The Coalwood Way (20 page)

21

A COALWOOD GIRL

IT WAS TIME for me to complete my Christmas shopping. I’d already gotten something for Jim and Dad. A subscription to
Argosy
was my gift to Jim. The only complication was whether to change his mailing address at Virginia Tech or wait to see where he was going. I dithered on it and then figured Jim would leave a forwarding address and the magazine could catch up with him. For Dad, I’d written to Charleston to see if I could get an autograph from Cecil Underwood, the state governor. Mom’s letter to Wernher von Braun last year in my behalf had been my inspiration. Governor Underwood was the first Republican governor in West Virginia in about a thousand years, and Dad thought he was the best thing to ever hit the state. I didn’t expect a reply but, to my amazement, the photograph arrived. I’d asked Mr. Varney, the postmaster, to keep an eye out for anything from the governor’s office for me, and he’d done it, slipping a manila envelope with the governor’s seal on it to me one day in the Big Store. Governor Underwood had written:
To Homer Hickam, the best (and maybe the only) Republican in
McDowell County.
I knew Dad would love it.

For Mom, I had something really special picked out. My plan was to give it to her just before she left for Myrtle Beach. I’d gone to the ladies’ department at the Big Store and found an enameled powder box that played “Love Me Tender” when you opened it. Mom always liked Elvis Presley’s slow tunes, and I sensed I had a winner. The only problem was it cost seven dollars. It took me a while to get up the courage to spend that kind of money on a present. It wasn’t that I didn’t have it. I did, but only if I dipped into the rocket-propellant money I’d saved up by washing cars and selling ginseng. After having a long conversation with myself on the importance of giving, especially to one’s only mother, and reminding myself that I’d gotten a free quantity of moonshine from the Germans, I decided to do it. I chose to slip on down to the Big Store to get Mom’s present on a special day, the day Santa Claus was coming to town.

The Big Store had set up Santa’s sleigh in the front near the drugstore counter. I recognized who was playing Santa despite his white whiskers and red suit. It was Mr. Clowers, a widower who lived up on Substation Row. Mr. Clowers, who was in charge of the bathhouse beside the man-hoist, had an ample belly and played the part well. He also had a bum leg, and the jolly old elf arrived with a noticeable limp. “Daddy, why is Santa limping?” a wide-eyed little boy asked worriedly. His father, a shuttle-car operator, said, “He’s been working 11 East.” It got a laugh and also reminded everybody how much the section was haunting all the thoughts of so many in Coalwood, even so near Christmas.

Santa settled into his sled, built by the company carpentry shop, and began to laugh the traditional ho-ho-ho with his stomach shaking like a bowlful of jelly. The children of Coalwood all lined up to give Santa their list and receive their baskets of fruits and nuts, gifts from the company. Roy Lee had come along to help me make my purchase. I was too embarrassed to go into the ladies’ department by myself. He was looking for something for his mom, too. We stopped to watch the excited children who were lined up for Santa. Some of them yelled bloody murder, fearful at the sight of Santa. Others cooed in wonder and willingly crawled up on him to state their Christmas list. I looked over and was surprised to see Dreama Jenkins also watching. She was wearing the same brown cloth coat I’d first seen her in down at the Cape. Her long red hair hung lifelessly, some stray strands over her eyes. She clutched a small brown leather bag with her chapped, pink hands. She looked not only lonely and forlorn but fragile. I thought she’d break if anybody hugged her. Not that there was any danger of that. People were keeping their distance. I decided to talk to her. “What for?” Roy Lee asked when I told him what I was going to do.

“I feel sorry for her,” I said. “Don’t you?”

Roy Lee shrugged. “I guess I do,” he said reluctantly. “But she doesn’t belong here. Don’t you see that? Look around. Pay attention for once in your life.”

I took his challenge and paid attention. I saw that nearly every one of the mothers filing past with their children were averting their eyes from her. I watched a little girl run over to Dreama when she held out her hand, and I saw the mother pull her daughter back. The little girl wailed, and Dreama blushed beneath her thick makeup. “I guess I see what you mean,” I said.

“Let her be, Sonny.”

Roy Lee was right and I knew it. Most people in Coalwood wanted Dreama Jenkins to leave. And the truth was it didn’t matter much to me, one way or the other. I felt sorry for her, but that was about as far as it went.

At his urging, I followed Roy Lee past Dreama and the mothers and kids and Mr. Clowers to the ladies’ department. I took him to the counter with the music box inside. Mrs. Anastopoulos waited on us. Her husband was a continuous miner operator. “It’s really a pretty thing,” she said, placing it on the glass counter. I agreed. It was shaped like a beehive, and on the top was a little painting of a bee. A clever, nearly invisible latch opened the lid to reveal a depression for the powder and puff. Mrs. Anastopoulos pushed the latch, the lid lifted, and “Love Me Tender” started playing in little tinkly notes.

“Nice,” Roy Lee said. “You have two of them?”

I was incredulous at his audacity. “We can’t give our mothers the same thing!”

“Why not? When do they ever powder their noses together?”

“We just have the one,” Mrs. Anastopoulos said, heading off an argument. “But, Roy Lee, your mother has looked at these hair combs more than once.”

Roy Lee looked at the combs. He liked them well enough, and they were within his budget. We had our presents. Mrs. Anastopoulos even gift-wrapped them. I felt a surge of sheer exultation while she did it. I knew Mom was going to love her present. I imagined the moment when she first opened the lid of her new powder box and heard the little tune. It made me feel warm inside to just think about it. The Bible says it’s more blessed to give than receive, and at that moment, I knew what it meant. I was so happy that I just felt like the world was a wonderful place, and so were all the people in it. I soared in the spirit of the moment. When I came down from my inner flight, Roy Lee was looking at me with worry in his eyes. “What?” I asked.

“Where do you go sometimes?” he wondered.

I told him to stop being an idiot. I didn’t go anywhere but right where I was. It wasn’t the truth, but I wasn’t about to confess to anything else. I didn’t want people to start saying I was a dreamer. I wasn’t, not at all. I did things, launched rockets, played in the band, hiked the mountains, made things happen. Dreamers never got anything done, just mused away the day. A dreamer? Not me, boy.

On the way out with our presents, Roy Lee and I found Dreama still watching the line in front of Mr. Clowers. There were just a few mothers and kids left. I don’t know why I did what I did. I guess I was still so filled with the warmth of the general good of all mankind I couldn’t stand anymore to see her standing there so dismal. I broke away from Roy Lee without a word to him and went up to her. “Hello, Miss Jenkins,” I said.

She looked at me with wide-eyed but delighted surprise. She let a grin peek through. I caught sight of her broken tooth, only it wasn’t broken anymore. It was fixed, or nearly so. Something about it didn’t look quite natural, though. She saw that I’d noticed. “It’s a temporary crown,” she said proudly. “Dr. Hale has ordered me a special one. And it’s Dreama, remember?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Isn’t this fun?” she asked, nodding toward Santa Claus Clowers and the little boy on his knee.

“Yes, ma’am, it is.”

“I never got to sit on Santa Claus’s lap,” she said wistfully. “They had him down at the Gary store but Mama, she wouldn’t take us. I used to cry and beg but she never would. It took me a while to figure out why. She didn’t want to get our hopes up, that we’d get much at Christmas.”

The way she said it was most sad, and I wanted to say something comforting but couldn’t imagine what it should be. So I just blurted the first thing that came to my mind, which was “I was always afraid when Mom brought me to see Santa Claus.” That sounded sort of negative, so I tried to clarify the thought. “Of course, at the time I had Santa Claus and God mixed up. I guess I’d still be scared if that was God sitting there and not Mr. Clowers.”

“Shhh,” she hushed me. “The kids’ll hear you. They need to believe as long as they can.”

An idea popped into my head. “Why don’t you get in line, Dreama? You could sit on Mr. Clowers’s lap.” Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Roy Lee opening his mouth in dismay.

“I couldn’t do that!” she said, but the way she said it, I knew she wanted to.

“Why not? I’ll stand with you.”

And I did. I coaxed her into the line and we stood at its end. Roy Lee came up and whispered in my ear. “Are you nuts?”

I excused myself from Dreama. “I’m trying to do a good thing,” I told him over by the drugstore counter. “It’s Christmas. You’re supposed to be charitable.”

“You moron. You’re just going to get her in trouble.”

“Don’t be stupid, Roy Lee,” I said, and left him fuming.

The room was emptied except for me, Dreama, Roy Lee, Mr. Clowers, and Junior, the drugstore clerk. Dreama hesitated when Mr. Clowers looked at her with round, surprised eyes. “I can’t,” she whispered to me.

Mr. Clowers got the idea. He was a kind man. “Come on, little lady.” He patted his knee. “Ol’ Santa’s always got time for a pretty girl.”

Dreama put her hand to her mouth, showing her uncertainty, but then she seemed to find courage and slid into the sleigh and onto Mr. Clowers’s knee. She held her purse in both hands. “I don’t really want nothing,” she said to his question.

“Oh, come on, every girl wants something,” Mr. Clowers said.

Roy Lee came and stood beside me. He released a quiet sigh.

Dreama shrugged her thin shoulders and turned her head, her whole body turning kind of into itself like some shy little girl. It seemed to me that she really was a little girl at that moment, that she was letting out who she had once been, or wanted to be. “I’d like a doll baby,” she said in a voice that could have belonged to a six-year-old. “And a little bottle with a nipple so I can feed her.”

“Well, I’ll see what I can do,” Mr. Clowers said. His eyes had turned misty. “Is that all?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you been a good girl?”

“Yes, sir.”

It seemed to me that a kind of magic had entered the store, that what I was seeing wasn’t happening at all, except perhaps in a pretty girl’s dream. The spell was shattered by a low, angry voice. “Jack Clowers, you are a dirty old man. See, Tag, see what I told you was going on? She’s been in here, sizing up our kids, seeing who she was gonna grab or something. Now, she’s even after Santa Claus.”

Mrs. Mallett had come in, bringing Tag Farmer with her. His face had a pained look. He shot a glance at me and then Dreama and Mr. Clowers. Dreama hastily got up from the sleigh. “I didn’t mean nothing,” she said. “I just wanted to see the children have fun.”

“Why did you want to see them?” Mrs. Mallett demanded. “You thinking about getting one of them for Cuke? We know what he did once with that baby girl. That’s why he was in prison.”

Tag said, “Now, Cleo, that girl was sixteen years old. It wasn’t right what Cuke did, but it wasn’t like she was a baby.”

This was all news to me. I’d never heard the reason why Cuke had gone to prison. I still didn’t understand exactly what it was.

Dreama hung her head. She mumbled something. “What’s that, ma’am?” Tag asked.

She looked at him. “I just want . . .” Her voice dropped off so I couldn’t hear what she said.

“Yes, ma’am, I know,” Tag said. “But I guess it’s best if you go on now.”

“Ain’t you gonna arrest her, Tag? You can see what she’s doing.” Mrs. Mallett looked at me and Roy Lee. “I bet she’s after these boys, too.”

Tag was clearly embarrassed. “Cleo, let it go.”

Mrs. Mallett was never the type to let anything go, especially when she saw an opening to expound on her perceptions of sin and other human folly. “What kind of woman are you?” she demanded, while Dreama seemed to shrink before her. “You come in here from some stinking Gary hollow, shack up with Cuke, and think you’re allowed to mix with decent folk? I’ll tell you where you belong. You belong in Cinder Bottom, not in a respectable place like Coalwood.”

“Mrs. Mallett!” It was Junior. Startled, Mrs. Mallett turned to look at him. The bespectacled clerk was leaning forward on his counter. His eyes said he was scared but he was mad, too. “Mrs. Mallett, I’ll thank you to leave my customers alone. If you can’t behave better than that, you should . . . well, you should just leave.”

Mrs. Mallett regarded him. “A colored man could get himself in big trouble with talk like that, Junior.”

“All right, all right,” Tag said. “That’s enough. I want everybody to go. That includes you, Cleo. You, too, Sonny and Roy Lee.” He put his finger to the bill of his cap when he faced Dreama. “You too, ma’am. I’m sorry.”

Just then, a mother and child arrived. “Ho-ho-ho!” Mr. Clowers cried in relief at the sight of them. “Merry Christmas!”

Dreama wrapped her arms around herself and walked quickly, her head down, through the door. Mrs. Mallett watched her, her fleshy arms crossed. Despite Tag’s order, she didn’t look like she planned on budging. “Tag, you’re making a big mistake, I’m telling you.” She looked around at all of us. “You think you’re doing that woman a kindness, but I’m telling you she’s up to purely no good.”

Tag went over and leaned on the drugstore counter. He rubbed his face and took off his cap and laid it down. “What’s the strongest thing you’ve got, Junior?” he asked grimly.

Junior gave it some thought. “Chocolate milk shake,” he said at last.

“Make it a double,” Tag said, slapping his scrip down. Then he looked around, his eyes falling on me and Roy Lee. Mrs. Mallett was squatted down beside the little girl, cooing, telling her how pretty she was while her mother beamed. He raised his eyebrows at us, and Roy Lee and I headed out the door.