Chapter 14
The next three months wore on Anna. She grew more and more isolated. She watched Lily play with Jason. Juanita watched Jason play with Lily. That was their world. They might as well have lived in another country, except when Anna went just past daybreak to make her commissary purchases. She succeeded in avoiding most of the camp community. She hoped God was testing her loyalty, that one day she would be rewarded.
Days spent talking with Juanita repeated each other with Anna’s beginning, “I need to leave this place.”
Followed by Juanita, “Me, too.” A thought later, “But we ain’t got no choice.”
“Never been a pretty place,” Anna would say.
“That’s the way of mining country. Everything coal touches turns drab, dingy. What light escapes is black light. Coal-black light.”
“Ground stays black with coal dust that grinds itself back into the dirt when it rains. Never washes itself clean.” Anna might sip her coffee.
“Can’t nobody keep heavy grit from tracking in the house. Jason ’specially,” Juanita said.
“You’d think it’s trying to return from where it was before miners come. The way it is, this land. Dust with a mind of its own, I reckon.” Anna added, “Won’t come out of clothes or off a bare foot.”
“Rims Seth’s eyes like some old pharaoh’s paint and seeps deep,” Juanita added. “Wiggles itself into your pores and sticks.”
“No washing it off, it’s so oily and slick.” Anna said, “Here to stay.” She poured another cup. “Like us.”
“Maybe it’s payback,” Juanita suggested.
“Payback is a fact of life,” Anna agreed. “God’s going to see to that.”
Their reoccurring word battles set them against Breakline Camp. An army of two against the people and the mountains themselves.
Anna rarely saw Winston. He came to the back door under darkness when he said he could, and she, fool that she was, took him in. For all, except Juanita and Winston and Lily, she no longer existed.
In time, Lily would start first grade at Unity Church school. Gladys’ daughter, Cecelia, would be there. In the same building. Maybe in the same room. She needed to ask Winston if, in light of his initial fear of the girls favoring, he had considered they might meet. Had he contemplated the possibility of his girls pushing each other on the playground swings? Or jumping rope?
Nights with Lily sleeping inside, Anna pulled up her straight-backed chair and from her porch watched the lights that lit up the valley. One by one, camp house lights went out. On the rise, in the yellow house where Winston lived with Gladys, the lights glowed brighter and lasted longer than those in the camp. Anna could rely on the routine. The first floor lights went out soon after the valley darkened. The second floor followed a while later in all rooms except one, the light in what must have been their bedroom. It weakened bit by bit as if someone blew out a series of lamps and finally went black. Once Anna knew the yellow house had shut down for the day, she went inside and slept.
With each new day, the camp came alive in the same way. Miners walked to the shack and on to the mouth of the mine. Wives sent children, little ones hand-in-hand, up the valley to school. Women spent mornings weeding and hoeing backyard gardens. Afternoons, they gathered on porches against the heat of the sun to talk or sew. Nothing changed.
As she viewed the rise and fall of camp life, Anna was more convinced she should have gone when she had more anger to push her forward. She might have found a place in Covington or moved on to Bristol. When she agreed to stay, she had expected her need for Winston to wither as her life with Clint had. But Winston Rafe had rooted himself in her innermost being. Her days centered on hoping to catch sight of him; nights, haunted by memories. And her need grew. As it expanded, her grief spread within and gouged out a wound, cutting deep gashes on her soul, deeper than had the death of Clint Goodman.
Years ago when she had been no more than a tot, Anna had slipped down Broken Rock Creek riverbank and landed in a Brer Rabbit kind of briar patch. Her squirming and thrashing so confused the briars that they lost sight of their direction and entangled her totally. Pa had taken his pocketknife and cut her out as she screamed against the pain. He took her home, sniveling, her skin dirty and bleeding, uprooted plants dangling from her skinny body. He set her down on the edge of the back porch and spit out words like careless, stupid, fool, adding more sting than that any briar had inflicted. Now she heard those names rolling around in her head more clearly than she heard her own. She could now add whore to the list when she thought that some, if not all, of her money came from Winston Rafe, in one way or another. Self-loathing bonded with depression. The two kept her inside more and more, talking to herself and her child.
The letter came in late fall, 1946. Gabe brought the envelope by late on a Monday night. It had appeared without notice. Gabe, as camp mailman, would know this was the first letter Anna had received at the camp. Though Anna tried to hide it, he must have seen shock slap her face when she scanned the handwriting on the envelope. She didn’t ask Gabe to come in or to sit while she read the letter. He touched his index finger to his dingy Irish cap and bade his goodnight.
Anna had written her family in Covington a year before to tell them that Lily had been born and that Clint was dead. It would have been nice, Anna thought, for them to at least write back saying they received the letter. Ruth could have written the letter, as their ma and pa, like most of their generation, were not highly schooled. Over time, Anna forgot that she had written to Covington. And now she received a letter.
Anna pulled up her straight-backed chair. Its oak-woven seat crunched when she sat. She held the letter facedown while she gathered up a willingness to face it. Darkness crept up on the far edge of the porch. As it drew nearer her chair, she turned the envelope over.
Her mother had scribbled Anna Parsons Goodman, Break Line Mine Camp, Virginie across the front. Pa must be dead. Maybe somebody she knew in her past had dropped into a dark, open mine shaft. They for sure were not inviting Anna to stop by and have a bite to eat. Or they had forgiven her for helping Clint jilt Ruth because Lily was born. A baby would make everything better.
The sun dropped just below the mountain, leaving rosy bands across the sky. The evening breeze wound itself around her chair as she sat there on the porch. Anna brought a kerosene lamp out and placed it on the floor and sat on one leg, dangling her other over the porch edge. She ripped open the seal, tearing the letter inside. Her hand shook as she drew out one page, written in pencil, front and back. Two brittle pages slipped out of the envelope and fell to her lap. Holding the torn letter together, she read.
Septumber 21 1946
Daughter,
We burried yur sister Ruth yesterdy on that slope that clum up the rise from Broken Rock Crick. Her rising will be towards the sun when she shall see that Jordan river on Judgement Day to come. We aint got no marker as yet for Horns business went bust when he dropped Sue Ella Watkins stone on his leg and mashed it up bad. Pa says he might jest put in a stake to mark where she lays. He put her under that ole cherry tree yur great granddaddy William set out. He was the boy of Uriah who settled this land. And dont you forget it as you are the onliest air left now that me and Pa is getting on an Ruth is alaying in the ground. No telling where that wild Mona is. Last I heared was she was in the Carolinas with some injuns. All I see is rotten cherries fallin on Ruths grave but I aint saying.
Frowning, Anna let the letter fall to her lap. Writing a letter was so unlike her mother, especially a letter that filled a page and half its back. But it read like Ma. Rigid. Harsh. It read like Pa, but she doubted that Pa knew about either letter.
Ruth is dead of a river drownding some folk say. Sherif Youell says hes alooking fer some feller who comes off the mountain and carpenters of a day. Says he was over by the bridge afore Ruth come in from working. Says her pocketbook was alaying on the sidewalk open and all and there warnt no money but ther weren’t be no money no how cause she never carried no money as it was a Friday when she would of been paid fer. She used that crazy man Hudson’s bank for holding her pay stead of layin it aside in some hidey-hole like a reasonable person. But Im her mama and Im asaying shes dead of a broke heart as any rightful woman would be who had her man stole right out from under her by her own sister. I see in my own eye that she give up when she heared that you birthed Clints youngun and jumped off that bridge on her own. No matter no how as her neck is broke as hard as her heart and she is dead and burried. I had my say now and you made yur bed so lay there in your black mining camp. Im sending these here deeds with this letter.
Anna picked the yellowed pages from her lap and glanced at them. They were, indeed, a deed dated 1815 and signed by Uriah Parsons. A long, long time ago. Anna recalled a time when she was six and Ruth had begged for hard candy at the drugstore. Their ma had refused, but after Ruth fell asleep, she crept into their bedroom and slipped a piece of peppermint under Anna’s pillow. Neither she nor her mother mentioned it then or ever. That was one of the few times Anna remembered such tenderness.
Yur youngun might need them of a day as Turtleback and Boone Station rightly goes to her and not to you who I say kilt her own sister. If you are a fittin mother youll lay them aside so she wont be having to live in no coal mining town the likes of which you run away to.
Anna bit her inner lip to stave off crying. The peppermint had not only been a gesture of tenderness. It was a favoring of Anna over Ruth. After Anna ran away, their mother had reversed their places in her heart. Anna had brought it on herself. She wondered if God had so many other worries that there was no time to look to the welfare of one human being. A loneliness swept over her and bowed her shoulders.
This letter is my say. Your pa and me aint got no younguns no more what with you being a lover thief and Mona off lost somewheres and Ruth in the cold cold ground. Dont be knocking on our door fer you aint welcome here no more.
Yur maw
Mrs Viola Parsons
My friend Clara Beauchamp holped me in this writing. She said I ort.