Saturday, November 22, 2003
note: The following fiction is not final draft nor is it complete. Read at your own risk!
CHAPTER 3:
"nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands"
--e.e. cummings
Back before people started even talking about putting an amusement park where Blair Mountain used to be, there was the Fire Tower and parties with the Blair Boys. They were big four-wheelin' bonfire affairs and evenings found the access road to the Tower dotted and dashed by a drunken code of convoys. Each encrypted character crawling and racing up the mountain was a pickup truck filled with either kegs of beer or people hoping for someone, in the fire tower above or somewhere even further out, to read the code, to understand what they were doing, to ascribe some meaning.
In the trucks surreal collages come to life as they bounce up the rutted track. The occupants' wildly contorted faces are thrown at odd angles to the splayed ends of faded graduation tassels. The threads dance with the suspended splashes of cherry wine cooler. All somehow hovers over a passionate collision of denim and cracked vinyl seats. The headlight beams cut through giant swaths of timber as the trucks swing round a tight hairpin turn into the long straight stretch leading up to a washed-out section of the road. They take the stretch as hard as they can until they must slow to navigate the broken timber and sandstone tumult of the slide. Some damn fools will turn off the lights and drive like a bat outta hell, using only the vibrations of a loosely held shift lever to gauge the distance. Here a trusted passenger will take the opportunity the relatively smooth road gives to push a .38 back up under the seat or confidently retrieve that one skunky smelling Wendy's bag lying among the crumpled fast food trash on the floorboard.
When the whine of the differential matched the jangle of Tom Petty's guitar rattling in the busted Motorola speaker - oh yeah, make it last all night—I slapped it into second, buried the accelerator and through the sole of my foot felt the rock and mud from the spinning wheels hit the undercarriage of the truck. April rolled off Eddy's lap so he could have room to work and slid with her pretty painted box of coolers through the open window in the rear glass. The acceleration pulled her back to the loud party in the truck bed. In the darkness Eddy dug past the smaller plastic of the nickels and half nickels to the bottom of the leathered paper bag and brought out the reserve.
"Where the hell'd you get this ragweed shit?" Eddy threw off the line as he broke up a big sticky bud on the tray in his lap. His skilled hands raked through darkness at the smaller pieces and picked out the invisible, tiger-striped seeds. I figured Eddy practiced this blind joint-rolling trick while locked in the dark of his dad's tool shed. This would happen whenever his dad came home drunk. It was probably a good thing—I had seen what his mom looked like when after ______ went on a bender. It sure worked out good for us as we tore up the hill in near total darkness. The air rushed through Eddy's long hair and he laughed as he flipped the kernels out the window. There were groves of this ragweed shit growing all around us.
As Eddy twisted the ends the joint we would pass during the slow ascent of the mountain to come, I cupped the ball of the shift lever in my hand and pushed it up into third. I was young and dumb. "Got that from Mike Broadus,” I said. “Cops always got the best smoke."
I heard the series of clicks as Eddy fumbled with the child proof lighter. "This the shit he took off Garland last week in the park?" There was a pause as he discovered the safety mechanism. "No, don't answer that," he mumbled, with the joint hanging from the corner of his mouth, "I don't wanna know."
I stared into the darkness as the parade of smoke and scripted conversation passed in front of me. I geared down. My feet danced with the clutch and brake until we came to a complete stop and I switched on the lights. “You reckon your cousin’ll be up there?” The words were sucked down into my lungs as I tried to control the massive hit. The ember pinched between my thumb and finger traced an arc in the darkness as I gestured toward the mountaintop, then across the cab as I held it outstretched for Eddy. It bounced with the hacking cough that racked my body.
“You mean the witch?” April’s head popped into the cab as she intercepted the joint.
Eddy snatched it from her before she could get a hit, “She ain’t no witch,” he said defensively, “and wait your fuckin’ turn!”
He inhaled deeply and held the smoke, then put the burning end in his mouth. He moved toward the sound of April’s voice as she continued to tease me and offered his smoking lips apologetically. She purposely ran her tongue along the ribbon edge of her mouth to seal their kiss. He did the work for her and with the force of his intoxicating breath pushed a gentle column of smoke through the joint deep into her lungs.
The truck surged forward as I lifted my foot from the clutch.
Down in the valley most folks collect in Logan like the rains that flow down the mountains to the Guyandot. The town sits astride the river with its two bridges: one a proud railroad span; the other, in disrepair, for local traffic. All you can see is what the workings of man and water have revealed as they wear down the mountains. When you walk out your front door the mountain’s history stares you in the face, layer upon layer of ancient mud compressed in a striated mural on the sandstone cliffs of the road cut. Those deep gouges in the earth delay the sunrise and the night is held there in the shadows. The recent past hangs in the humid air and collects on the leaves of the dense vegetation and time is released with the mist as the sun burns off the dew. It escapes slowly like the smoke curling from April's lips. To even begin to sense the present you have to climb out of the town's entrenchment to where the erosive power begins, up the towering ridges that stab into the narrow crack of sky and rake the clouds of their moisture.
Tania felt the future could be found wrapped in a single drop of rain somewhere in the storms gathering over Blair Mountain. At the slightest chance of rain Tania would take her daddy's three-wheeler and disappear into the woods where she would pick up an old path on the haunted side of the mountain to the Fire Tower and climb into the thunder.
"Always been strange with the rain," Tania's dad worried to his brother as they worked together setting charges down in the mine, "Even put her in a mood when she was a baby."
"How long's she been gone this time?" Because his body was jammed into a narrow crack in the rock, Ed's feet seemed to ask the question.
In the shelter atop the tower she stands in front of the old map desk carved with the names of lovers and surveys the clouds. As she waits for the rain to come she reads the deep gouges in the wood with her fingertips.
"Been out three days now," he took off his hard-shelled hat and mopped his forehead with a blackened rag, "I know I shouldn'ta done it, but this time I locked her up in the closet, locked up that damned three-wheeler too. Drove her ma crazy to where she had to let her out. Kept bitchin' she was hungry, and damn if she didn't go right out the window. Didn't even take no supper."
Ed backed up out of the hole he was in and looked at his brother, "Stop worryin' over it and get your head back down to business."
"I don’t know _____ I'm afraid I ain't never gonna see her again, but I had to lock her up. I can’t have her mixin’ with that witcher woman up the holler."
The showers start and the spray blows under the deep protective eaves of the shelter. The moisture beads on her face and bare arms, mixing with her perspiration. As the storm begins to pick up force the wind crashes the rain into her. It forms in rivers running down her body. A cascade follows the delicate arch of her spine under the loose confinement of her summer top; Twin waterfalls escape the gravity of her body, curling gently off the bend of her elbows as she stands face to the wind. She watches the bands of rain move across the Earth, the undulating movement drawing her into her trance. A trickle traces the faint blue outline of the veins in her forearms and collects in her cupped hands, which she empties into a group of wide cut letters spelling out his name on the map table.
Suddenly, she is the rain falling from the tower, the salt of her body the core of a single drop. She falls into the torrent rushing down the mountain face, tearing loose the rocks and trees. She is the gentle patter on the tin roof of a coal tipple, then a steady drip to a handrail following the line of the conveyor thrust deep into the earth. She clings to the underside of the rail and races down the incline.
"What's done's done." Ed tapped his hard hat with the drill bit he had just finished using, "The weather was startin' to break when we came on. She'll be back by end of the shift."
Clark absently rolled his hat back onto his head. "Your right, I know your right, but all hell's gonna break loose when I get back home."
In the tower Tania's body shivers as part of her spills onto the cold black floor of the mine. She senses that she should not be there—that no one should be there—but the force of the water behind pushes her slowly through the dust. Her fluid spirit is blackened by the thirst of the men who splash through her. She is swallowed by the greedy cavern and collects in a pool against the face of the seam the brothers are preparing to blast. Their faces, as they sound the alarm, are reflected silently on her still surface. Tania sees her father mouth his words of regret. The final connection is made.
With the force of an entire forest bursting from the ground to its full height in an instant, the explosion rips through men. It knocks loose support beams and sears coal-encrusted flesh. Shockwaves rumble through the earth, bringing down large slabs of rock from the roof to seal a fate that should never have been. In the mine, the air, heavy with dust, is transformed by fire into something incomprehensible to the lungs of the men.
Tania's vision evaporates. Her spirit escapes as vapor from the mouth of the ruined mine. She rises, billowing through the open windows of John's pickup as he tears up the mountain face. She runs misty fingers through her dream lover's hair as she climbs to her empyreal body shivering in the clouds.
From where she lay on the floor Tonia felt the familiar footsteps shudder through the structure of the tower - quickly at first, then slowing as he came closer to her. She smiled knowing that he did not want to appear to eager to see her. She leaned against the table and watched the wasps take mud from the old boot tracks on the floor to rebuild their nests, shaken loose by the pounding of lovers on the tabletop. She looked out over the mountains as he emerged from the stairs.
"Hey, what cha been doin'?" I asked, not looking at her but following her gaze over the horizon.
She turned back to the table and ran her finger down the length of J carved in the surface, "Been readin'. Says here, 'April loves you'," with the flick of her wrist she traced the looping curve at the bottom, splashing out the water. "That so?"
"Uh, yeah. It's been a while back.” I looked over my shoulder to see if Eddy was coming up the stairs. “She's bangin' Eddy now." I stared out over the hills again, "Doesn't say I love her does it?"
"Nope, doesn't say you love anybody"
"Sounds about right."
Eddy popped through the opening in the floor into the silence between them and with looping strides made his way over to his cousin, "Toniaaa...!" He held his scrawny arm over his head for a high five, "I saw your new painting roll through Logan the other day. Bad as hell." They slapped hands and followed through making a wide circle with their swinging arms then touched hands again at the bottom of the arc. "Want a beer?" He pulled a can from the six-pack that dangled from his finger and set it on the table in front of her.
"Thanks."
He pointed a bony finger at me, "Beer?" Without waiting for an answer he pulled off another can and quickly pitched it in my direction.
My hand shot out instinctively and snagged the beer before it went out the window. I snapped it open and took a drink. "What paintin's that?" I asked.
Eddy knocked loose another nest as he hopped up on the table, "You didn't see it?" he said loudly with a slight slur in his speech. He was already drunk but just getting started. "Tonia is a true artist man." He raised his can in salute toward Tonia. "I was hangin' out in the bowling alley parking lot 'bout five o'clock the other day when the train rolled through town and stopped all the traffic. We didn't have nothin' better to do than just watch it roll on by, reeal slow, cause it was loaded down heavy." He paused and drained his beer, "Kindda had everybody hypnotized ya know." He opened the last of the sixer. Tonia took the plastic rings that held the pack together and concentrated on tearing them apart as he told the rest of the story. "I was lookin' down the line for the last cars to come round the bend when I saw it - fuckin' Snow White, big red apple stuck in her mouth, and Grumpy doin' her doggy style. Then the rest of the dwarves right on down the line, Hi Ho Hi Ho, big hairy dicks swingin in the wind. I couldn't fuckin' believe it, Snow White and the Seven Fuckin' Dwarves doin' a train on a train. And to top it off, Dopey on the caboose just sittin' there at the end of the line jackin' off. Bad as hell. And everybody in town just sittin' there in their cars starin' at it - didn't even move when the tracks cleared." He took another drink, "Like I say, Bad as Hell!
CHAPTER 3:
"nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands"
--e.e. cummings
Back before people started even talking about putting an amusement park where Blair Mountain used to be, there was the Fire Tower and parties with the Blair Boys. They were big four-wheelin' bonfire affairs and evenings found the access road to the Tower dotted and dashed by a drunken code of convoys. Each encrypted character crawling and racing up the mountain was a pickup truck filled with either kegs of beer or people hoping for someone, in the fire tower above or somewhere even further out, to read the code, to understand what they were doing, to ascribe some meaning.
In the trucks surreal collages come to life as they bounce up the rutted track. The occupants' wildly contorted faces are thrown at odd angles to the splayed ends of faded graduation tassels. The threads dance with the suspended splashes of cherry wine cooler. All somehow hovers over a passionate collision of denim and cracked vinyl seats. The headlight beams cut through giant swaths of timber as the trucks swing round a tight hairpin turn into the long straight stretch leading up to a washed-out section of the road. They take the stretch as hard as they can until they must slow to navigate the broken timber and sandstone tumult of the slide. Some damn fools will turn off the lights and drive like a bat outta hell, using only the vibrations of a loosely held shift lever to gauge the distance. Here a trusted passenger will take the opportunity the relatively smooth road gives to push a .38 back up under the seat or confidently retrieve that one skunky smelling Wendy's bag lying among the crumpled fast food trash on the floorboard.
When the whine of the differential matched the jangle of Tom Petty's guitar rattling in the busted Motorola speaker - oh yeah, make it last all night—I slapped it into second, buried the accelerator and through the sole of my foot felt the rock and mud from the spinning wheels hit the undercarriage of the truck. April rolled off Eddy's lap so he could have room to work and slid with her pretty painted box of coolers through the open window in the rear glass. The acceleration pulled her back to the loud party in the truck bed. In the darkness Eddy dug past the smaller plastic of the nickels and half nickels to the bottom of the leathered paper bag and brought out the reserve.
"Where the hell'd you get this ragweed shit?" Eddy threw off the line as he broke up a big sticky bud on the tray in his lap. His skilled hands raked through darkness at the smaller pieces and picked out the invisible, tiger-striped seeds. I figured Eddy practiced this blind joint-rolling trick while locked in the dark of his dad's tool shed. This would happen whenever his dad came home drunk. It was probably a good thing—I had seen what his mom looked like when after ______ went on a bender. It sure worked out good for us as we tore up the hill in near total darkness. The air rushed through Eddy's long hair and he laughed as he flipped the kernels out the window. There were groves of this ragweed shit growing all around us.
As Eddy twisted the ends the joint we would pass during the slow ascent of the mountain to come, I cupped the ball of the shift lever in my hand and pushed it up into third. I was young and dumb. "Got that from Mike Broadus,” I said. “Cops always got the best smoke."
I heard the series of clicks as Eddy fumbled with the child proof lighter. "This the shit he took off Garland last week in the park?" There was a pause as he discovered the safety mechanism. "No, don't answer that," he mumbled, with the joint hanging from the corner of his mouth, "I don't wanna know."
I stared into the darkness as the parade of smoke and scripted conversation passed in front of me. I geared down. My feet danced with the clutch and brake until we came to a complete stop and I switched on the lights. “You reckon your cousin’ll be up there?” The words were sucked down into my lungs as I tried to control the massive hit. The ember pinched between my thumb and finger traced an arc in the darkness as I gestured toward the mountaintop, then across the cab as I held it outstretched for Eddy. It bounced with the hacking cough that racked my body.
“You mean the witch?” April’s head popped into the cab as she intercepted the joint.
Eddy snatched it from her before she could get a hit, “She ain’t no witch,” he said defensively, “and wait your fuckin’ turn!”
He inhaled deeply and held the smoke, then put the burning end in his mouth. He moved toward the sound of April’s voice as she continued to tease me and offered his smoking lips apologetically. She purposely ran her tongue along the ribbon edge of her mouth to seal their kiss. He did the work for her and with the force of his intoxicating breath pushed a gentle column of smoke through the joint deep into her lungs.
The truck surged forward as I lifted my foot from the clutch.
Down in the valley most folks collect in Logan like the rains that flow down the mountains to the Guyandot. The town sits astride the river with its two bridges: one a proud railroad span; the other, in disrepair, for local traffic. All you can see is what the workings of man and water have revealed as they wear down the mountains. When you walk out your front door the mountain’s history stares you in the face, layer upon layer of ancient mud compressed in a striated mural on the sandstone cliffs of the road cut. Those deep gouges in the earth delay the sunrise and the night is held there in the shadows. The recent past hangs in the humid air and collects on the leaves of the dense vegetation and time is released with the mist as the sun burns off the dew. It escapes slowly like the smoke curling from April's lips. To even begin to sense the present you have to climb out of the town's entrenchment to where the erosive power begins, up the towering ridges that stab into the narrow crack of sky and rake the clouds of their moisture.
Tania felt the future could be found wrapped in a single drop of rain somewhere in the storms gathering over Blair Mountain. At the slightest chance of rain Tania would take her daddy's three-wheeler and disappear into the woods where she would pick up an old path on the haunted side of the mountain to the Fire Tower and climb into the thunder.
"Always been strange with the rain," Tania's dad worried to his brother as they worked together setting charges down in the mine, "Even put her in a mood when she was a baby."
"How long's she been gone this time?" Because his body was jammed into a narrow crack in the rock, Ed's feet seemed to ask the question.
In the shelter atop the tower she stands in front of the old map desk carved with the names of lovers and surveys the clouds. As she waits for the rain to come she reads the deep gouges in the wood with her fingertips.
"Been out three days now," he took off his hard-shelled hat and mopped his forehead with a blackened rag, "I know I shouldn'ta done it, but this time I locked her up in the closet, locked up that damned three-wheeler too. Drove her ma crazy to where she had to let her out. Kept bitchin' she was hungry, and damn if she didn't go right out the window. Didn't even take no supper."
Ed backed up out of the hole he was in and looked at his brother, "Stop worryin' over it and get your head back down to business."
"I don’t know _____ I'm afraid I ain't never gonna see her again, but I had to lock her up. I can’t have her mixin’ with that witcher woman up the holler."
The showers start and the spray blows under the deep protective eaves of the shelter. The moisture beads on her face and bare arms, mixing with her perspiration. As the storm begins to pick up force the wind crashes the rain into her. It forms in rivers running down her body. A cascade follows the delicate arch of her spine under the loose confinement of her summer top; Twin waterfalls escape the gravity of her body, curling gently off the bend of her elbows as she stands face to the wind. She watches the bands of rain move across the Earth, the undulating movement drawing her into her trance. A trickle traces the faint blue outline of the veins in her forearms and collects in her cupped hands, which she empties into a group of wide cut letters spelling out his name on the map table.
Suddenly, she is the rain falling from the tower, the salt of her body the core of a single drop. She falls into the torrent rushing down the mountain face, tearing loose the rocks and trees. She is the gentle patter on the tin roof of a coal tipple, then a steady drip to a handrail following the line of the conveyor thrust deep into the earth. She clings to the underside of the rail and races down the incline.
"What's done's done." Ed tapped his hard hat with the drill bit he had just finished using, "The weather was startin' to break when we came on. She'll be back by end of the shift."
Clark absently rolled his hat back onto his head. "Your right, I know your right, but all hell's gonna break loose when I get back home."
In the tower Tania's body shivers as part of her spills onto the cold black floor of the mine. She senses that she should not be there—that no one should be there—but the force of the water behind pushes her slowly through the dust. Her fluid spirit is blackened by the thirst of the men who splash through her. She is swallowed by the greedy cavern and collects in a pool against the face of the seam the brothers are preparing to blast. Their faces, as they sound the alarm, are reflected silently on her still surface. Tania sees her father mouth his words of regret. The final connection is made.
With the force of an entire forest bursting from the ground to its full height in an instant, the explosion rips through men. It knocks loose support beams and sears coal-encrusted flesh. Shockwaves rumble through the earth, bringing down large slabs of rock from the roof to seal a fate that should never have been. In the mine, the air, heavy with dust, is transformed by fire into something incomprehensible to the lungs of the men.
Tania's vision evaporates. Her spirit escapes as vapor from the mouth of the ruined mine. She rises, billowing through the open windows of John's pickup as he tears up the mountain face. She runs misty fingers through her dream lover's hair as she climbs to her empyreal body shivering in the clouds.
From where she lay on the floor Tonia felt the familiar footsteps shudder through the structure of the tower - quickly at first, then slowing as he came closer to her. She smiled knowing that he did not want to appear to eager to see her. She leaned against the table and watched the wasps take mud from the old boot tracks on the floor to rebuild their nests, shaken loose by the pounding of lovers on the tabletop. She looked out over the mountains as he emerged from the stairs.
"Hey, what cha been doin'?" I asked, not looking at her but following her gaze over the horizon.
She turned back to the table and ran her finger down the length of J carved in the surface, "Been readin'. Says here, 'April loves you'," with the flick of her wrist she traced the looping curve at the bottom, splashing out the water. "That so?"
"Uh, yeah. It's been a while back.” I looked over my shoulder to see if Eddy was coming up the stairs. “She's bangin' Eddy now." I stared out over the hills again, "Doesn't say I love her does it?"
"Nope, doesn't say you love anybody"
"Sounds about right."
Eddy popped through the opening in the floor into the silence between them and with looping strides made his way over to his cousin, "Toniaaa...!" He held his scrawny arm over his head for a high five, "I saw your new painting roll through Logan the other day. Bad as hell." They slapped hands and followed through making a wide circle with their swinging arms then touched hands again at the bottom of the arc. "Want a beer?" He pulled a can from the six-pack that dangled from his finger and set it on the table in front of her.
"Thanks."
He pointed a bony finger at me, "Beer?" Without waiting for an answer he pulled off another can and quickly pitched it in my direction.
My hand shot out instinctively and snagged the beer before it went out the window. I snapped it open and took a drink. "What paintin's that?" I asked.
Eddy knocked loose another nest as he hopped up on the table, "You didn't see it?" he said loudly with a slight slur in his speech. He was already drunk but just getting started. "Tonia is a true artist man." He raised his can in salute toward Tonia. "I was hangin' out in the bowling alley parking lot 'bout five o'clock the other day when the train rolled through town and stopped all the traffic. We didn't have nothin' better to do than just watch it roll on by, reeal slow, cause it was loaded down heavy." He paused and drained his beer, "Kindda had everybody hypnotized ya know." He opened the last of the sixer. Tonia took the plastic rings that held the pack together and concentrated on tearing them apart as he told the rest of the story. "I was lookin' down the line for the last cars to come round the bend when I saw it - fuckin' Snow White, big red apple stuck in her mouth, and Grumpy doin' her doggy style. Then the rest of the dwarves right on down the line, Hi Ho Hi Ho, big hairy dicks swingin in the wind. I couldn't fuckin' believe it, Snow White and the Seven Fuckin' Dwarves doin' a train on a train. And to top it off, Dopey on the caboose just sittin' there at the end of the line jackin' off. Bad as hell. And everybody in town just sittin' there in their cars starin' at it - didn't even move when the tracks cleared." He took another drink, "Like I say, Bad as Hell!
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