hole, I could already hear people hollering, and once the path passed out of the trees, there they were, kids about Jimmy’s age, and beer cans all around. Me and Jimmy Make didn’t even look at each other.We veered off and shortcutted the half mile through the woods to the above-the-hollow-road, me feeling the heat of him behind me all the way, his heat horse cat, sweat and brush and briars and sun, the anger and the hunger. The hate and the want. Finally we stumbled into the backup place we’d used a few times before, under the snake ditches, and then I did turn to face him. I saw the two red thorn scratches down his shoulder, how the sweat drenched his hairline, how his eyes seemed to be moving forward out of his face. I pushed him down behind this big honeysuckle thicket, then he was on top of me, the sharp stones and rotty branches in my back, he struggled with his pants, I shoved him back until he got himself ready, his fingers trembling, him cussing the foil.Then Jimmy Make driving hard and me coming right back up to meet him, then me turning him over and driving just as hard back, and then he rolled me, it was wrestling, I was under him again and I took a piece of his arm in my mouth. And then I felt it. Sudden spurt of warm wet that wasn’t me. I understood immediately. Rubber’d broke.
That time, when I missed my period, I knew right away. No. I knew before I missed. I said nothing to no one for several weeks. Partly out of embarrassment—fool me once, fool me twice—partly, I think, because I was once again trying to pretend I had some kind of choice to make.
It was fall again, right after Bant’s third birthday. Mom was going out that morning to scout for ginseng, and I’d planned to go, too, but anybody says you don’t get as sick the second time . . . I’d been over the commode off and on for two hours, trying to muffle what I was doing by flushing the toilet while I heaved. After about the third time, when I opened the door, Mom was standing right there in her sweatshirt and boots. Looking hard at me.
I wiped my mouth with my hand. “I’m too sick to go, Mom.”
She nodded. She didn’t turn away. She kept looking at me. I swung my eyes down, wishing she’d move so I could just go on, then I looked back in her face. And I saw she didn’t look mad. She didn’t look disappointed. She just looked sad. And that sadness scared me to death.
“All right,” she finally said. “I’ll take Bant with me.”
I went back to bed. Daddy, who I knew wouldn’t have any idea until I told him, sat in the living room with the radio. I was thankful for that. Twice more I had to lock myself in the bathroom, and Daddy’s gospel music covered everything up. Around eleven, I finally got some clothes on, and I was standing in the kitchen trying to eat crackers when Daddy called in, “You feelin better, honey?”
I swallowed. “A little,” I said. Not because I was, but because I knew what he wanted to say next.
If you’d asked me later, I couldn’t have told you if that day had been cloudy or clear. I remember it was cooler than it looked because I had to go back in the house to get a padded flannel for Daddy. I remember I went bare-armed, I remember how I craved that cold. Give me some pain from the outside for a change. I seized the chair handles, I shoved the wheels into the leaves, I forced it hard up the hill, trying desperate to drown out the what you gonna do? What you gonna do, Lace, now? I jammed it over rocks, I split dead branches in two, it felt good to have something solid to push against, and I did stop once and ask Daddy, I heard my voice at a distance, “You okay?” and him, “Don’t bother me none. I’m fine.” When we reached the place we usually stopped, I just tilted the chair and pushed harder, higher, until I came up against a long thick log I was finally too winded to get around.
I’d almost forgotten Daddy until I was stooped over and hunting for rocks, and “Thank you, honey,” I heard him say. Then I looked at my daddy. Bundle of chicken bones in flannel and jeans. A hand gripping each knee, the gap where the two fingers were missing, him glassy-eyed as a mounted buck, not speaking, not knowing, not even enough lung to talk, and what are we going to do? What? Why us? I chocked his wheels, my mind moving so fast it tripped over its own legs and somersaulted wild, me grabbing at it to get hold of it long enough to think clear, when all of a sudden, I heard, outside and on top of all that racket in my head. The one breath. One breath. One breath more. Then my mind was screaming, I squeezed my ears between my hands, and Shut up, I yelled at him and me both without a sound leaving my mouth, then my mind jumped a track, and it came to me—he’s being buried by it. He’s being buried by it.
His lungs are being buried by it, by coal, which is earth, which is this place, and, still, he wants nothing but to be out in it. On the land, like me, like us, despite the burying it does, and what the hell, what the hell is it? Why do we have to love it like we do? The Bible says we are made of dust, but after that making, everybody else leaves the dirt and lives in air, except us, oh no. We eat off it, dig in it, doctor from it, work under it. Us, we grow up swaddled in it, ground around our shoulders, over top our heads, we work both the top and the underside the earth, we are surrounded. And still, Daddy wanting nothing at the end but to sit and look at land. Even though inside it drowns him.
Within a month, Daddy died. And if I’d thought my life was over when I got Bant, I realized how little about over I understood until I got Dane and Daddy died. If I’d thought my choices were narrow before, well. And although I’d spent a lot of my life laughing at those old-time stories, it is hard to ignore them completely, especially around birth and death. Because while Bant was inside me when I grew up and lost the self I thought I was, Dane was inside me when I lost Daddy and what little independence I’d hung onto with Bant. So while Bant was born aged, old people in her, Dane was born peculiar, mournful, and sad. Sad Dane. The way Dane never did get quite right seemed a mark of the marriage.
Because that time we did marry. Shortly after I missed my period, before I’d even told Jimmy Make, Jimmy’s cousin helped him get on at a union underground mine, making real good money. Me with two kids, no job, the loss of Daddy—it all forced my hand. The union job gave Jimmy Make courage, the second baby must have amped up his guilt. He asked me for real. I told him yes.
Bant
I STEPPED out and let the screen snock shut behind me. But even when I walked to the very edge of the porch, I couldn’t shed the sound of them, despite that they weren’t fighting loud. They’d started in the bedroom, and Jimmy acted like he was going to walk out, but then he stopped in the hall. Now he stood there with his back to the outside wall of the bedroom where Lace sat up in bed, him clenching and unclenching his fists, taking a step or two towards the front door, then a step or two back, and they fought each other without looking at each other, through the bedroom wall. I reopened the screen, reached in for the regular door, shut that. Then it was just Lace I heard, through the window. Her and the machines working up overhead.
My face surged full. I pushed back on it. Corey and Tommy sat in the road with their bike and trike upside down, resting on handlebars and seats. They called it working on their cars. I’d thought I’d been right, about the phone yesterday, what I’d overheard. Now that Jimmy Make had said what he did to start the fight, I knew I was right for sure. My nose tickled way back in, my hands started to tingle. I made my face hard. And then I felt the need to go.
I hadn’t felt that in a while. It was that need I used to get when I was younger, twelve or thirteen, back when my body was coming on me rapid-quick, and it brought with it this thrusty urge to go. My guts standing up and pushing forward, thrusting against the front of me go, it was like if I pushed fast enough, I’d bust through something and be free, and I hadn’t felt it in some time, but I did feel it now, and go, I thought. Just go.
Corey and Tommy pumped their pedals with one hand and felt the spin of the tire through the other.Then Corey stood up on his knees, put his hands on his hipbones, swiveled his head, and spat. Just like Jimmy Make would. I looked at Corey there, that stupid rag tied to his arm. And all of a sudden, the go thrusting in me, I wanted to smack Corey. I wanted to shake Corey (there at the end it was like driving a boat), I wanted to rub his face in it, show him ( you can live off these mountains) because Corey did not understand. Jimmy Make copycat did not understand, and now the go was behind my teeth, a mad with a whipping pleasure in it, and I knew another way, a most likely unguarded way, not to the top of the fill, but to the very edge of the mine.
I jumped off the porch and ducked under it, jerked out my old bike, too small for me now and coated in flood crust. I was in my paint clothes, I’d been waiting for Jimmy to quit fighting and take me to work, but I didn’t care anymore. I pushed my bike over to the boys, clamping back the go in me so they wouldn’t see. “C’mon, Corey,” was all I said.
Corey squinted up from under the heavy bangs, that oil-colored hair. “Where we going?” he said, still pedaling with one hand.
“Up on the mountain. I want to show you something.” I straddled the bike now, but the go I tamped down. I wanted Corey to think I was doing him a favor, not him doing me one.
He kept pedaling with his one hand, looking at his spokes instead of me. I looked away from him, too.
“I’m going up through the snake ditches.”
Then I saw the pedal hand slow, just a little. I started to walk my own bike away.The pedal hand stopped. Corey stood up, tossed back the bangs, wiped both palms on his just-too-short jeans, and as he flipped his bike upright, he eyed his piddly bicep under the chamois rag. Tommy hurried and turned his trike, too.
“Tommy, you can’t go,” I told him, keeping my voice even again. Hiding the urgent in it.
“You think that rusted-up sorry-ass tricycle could make it up them snake ditches, boy?” Corey said.
Tommy whimpered and scrambled onto his trike, but me and Corey were already moving. Tommy left the trike and ran after us with a chunk of coal in his hand that he let fly with a shout, and it thumped me in the small of my back. But we were gone.
And then me and Corey were moving. We were shooting, tearing, flying, we were leaving behind. We went. Gravel spitting off our tread and ringing the bike fenders, and then there came the hardtop ledge, but I still knew what to do, wheelie up and twist a little, crash down on the hardtop flat and steady (like we used to do), and then we could really travel. The houses and trailers and sheds little run-together color lumps in the edges of my eyes, and the wind we made cooling us against the already humid day, and it was like it used to be, me flooded with them punchy gusts of got-to-go, part joy, part rage, part hope, part put-behind-despair, my body thrusting to get ahead of itself, no mind to it, and I’d forgotten how good this here felt, body grunting: Move, girl. Move.
I was always in the lead, despite the bike being at least three years too small, midgeted up under me, my knees splayed. I was back to twelve, eleven, ten, pistoning my pedals in too-short-for-my-legs strokes, and we took a turn and pumped through the Williamses’ backyard, cranking as hard as we could in the grass to get a good run on the rutty diagonal path that would shoot us up onto the above-the-hollow road. The old dirt road that had been dozed before I was born for a strip job long over, and trees and brush had pushed in on the road, like a tunnel it was, and water had worn it, rutted and puddled it. This was the way to the snake ditches. When I was real little, Jimmy Make used to bring us up here all the time, me and Dane, on the dirt bike he had back then. Now me and Corey balanced our bike tires on the ridges of the ruts, the road bombed with puddles as long and as wide as cars and deep to above your knees (wet spring, wetter summer, this crazy weather), then, pushing as fast as I could go on that rut edge, I saw a monster puddle looming. I kept balanced, I hung on, and it came to me, as the water sprayed and I won, I remembered again, what I had known when I was younger and tended anymore to forget. I knew again what the truck meant to Jimmy, what the speedwagon did to Corey, why Tommy and B-bo and David ran around with motorcycles in their mouths, I remembered, the glory of forgetting and that stun of blind power that came with that gut-urgent go.
