Chapter 8

Winston Rafe had spent every day for the past three years opening Big Mama #2, east of Covington. He put Seth White in charge of Breakline #3 and took a boarding house room with Widow Clara Beauchamp in Covington. With the economy what it was, there were few turnovers, so Rafe knew most of the camp, if not by name then by face. But he had little knowledge about those Seth White hired during his absence.

Now that Big Mama #2 was producing, Rafe had returned to Breakline. He was signing pay vouchers when Anna Goodman stepped into the commissary. He overheard her speak to Gabe Shipley, as softly as a mother cat soothes her kitten.

“I need lard for a balm,” she said to Gabe. “As fresh as you got.”

“Got some in yesterday,” Gabe said. “How much you want?”

“Can I get a cup? My husband’s cut his hand real bad working the garden.”

Rafe stepped from behind the barred window that served as the company bank to see who the woman was. He prided himself in knowing all his miners’ names, as well as those of their families. Breakline Camp was his town to own. This voice he did not recognize. Rafe moved closer to where she stood. He wondered who her man was.

Rafe knew his commissary stock as well as he knew his own breath. He recognized by her blue and white striped dress that both pattern and cloth had been bought from him. Unadorned with lace or frill, she had to be wife to one of his miners. And her plain gold wedding band had been bought by an underground worker who saved up for special gifts. Rafe sold similar rings from behind the counter for twenty-five dollars, almost the cost of a month’s worth of food. When a gallon of gas ran eleven cents and miners drew only a hundred dollars a month, to spend so much on a woman’s gold ring said the man must truly value her.

This new woman captivated Rafe. This girl-woman, unlike his wife, Gladys, who insisted on a string of pearls around her neck at breakfast to accent her ankle-length satin robes, needed no ornaments to set her apart. He perceived a sense of raw passion tied down by frustration and self-control. She would be a prize. She reminded him of soft bread dough his mother kneaded for him and his father as she slapped it back and forth on her cutting board. His mother would allow him to stroke the dough, to smooth it out. He wanted to touch her in the same way, to pull the heavy tortoise-shell comb from her golden hair and watch it drop down her back.

He walked up behind her close enough for her to surely be able to smell him. As a gentleman, he kept himself soaped and rinsed on a daily basis, and he prided himself on the spicy pomade in his hair. He noticed her spine stiffen with awareness.

“I’m Winston,” he said, his voice low and soft. “Winston Rafe.” He stepped from behind her and extended his hand. For a man his size, he used up a great deal of space, leaving little room for others.

She glanced around the commissary, scanning canned beans, tinned baking powder, stacks of flour, bolts of cloth. Not looking at him.

He moved close enough to smell freshly ironed Argo starch in her dress. When she took his hand, he placed his other over hers.

Gabe Shipley walked away toward where the lard was stored in a ceramic tub, his jaw set against Rafe’s behavior.

“Anna Goodman,” she answered. “Clint Goodman’s wife.”

The movement of her fingers told him a vacant space resided in her life, though she did not know where or what it was. He chose to decide that she had not experienced true pleasure between a man and a woman. With him, she might be open to his life-giving force.

She quivered. He would need to convince her that their sexual union would prevent them from the sin of lust. It had worked before.

 

Overhead, a cloud passes before Sister Sun. She sizzles out to Brother Moon. “Come see this.” She laughs at the electricity passing between the two. “They could ignite the Northern lights on a bitter winter night.”

Brother Moon ignores her. Her constant snooping aggravates him.

 

Winston Rafe was not always the gallant man. A constant smoker, his fingers were tinged with Lucky Strike nicotine—a cigarette he had chosen for its name rather than its flavor. When he first met Gladys Breakline, he knew he had struck a life of security and success. Ends he would never have attained with his first wife, Jenny, Gabe’s mother. Early on, he had met few of his life goals, though he would argue that he had truly worked for them when, in truth, every boss he had ever had labeled him lazy.

Rafe had met Gladys Breakline outside Bristol while he was clerking at the general merchandise. It would be the store he would use as a model for his commissary a few years down the road. When she entered, he steepled his fingers and decided that a woman wrapped in a fox boa could add much to his long-range plans.

Never having had many suitors, Gladys married easy. She set her head on having this man fifteen years her senior. Her father, as Rafe had intended, took him into the mining business. What Rafe had not expected was that Ed Breakline would box the two up, command Rafe to take a degree in mining engineering, and send them to Blacksburg, Virginia. His plan, as contrived as Rafe’s, meant that his only child would not be without her affluent lifestyle when he died.

Rafe flourished at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, Virginia. He discovered he loved the geology of the land, the organization the work required, and the power he felt as he rose to the top of his class. His marriage to Gladys became one more step on his trek to becoming ruler of his own small domain.

The couple moved to Breakline Mining Camp. Ed Breakline, ever conscious of appearances and the supervisor’s place in society, paid for building and furnishing a grand Queen Anne home on the highest point overlooking the workers’ clapboard houses. Rafe’s plans were locked in place the day Gladys’ father collapsed from a stroke at the entrance to Big Mama #2 east of Covington. The old man had dropped at “The Downer,” a mine opening so called for its steep slope into Spencer’s Mountain. Rafe later chuckled when he thought about the location.

Ed Breakline had come from Bristol to inspect the three mines he owned. All seemed well until he had lunch with Gladys and returned to Big Mama #2. He left his car running, got out and approached Rafe. “I mean to talk to you, boy,” he said, his stark white face explosive as he spit out his words. “Come in this office. You got a few questions to answer to.”

Rafe knew the rife would be about some camp woman. It always was.

Ed stumbled on the first tread of the wooden step and collapsed. His face turned a purplish-blue.

“Get the doc!” Rafe called out to anyone within hearing distance. He looked at his father-in-law’s face, now drawn so far down on the left side that his eye squeezed shut. Ed tried to speak, but he could only mumble. Rafe glanced around to see if anyone had noticed that Ed no longer had a voice. Every miner in the area, except Seth White, Juanita’s husband, had run toward the doctor’s house.

Doc Braxton arrived, and Rafe spoke for Ed. “He says he wants to go to the hospital in Bristol. Can he make it that far?”

Knowing he should not be hearing this, Seth White stepped back from Rafe’s line of vision and stuck his left hand in his pocket. He jammed his hand deeper into his pants in frustration as he watched Ed struggle to shake his head, but Ed could only blink his left eye.

“I want you to be my witness here, Doc. He said that I’m superintendent over all the mines until he gets well.”

“That what you want, Ed?” Doc asked.

“He can’t talk now,” Rafe said. Seth White moved a step further back, toward the mouth of the mine.

Again, Ed could only blink.

That afternoon, Winston Rafe, son-in-law and only male heir, walked away from the mouth of #2, curly, dark-haired, head held high. He took to wearing a tie so miners would perceive him as a superintendent, rather than another boss. His father-in-law, bedbound in Bristol and paralyzed from the neck down, would never speak again. Winston Rafe felt as secure in his ability to run Breakline Mining Company as he did in manipulating his camp women.

What he had not anticipated were the erratic moods Gladys shifted into with no warning, even before her father’s stroke. Unlike Gabe’s mother, her anger could often be lessened with a two or three-day shopping trip to Bristol. She would return, the car filled with clothes she would hang in the closet and never wear.

Like Ed Breakline, appearance mattered to Rafe. He perceived himself to be a man of prominence. With appearance came authority. Appearance was what led Rafe never to acknowledge Gabe Shipley as his son. A man whose wife found him too vile to live with was not a man at all. A real man could hold his woman as easy as he held his liquor. He had perfected his words and moves to the point that no one knew his truth from his lies, not even he. He looked in the mirror each morning, and the attractive man, never the rogue, looked back.

 

Gabe dropped a gallon bucket of lard on the counter. “Smallest we got,” he said. “Keep it cool and it won’t go bad before you use it up.”

Rafe walked Anna to the commissary porch, carrying her bucket of lard by its handle in one hand and directing her elbow with the other. When they reached the wooden steps, Rafe leaned near and spoke. “You are without doubt the most beautiful woman in this camp.” He looked at her and almost smiled.

Anna blushed and took a cautious look around. “Thank you, Mr. Rafe,” she stammered. Her hand shook as she took her bucket of lard. She did not look at Rafe; instead, she marched herself home and locked her front door.

Both flattered and terrified by Rafe’s interest, Anna sat at her kitchen table. Bowing to this man’s attention would bring the Wrath of God down upon her. Infidelity with any man, especially her husband’s boss, could send the rock of Commandments down on her head, shattering like shards of glass. Her God did not tolerate the sins of His people. She, like Eve, bore the burden of sparking the flame that would send her into a burning hell. She considered a drink of Clint’s moonshine hidden behind his can of tools on a shelf near the kitchen flue, but he would miss it. She tried one of Clint’s Camels, but her hand quivered so hard she could not light the cigarette. She paced the floor until, when darkness fell, she opened a can of beans and baked a pone of cornbread for Clint.

After their meal, Anna approached the idea of moving to Bristol again.

“I’m drawing a dollar a day as it is, and Mr. Rafe lets me work as many shifts as I want. I’m not going to Bristol to work in no cow-piss factory making the same thing day after day,” Clint argued. “Not going to one of them plants in Kingsport neither. Just get that craziness out of your head.”