Sister Mine (25 page)

I had on a pair of cutoffs and a halter top I had made from a couple of bandannas in Home Ec class.

He was wearing a pair of dark blue suit pants and a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the top buttons undone. A yellow tie was stuffed into one of his pants pockets and fluttered behind him like a tail when he walked. His shoes were shiny black and remarkably clean.

He said hello. I said hi back. We made small talk. Soon we were smiling and laughing and he was telling me I was pretty.

He asked me if I knew who he was and I told him I didn't. I knew he was management by the way he was dressed and the softness of his hands. When he told me he was Cam Jack, I was as excited as if I was meeting foreign royalty or a Pittsburgh Pirate.

He wasn't terribly bad looking then. He was solid, not beefy yet. He had thick unkempt hair that made him look vulnerable despite the bully's smirk he always wore and a big outdoorsy voice that made me think of cowboys and campfires. He had a way of tilting and lowering his head as if he were trying to hear me better when we talked that I found endearing. This was before I knew the word “patronizing.”

I told him my name. He pretended to know my father. He praised the Jolly Mount miners, using the same line he'd use over twenty years later in E.J.'s hospital room after the explosion in Jojo. He said his dad always said he'd give four of his Marvella miners for just one working Josephine or Beverly.

I wanted to ask him why, if he valued them so much, he didn't get them a couple new exhaust fans and some self-rescuers, but I had a feeling this would have put a damper on the rest of our conversation and I wanted him to like me.

I don't know why exactly. Physically, he was the opposite of the type of man I was attracted to. He was nothing like Lib or Jimmy or any of the boys I'd been with. They smelled of cigarettes and engine grease and whiskey. They had big callused, scarred, dirty hands that could easily leave bruises or just as easily convince me that nothing could ever harm me if they chose to love me.

They never appeared to be clean-shaven, and even when they were their cheeks always felt like sandpaper.

They didn't talk much but expressed plenty if you knew how to read them. I could tell exactly what my dad thought of someone by the amount of eye contact he made with him, whether he stuck his hands in his pockets, crossed his arms over his chest or held them akimbo, and how often and how strenuously he spit.

Cam wore an aftershave that made him smell like a freshly shampooed dog. There was something damp and animal about his scent that the cologne couldn't cover up completely. His hands were smoother and softer than the hands of most women I knew. His face was the same. He never stopped talking yet I was never sure what he really thought about anything.

The mantrip rumbled up to the mine's entry, and tired, dirty, squinting men in hard hats carrying lunch pails and thermoses began to straggle away from the hill toward the double-wide trailer they used as a bath house.

The sight of them changed Cam's demeanor. He looked uncomfortable and was suddenly in a hurry to leave.

We parted and I never gave him a second thought except to occasionally think back on our meeting the way I might think about meeting anyone who was rich or famous.

He called me one night about a week later, and I met him the next night in his Cadillac about a mile down the road from our house.

I've often wondered since then if he would have been equally bold with any teenaged girl he might have encountered that day among the rows of pickup trucks or if he sensed something in me that made him take a chance. Did I give off a victim's scent like a cat in heat?

We drove around for awhile talking in his car before we finally parked.

We talked about a lot of things. We even talked about the same miners he seemed in such a hurry to avoid the week before.

I got the feeling he was lonely. I don't think he had any true friends. He complained that the rich kids at his college called him a redneck behind his back. The rednecks back home hated him because of his wealth. I guess it never occurred to him people might dislike him simply because he was an asshole.

Before we moved to the backseat and got down to business, he seemed nervous at having me in the car with him. He explained to me that we couldn't be seen together.

He said it was because the world was full of uptight, holier-thanthou Bible-thumpers and titsy feminists. According to him, the women belonging to either of these groups had pussies that were so dry, dust and cobwebs came out of them when they spread their legs. They all hated men and any type of pleasure, particularly men having pleasure. Their goal was to keep men from satisfying their natural urges, thereby keeping them weak and miserable. Since girls like me were the perfect age for satisfying those urges, they especially hated us.

I didn't completely buy into his pleasure-depriving conspiracy theory, but I listened politely while he expounded on the topic. I tended to think our secrecy had more to do with the fact that if my dad or any of the other miners found out what he was doing they would beat him to death with the same bare hands that worked in his mines every day.

He never called me again after that night. I wouldn't have cared. I had no desire to see him again and I wouldn't have called him either except I felt obligated a few months later to tell him I was pregnant with his child.

I signal to the bartender for one more bucket of margarita.

Chapter Twenty-Three

T
HE J&P BUILDING IS
by far the nicest one in downtown Centresburg. Even before the other buildings in town began boarding up their windows and padlocking their front doors as stores and businesses folded one by one in the wake of the mine closings, it stood out as the most spectacular landmark for miles around.

It's a stately redbrick structure with a gleaming gold clock tower and wide marble front steps leading to a set of white columns supporting a two-story-high balcony where they hang red, white, and blue bunting every Fourth of July and display a life-sized Nativity scene every Christmas now that the courthouse is no longer allowed to do it. Most visitors to town think the J&P Building
is
the courthouse and it might as well be. The two men who have owned it have always had more power than any judge.

I push open the heavy brass and glass front doors and step inside. Everyone is gone for the day. The foyer is empty and the size of a barn. The floor is white marble shot through with black and gray streaks and flecks of quartz that glitter softly in the light coming from the enormous wrought-iron chandelier overhead. It's obviously very old and reminds me of the candle-dripping chandeliers hanging in Transylvanian castles in vampire movies. It adds a sinister element to the otherwise Romanesque opulence of the rest of the cavernous entryway.

The ceiling above it is painted in a panoramic Pennsylvanian version of the Sistine Chapel. Various highly selective scenes of Pennsylvania lifestyle and history are represented.

There's the obligatory portrait of William Penn and the depiction of Ben Franklin flying a kite with a key tied to the end of it. Ragged colonists overwhelm British redcoats who turn and run, and Union soldiers slaughter their Confederate brothers at Gettysburg. A hunter in camouflage and neon orange takes aim at a majestic stag, and black-faced miners trudge home from their shift with their backs turned toward a puffing locomotive carrying off carloads of coal. A red covered bridge and a horse-drawn Amish cart sit against a backdrop of rolling green hills. The steel mills of Pittsburgh, Philadelphia's cracked Liberty Bell, a Hershey bar, a bottle of Heinz ketchup, and Punxsutawney Phil leaving the comfort of his burrow in search of his shadow are all accounted for.

There's not a single woman in the entire painting.

I take a few steps toward a curving staircase carpeted in dove gray leading to the second floor. My boots make loud clacking noises on the marble that echo around the room like gunfire.

I stop and I'm suddenly very conscious of my bare knees. I ruined my stockings in the mud with the Marine and threw them away in the ladies' room at Ruby Tuesday's. Now I'm barefoot and bare-legged inside my boots. Normally it wouldn't bother me but right now it makes me feel poor and cheap.

I continue across the marble, setting my heels down even harder. The sound is almost deafening. Once I reach the staircase, my heels sink into the plush carpet like I've stepped into a field of dandelion fluff.

At the top of the stairs is a long ornate hallway dimly lit by gold sconces with frosted glass globes. The walls are paneled in a rich dark wood and hung with portraits of stern board members past and present. A brighter light spills out from behind an office door that's slightly ajar at the end of the corridor. I make my way toward it.

A small gold plaque is mounted on the door engraved with the words: Cameron E. Jack, Chief Executive Officer.

My palms are sweating. If only he'd take a swing at me then I'd know what to do.

I pull the door open and step inside. He's standing behind his desk with his back to me. He looks like he's staring out the window, but the curtains are drawn.

He turns around, even though neither the opening of the door or my footsteps have made any noise.

“Well, well, well.” He smiles at me. “Shae-Lynn.”

The office is immense. The distance between the door and his colossal desk is enough to make any supplicant truly nervous as he crosses the room while being scrutinized by the man he's come to report to or beg a favor from.

Everything is done in creams and golds except for the dark wood of the desk and his bookshelves, and the brick red leather of his chair.

The shelves are full of leather-bound books which I'm sure he's never read, and the walls are hung with dozens of framed photos of himself with famous people who I'm sure don't display photos of themselves with him.

There's also a fair number of photos of his parents posing at various civic functions. His mom is a gray mouse of a woman who stands beside his father, dutiful and unsmiling, wearing practical polyester skirts and jackets in diluted popsicle colors with blouses that tie at the neck in big bows.

He hasn't aged well. It's the first thing I thought when I spied on him in E.J.'s hospital room two years ago. His face is jowly and lined; his stomach is too big for his pants. He's expanded the way a yeast bread rises and I have the feeling if I were to poke him with my finger, it would sink into his flesh like it would into an underbaked muffin.

His hair is still thick but has turned pewter gray. He wears it moussed and slicked back, completely covering the top of his head like a steel cap.

“Standing over there you look exactly the same as you did when you were sixteen,” he tells me. “Maybe better. You got a little more meat on you now. You were such a scrawny little thing.”

I don't know how to respond. I can't and won't make polite conversation with him.

I say nothing.

He gestures at the two chairs placed in front of his desk and asks me to sit.

I do as I'm told.

Up close, he doesn't look well. There've been rumors circulating for years about his failing health. Talk about dialysis machines and experimental drugs.

I forget that I don't look so great either.

“What the hell happened to your face?” he asks me with his typical tact. “Don't tell me you got yourself a boyfriend who knocks you around?”

“It's none of your business.” I break my silence.

“Oh, I see. You're gonna be all pissy with me. I was hoping after our conversation yesterday you'd take some time to think about things and get yourself in a better mood. You got no reason to be mad at me.”

I stare at him incredulously and hope that my jaw isn't hanging open.

“I'm not saying I haven't made some mistakes,” he continues, not sounding the least bit humble. “My dad used to say, ‘A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.' I'm just saying there's no reason to be mad at me.”

“No,” I tell him, crossing my legs and forcing a strained smile. “There's no reason for me to be mad at you. I should let bygones be bygones.”

“That's my girl. Can I get you anything? Coffee, soda, bourbon?”

My head is beginning to throb, and I rub at the knot behind my ear.

“How about some health insurance?” I joke.

“You don't have any health insurance?”

“I'm self-employed now. I can't afford it.”

“That's your God-given right as an American.”

“Not to be able to afford health insurance?” I wonder aloud.

“To be able to buy health insurance if you can afford it.”

He walks over to a cabinet, opens it, and takes out two glasses and a bottle of Old Grand-Dad.

He pours two shots of the amber liquor and hands me one.

I notice in the midst of all his photos he only has one of his wife, Rae Ann.

She's about my age. He married her when he was in his early thirties. At the time I suppose she would have been considered a trophy wife: ten years his junior, as blond as they come, daughter of a real estate mogul, a former Miss Florida runner-up who dreamed of becoming a marine biologist and working at Sea World with trick dolphins but who settled for playing a lot of tennis and living on her parents' 200-acre estate near Boca Raton until she met Cam Jack.

He also only has one photo of his three daughters.

He and Rae Ann never had a son.

“So tell me,” he says, taking a seat on the corner of his desk nearest me, “you're good friends with some of those boys that were trapped and rescued up in Jolly Mount, aren't you?”

“Yes, I am.”

“How's that working out for them?”

“Well, the part about being rescued is working out real well.”

“I mean…there was a lot of fanfare after they were rescued. They were regular celebrities there for awhile. Book deals and movie deals and things like that. Oprah treating them like heroes, putting them on her show and giving them all a new set of camping equipment and a hunting trip to Wyoming.

“Did you know she never even called me and asked for my side of the story? I would have been happy to give it to her. I think she's damn attractive for a black woman.

“I bet those boys really cleaned up,” he finishes.

I'm starting to get pissed over the “boys” reference.

“Two of those boys are older than you,” I point out to him.

“One of them still works for me, doesn't he?”

“Two of them still work for you.”

I think about E.J. I think about what he survived, about how he still feels like he's losing his mind sometimes, about the amount of composure and willpower it takes for a man to be able to continue to do a job that almost killed him.

“How about now? How're they fixed for money?” Cam disrupts my thoughts.

“I don't know. Why do you want to know?”

“You know about this lawsuit. Hell, everybody does. I'm trying to figure out where they're coming from. What's their motivation? You think they're only in it for the money or is it personal?”

“Is that why you invited me here? To talk about the Jolly Mount Five?”

“The Jolly Mount Five,” he scoffs. “What the hell is that? Everybody calls them that. The Jolly Mount Five: sounds like a goddamned backup group for Willie Nelson.”

He tosses back his drink in one gulp and gets up to pour himself another one.

“It took them awhile to decide to do it and that means they had some misgivings,” he goes on. “I'll give them credit for that. But I knew they'd eventually do it. The working man doesn't have any honor anymore; that's what it boils down to. It makes me sad. Truly. None of the old-timers would have ever sued my dad. Ninety-six men died in Gertie and nobody ever made a peep.”

“Who were they going to make a peep to?”

I'm starting to get angry and I've had enough to drink to loosen my tongue.

“Everyone knew the inspectors never really pushed enforcing the safety violations if they wanted to keep their jobs. And every mine commissioner and muckety-muck in the government was a former mine owner and a friend of your dad's.

“The system's not any less corrupt nowadays, it's just things are harder for you because the public gets involved in everything and there's always a lawyer somewhere willing to sue.”

“Shae-Lynn. I'm surprised at you. Where did you ever pick up this bullshit?”

“It's public knowledge. You've just always had a public that doesn't want to think about it because they don't know what they can do to change it and they need the jobs so they ignore it.”

“If there were still Communists around, I'd say you sound like one.”

I finish my drink and hold it out for him to refill.

“There are still Communists around, you ass. It's called China. You know, the place that makes all the things we used to make here in America?”

He pauses with the bottle held over my glass. His face grows dark and I think I might realize my wish for him to hit me, but he lets it pass and produces an expression that doesn't show the least bit of affection or amusement but still manages to look like a smile.

“Cynicism isn't pretty, sweetheart. No wonder you never got married.”

He fills my glass and sits back down on the edge of the desk.

“I'm gonna let you in on a secret. I'm getting out of the coal business. Now on the surface it might not make sense. Coal's coming back in a big way. Not that it ever left. Most Americans would be shocked red as a baby's rashy ass if they knew 60 percent of their electricity still comes from coal.

“They want to run their five TVs and their four computers and have every light on in the goddamned house all night long and never think about where the juice is coming from. Well, it sure as hell isn't coming from the Energy Fairy. And it sure as hell isn't coming from the sun and the wind. You ever been to Holland?”

“No,” I answer.

“Neither have I. But I've seen pictures and those windmills aren't doing shit. Nuclear power? Who the hell wants to risk having his hair fall out and his pecker shrivel up from radiation when you can use coal and just have a little old-fashioned air pollution?

“Besides, all that clean air nonsense is becoming a thing of the past anyway. Coal has friends in very high places these days. And we got all these Third World countries needing coal because they can't afford oil and hell, none of them care about clean air. People are calling America the Saudi Arabia of coal.

“That's a compliment,” he feels compelled to add.

He gets off the desk and begins to pace. I watch the jiggle of his soft, pudgy body underneath his expensive suit and think of E.J. again. Nothing on him jiggles.

“Fact is, I'm tired of coal. More than that. I hate coal. Coal and coal companies and coal miners and coal dirt and coal money.”

And one coal baron in particular whose name you inherited, I think to myself.

“I even hate those stupid little pieces of coal they sell in stores now at Christmastime to put in kids' stockings.

“I was in a store in New York City, and the salesgirl saw me looking at some and she started talking to me about how nice it was that we're finding a different use for coal instead of burning it and destroying the environment.