Harlan County Horrors (18 page)

I
choked back the tears from my nose and inched open the lid. On top
of a tattered, moth-eaten wool blanket was a letter in a yellowed,
unsealed envelope. The letter read, “I’m sorry. Jesus forgive
me.”

I
replaced it on top of the blanket and secured and locked the trunk.
No one knew. No one had seen. Now I had to get it out of the attic
and get rid of it. Alone.

Mama hadn’t had much, so it surprised us that we had to go to
a will reading. She’d had a little savings, which she’d left to
Becca for taking care of her. There was also a letter for each of
us. Mine was much thicker than the others, but I made a joke about
being the oldest and it seemed to settle any reason for it. She
also left a short list of possessions she wanted distributed a
certain way.

Sissy looked at Becca and said, “Keep ‘em” when the list of
things Mama had bequeathed to her was read. JR got a few things
that had belonged to Pop, like his medals, uniform and dog tags,
both from the service. To me she left “your father’s purple heart,
the old steamer trunk, and Ching-Ching.” The lawyer raised his
eyebrows and said, “What’s a ching-ching?”

I
felt a flash of nausea while the others laughed. JR spoke up. “It’s
this godawful thing our pop brought back from Vietnam.” To me, he
added, “Guess you win, Pete.”

“
Ching-Ching’s gonna get you,” Sissy added with an extra
laugh.

I
forced a smile and pressed my fist against my mouth.

The
boys ran straight upstairs when we got back to Becca’s. As I
stripped off my jacket, I asked, “So where is Ching-Ching
anyway?”

“
On the shelf.” She lifted her chin toward a bookcase beside
the TV stand. “It’s up top so I don’t have to look at it. Go ahead
and pack it. Jesus, I’ll be glad to be rid of it.” As she took the
baby up for a nap, she added, “It gives me the willies.”

I
spotted it right away in the back, on the topmost shelf,
half-behind a framed photo of our dad in his uniform. I lifted it
out and blew the dust off it. It had always reminded me of a
coconut, but egg-shaped, with the flatter end on the bottom and
covered in coarse brown hairs. It had a thin white line around what
would be its waist and, near the top, an engraved and painted face
with narrow, angry eyes and a firm mouth. It had more hairs
sprouting from the top of its head, worn at the ends and frazzled
but originally in a freakish bowl cut meant to emphasize its eyes.
JR and I used to play GI Joes with it until Mama caught us, whupped
us, and put it on top of the refrigerator. When Pop died, she moved
it behind his photo and we were all glad to be rid of the sight of
it.

I
remember him bringing it back after his second tour. Sissy was
walking already and he had gone back into the mines. He pulled it
out of his duffel and showed it to Becca, JR and me. We gathered
around, simultaneously repulsed and attracted. He explained
something about it, using words that sounded so exotic I decided
that if the war started up again, I would go. All I caught out of
it was something that sounded like “Ching,” so we named the little
figure “Ching-Ching.” Pop kept it on top of the chiffarobe, beside
Mama’s bottle of Skin So Soft. When he found out we’d played with
it, we thought he’d kill us. Instead, he said, “I didn’t bring that
halfway across the goddamn world for you to break it.”

I
put Ching-Ching back in its spot and went out to the kitchen. Becca
surprised me hot on my heels. “You want some coffee?” she
offered.

I
considered a moment and asked for something stronger.

She
got the coffee going and opened a high cabinet. “What do you
want?”

“
Anything.”

She
poured. When I asked if she’d join me, knowing I shouldn’t, she
shook her head. I watched her lean against the counter, her body
language exactly like Mama’s as she lit a cigarette and tossed her
lighter back into her purse. She half-filled a cup of coffee,
topped it with milk and three spoonfuls of sugar. As she came over
to join me, I saw something out of the corner of my eye and
gasped.

Ching-Ching sat in the passage between the kitchen and the
living room, its gouged, white eyes staring in my
direction.

“
Damn it,” she said, slamming her mug down on the table. Becca
stomped over to it, snatched it up, and headed into the living
room. I heard her set it back in place and yell up the stairs,
“Y’all leave this thing alone!”

The
response was a creak of the floor in the attic and a ripple of
feedback on the baby monitor.

“
Of all days,” she said, taking her seat at my
knee.

I
sipped my drink and kept my eyes on the doorway.

“
Becca.”

“
Yes?”

“
How come you weren’t gonna follow Mama’s wishes and cremate
her?”

Becca took a long draw on her cigarette, her fingers
trembling, then tapped it on a breakfast plate. “I wanted to see
her, Peter.”

“
You’d seen her for months.”

“
Sick.” She flashed her filling eyes at me. “I wanted to see
her made up and pretty one more time, all right? I saw her all
sunken and ashy and vomiting blood every goddamn day. I didn’t want
that to be how I remembered her. We didn’t get to see Pop and I
wasn’t going to be cheated out of seeing Mama.”

“
You know why we didn’t see Pop.”

She
opened her mouth and snapped it shut just as quickly. In the
silence, I stole a glance at the doorway. Nothing.

I
said, “I suppose now she’s gone, we can talk about it. Why he
k—”

“
I
don’t want to talk about it.”

I
nodded and finished my drink, my eyes locked to the spot where the
kitchen’s linoleum met the living room’s shag carpet.

At
around 3 a.m., I woke out of a sound and dreamless sleep. I rolled
onto my back and stared at glow-in-the-dark stickers on the bottom
of the bunk bed overhead. There wasn’t a lot of moonlight, but
there was enough that I could make out shapes on the dresser. A
baseball in
an
acrylic box. Stacks of folded clothes waiting to be put away.
Som
ething small, almost round, with white
eyes...

I
sat bolt upright and began to hyperventilate. I clapped my hand to
my mouth, partly to calm my breathing and partly to keep from being
sick. I knew the boys hadn’t brought it in. I knew Becca wasn’t
playing a practical joke. I’d locked the door and put a useless
beanbag chair behind it.

I
stood and snatched up Ching-Ching. Warmth. And underneath its hard
shell, a pulse—single, almost electric, combined with a constant
hum. In that moment, I suspected what Mama had told me was true.
But it wasn’t enough. Without letting go of the thing, I shoved my
feet into my sneakers and grabbed my keys and jacket.

It
only took four and a half minutes to drive to #17 and another
thirty seconds to run as far as I could into the shaft. I didn’t
want to follow the tracks into the four-foot-high maw that lead to
the collapsing and crumbling mine.

“
Where are you?” I yelled into the darkness. My voice echoed
off the stone that glittered with threads of virgin coal. After a
while, I yelled again. “I know you’re here. I know it.”

Silence.

I
stomped toward one of the seemingly bottomless air shafts along the
walls. “Get out here or I throw this thing down the
chute.”

“
You know it’ll just come back.”

I
gasped so hard that I choked. The voice came from the darkness of
the mine, where the trams sat rusting.

“
What is this?” I growled toward the voice as I held out the
throbbing mutant coconut.

“
It don’t matter, Peter.” He stepped from the darkness into
shadow, the slightest bit of moonlight creeping in as far as where
we stood, defining his hands and the line of his jaw. “What matters
is that now it belongs to you.”

I
poised over the manway. “I don’t want it.”

“
Yet you know that if you drop it, you’ll drive home and find
it waiting on your pillow.”

I
shook to the point that I had to grip the wall for support. I
nodded and waited for him to speak again.

“
You don’t seem surprised to see me.”

“‘
Surprised’ isn’t the word for it, Pop.”

“
She told you. She told you what I’d become.”

I
nodded again. Desperate for something to do, I turned Ching-Ching
over in my hands. Its pulse grew stronger and it became downright
hot, almost too hot to hold. I set it on the ground at my
feet.

I
said, “I couldn’t hardly believe her, though.”

“
So you spent your life trying to prove creatures like me
don’t exist, that it? ‘Cause if you can do that, it was all in her
head. And what come after, well, that would’ve been in
yours.”

I
slumped against one of the support pillars, my elbows on my knees
and my head in my hands.

He
walked toward me, but not with the gait of a
sixty-something-year-old man or a thirty-year-old one. He moved
slowly, as though forcing an illusion of grace. He knelt beside me
as I looked up. My eyes had adjusted to the light, and I could see
the reality of him. He was no ghost, no figment of my imagination.
He was exactly as I’d remembered him, which was impossible. Longish
hair and sideburns, now with strands of silver but styled as they
had been in the years after he’d crossed the ocean.
But how?
I said to
myself.
How is it possible?

I
opened my mouth to say something, but before I could decide what to
ask, he said, “Your mother’s trunk.”

His
eyes held mine. I nodded and exhaled. “Yes.”

“
Where is it?”

“
The attic. Becca’s attic.”

“
She left it to you.”

“
The trunk? Yeah.”

“
Get it and bring it here.”

“
But I can’t—”

“
We can get it down the cage, you and me. After that, I’ll
take care of everything.”

“
Take care of it?”

“
I
know what’s in the trunk, Peter.”

“
She told you?”

He
nodded. “I know your hand in it, too.”

I
felt sick. My father sat cross-legged on the ground beside me and
picked up Ching-Ching. As he talked, he passed it between his
hands, as I had. I felt its pulse under his words and in the rock
that surrounded us. Everything in the mine came alive with exotic,
living
energy.

“
I
was hurt bad at Xuan Loc. Real bad. A hole in my chest big enough
to stick two fists in. I watched medics pass me by, over and over.
I laid there with my eyes staring into the sun, then the dark of
night, unable to die.”

“
I
can’t believe that, Pop.”

As
if I hadn’t spoken, he continued. “Locals come by, pointed at me,
whispered. I couldn’t move my head, my eyes even, to see what they
were doing. They used a blanket for a gurney and carried me through
the jungle to a thatch hut so camou’ed, you didn’t even realize it
was there. I felt solid ground under my body. An old man with long
white hair bent over me. I felt his hands on me, inside me. I
couldn’t speak. I heard his voice in my head. He spoke Chinese and
I could understand him, Peter. I knew a language I’d never heard
and I knew what language it was. He said ‘Your p’ai is
strong.’

“
I
told him I wanted to go home, that I had a baby I’d never seen and
I had to see her, had to see my wife, had to see you. I told him
your names. While I spoke to him with my mind, he worked and
nodded. Aloud he spoke Chinese, and I couldn’t tell what he said
but he used the word p’ai again. Room smelled like incense and
blood. In my head, he said, ‘I will make you strong but your body
will be weary.’ I closed and opened my eyes. I felt tears on my
cheeks. It was a miracle. A true miracle, son. This old witch
doctor was fixin’ me up and I was goin’ home. Layin’ on the floor
of that hut, I promised Jesus I would never leave you all again. If
it meant I had to stay in these mines the rest of my life, I’d
never, ever leave none of you.”

He
paused, turning Ching-Ching over in his palms. He traced its
engravings with his fingertips.

“
I
thanked him inside my head and he said he was gonna give me
something to make me sleep, that it’d be easier for me to get home
but they’d have to smuggle me. They could send me back with the
dead men from my unit so’s I could sleep. He gave me this,” he held
out Ching-Ching, “and told me that my return, as a whole man,
depended on the care of it. I told him I’d do anything to get back
here.”

He
unbuttoned his shirt down to the middle of his chest and opened it.
I knew then why he’d been the only dad in the hollow who wore an
undershirt to cut the grass or barbecue. His scar was a twisted
mass of smoothed, hairless flesh.

“
Why didn’t you tell me?”

“
Tell you what, Peter? That I’m dead?”

“
You’re not dead, Pop. You’re right here.”