PINK FABRIC
Raynelle sent me to the Grocery for salt—and to see if the pink-flowered fabric at the Dry Goods had been marked down. It pained me a mite to lie to Raynelle and it pained me a heap to have to walk back into that store and face Miz Sparks.
Smoke Ridge wasn’t a town, jist a coal camp. The Dry Goods set beside the Grocery, across from the cookhouse, Mr. Putney’s office, and the blacksmith shop. At the far end stood the two-room school that doubled as a church one Sunday a month, when Pastor Justice drove over from Bell County to preach.
Beyond the school and down the road was the main entry to Smoke Ridge Mine. I couldn’t see it from here, and Daddy didn’t like us girls to go down there. But we could see the smudgy sky and hear loud blasts when miners used black powder to loose up the coal.
The mine itself went deep underground, reaching its tunnels into more rooms than any house atop the earth. Them rooms of coal set beneath places where folks walked ever’ day. Ventilation shafts reached through hills, and fans sent dangerous gases out holes that dotted hillsides. We knew to keep clear of ’em.
Evenings, we heard whistles from trains that carried full cars of mined coal down to the coke ovens. Mornings, the trains rumbled back with empty cars, ready to be filled again.
Today, I readied myself to face Miz Sparks. I looked down to check my dress for spots and wrinkles. I wiped dust from my bare feet on a grassy place between the stores, even though I knew that two more steps would dirty ’em again. In a county full of coal miners, coal dust from their clothes dropped and settled on ever’thing.
When my feet was as clean as I could git ’em, I took a deep breath and stepped inside the store.
“Hey, Miz Sparks,” I said, polite as you please. “I come to look at dress goods.”
No one else was in the store, and I sauntered over to the pile of shirting where I seen the fabric two days ago. It wasn’t there.
I scooched way down to git a better look under the shirting. A thimble on the floor peeked out from the edge of the shelf, reminding me of that clumsy girl I’d been when I’d knocked over the whole box of ’em. I swallowed back that reminder and glanced to the other side of the store. But them was all miners’ things. Hats, boots, tools, lanterns, and flasks of carbide. Pink fabric would’a stood out like a woodpecker’s red head.
I breathed deep and strolled myself up to the counter. “Miz Sparks, ma’am, I seen some pink cloth t’other day with flowers sprinkled on it. Ya still have it?”
She leaned behind the counter and hauled up the bolt I wanted. She held it with her thumb and one finger like it was a dirty diaper. “Is this the one ya mean?”
I sucked in an excited breath. “Yes, ma’am.”
“It’s less’n three yards and it’s a mite soiled,” she said, afore adding in a down-her-nose tone, “Seems some’un left it on the floor. Cain’t imagine any decent person wanting soiled dress goods, but it’s half off if you’ve a mind to buy it anyhow.”
I give her a steel coin and pocketed smaller scrip coins she give me in change, happy for a bargain and hoping Raynelle could git out the dirt.
Miz Sparks handed me the fabric and waited for me to leave, but I couldn’t. I’d been digging in my mind the past couple days like a miner putting in a hard day’s work, trying to unearth memories of Mama. I had to keep digging.
“Miz Sparks.” I aimed my question full-bore: “You remember my mama, don’t ya?”
“’Course I do, Adabel. Your mama and me was good friends. A lovely woman, your mama.”
Why did it pain me so that this sharp-tongued biddy had memories of my mama, when I couldn’t find one scrap of her memory in my whole head?
“Ya heard from her recent?” I asked.
I had never mentioned Mama to Miz Sparks afore, and she forced the surprised look off her face afore she answered. “Why, no, I ain’t.”
“She don’t never write to ya?”
“Your mama was never one much for writing.”
“Do ya know where she is?”
“No, I certainly don’t.”
“Why do ya reckon that is, Miz Sparks, seeing’s you was such good friends and all?”
She coughed and cleared her throat. “I … we … she … You run along now, Adabel. I have work to do.”
“Yes, ma’am. I reckon you need to sweep this floor afore more dress goods gits dirty.” I snatched up the fabric and didn’t light out, but walked out that door calm as you please with my nose jist a tad in the air.
The screen door hadn’t banged shut yet when I near run into Mr. Grayson, the insurance peddler from Letcher County. As he passed me on his way into the store, his scornful look flattened my prideful feeling like a stomped-on blackberry.