The Coal Tattoo Page 20

  “I want to have a real wedding,” she said. “With a veil and everything.”

  He laughed and leaned over to kiss her. With his lips still against her, he said, “You can have anything you want.”

  Nineteen

  Tell the Truth

  ALL WHITENESS, A WHITENESS like eternity, and Easter thought for a moment that she might be dead, before she realized that she had opened her eyes from a long night’s sleep only to see the ceiling illuminated by the blinding light of an August morning. Usually she came awake with a start, always pushed out of rest by a dream that escalated until she could bear no more. But this morning she had felt as if she was drifting up from the bottom of a still lake, her arms extended, the last bubbles of air in her lungs forcing her to the surface, and once there, she had opened her eyes with no more thought than she might give to blinking. She lay flat on her back for a long moment, trying to orient herself. It was the morning after Anneth’s wedding and they had stayed up late, everyone gathered at Easter’s house after Anneth and Liam had pulled away with cans tied to their bumper, heading to Virginia Beach for their honeymoon. Easter had so much to do: she had to work in her flower bed, and the garden needed tending in the worst way. Busy helping Anneth with the wedding, she hadn’t chopped the weeds out in a week.

  She sat up and the white light of August filled her head. It crackled behind her eyes and flashed across her brow. She had never felt a headache like this before in her life. She lay back down and the pain eased somewhat but still pulsated around her eyes. If she kept her eyes open, the daylight was too much to bear, and if she closed them she could see the pulsing, as if she were seeing the traces of her every heartbeat in the corners of her eyes.

  She immediately began to pray. A headache like this was more than it seemed. Used to, when the pain like this came she would deny it to herself. But now she knew that the headache was an admonition she had no way of warding off.

  The headache lasted three days. In that time, Easter was barely able to leave the bed. She grieved over missing the last full days of summer, the blinds drawn tight against the sunshine. Sophie had to tend to her. The pain was blinding, so bad it made her vomit into the dishpan Sophie held for her.

  “Bless your heart,” Sophie said, and held a wet washrag against Easter’s forehead. “I tell you what, honey, you sure have suffered a lot for something you don’t seem to want.”

  Easter eased herself back on the pillow. She spoke over her cracked lips. “What do you mean?”

  Sophie rewet the rag in a bowl of cold water sitting on the night-stand and wrung it out. She didn’t look at Easter. “You know good and well what I mean.”

  “No,” Easter said, “I don’t.”

  “Every time these headaches come, they let you know something, don’t they? Everybody knows,” she said. “I don’t know why you try to hide it.”

  “There’s nothing to tell,” Easter said, glad for the opportunity to talk about this curse she had, a curse that some people saw as a gift. They didn’t understand, though. “That’s the thing. Sometimes I see a little glimpse of something. Vine or Serena whispering to me. A flash of bad times coming. But when these headaches strike me, all I know is that something bad is going to happen. What’s the use of a gift that makes you throw up?”

  Sophie laughed and ran her hand over Easter’s forehead, then stood. She took the dishpan and the bowl of water.

  Easter closed her eyes and listened as Sophie walked down the hall, humming. Easter knew that Sophie wanted more information—it was the first time she had ever asked Easter anything about her seeing—but she didn’t know what else to tell her except the truth. All Easter was sure of was that her forewarning didn’t involve Anneth, even though she was the one who was off traveling. In her sleep the night before she had seen Anneth walking the beach, bending to pick up shells. Anneth threw her head back in laughter, her curls blowing around in the salt wind of midnight. But that meant that only Anneth was protected. Something bad approached for someone Easter loved, and each throb across the top of her eyes had let her know that much.

  Still, she worried about Anneth as she lay in the bed, trying to go to sleep. Why was it that her sister was always trying to fill up some hole inside herself with the help of a man? Anneth didn’t love this man any more than she had Matthew Morgan. At least with Matthew they had looked good together. Liam Trosper was all wrong for Anneth, in every way. There was something about his face that was immediately unlikable—a smugness, a slight upturn at the corner of his lips that seemed to announce that he thought he was superior to everyone. He was good looking, but in a dark, forbidding way that made Easter want to avoid him. The thing was that he was too good looking. His whole face was like a mannequin’s, unreal and placid in its features. A truly good face had to have some imperfections to even it all out. But Liam’s face was not like that at all. It seemed that someone had cut pictures out of a magazine—two dark eyes, copper-colored hair, a strong chin, a steep, straight nose—and pasted them together to make the perfect face. And within perfection lay something akin to blandness. It wasn’t just that their looks didn’t match. Although blunt and loud, Anneth was never impolite and made everyone feel as if they were important. Liam, on the other hand, seemed to be entertaining people without caring what they thought or said. When someone talked to Liam, he looked just past their face, biding his time until he could break in and speak again. It seemed the only voice he wanted to hear was his own. Easter suspected that this stemmed from having been raised with plenty of money. Rich people were different from everyone else and that was all there was to it.

  And people like Anneth Sizemore didn’t marry the sons of coal operators. Coal mining had put bread on the table for her family for years—but poor, regular girls didn’t mix with the company men. Rich people and poor people didn’t do things together, period, much less get married. That stood between Easter and Liam, but it also stood between Anneth and Liam.

  Easter had told Anneth as much the day she announced their engagement. Anneth had come to the house while Easter was cutting lavender to hang up on the porch rafter to dry, and she would always connect that scent to the day Anneth told her this news.

  “When are you going to learn that you don’t need a man to take care of you?” Easter said, drawing the blade of her knife against the lavender. The thick aroma washed over her face. “Just be still awhile and don’t jump out and get married again, Anneth. It’s a mistake.”

  “I don’t think I need a man to take care of me,” Anneth said, and lit a Lucky. Easter felt like snatching the cigarette from her sister’s mouth and throwing it onto the ground. “We have a good time together. Wouldn’t you rather I marry him than keep on doing what we’ve been doing out of wedlock?”

  Easter saw the little grin on Anneth’s face. Anneth wanted to shock her but she had underestimated Easter’s sophistication. Easter couldn’t care less what they did in the bedroom. “I just don’t know when you’ll learn.” Easter wiped her hands on her skirt.

  “That’s so easy for you to say,” Anneth said, her voice building with each word. “You’ve always had a good man. The best man anybody could hope for, but half the time you take him for granted.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “You better look back in time and check on that, honey. Because it’s true. Everybody knows it, especially El. I don’t know why he’s put up with you all these years.”

  “Hush, Anneth. That might have been the case once upon a time, but it’s not anymore. I know what a good man I’ve got. I’m happier now than I’ve ever been.”

  “You still don’t know how good you’ve got it, though.” Anneth’s words came out with puffs of smoke. “And you don’t appreciate that, don’t know how hard it is to find that in a man. You’re so lucky—”

  Easter had a sudden flash of her own baby, dead in her arms. “Don’t tell me about being lucky,” Easter said, and started to add, Or I’ll slap your face again, but she stopped herself.
She got up and walked toward the house with her handful of lavender, leaving Anneth behind. Anneth leaned back on one arm and smoked with the other, looking at the sky. Easter stepped up on the porch and looked back at her. “Mark my words,” she said. “One of these days you’ll regret marrying that man.”

  There was no use worrying about it, though. Anneth had married him and run off to Virginia Beach for her honeymoon, and when she came back she would leave her little apartment behind the Depot Café and go to live with him in the Altamont Coal Camp, a sprawling, dirty place that sat in the shadow of Redbud Mountain on Vine’s old land. Easter finally went to sleep thinking of this place with its grit and its noise. She dreamed of being down in a coal mine and feeling as if she might never come up to sunlight again.

  The next morning the headache had left. It was snuffed out all at once, like a candle flame. Easter threw back the covers and was buttoning up her dress by the time Sophie came back into her room.

  “Get back in that bed,” Sophie said, hooking her finger through the air.

  “The pain’s left me,” Easter said, and slid her feet into her shoes. She had work to do.

  ANNETH STOOD ON the beach and looked out at the ocean. It was very early, still dark, but she had not been able to sleep. She’d left Liam snoring in the hotel room and come down to the beach in nothing but her gown and a robe she had found in the hotel closet. There she would be able to see the sunrise. Daylight came very quickly here, unhindered by mountains. The sun showed itself over the ocean like a great light that was spreading its wings, and then suddenly it was morning, clear and white.

  Her big sadness was upon her this morning, but she tried to shake it away. It was a burden to be ecstatic one minute and in the throes of sorrow the next. She felt like two different people, and when she awoke to find herself in this stage between joy and sadness it was even worse, a vast purgatory that seemed inescapable.

  Now, sitting here on the beach she had always wanted to see, she watched the waves roll in and felt nothing but an overwhelming sorrow. Everything made her sad, this vast ocean with its power and glory, the water going on and on until you couldn’t even tell where the ocean ended and the sky began. The flight of gulls above her, the relentless wind and the white sand and the seashells. She didn’t think she could stand living in a world where everyone didn’t pay attention to these things. Maybe that was the reason for her grief.

  But she knew that she had made a bad decision. How could she have been so stupid as to marry a man she didn’t really love? She had sworn that she would never do that again, after Matthew. It still broke her heart to think of the way his face had looked when she left him in Nashville. But she hadn’t loved him. And she didn’t love Liam, either. She just thought that being married to him would make her happier. He had plenty of money. He liked to go places all the time. He was always interested in having fun. But none of that mattered, really. She was just beginning to see that the only thing that really mattered was finding someone who would listen to you when you spoke. Really listen. Someone who missed you when you weren’t around. All these realizations had come to Anneth the day she saw Easter and El be baptized together. Because there existed a respect between them now that hadn’t been there in the past. Finally they were a true couple, joined not only by their marriage certificate but by something much deeper as well. Perhaps it was their shared grief that had finally been the key for them. Or maybe they had grown to know each other in a way that Anneth felt she would never know a man. Whatever it was, she had seen the love that existed between El and Easter the day of the baptism. And from that day forward she had known that she was searching for that same thing. She had spent her life looking for magic without realizing that it existed in things like that: the bond between two people, the power of family. There was no magic in her relationship with Liam. Only fun. And everybody knew that the good times didn’t last forever. Why was it that she had to wait until her honeymoon to discover all this?

  She had agreed to marry Liam because he had a boat, because he had taught her how to water-ski. He never let his Coleman cooler run out of ice or Pabst Blue Ribbon. He knew how to have a good time, and when they talked they discussed only that: the next thing they were going to do. At least he would keep her busy. That was the problem with people nowadays, though, she thought. They married someone just because they had things in common. If two people liked the Beatles, then they thought they had a match made in heaven. People—including herself—forgot to look at the really important things. But now she realized that what was much more important than having similar favorites was the simple things: the ability to have comfortable silences, a sort of telepathy achieved just by glancing at the other’s face, a surrender of pride.

  And then there was the conversation she and Liam had had last night. If he had told her that before, would she still have married him? Because now everything was so clear to her.

  They had gone to a bar on the pier. People drank and looked out at the black water, and the band played until two in the morning. They had taken shots of rum and been served drinks that came with orange slices and umbrellas. They had done the limbo and the twist until their legs were sore. Once back at the hotel, Liam drank more until he finally ended up on a crying drunk. She did not like to see men cry. Some women were moved by this, but it did nothing for her. And especially the way Liam cried, an all-out, blubbering mess of boo-hooing. He sat on their balcony with his face toward the ocean and let the tears flow. She finally pulled a chair up in front of him and asked what was the matter.

  “I killed a girl,” he said. “Back home. We were drinking, all night long. It was daylight when I realized I should take her back. And then... I just drove right off the mountain. Didn’t do nothing but break my arm, but it killed her. She went right through the windshield.”

  Anneth didn’t say a word. She knew what he would say next before he even opened his mouth.

  “Daddy got me out of it, though.”

  “And that’s why he sent you to Altamont,” she said. “Gave you the hardest job he could find in the company to straighten you out.”

  He nodded, his hands covering his face now. She should have gone to him, held him until he felt better, but she couldn’t find it in her heart to do such a thing. Instead she went on into the room and lay down on the bed, smoked three cigarettes, and dozed off for a few minutes. He had passed out on the balcony, sprawled in the metal chair out there. When she woke up, she went down to the beach.

  She was never satisfied. Matthew had been completely selfless and devoted himself to her and she had lost respect for him because of it. Now there was Liam, who didn’t love her but loved the way she danced, loved the way she strutted up the beach in her two-piece, loved the way she leaned back and drank an entire beer without taking the can from her lips. A man who had been given everything and didn’t appreciate any of it. Two completely opposite men and neither of them pleased her. She was impossible.

  She plucked a rock from the sand and threw it into the surf.

  “Maybe I am crazy,” she said to the ocean.

  PART FOUR

  This Land

  They cannot see

  A river is a vein in God’s arm.

  —Ron Rash, “The Preacher Who Takes Up Serpents”

  Twenty

  Paradise

  IN EARLY SEPTEMBER, Easter put together a party both to welcome Anneth and Liam back from their honeymoon in Virginia Beach and to give Gabe and his new wife a good send-off. Gabe had recently announced that he and Evelyn would be moving to Dayton, Ohio, to find work. Easter grieved over the loss of her brother and the marriage of her sister, and she figured the best way to nurse all of this was by way of a good meal.

  Easter and Sophie had cooked all day, hustling around the kitchen as if they could predict each other’s movements. At the first redness of dawn, they had killed, cleaned, and cooked a hen, then rolled out a great dough that covered the kitchen table, and pinched off dumplings to go in the bu
bbling broth. Sophie had tended to the shucky beans, which took all morning to cook. Easter had taken ears of corn, snapped off tomatoes and cucumbers from the garden. By the time everyone arrived, Sophie was still fretting over the beans, and Easter was slicing up cucumbers and tomatoes while the smell of corn bread filled the kitchen, along with the heat, which was so thick that Easter thought it might be visible. She had opened all the windows in the house but it was still like a furnace.

  Anneth held court as she sat on top of one of the tables in the yard and smoked in an exaggerated manner. Easter walked out to tell them all to come in and get a plate, but she stood watching her sister for a moment, resenting her for not coming in to help, but also admiring the way she held them all in her grasp. Anneth was talking about seeing the ocean for the first time and the navy ships and the long drive to Virginia Beach. Liam sat in a chair in front of her, holding her bare feet in his hands and watching her talk.

  “It’s the scariest thing, that ocean. I wasn’t scared of it—I jumped right in—but to sit and look at it for too long, it’s so huge and powerful. Looking out at it, you know good and well that the ocean can kill you if it wants to.”

  “Lord have mercy,” Lolie said. “I don’t believe I ever want to go to the beach.”