Authors: Thomas Cater
“If that’s the case, those mine shafts must run all
over the county.”
Her eyes clouded over briefly as if to concede that
that some areas of her expertise were unclear and additional information was
not available.
“Yes, I suppose that’s true,” she concluded.
I asked how extensive she thought the tunnels might be,
as I opened the van door. She shook her head nervously.
“I have no idea
,
but as you say, more than 100 years; they must run
all over the county, probably everywhere.”
I asked if she thought they might reach all the way to
Elanville.
“It’s possible. Elanville isn’t really that far away,
it’s just two or three miles, and one mountain beyond those hills behind the
hospital.”
“Then why did I have to drive so many more miles to
get here?”
She shrugged her shoulders and pursed her lips, which
made me think she was uneasy about entering the van. I began to feel guilty for
imposing on her.
“Just part of West Virginia’s unique system of roads
and highways,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
“I’m just curious,” I replied. “I don’t want to wake
up some morning and find that my house has fallen into an abandoned mine
shaft.”
She laughed and I detected the smile of a wanton in
the curl of her lips.
“You don’t have to worry,” she said. “The farther
south you go the deeper the mine seam runs. At Elanville, coal seam is very thin
and close to the surface, but here, it is probably 10 to 20 feet below the
surface. By the time the seam crosses the southern state line, it is very deep.
In the southern part of the state, they don’t mine it. It runs at too steep an
angle and it is difficult to mine.”
“How do the Alberichs haul the coal?”
“They once used mules and mine cars.”
“I didn’t see any mules.”
“You wouldn’t” she said, “They once kept then in the
mines. The mules are probably gone by now. Rats probably ate them up overnight after
they died. They seem to do just fine with the tools they have now, axes,
shovels and tiny mine cars.”
“You’d think they’d have run out of coal by now,” I
said.
“No, there’s plenty down there. But they’re ‘pillaring’
now, so they won’t have to haul the coal so far.”
“And how did you come by all this information?”
“My father used to be a mine foreman. I know more
about coal mining than Rockefeller knows about oil, even though he to owns
thousands of acres of coal.”
Something still made me feel apprehensive. It was as
if the state were endorsing a form of slavery under the pretext of
rehabilitating the mentally and physically handicapped.
“With all the laws governing safety, you’d think some
occupational safety inspector might have stepped in and stopped that kind of
operation by now.”
She gave her head and hair a little toss from side to
side.
“Evidently not. The fact is that the coal is being
used by the institution and not sold commercially. There are only three people
employed in its extraction, so that makes it a ‘mom and pop’ operation and not
subject to state or federal laws.”
It still sounded as if there were some elaborate
scheme to keep men subservient to the state for generations to come, but to
what end?
“So how did the Alberich’s fall heir to the hospital’s
tombs?” I asked and shivered at the prospect.
“Actually, I don’t know,” she said. “I think someone
just dropped them off here one day when they were young.”
She hesitated for a moment and then asked, “Did you
notice anything unusual about their appearance? I mean, besides the fact that
they were dwarfs or hobbits?”
I could not keep from frowning. “They do have large
jaws, but it was dark down there. I could have been looking at coal dust and
shadows. It makes me wonder why they don’t provide better lighting. It seems
criminal to expect someone to work in that kind of darkness.”
“There weren’t any lights?”
“It was dark as a dungeon,” I said.
“Maybe their eyes are used to it,” she replied.
“You asked if they looked different. There was something
about their skin. It looked like leather, as if they’re skin had a patina.”
She
nodded
affirming my observation
.
“Yes, that’s what I heard. Have you ever heard of
progeria, a strange disease? It makes victims age about
ten
times faster
than normal. Victims live about ten or fifteen years and then die of old age.”
“I’ve heard of it,” I said. “But don’t know anything
about it; is that what they’ve got?”
“Hardly,” she said. “What they have is the opposite.
They have a rare genetic disorder that keeps them from
growing old
.”
Connie kept nodding her head. She was like a
goofy-head toy a teenager sticks on his dashboard.
“Crazy, isn’t it?” she said. “The first time someone
catches a meaningful disease, weird little gnomes catch it.”
I too felt angry that I was not accursed. It tipped
the scale of justice.
“Think what it would have meant if Hitler, Nixon,
Truman or
Mondale
caught it. Mediocrity would have enslaved the world. There would be no more rising
to great heights or sinking to great depths, only mediocrity,
or
Mondale
duality.”
I found it hard to believe that little gnomes were
going to outlive me
and in total darkness, never to see or appreciate a
sunset or a girl in a pink blowsy dress.
Connie tried to catch my eye. I think she was finally
ready to enter the van, but I wanted her in a state of eager anticipation.
“How old did they look to you?” she asked in a
teasing, testing voice.
“It was dark and they were covered with coal dust;
maybe they're ages were forty, or fifty?”
She glowed with pleasure. “They’ve got to be
in their seventies, maybe eighties
. My records show they were wards of the state and
patients at the hospital in the 1930s or forties. They weren’t babies when they
were admitted either, because they went to work tending the furnace soon after.”
I suspected all along that somehow they were part of
this extraordinary experiment that was taking place in Upshyre County. I tried
to identify the problem, ferret out the miscreant whose self-generating legacy
would continue into eternity, unless someone stopped it.
“Who was responsible for putting them to work in the
mine?”
“Whoever was acting administrator or head of the
hospital at the time,” she replied.
“And who could that have been?” I had already answered
the question in my own mind; I just wanted confirmation.
“We don’t really know when they actually got here, or
when they started working in the mine, we only know when their ‘scrawl’ started
appearing on the requisitions. It was some time in the 20s or 30s and that
could only have been Samuel Ryder.”
“Then they knew the old man!”
“They must have,” she replied, “though I
doubt…socially.”
“It is also possible they knew Elinore, or at least about
her,”
I suggested.
Constance stopped smiling and started frowning. I
sensed it was time to
move into the van
.
“Why am I getting so excited about this? I don’t know
who you are, or what you’re doing. Would you mind letting me in on what is
happening? If I’m going to get excited about something, I want to know more
about it.”
I stepped aside and took her arm. “Come into my
parlor, said the spider to the fly; it’s the cutest little parlor that you ever
did spy.”
She took a quick look before entering; she was probably
searching for
leather
whips and
shackles
. She tested both steps for stability and suddenly
went nuts exclaiming over the red carpet.
“Looks like a cat house on wheels.”
“A cat house: where did you see a cat?” I asked
anxiously.
“Not a real cat house, a brothel, a house of ill
repute,” she replied
“Oh,” I sighed with relief. “I try to indulge my
passion for color and comfort.”
I followed her in and locked the door. Inside she took
to the white couch, and flung her purse and jacket on the floor, kicked off her
shoes and snuggled into its luxury and comfort. I glanced about to see if
Myra’s disappearing cat had made a sudden re-appearance.
“This thing had to cost a fortune.” She said.
“It’s used. When it was new it cost about the price of
a modest middle-class suburban two-bedroom
dwelling
.”
She waited silently for me to continue. “It cost me 35
thousand, plus another two or three thousand in insurance and miscellaneous
items.”
“How can you afford it?”
“I try to think I’m resourceful,” I replied.
“Does that mean you’re rich?”
I squirmed uneasily. “I have nothing to write home
about, but a small monthly stipend, and enough to keep this thing guzzling gas”
“And you can do that without working?”
“I work,” I said indignantly. “I also have
income-producing real estate that requires my attention. I take pictures,
follow the sun and prowl the beaches.”
“Sounds like fun not work,” she said.
“My life style was thrust upon me,” I said. “I have to
live this way or my ex-wife and her lawyer will impoverish me. I think she
intends to pay him a very large percentage of everything he squeezes out of me.
She wants the van, but she has to catch me first. She trashed my art treasures
and my masks. She even sold my collection of tractor seats.”
“Tractor seats?” she replied. “You got to be kidding;”
and added, “new or used?”
I could barely restrain the flow of tears. “When
someone trashes everything you love, you know what bitterness means. I had a
set of twelve; almost two thousand dollars invested.”
“In tractor seats?’ she said callously. “How much were
they worth?”
I fidgeted uncomfortably. She was very nervy, I
thought, asking me such personal and embarrassing questions. Aren’t these
mountain people cognizant of others' feelings? I poured several fingers of gin
into bud vases I used as brandy snifters, stirred and poured two very dry
martinis.
“The house special,” I said.
She sipped courageously, a skilled saucy minx. “I want
to know what kind of a man collects tractor seats?” she said making a formidable
face.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t ask,” I replied.
“I mean, tractor seats? Something a fat old farmer
plants his smelly bum on?”
“These weren’t your generic Kansas wheat farmer or
Ohio dairy farmer type tractor seats. They were smelly old tractor seats from
the heart of darkest Africa, from the killing fields of Eritrea and Vietnam and
the pogroms of Germany, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosova, Timor, Thailand and Myanmar.
These tractor seats aided and abetted the smelly old bums of murderers and
assassins, as they went about the business of racially and ethnically cleansing
various cultural groups. These seats were from tractors that hauled their cargo
of dead and defiled humanity to mass graves and crematoriums throughout the
world. These were seats that knew the real smell of life and death.”
“Sounds grisly,” she said. “Why couldn’t you be like a
normal man and collect guns or knives?”
“Power symbols,” I said. “I wanted something
pantheistic, agrarian.”
“I’m sorry, I asked,” she said genuinely troubled.
“Would you like some vermouth?”
She gave me her glass.
“I’ll take some ice water, tonic or ginger ale, if you
got it, anything at all. I need something to quiet my nerves.”
I was willing, even hoping to accommodate her every
wish. I found a month-old lemon in the refrigerator, squeezed it unmercifully into
her glass and added sugar.
“Ah, that’s more like it. I don’t mind a stimulating
buzz before dinner, but I don’t want to walk into the house blitzed.”
“You live alone?” I asked.
“I live with my mother, my cat, my dog, my gay goldfish
and Jeffrey.”
“Jeffrey?”
“My son; he is the most irrepressible five-year-old in
town.”
“The product of an unfortunate union,” I asked,
wishing I hadn’t.
“No union that produces a child like Jeffrey could
ever be considered unfortunate.”
“A healthy attitude,” I replied. “I wish my caretakers
had felt the same way about me.”
She laughed, and almost choked on ice.
“Unhappy childhood?” she asked.
“Don’t know for sure,” I said. “Never really knew my guardian.
No one talked about him. He just left one day and then the cards and letters
stopped coming. Turns out he was a carnival rube and drank too much. I guess he
got his fill of circus folk, sideshows, mummified corpses, two-headed calves
and Siamese twins.”