The Evening Hour (7 page)

More than once, Cole had overheard Larry talking to the other uncles, calling his grandfather a stubborn old fool.

“Don't touch him,” Cole said sharply.

“What did you say?” he started, but Rebecca put her hand on his arm.

“Let Cole do it,” she said.

He approached his grandfather cautiously, as if he were a wild dog.

“Devil won't leave me alone,” his grandfather muttered.

“The devil won't bother you here,” Cole said. “This is a good place.”

A long silence, then the old man stepped forward. They parted for him. He probably hadn't understood Cole, but he'd listened to his voice and, for some complicated reason, trusted him. He held his grandfather's elbow and led him down the hallway, but felt as if he were leading him to his grave, remembering the scripture his granddaddy used to say,
My flesh and my skin hath he made old: he hath broken my bones
.

Chapter 5

He thought everything would change, but it didn't. Not much, anyway.

Today the cafeteria was decorated with crepe paper and American flags, and a volunteer from the Wives of the Veterans auxiliary group played “Yankee Doodle Dandy” on the upright piano. A few residents sang along, others looked startled. At the center table was a cake frosted with stars and stripes that Ellen was cutting into squares.

“Cole, help me pass these out,” she said.

His grandfather sat at a table with five of the liveliest patients in the nursing home, all women. There were always more women than men. They were stronger, maybe just more stubborn.

“Granddad, you want a piece of cake?”

He chewed his bottom lip, eyes burning like a prophet's. Cole now knew him in ways he'd never wanted to. Wrinkles, bruises, smells of his old body. He had sponge-bathed him and tucked his flaccid penis into his pants. Cleaned up his piss and shit and spit. He did not think that his grandfather recognized him: Would he have tolerated his grandson undressing him, rubbing lotion onto his cracked skin, wiping his behind? He'd touched him more in the last month than he had his entire life.

“Here's Grandma.”

The old man raised his eyes. She was the only person he still seemed to consistently recognize.

“How'd you get here?” Cole asked her.

“Erik.”

“He couldn't come in?”

“Well, he had to get to work.” She smiled apologetically. “It's hard for some of your cousins to see him like this. It's different for you, Cole.”

“If you say so.”

His grandfather did not take his eyes off her. Everyone at the nursing home figured he was mute, but Cole liked to think that his granddaddy was still talking inside his head, building a tower of words that one day would be knocked loose. A final, furious sermon spilling out of him.

“This is a real nice party,” his grandmother said.

Wanda Woods rolled up in her wheelchair and took Cole's hand in hers. “Jamey, what are you doing here? You didn't tell me you were coming today.”

Wanda always confused Cole with her son who'd been killed in a car accident fifty-some years ago. The first time it happened, he tried to explain who he was, but now he just played along, turning into a ghost for her, a smooth-talking seventeen-year-old with a girl named Penny.

Wanda smiled and laughed, but her eyes flickered. How many of the old people knew more than they let on? Did they see past this childish sing-along, the crumbling cake? Were they as dazed as they appeared? Cole looked around the room. He knew all of them. If they had family or not. What ailed them. If they were lonely, or confused. He knew what he'd taken from their rooms. What they'd been prescribed. How much their meds went for on the street.

On his break, he walked over to the Wigwam, hoping Lacy Cooper would be there. He'd been stopping in a few times a week; if it wasn't busy, she would sit with him over pie and coffee, and they'd talk about their families and how funny it was that they grew up a couple of miles from each other but had never met until now. Cole's grandmother said things used to be different, there was a time when everyone knew everyone.

She was waiting on a couple of coal miners who were flirting shamelessly with her. Cole could see why. The top three buttons on the canary yellow dress were undone, and her hair was pinned back, showing off her long neck.

She saw Cole and waved. “Be with you in a minute.”

He took an empty stool at the counter. The man next to him glanced over and smiled, then turned his attention back to the old woman on the other side of him. Cole had never seen either of them before. The old woman had a leathery face, and her hair was dirty gray and disheveled, her dull blue housedress frayed at the sleeves. “They're spilling sludge into my water, trying to run me out,” she said, her voice gruff. She was from the hills, probably didn't get out much. But the man wasn't from around here. He spoke in a clipped songless voice: “Did anyone from the DEP come out to investigate?” He looked to be in his thirties. Short tapered hair, a black T-shirt, jeans, Buddy Holly–style glasses. Stubble. Small and fit.
Faggot.
The word jumped out at Cole, and he quickly looked away.

Helen poured Cole a cup of coffee. It sloshed over the sides. “You want anything else, hon?”

“No thanks.”

“Anytime.” Helen had been working at the Wigwam since it opened twenty years ago. She was a two-time widow, with brassy hair and basset-hound eyes. She turned to the old woman. “You want a refill, hon? Anything else?”

“A piece of that apple pie. You want a piece?” she asked the man, but he shook his head.

“Just a refill please.”

Cole sipped the greasy black coffee, lit a cigarette. He stared ahead, watching the cook grill burgers and a bored teenager slop dishes into the double sink. He had the feeling that he was being watched. He looked over.

“Sorry. I was just wondering—do you think I could bum one of your cigarettes?” The man smiled apologetically.

Cole shook out a cigarette. The old lady wasn't in her seat, and then he saw her, shuffling toward the bathroom. He held out the cigarette, and the man took it.

“Thanks. It's nice to be able to smoke in a restaurant,” he said.

Cole wished that Lacy would hurry up. Maybe this guy was a government man. Or an activist. He didn't want to be seen talking to him.

“I'm Michael Brody.” He looked at Cole expectantly.

“Name's Cole.”

“Thanks again, Cole.”

“It's just a cigarette.”

“Are you a doctor? A nurse?”

“No. Aide.”

Cole felt relieved when Lacy waved him over to an empty booth. He drained the coffee and dropped a worn bill next to the saucer.

“Nice to meet you,” Michael called out.

Cole sat across from Lacy in the back of the restaurant. She had faint circles under her eyes, but when she blinked, he saw the lids were brushed with a greenish-gray eye shadow, her lashes long and dark. “I need a vacation,” she said.

“Shit, what's a vacation?”

“If you went on one, where would you go?” She didn't wait for him to answer. “I'd go somewhere far. Real far. Like Italy or France or something.”

“Hell, I was just thinking Kentucky, maybe North Carolina.”

She laughed, and he liked the sound of it. Then the bell on the door jingled and a little girl walked in, sweaty-faced, brown as an acorn. Lacy called to her. “Back here, hon.”

She tousled the girl's sun-streaked hair. “This is Sara Jean. Hon, this is Cole Freeman.”

“Hey, Sara Jean.”

The girl barely glanced at him. “Hi.” She was thin and small, sharp-elbowed, knobby-kneed. Cole wasn't used to being around kids, didn't particularly like them. This one looked part animal, bright eyes, messy hair.

“She looks like you,” he said to Lacy.

“No, not really.”

“I look like my dad,” the girl asserted. “Hey, can Blue come to the fireworks with us tonight?”

“Sure. Ask her if she wants to come. You want to come too, Cole?”

He caught the disappointment in Sara Jean's eyes. “I don't think so. I'm not one for fireworks.”

“Where is Blue, anyway?” Sara Jean asked. “Is she here yet?”

“She was sitting up there, talking to that fellow from New York,” Lacy said. “I think she went to the bathroom. Why don't you go on up there? Ask Helen to make you a shake.”

As the kid climbed onto the stool where Cole had been sitting, Lacy said, “All this has been real hard on her. Her dad gone, me working so much.”

“Where is he, anyway? You never told me.”

“Goddamn Wyoming. Working for a coal company out there. I don't want to talk about that son of a bitch.” She glared at Cole. “You know who came to see me the other day? Denny's dad. Gundy. You know about him?”

Cole shook his head.

“Vietnam vet, crazy as all hell. He took off when Denny was a kid, after his mom died. I only met him once. Lives way out in the middle of nowhere, but somehow he heard about Denny leaving. Comes by here, and gives me two hundred bucks. Sorry for what he done, he tells me.”

“Does Denny send you money?”

“Once in a blue moon.” She took a deep breath. “I don't miss that son of a bitch anymore. I just feel sorry for Sara Jean. Between him gone and then what's happening to the mountains, it's too much. When I'm at work, she stays with my parents. They live just a couple of blocks from here. But she wants to be up on the land all the time. She loves the woods.”

The old woman had returned to her seat. She, Sara Jean, and Michael were talking to each other like old friends.

“Who is that guy?”

“A writer from New York. He came down here to do a story on mountaintop removal.”

“A story?”

“I think it's going to be in the
New York Times Magazine
. Something like that.”

Cole looked at her skeptically. “Why do they care?”

“People care.”

“So he's an environmentalist?” The word sounded forced on his lips.

“I guess, I don't know.”

Cole didn't think he looked like one. He used to see them in Charleston from time to time, holding rallies and protests outside the capital. Most of them were hippies. Young, raggedy.

“I'll tell you what, Sara Jean is caught up,” Lacy said.

“What about you?”

“The more I find out, the more pissed off I get. Sometimes Sara Jean gets me on the computer … it's scary. I mean, if there's some kind of accident, all hell could break loose. It could be another Buffalo Creek. You know about that, don't you?”

“I ain't stupid.”

“Well, you know about the big sludge dam?”

“I heard about it.”

“Two billion gallons sitting right up above our heads. Right above where I live. If that dam breaks, it would probably get you too, if it comes down the ridge the right way.” She paused like she needed to catch her breath. “Sometimes I wish I would have sold when they first came knocking. Now the sons of bitches cut their offer in half. It wouldn't be enough to move anywhere, except some trashy trailer park.”

Cole gulped the last of the coffee. “Sorry,” she said. “Sometimes I get worked up.”

“It's all right. I like listening.”

She smiled. “I'm glad.”

After his shift ended, Cole drove his grandmother home, going slowly and glancing up at the mountain. “Grandma, what was it that happened at Buffalo Creek?”

“Don't you know? Dam broke. That was in '72, I think it was. Coal slurry. Killed a hundred and twenty-five people. My cousin Susie's husband was killed. It was sad. Just terrible. Just about everybody lost their homes.” She paused. “Well, you coming in? I was going to make that chicken dish you like.”

“Can't tonight.”

“There's gonna be a good movie on,” she said. “A two-parter.”

He told her he'd be over tomorrow. “I'll catch the second part.” It didn't surprise Cole that his grandmother had turned into a TV-watcher, but he was surprised by just how much she liked it. A couple of weeks after his grandfather had gone into the nursing home, she had shown Cole a flyer from Walmart advertising televisions. “I reckon I wouldn't mind having one of those,” she'd said.

Instead of heading directly to Stillwell, Cole went the opposite direction, turning right onto Route 16. He rarely went this way, and sometimes forgot the processing plant was even here. He passed under a conveyor belt that ran from the plant up to a mining site, crossing above the road and disappearing behind the trees like some kind of strange carnival ride. The plant was lit up like a tiny city. He pulled over. A tall fence ran around the property; locked gates; a guard post; cameras. He saw a few Heritage workers, in brown uniforms, walking toward the office. There were metal beams and platforms, he didn't know what they were used for. Pipes and conveyor belts. One led to an enormous silo. He was so used to seeing this kind of equipment and coal mining operations all around the county that it didn't leave much of an impression, everything a part of the landscape now, like the old coal tipples that still dotted the county like the shells of giant locusts. He couldn't see the sludge dam from here, but Lacy said the face of the dam itself was three hundred feet. After the coal was cleaned, the chemicals and water were sent up there. A lake of toxins, Lacy said. Two billion gallons. Mercury and a bunch of other stuff. The trees hid everything. Cole sat there until a worker started in his direction. He shifted gears, headed the other way.

He had long night of deliveries ahead of him—holidays were always good for business. First he went to see Reese Campbell. He pressed the bell a few times, until the door on Ruthie's side flung open. “Is there a goddamn fire or what?”

“You're the one who called me.”

Reese wore a pair of denim cutoffs, nothing else. He was about the only guy in Dove Creek who wasn't afraid to wear shorts; most, like Cole, would rather sweat in jeans. His torso was webbed with tattoos: his name in baroque letters across his chest, the word
Fearless
scratched underneath, snakes, flames. Most of them were prison jobs, rugged scars and inky smudges, but wound across his stomach was a vine of yellow flowers that didn't look like any flowers Cole had ever seen. He thought of the tattoos on Charlotte, designs he'd brought his mouth against, then glanced away, blushing.

“You thinking of getting a tat, church boy?”

“Just wondering why everyone wants to have one of a snake,” he said. “I bet you never even seen a snake up close.”

“I've seen plenty of snakes. Just maybe not the kind you're speaking of.”

“You're fuckin' sick, man.”

Cole followed him inside, checking to make sure he wasn't leaving any dirt on the dusty rose carpet. Instead of stale cigarette smoke, Ruthie's side smelled distinctly of things gone old. The downstairs an unlived-in space. Furniture that had not been sat upon for years. Christmas catalogs collecting dust. A candy dish holding a gluey mass of lemon drops.