Stories of Breece D'J Pancake (6 page)

“That’s where I’ll be, by God,” Buddy said, as if there might still be something to hold to.

“Just leave ’nough of Fuller to crawl in that doghole on Monday,” Curtis said, taking off his cap. Buddy stared at the lines of gray in his hair where the coal dust had not settled.

“I ain’t makin’ no promises,” Buddy said as he started down the path toward the road.

“Pick ya up about eight tonight,” Estep yelled, watching Buddy wave his lunch bucket from the trail.

Night rose up from the hollow, and as he came to the dusty access road, Buddy could feel the cold air washing up around him, making him cough. Patches of clouds gathered over the hollow, glowing pink. He turned onto the blacktop road, banging his lunch box against his leg as he walked, and remembered hating Fuller as a boy because Fuller had called him a ridge runner. After twenty years of living in the hollow, he knew why Fuller hated him.

He laughed again at the thought of the coal. He would have a car by fall, and a new trailer—maybe even a double-wide. He tried to think of ways to get Curtis to give up dogholing, and for a moment thought of asking Sally to go into Chelyan with him to look at trailers, but remembered all her talk of leaving.

Through the half-light, he could make out the rotting tipple where his father was crushed only ten days before they shut it down, leaving the miners to scab-work and DPA. The tipple crackled in the cold as the sun’s heat left it, and on a pole beside it an unused transformer still hummed. No more coal, the engineers had said, but Buddy had always laughed at engineers—even when he was in an engineer company in the Army. At the foot of the smoldering bone pile where the shale waste had been dumped, Estep’s little boy stopped, searching.

“What ya doin’ there, Andy?”

“Rocks,” the boy said. “They’s pitchers on ’em.” He handed Buddy a piece of shale.

“Fossils. Ol’ dead stuff.”

“I’m collectin’ ’em.”

“What ya wanna save ol’ dead stuff for?” he said, handing the shale back.

The boy looked down and shrugged.

“You get on home, hear?” Buddy said, watching as Andy disappeared down the secondary, leaving him to the hum of the transformer. He wondered why the boy looked so old.

As he started back up the road, he could hear the dogs packing up, their howls echoing from the slopes, funneling through the empty tipple. The clouds had thickened, and Buddy felt the first fine drops of a misty rain soak through the dirt on his face. When the trees thinned, he saw his trailer, rust from the bolts already streaking the white paint of last summer. The dogs were just up the road, and he wondered if they could smell Lindy, his bluetick bitch, in the trailer. Sally sat by the window, looking, waiting, but he knew it was not for him.

Lindy smiled at Sally, wagged at the sound of Buddy’s footsteps from the bedroom and down the hall. Sally walked away from the door window and set the plates by the stove.

“Estep’s stoppin’ ’round eight,” Buddy said, frowning at the turnips and beans beneath the potlids of supper. “No meat?”

Sally said nothing, but took up her plate and dolloped out her food, leaving the side meat for Buddy. She watched him serve himself, and found herself staring at the freckles of black dust embedded in his face. A dog bark broke her stare, and she went to the table. She could hear them sniffing under the floor.

“They bother hell outa me,” she said when Buddy sat.

“Well, she stays in. I don’t need no litter of mutts.” Buddy mashed fat between his fork prongs, fishing the lean from the mess, and watched Sally eat. “They’s gonna be money, Sal.”

“Don’t start up. They’s al’s
gonna
, but they ain’t never any.”

“This time’s for sure. Estep an’ me, we worked that stuff today. A D-nine dozer an’ steam-shovel’d a-fixed us real quick. Curt’s got the deed an’ all.”

“Thought yer folks settled these here ridges.”

He remembered standing in the sun at a funeral—he could not say whose, but the scent of Vitalis from his father’s hands had turned his stomach, and his new shoes pinched his feet.

“Never had a pot to piss in, neither. Stick ’round, Sal.”

With her fork, Sally drew lazy curves in her beansoup, and shook her head. “Naw, I’m tired of livin’ on talk.”

“This ain’t talk. What made ya stay with me this long?”

“Talk.”

“Love? Love ain’t talk.”

“Whore’s talk.”

His hand flashed across the table, knocking her head askance, and she flushed. She got up slowly, put her plate in the sink, and walked down the hall to the bedroom. Buddy heard her turn on the TV, but the sound died down, leaving only the whimper of the dogs. He watched his plate turn cold, grease crusting the edges.

Getting bourbon for his coffee, he sat his plate on the floor for the bitch, and went to the window. With lamplight shining green in their eyes, the pack circled the trailer, talking, waiting. He turned off the lamp and looked for the thing Sally stared after, but only the light gray sky and near-black ghost of the road touched the hollow.

In the darkness he found his .30-.30 rifle and flashlight, opened the slatted window, and poked them through. Passing over two strong-boned hounds, his beam landed on a ragged spitz, and he fired into the marble-lights, the shot singing through the washes and gullies.

The dogs scattered into the brush beyond the road, leaving the thrashing spitz to die in the yard. Lindy paced the trailer’s length to the sound of the whines, but when they stopped, she settled on the couch, her tail flapping each time Buddy moved.

The shot jerked Sally from her half-sleep, but she settled back again, watching the blue TV light play against the rusty flowers of ceiling leaks as the last grains of cocaine soaked into her head. She stretched, felt afloat in an ocean of blue light rippling around her body, and relaxed. She knew she was prettier than the girls in the Thunderball Club, or the girl on the TV, and lots more fun.

“Lotsss,” she whispered, over and over.

Buddy’s silhouette stood in the doorway. “They won’t be back,” he said.

“Who?” Sally sat up, letting the sheets slide away from her breasts.

“The dogs.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Ya can’t make any money at it, Sal. Too much free stuff floatin’ ’round.”

“Yeah? An’ all this money yer makin’s gonna keep me here?”

He turned back down the hall.

“Buddy,” she said, and heard him stop. “C’mon.”

As he shed his shoes, she noticed the slope in his back more than usual, but in turning to her, his chest swelled when he unbuttoned his shirt. From where he stood, the hall light mixed with the TV, flashing her eyes white and pink as she moved in the blanket-wave to make room for him.

He climbed in, his cold hands stroking her waist, and she felt the little tremors in his muscles. She dragged a single finger down his spine to make him shiver.

“When ya leavin?”

“Pretty soon,” she said, pulling him closer.

Estep honked his horn again, and Lindy danced by the door, howling.

“I’m comin’, dammit,” Buddy muttered, buttoning his shirt. The clock on the nightstand glowed ten after eight.

Sally propped her pillow against the headboard and lit another cigarette. As she watched Buddy dress, her jaw tightened, and she rolled ashes from the tip of her cigarette until the fire came to a point. “See ya,” she said as he started down the hall.

“Yeah. See ya,” he answered, keeping the dog inside as he closed the door.

Outside, the mist mingled with snow, and the spitz lay cold as the water beaded on its fur. Buddy left it to warn the pack, and walked toward the clicking of Estep’s engine and the soft clupping of wipers. Before he could open the door, a pain jabbed his lungs, but he held his breath against it, then tried to forget it in the blare of the car’s radio.

“Whadya know, Mad Man?” Estep said as Buddy climbed in, coughing.

“Answer me this—Why’d ya reckon Curt wants props for?”

“To shore the damn face, dumbshit.”

“An’ doghole that goddamn seam, too. He’s a ol’-time miner. He loves doin’ all that ol’-time shit.”

“Whadya drivin’ at?”

“How many ya reckon’d walk out if I’s to dump the water Monday?”

“Buddy, don’t go callin’ strike. I got family.”

“C’mon—how many ya reckon?”

“Most,” Estep said. “Maybe not Fuller.”

Buddy nodded. “I’d say so, too.”

“Yer talkin’ weird. Curt’s kin—ya can’t go callin’ strike on yer kin.”

“I like Curt fine,” Buddy coughed. “But I’m tellin’ ya they’s a easy way to run that coal.”

“Won’t work, Buddy. Operation like that’d put ever’body outa work. ’Sides, land ain’t good fer nothin’ after ya strip.”

“That land,” he gagged, “that land ain’t no good noway, and we could so use work. We’d use ever’body in our hole. An’ Storm Creek. An’ that piddlin’ of Johnson’s. Fair an’ equal. Know how much that’d be?”

“Can’t be much with all the fellars in the line.”

“Try on fifty thou. Does it fit?” He slapped Estep’s arm. “Well, does it?”

“Where’d we get the machines?”

“Borrow on the coal. Curt’s got the deed—just needs some new thinkin’ put in his head’s all. You with me?”

“I reckon.”

They rode, watching the snow curve in toward the lights, melting on the windshield before the wiper struck it. Through the trees, Buddy could see the string of yellow light bulbs above the door and windows of Tiny’s.

“Johnson found out who’s stealin’ his coal,” Estep said, letting the car slow up. “Old Man Cox.”

“How’s he know for sure?”

“Drikked a chunk an’ put in a four-ten shell. Sealed ’er over with dust an’ glue.”

“Jesus H. Christ.”

“Aw, didn’t hurt ’im none. Just scared ’im,” Estep said, guiding the car between chugholes in the parking lot.

Buddy opened his door. “Man alive, that’s bad,” he mumbled.

Inside Tiny’s, Buddy nodded and waved to friends through the smoke and laughter, but he did not see Fuller. He asked Tiny, but the one-eared man only shrugged, setting up two beers as Buddy paid. He walked to the pool table, placed his quarter beside four others, and returned to lean against the bar with Estep.

“Slop,” Buddy yelled to one of Johnson’s shots.

“Slop you too,” Johnson smiled. “Them quarters go fast.”

Fuller came in, walked to the bar, and shook his head when Tiny came up.

“ ’Bout time ya got here,” Buddy said.

“Sal’s out yonder. Wants to talk to ya.”

“Whadya got? Carload of goons?”

“See fer yerself.” Fuller waved toward the window. Sally sat with Lindy in the front seat of Fuller’s car. Buddy followed Fuller outside motioning for Sally to roll down the window, but she opened the door, letting Lindy out.

“You baby-set for a while,” she said.

Fuller laughed as he started the car.

Buddy bent to collar Lindy, but she stayed by him. Straightening himself, Buddy looked after the car and saw his TV bobbing in the back seat.

“C’mon,” Estep said from behind him. “Let’s get drunked up an’ shoot pool.”

“Yer on,” Buddy said, leading the dog into the bar.

Buddy lay on the trailer’s carpet, a little ball of rayon batting against his nostril as he breathed, and tried to remember how he got there, but Sally’s smile in his mind jumbled him. He remembered being driven back by Estep, falling down in the parking lot, and hitting Fred Johnson, but he did not know why.

He stood up, shook himself, and leaned down the hall to the bathroom. The blood flow from his head and the shock of the light turned the room purple for a moment, and he ran water from the shower on his head to clear the veil. Looking into the mirror, he saw the imprints of the carpet pattern on his cheek, the poison hanging beneath his eyes. He wanted to throw up but could not.

“Ol’ dead stuff,” he muttered, and heaved dryly.

Atop the commode sat a half-finished bourbon Coke, and he tossed it down, waiting for it to settle or come up again. Leaning against the wall, he remembered the dog, called to her, but she did not come. He looked at his watch: it was five-thirty.

He went into the living room and opened the door—the wet snow was collecting in patches. He called Lindy, and she came to him from behind the trailer, a hound close behind her. He shut the door between the dogs and sat on the couch. Lindy hopped up beside him. “Poor old girl,” he said, patting her wet side. “Yer in fer the works now.” His knuckles were split, and blood flaked from his fingers, but he could not feel any burning.

“Sal’s gone, yes, she is. Yes, she is. Couple of months, an’ we’ll show her, yes we will.” He saw himself in Charleston, in the Club, then taking Sally home in his new car…

“Hungry, ol’ girl? C’mon, I’ll fix ya up.”

In the kitchen, he looked for fresh meat to treat her, and finding none, opened a can of sardines. Watching her lap them up, he poured himself a bourbon, and feeling better, leaned against the counter. Sally’s plate lay skinned with beansoup in the sink, and for a moment he missed her. He laughed to himself: he would show her.