The Coal Tattoo Read online

  “Don’t, Anneth,” Gloria called after her, although she didn’t stop rolling her silverware. “Please. She’s not worth going to jail.”

  Anneth put her hand against the door and opened it halfway. “I won’t be going to jail,” she said.

  Anneth relished the click of her heels against the sidewalk as she made her way toward the Shoes Galore storefront. Small loudspeakers attached to the corner of the building pumped out Christmas music. Anneth felt almost happy in her fury and sang a line or two along with Brenda Lee as she growled about rocking around the Christmas tree. Anneth stopped long enough to peer through the windows of Shoes Galore and saw Lolie putting up boxes of shoes. As if sensing Anneth there, Lolie turned her head and, spotting Anneth, rose up to wave.

  Bells hanging from the doorframe rang out as Anneth stepped inside the store. Lolie’s smile faded as soon as she saw the look on Anneth’s face. “What in the world’s the matter?”

  “Did you know about Liam and Sissy and not tell me?” Anneth said. She knew the answer as soon as she asked, though. She had known Lolie all her life and could read her face.

  “What are you talking about?” Lolie said. “Surely he wouldn’t have her.”

  “Is she here?” Anneth asked, and Lolie nodded and then pointed toward the back, where thick maroon curtains divided the store from the shoe storage. Anneth picked up a black patent leather pump and inspected it carefully. “Go get her for me.”

  Sissy parted the curtain with an elegant hand and stepped out. She was wearing a smart blue dress with a Peter Pan collar and two-tone heels that caused her feet to arch unnaturally. Her hair was perfectly done, since she went down to the beauty shop every other day to have it styled. She had a kind, heart-shaped face that betrayed her true nature. She was so prim and uptight that Anneth couldn’t picture her in the throes of a heated affair, but something about her hands gave Sissy away. She held them together in front of her as if she was about to wring them out of nervousness. Anneth tapped the sharp heel of the black shoe against her palm and tried to see something in Sissy’s face that announced her trepidation. Surely Sissy would be scared to find her lover’s wife standing in her store. But she was a perfect actress, smiling with freshly painted lips and asking, “Can I help you?” as if Anneth was someone straight off the train, just browsing for a new pair of shoes.

  “I was wondering if you enjoyed screwing my husband,” Anneth said.

  Sissy took a step back. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Sure you do. You know, screwing. When Liam gets on top of you and moves around and you holler out and act like it’s really good. Letting my husband screw you and knowing good and well that he was married to me. You had to know I’d find out eventually.”

  “Lolie, get her out of here,” Sissy said, walking backward into the counter.

  “Kiss my ass, Sissy,” Lolie said.

  Anneth brought the shoe up and swung it through the air, stopping it just before it slammed into the side of Sissy’s face. Sissy drew back in anticipation of the blow and let out a little scream. When she realized the impact wasn’t coming, she put her hand up to her cheek as if checking to make sure she really hadn’t been hit.

  Anneth and Lolie looked at each other and burst out laughing, shaking with glee for a moment before Anneth forced her face to grow serious again. She threw the shoe down at Sissy’s feet. “Honey, you can have the sorry bastard,” she said, and turned to walk away.

  She paused at the door and put her forefinger to the side of her mouth. “I wonder what your husband will think of all this?” she said, and walked out with the bells ringing merrily, announcing her exit.

  THE WINTER MOVED like a slow song into the mountains. It started quietly, the cold a guitar strumming that grew until it was joined by the banjo feeling of frost, the cutting wind a crescendo that rose like the sawing of a fiddle. And then the snow fell, bringing with it a large quiet. A new year rolled in and then all was still once again, the earth tucking itself away for a winter’s sleep, the season as big and gray as a bass plucking out a funeral song.

  Anneth felt as if she was waiting for something all winter. When spring came, she was still grieving the failure of another marriage but didn’t dwell upon it. She didn’t miss Liam one bit and laughed uncontrollably when Lolie came to tell her about Sissy Goins’s husband beating Liam so badly that he had to have six stitches below his eye. She told everyone that she was glad to be rid of him, but she carried a lump of disappointment in the back of her throat. Twenty-seven years old and twice divorced now. She loved Free Creek but at the same time she couldn’t have stood living there for long. Living there had meant that she had to stay with Easter and El and watch how well their marriage had worked out. She was glad for this, but still it had reminded her of her own failures. So she was happy to have her little apartment behind the café.

  She spent some money fixing it up better than she had when she’d lived there before. She and Sophie sewed curtains—Sophie doing all of the work while Anneth picked out the loudest colors—and she hung pictures and bought a metal stand to put her record albums in instead of just piling them up on the floor. She lined up her seashells from Virginia Beach on the back of the toilet and framed photographs she had taken of the ocean. It didn’t matter that these were photos from the honeymoon of her recently dead marriage. She thought a bathroom decorated in ocean things made it seem cleaner. She bought herself a wooden bookcase at a yard sale and got Jewell to go with her all the way over to Morehead, which had a bookstore. There she had Jewell pick out all the books she had announced as her favorites—A Long and Happy Life, To Kill a Mockingbird, Spencer’s Mountain, and two or three more—and bought them all, plus a copy of Jude the Obscure for Jewell. She found a Lava lamp and was so fascinated by it that she decided to take it home as well. Liam’s affair had given her the right to a quick divorce—the courts paid more attention to infidelity than they did wife beating or anything else, it seemed—and the judge had also been moved to award her a lump sum of cash, which Liam had handed over in an envelope stamped ALTAMONT MINING COMPANY. She spent all of the money, wanting to rid herself of his cash. She felt like it was blood money.

  One night after a long day at work she was sitting in her apartment, soaking her feet in Epsom salts and leafing through a magazine as she listened to the Grand Ole Opry, when Matthew Morgan came on to sing. Ernest Tubb introduced him as “the best feller you ever met,” and then Matthew was singing a song he had written, “Love Me One More Time.” The song was about a girl who didn’t know how to be loved, and Anneth couldn’t help thinking it was about her. She knew it was about her. She pictured the joy on his face as he belted out his song, which was so beautiful she knew he was going to get famous for it. When he was finished there was thunderous applause and then Anneth felt like bursting into tears when Matthew thanked the crowd and said, “I want to say hello to everybody back home.”

  Anneth was so proud for him. He had made it, had worked and worked until his dream had come true. She was glad it had happened for him, if not for herself. “You did it, buddy,” she said to the radio.

  She spent that whole spring partying. There was nothing else to do. She went out honky-tonking with Lolie and Israel or Jewell and her husband, Doug. Sometimes Glenn came, but she brushed off his attempts to take her home. The second time he came, Anneth danced to nearly every song with him. He was a good dancer and one of the few men she had ever met who seemed to genuinely enjoy dancing as much as she did and not just as a way of courting, like most other men. By the end of the night, Anneth was half-drunk and felt like letting someone hold her, so she leaned her body against Glenn’s while they slow-danced. It felt good, just to be held in such a way, to be taken care of for a little while. But when they got back to the table, Jewell had demanded that Anneth come with her to the bathroom.

  Jewell stood in front of the bathroom mirror and put on lipstick. Anneth had never seen her wear any makeup of any kind before. So
mehow it made her look young and foolish. Jewell was too naturally pretty for makeup, and Anneth was just drunk enough to announce all this. When she did, Jewell acted as if she hadn’t heard her and clicked the lid back on the lipstick. She looked at Anneth in the mirror. “I don’t want you and Glenn going together.”

  “Why, don’t you think I’m good enough for your big brother?” Anneth said, and laughed.

  “No,” Jewell said, and turned to face her without a smile. “I don’t think he’s good enough for you.”

  “That’s a hell of a thing to say about your brother.”

  “Well, you’ve been a good friend to me, Anneth. And I love Glenn. But he’s too jealous. He’d try to control your life. Why do you think he’s never been married? Because every woman he’s ever had got tired of him looking over their shoulder.”

  Anneth hooked her arm through Jewell’s and walked them toward the door. “No matter,” she said. She opened the door, and the sound of the bar was suddenly raucous all around them. “A man is the last thing on my mind right now, anyhow,” she said into Jewell’s ear. She meant it, too. Her divorce had just been wrapped up and she had no intention of even looking at another man for the foreseeable future. Often she thought that she might never have another man, period.

  THAT’S WHAT SHE thought, anyway, until one night when she found her shoulders heavy with the blues and whiskey. She had had a rough day at work and had gone to her little apartment to numb herself. She had already smoked a whole pack of cigarettes and gone through half a fifth of Jim Beam when someone knocked on her door.

  It was Glenn. He stood there in a freshly pressed shirt and a hat, which hardly anyone wore anymore. Didn’t he realize it was 1967? People were going around naked out in San Francisco, and even people in Black Banks had given up on hats. But still, it was strangely sexy. She liked it that he didn’t go by what was in style. The hat showed off the strong bones in his face, gave a shadow to their angular lines and clefts. His eyes were unnaturally dark, though. Black. Lolie said that Glenn’s eyes made him look creepy, but Anneth didn’t think so. They added to the mystery of his face. He was a big man: broad shoulders and thick forearms, and Anneth liked that about him, too, now that she thought about it.

  “Hell’s bells,” she said, and held the door open wide. “Come in and get drunk with me, Glenn.”

  He did. The drunker he got, the more appealing he became. She liked the way he hooked his glass back through the air and drank his whiskey with the ice cubes clicking against his teeth. She turned on the radio and they danced to “Brown Eyed Girl,” and Glenn sat back on the couch grinning while Anneth pantomimed “Ode to Billie Joe” and “To Sir With Love.” She flopped down beside him and put her legs up on the coffee table.

  “How old are you, Glenn?”

  “Thirty-three.”

  “Damn, buddy,” she said, and slapped his leg. “You’re old. That’s how old Jesus was when he got crucified.”

  “I know that,” Glenn said.

  “And you’ve never been married?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” Even though she was drunk, she remembered what Jewell had said. “Can’t you keep a woman, buddy?”

  “Never found nobody that I could stand that long,” Glenn said.

  She laughed. “I never realized that until I was already married to my men.” She tapped a finger against her chin. “Let’s see. What else can I ask you? I know—Stones or Beatles?”

  “Stones.”

  “I can’t choose between them, but that’s still a good choice,” she said. “Oh, here’s a good one. My old standard. Do you believe in magic?”

  He laughed. She knew that he wasn’t as drunk as she was. “Yeah, I guess I do.”

  “Tell me what’s magic to you, then.”

  He put his arm around her shoulder. She closed her eyes and relaxed when he started to massage her neck. She knew he was making a move but she didn’t care. It felt good. And the room was spinning, around and around. “Finding somebody that you love, I guess. That’s as big a magic as can be found.”

  She started to kiss him. She looked at him, considering what he had just said, but then she saw on his face that he had only been humoring her. He had said this because he had read her mind and knew exactly what she wanted him to say. So instead she punched him on the arm. “You’re so full of it,” she said, and laughed like they were old friends. She didn’t drink any more after that and just let the whiskey ease out over her whole body. That sadness was so thick, so all-encompassing, that she knew if she didn’t keep on laughing she might start crying.

  “You’re welcome to the couch,” she said, and pushed herself off her seat. She meandered over to her bedroom door and looked back at him, pitiful as he sat there with his hands atop each of his knees, looking at her in a way that was much too akin to how Matthew Morgan used to stare at her. She didn’t want another man who worshipped her. And Glenn would expect her to worship him, too. She had never done that for any man. This was all far too much to think about right now, so she locked her door behind her before she stretched out diagonally across the bed without even turning down the sheets. Even before she had had the chance to pass out, she heard him leave.

  Twenty-four

  What Flowers Know

  ANNETH KNEW AS soon as she saw him. It wasn’t love at first sight—she didn’t even believe in that—but there was a connection there, something ancient. He was beautiful, of course, but it was more than that. It was as if she liked him right away not because he was good looking but because his looks said something about him. His hair was the color of rich soil, perfectly parted on the right side to reveal a line of pale scalp. The bones in his face were so straight and solid that they looked as if they needed someone to smooth out the sharp angles. She moved around and looked at him from behind so she could see the way his green uniform stretched tightly across his broad back. Maybe it was just the uniform. Soldiers always caught her eye when they came into the café.

  But no, it was more than that. She liked the careful way he was studying the laminated menu that he had taken from its place between the ketchup and the napkin holder. He was poring over it as if choosing his meal would prove to be the biggest decision of his life. Most of all what she loved about him was the way he was tapping his foot beneath the table to the beat of “Crimson and Clover,” which was playing on the radio behind the counter. She didn’t think he even realized that he was moving his shoulders a little bit to the music. She couldn’t help moving, either, and the waitresses stood on each side of her snapping their fingers and finally bumping their hips up against her. They all laughed and the men at the counter smiled as if paralyzed by their sudden vision of the three women all dancing together. As the song went into that strange part where Tommy James’s voice distorts, Anneth strutted across the café and went to the soldier’s table.

  He was still studying the menu. Now he had it lying on the table and he had his hands spread out on either side of it as if he was keeping the table from floating up off the floor. His hands struck her—long fingers that looked like they were meant for picking a guitar.

  He looked up at her, and his smile revealed that one of his front teeth was chipped. He put his tongue to the back of this tooth as if the damage was recent, and this sight caused a little start to run all through Anneth.

  She pulled out her ticket pad and put the tip of her pencil to the paper. “What can I get you, soldier boy?”

  “I think I’ll have that lunch special.” He put his fingertip to a line of text on the menu. “And a cherry Pepsi.”

  Anneth turned her wrist and glanced at her watch, already knowing what time it was. “Well, really lunch service was over ten minutes ago but I guess I can pull some strings for you,” she said, and gave him a wink.

  “I’d sure appreciate it,” he said. He didn’t take his eyes from her face as he put the menu back in its place. “I’ve been craving a BLT all day for some reason.”

  “Anything els
e?” She ripped his ticket off and then slid the pad into her apron pocket. She shoved the pencil behind her ear.

  “You all could turn that radio up a little.”

  She smiled. “You like this one?” she said, just as the song went off and a reporter came on to talk about the space program.

  He nodded. “You got that album?”

  “No,” she said, “but it’s next on my list. I buy a new one every payday.”

  “Yeah, it’s a good one,” he said.

  “So you’re headed overseas?”

  “Vietnam, here I come, baby,” he said, leaning back in his chair.

  “You enlist?”

  “Hell, no,” he said. “My number came up.”

  “I hate that for you.”

  “It’s all right,” he said, but he wasn’t very convincing. “It’ll be an adventure.”

  She took a step backward. “I guess I better get your order turned in,” she said, and turned away before he could say more. She latched his ticket onto the stretch of line between the grill and the counter with a clothespin. The rush had slowed down, so there was nothing for her to do except roll silverware. This was something she had learned from Gloria: when everything else was caught up, roll silverware. Silverware rolls were something you could never have too much of. Anneth spread out her napkins and put the utensils in and then rolled them up with a twist of her wrists. She still hadn’t gotten used to the fact that she was the boss now. Gloria had stopped coming in every day and let Anneth run the café, but Anneth still waited on tables when it got busy. Even if it was hard work, it seemed more tiring to her to be figuring out schedules or doing the payroll, which were only two of her new responsibilities. While she worked she kept her eye on the soldier. She wished she knew his name, but the sun had caught itself in the gold name tag on his jacket, so that she hadn’t been able to read it.