One of Us (13 page)

This insistence sank her insanity defense. Everyone had already decided she had done it. All that was left was to decide if she deserved leniency because she was ill, and the jury made up of hardscrabble blue-collar cynics believed there was nothing saner than telling a bald-faced lie to save your own skin.

I leave Mindy’s MMPI in the box. I can’t work. I need to get out of
this house. This place has always been my safe haven, but it’s also filled with bad memories. As a child I rarely slept here without having a nightmare, and now it seems the same thing is happening again.

I pass on the coffee. I eat a banana and go out for a run.

I don’t pay any attention to my route. I know all the roads and I’m not worried about getting lost, but today this works against me as I get too absorbed in my flight and trying to survive the cold. I come to an unpaved road I haven’t taken before. I know I should turn back and head for home. My eyes sting from the cold; the icy air burns my lungs; my hands, face, and feet are numb.

This new route is no different from any other back road around here. The hard-packed surface of mud and gravel glimmers with patches of ice. It’s heavily wooded on both sides. This time of day the bare tree branches are starkly black against the iron-gray sky and I’m struck by the macabre thought that the coal-rich land has been stabbed again and again, spurting its lifeblood into the frigid air where it hangs frozen.

As I’m cresting a hill I hear the rumble of trucks and see lights below blazing against the indigo wall of the predawn hills. The massive piles of slag, the ebony sparkle of coal tumbling off a loader into the back of a truck, the double-wide trailer that serves as an office, the dark yawning entrance to the four-foot-high tunnel sunk eight hundred feet into the side of a mountain: I didn’t know there were any operating coal mines left near Lost Creek.

I hear a truck coming up behind me. I turn and make out a pickup behind the glaring headlights and prepare myself for some abuse.

The truck slows as I expected and the passenger-side window rolls down.

“You looking for a job? Sorry but we’re not hiring.”

The voice is female and taunting and vaguely familiar. I move closer and find Brenna Kelly behind the wheel.

“It’s a joke,” she explains.

I don’t know what to say.

“Anyone ever call you a fanatic?” she asks.

“Are you referring to the running?”

“You’ve got to be crazy to be out on a day like this. Get in. I’ll take
you down to the office and get you some hot coffee then drive you home.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“Get in,” she repeats.

The tone of her voice is commanding but not domineering. There’s a gentleness to it that makes me think she knows what’s best for me. I’m tired. I do what she wants.

A group of men in coveralls and hard hats stand outside the trailer stomping their feet in steel-toed safety shoes and blowing into their cupped hands to keep warm. They greet Brenna with grunts and nods.

“You find yourself a hitchhiker, Lou?” one of the men asks her and the rest respond with smiles they try to hide by bowing their heads.

“Just a man in need of a cup of coffee,” she replies.

“I don’t know what you heard, mister, but Lou’s coffee ain’t that good. Sure as hell not worth coming all the way out here to get it.”

They all laugh at this.

“Lou?” I ask her.

“It’s a nickname.”

“She’s an army lieutenant,” one of the other men provides.

“Not anymore.”

“Six tours,” he says.

“Now I’m an accountant,” she tells me.

“An accountant who can shoot you between the eyes from three hundred feet away.”

More laughter. She smiles back at them. I decide to smile, too.

“This is Danny Doyle,” she introduces me. “Tommy McNab’s grandson.”

At the mention of Tommy’s name, they all quiet down and stand a little straighter out of respect. I’m glad she didn’t introduce me as Owen Doyle’s son.

A tall, lanky man with a gray beard steps forward.

“How’s Tommy doing?” he asks me.

“He’s fine.”

“He was sick, right?”

“Pneumonia. But he made a full recovery.”

“There ain’t nothing can kill Tommy. ’Cept time.”

The rest of the miners nod their agreement.

“This is my brother, Carl,” Brenna says gesturing to the man who just spoke, “and this is Ricky, another one of my brothers.”

One of the other men steps forward. He’s not quite as old or tall as Carl and he’s a little meatier, but the family resemblance is obvious.

He shakes my hand. I’m relieved when I get it back.

“And this is J. C., Todd, Jamie, and Shawn. Is Tim around?”

“He won’t be back till this afternoon. He’s checking out that new generator.”

“Right,” she says.

She leads me into the trailer. The men silently watch us go. I assume they’re going to make fun of me as soon as I’m out of earshot.

The office is deliciously warm. The circulation begins to return to my face and extremities and they burn. My muscles are starting to cramp up but there’s nothing I can do. I’m not going to stretch and I refuse to sit down and then have Brenna watch me try to get to my feet later groaning and wincing like an old man.

“I wasn’t aware that there were any mines still operating around here,” I comment.

“There’s just this one and another one out near Coulter. They’re small. We only employ forty men. They’re prized jobs, believe me.”

“So you work for Walker Dawes?”

“Technically, yes, through a complicated financial and legal arrangement that’s pretty common in the industry now. Tim Franklin operates it, but his company is a subsidiary of Lost Creek Coal. Tim bought the rights to the coal cheap in a tax sale from another company. Dawes is into a lot of fracking now. And clean coal.”

“Clean coal,” I interject. “Mention it to Tommy and he spends the rest of the day saying things like, ‘How’d you like a plate of dry water?’ or, ‘Maybe you’d like me to hit you in the head with this nice soft rock?’”

She smiles while taking off her coat and gloves.

“I know a lot of guys who feel that way, but they’d never turn down the work. Jobs are jobs.”

“How’s this mine doing?” I ask.

“Like most mines this size. It’s profitable only if everything goes absolutely right, which is hardly ever. The next two shifts have to fill forty trucks or we’re out of business.”

“Is that a lot?”

“One twenty-by-twenty-foot cut fills three trucks.”

She sees that I have no idea what she’s talking about, but I’m flattered that she thought I might.

“It’s a lot because we lost a couple hours yesterday. A problem with the generator. No generator, no fan. No fan, no air. Every hour of downtime costs about two grand.”

She brings me a cup of coffee and walks back to her desk. I wish she would have stayed a moment longer. She smells good: a clean floral soapy scent combined with cinnamon and ginger. I remember Moira said she likes to cook. Maybe she has nightmares. A lot of veterans do. Did she wake up screaming, too, and bake a pie before coming to work?

“Thank you,” I say. “Six tours of duty. Were you in Iraq?”

“That’s one of the places.”

She cocks her head to one side and eyes me critically.

“You look like you’re thinking about giving me your business card so I can call you if I ever shoot up a shopping mall and want to use PTSD as an excuse.”

“That’s the kind of thing I could help you with, but I’m not thinking that.”

“So Tommy’s feeling better. Is that why you’re here? To see how he’s doing?”

“It’s been a while since I’ve been back and I thought it was time.”

I drink my coffee while she goes about getting folders out of a filing cabinet.

“I’ve never seen Rafe and Moira together,” I say, attempting to fill the silence, “but from what I’ve heard, there’s more bad blood between them than between him and Glynnis.”

“You know how that goes. Glynnis got over the divorce but Moira never will. Sometimes it’s easier to get over someone wronging you than it is to get over someone wronging someone you love.”

“Rafe didn’t exactly wrong her.”

“Rafe’s a good man. He’ll do anything for you except give even the tiniest bit of himself. Most women expect at least a little piece.”

“Most women want all of it.”

“Really?”

She fixes me with an intensely probing gaze, the meaning of which I can’t quite determine. I’m reminded of the other day and how our first meeting had ended on a sour note. I don’t want to get in an argument with her again.

Fortunately the trailer door bangs open and her brother with the viselike grip steps in.

“You got any tape?” he asks Brenna.

She goes to the desk and tosses a roll of reflective duct tape at him.

He catches it and begins ripping off pieces he wraps around the cuffs of his sleeves and his pant legs.

I silently congratulate myself on the fact that I’ve never had a job that requires taping my clothing so parts of my body won’t be chewed off by machinery.

“How are you doing?” she asks him.

“I’m fine. What kind of question is that?”

“The kind of question a sister asks her brother when she’d like to know how he’s doing.”

“Everything’s great.”

He throws the tape back at her and stalks past me on his way toward the door.

“Nice to meet’cha,” he mumbles.

“Is anything wrong?” I ask her once he’s safely outside again. “You look upset.”

“His wife lost her job,” she explains. “They have four kids. This job has been a godsend for him but it might not be here tomorrow. I don’t know what they’re going to do.”

She pauses.

“I look at their situation and all I can think is how lucky I am that my kids are grown and it looks like they’re going to be okay.”

“You’re old enough to have grown kids?”

“I got pregnant with my first right out of high school. They’re eighteen and twenty. My son’s in the army and my daughter’s a freshman at Pitt. She wants to be a doctor. We’ll see what happens. Not bad for a couple of yokels.”

I glance at her to see if she’s smiling but she’s not.

“I tried to explain that.”

“I know what you were trying to say, but you didn’t have to be mean about it.”

“People here were mean to me first.”

Her frown deepens.

“Listen to yourself. You sound like you’re five years old.”

I open my mouth to protest but she won’t let me.

“What about you? Any kids?”

“No.”

“Wife? Ex-wife?”

“No.”

“There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with you. You make a good living. You’re not bad looking.”

“Why do you have to assume there’s something wrong with me because I’ve never been married or have any children?”

“Most people do it, that’s all. Whether they should or not. Sometimes whether they want to or not. It’s what we’re supposed to do, so we do it.”

“Is that why you got married?”

“The first time? Pretty much. Plus I was pregnant.”

“What about the second?”

“Rebound guy. French. Met him in an airport coming back from one of my tours. The accent really got to me.”

“You married a guy because of his accent?”

“Pretty much.”

“I once slept with a woman because she used the word ‘lain’ correctly in a sentence.”

She giggles at me over the rim of her coffee mug, and despite the snow that’s begun falling softly outside the trailer window, my mind drifts back to high school and that last week before summer break when
the girls were allowed to wear shorts. All those bare legs and round bottoms and flashes of soft bellies between bandanna belts and faded halter tops. They’d glide by with glitter-painted toenails sticking out from plastic sandals, laughing like Brenna and tossing their heads, filling the halls with the tantalizing smell of their fruit-flavored Lip Smackers and cheap roll-on perfumes, as unself-conscious as flowers, not understanding the meaning they brought to the world simply by being in it.

I was never allowed anywhere near that particular garden until today.

thirteen

I
LET BRENNA DRIVE ME
back to Tommy’s house, and I tell her I owe her a favor.

Mom’s in her reindeer bathrobe busy at the stove. Tommy’s sitting in his chair cleaning his rifle, wearing one of her hand-crocheted hats. It’s a green one with the word
FORGIVENESS
stitched across the border. Mom is wearing a purple
TOLERANCE
hat.

My orange
GOOD SENSE OF HUMOR
hat has been given to the deer head.

“You know you can’t shoot ghosts,” I tell him. “They’re already dead.”

He glances up from his gun.

“Raccoon’s been in my trash again.”

“Do you want some breakfast?” Mom calls out.

I walk over to her and see what’s on the menu.

“You need to eat, Danny, or you’ll never fill out. Have some creamed dried beef,” she instructs, dragging a wooden spoon around a frying pan full of bubbling red and white muck.

“Wonderful,” I say. “Our yearly salt requirement satisfied in one meal.”

“When you have food you should eat it,” Mom explains. “We might not have any tomorrow. Or we might be dead or we might be held captive against our will.”

She explains these scenarios without expression, apparently not the least bit upset by the possibility of any of them occurring. She obviously took her pills this morning. The medication helps control her illness but it also erases her personality. People’s identities are shaped by their beliefs, even if they’re wildly untrue; eliminate them and their lives become banal. My mother sees herself as the heroine in an epic tale of good versus evil, even though the extent of her good deeds might only be painting a garage or knitting hats, but when she’s medicated, she believes she’s weak and useless.

“Do we have any cereal?” I ask.

“Lucky Charms,” Mom replies.

I sigh and look behind me at the boxes of cookies and snack cakes sitting on the table. On the way home from the hospital we made another stop at
the
Bi-Lo.

I can’t stop my mind from drifting back in time to our own kitchen was filled with the dozens of cookies she used to bake. They were wondrous creations: peanut butter blossoms with Hershey kisses in the center; warm, gooey pecan tassies she called fairy pies; ginger snaps that smelled like autumn; thumbprints filled with dabs of glistening raspberry jam. But my favorites were the sugar cookies, the hearts and stars and bears and shamrocks frosted in every color imaginable and topped with sprinkles and gleaming silver candy balls.

I never knew when I’d wake up in the morning or come home from school to find them already made or when she’d have me help her. Afterward we’d drive around town giving them to people. The trips would start out full of fun and good intentions, but one time we ended up far from home lost and out of gas, and another time she got caught up in the excitement of our mission and started driving too fast and hit a phone pole. I broke my wrist. She bloodied her nose and broke a rib. The car suffered the most damage. Dad took away her car keys after that.

A vivid picture of her emerges, young and lovely, with shiny red hair like a new penny, pulled back in a ponytail. She’s rubbing her big belly, talking about how the next batch of cookies we make will be for Molly. (She already had her name picked out. She was certain the baby was
going to be a girl.) How she won’t be able to eat them because she’ll be too little. She won’t have teeth. I laugh at this. I can’t imagine how weird she’ll look without teeth. Mom laughs, too. She ruffles my hair and tells me I will always be her special boy. Molly will be her special girl and she wants me to love Molly as much as she does. I promise her I will.

I dashed off to the school bus and left her behind, seeming painfully well and deceptively content, alone with the dozens of dazzling cookies she had made in the middle of the night stacked all along the countertops.

When I returned home from my few hours of kindergarten, every single one had been destroyed. The kitchen was covered in crumb carnage. Mom sat at the table, her eyes as empty as the ones in Tommy’s deer head, her hands, her hair, her cheeks streaked with frosting and sprinkles. I burst into tears, not sure if I was more upset about the loss of the cookies or the loss of my mother yet again.

They were ugly, she told me in her chilling monotone. She was worthless. She couldn’t do anything right.

Tommy has put on his coat and cap.

“Going to get the mail,” he tells us.

On his way out, the phone rings and he snatches up the receiver without bothering to glance at caller ID. It’s an irrelevant service for him since he would never
not
answer a call. He enjoys berating telemarketers even more than chatting with friends.

“Yes, this is Thomas McNab,” I hear him say. “He is. Sure you are.”

He turns to me with a skeptical grin and holds out the phone.

“Some joker wants to talk to you. Says he’s Walker Dawes. Probably one of your psycho pals from prison.”

“Hello?” I say hesitantly while watching Tommy out the window make his way across the porch and down the icy steps with the help of his cane.

“Yes, hello. Is this Sheridan Doyle?”

The voice on the other end is smooth and refined with a tinge of affectation to it.

“Yes?”

“This is Walker Dawes.”

An irrational fear courses through me. For a moment, I’m convinced I’m speaking to the original Walker Dawes, who could only be calling from the grave, or in his case from the cold, airless, marble interior of his family’s mausoleum. I can’t think of anything to say.

“I hope you don’t mind me calling you at your grandfather’s home. I heard you were here taking care of him while he recovers from his recent illness.”

“How did you know?”

“Oh, little birdies. Spies. Snooping is my hobby.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m a little confused. You don’t know me.”

“No, but I know of you, and I’m sure you know of me.”

“Yes . . .”

“It’s because I know of you that I’m calling. I’d like to discuss something with you. It’s a little delicate so I’d prefer to do it in person. Will you be free later today?”

“Possibly.”

“Wonderful. Do you know where I live?”

I’ve met and worked with and even befriended the rich and famous. I’m certainly not impressed or intimidated by this man’s wealth or his reputation, yet now that I’m being offered the chance to finally meet him I’m not sure I want to. I’m not flustered by who he is, but there’s a part of me that’s unnerved by what he’s always represented to this town.

“If I head north, it’s the first fifty-room mansion to the left,” I reply.

“Very good,” he laughs. “Actually, it’s fifty-five, but who’s counting?”

He hangs up and I’m left staring at the phone, not completely sure what just happened but certain of one thing: I can’t wait to tell Tommy about this.

I look out the front window and see him standing on the side of the road in front of his mailbox with a collection of bills and catalogs in one hand and a single piece of paper in the other held close to his face.

His expression is almost fearful. He’s so preoccupied with what he’s reading, he doesn’t even look up when I open the front door and call to him.

I run out and join him at the mailbox.

“Danny,” he says simply and holds out the sheet of paper to me.

I look at the words typed in the center of it.

SHE’S INNOCENT. YOUR GRANDDAUGHTER’S STILL ALIVE.

“Who would do this? Who could be this mean?” he asks in a mystified pleading tone, too sad to be angry. “It must be a prank.”

He hands me the envelope. It’s typed, too. There’s no return address and it has a Barclay postmark.

This isn’t the first time someone has anonymously harassed us because of my mother’s crime. Back when it happened, Tommy’s house and truck were vandalized. Someone spray-painted “murderer” and “baby killer” on his front sidewalk. Someone threw a rock through one of his windows. Yet even at the height of my mom’s notoriety, no one ever sent a note like this one. No one ever claimed she was innocent, and certainly no one suggested that my sister was alive.

“After all these years,” Tommy says, shaking the note at me. “What do you think it means?”

“I don’t know.”

He puts a trembling hand on my arm and he’s suddenly a confused, vulnerable old man who needs my help and I don’t like it. I don’t know what to do. I never realized until this moment how much I’ve always depended on him to be able to weather any indignity or assault, to be invincible and eternal like the hills.

Tommy holds the piece of paper out to me again.

“Could it be true?” he says.

I know how much he’s always desperately wanted to believe in these words, but there’s no denying the fact that Molly was killed. Her body was found buried in our backyard. Mom’s the only one who could have done it.

I put my arm around his shoulders and we walk back into the house together. My cell phone is ringing when we get inside. It’s Rafe.

“Have I got something to show you, Danno,” he says.