The Heart is Deceitful above All Things (18 page)

I had brought on the Black Coal Times.

A little coal-burning stove sits in the corner of the $75-a-month shack on the outskirts of a small town in West Virginia. The house has no electricity and a pump out front for the rusty water.

But I have a battery-operated TV Chester let me have. Chester married my mom two days after they had met at the pool hall bar in town. I keep my TV on day and night. Chester doesn't mind, though, he just gets me a new battery every week.

They work in the basement: Chester, my mom, and his friends with motorcycles. They'll be down there all day and out all night. I'm not allowed down the creaky wood steps that lead to the cellar. I'm not allowed anywhere near it. I'd gotten a whipping from Chester for tugging on the padlock when I thought they were gone, but even after my whipping I'd run down the stairs to the door and tug on the always locked padlock, to try to see what all the secrecy and excitement were about.

My mother doesn't talk to me much. Her eyes, like Chester's, are ringed red like someone drew marker circles around them. I lie on my stomach on the dirty yellow shag rug, looking at my TV but watching my mom pace the living room. She scratches at her face constantly
and chomps her jaw back and forth even though there's nothing in her mouth.

When I speak to her, all she'll ever answer is, ‘Huh?' even if I ask her again.

Chester always brings me a TV dinner and Cap'n Crunch from the grocery store in town which he gets on the way home. He wakes me up four or five
A.M
., lights up the coals, and puts my tin tray on the little rack above them. In thirty or so minutes it'll be done enough so I can wolf it down while I watch morning cartoons. The cereal I eat later.

My mom stays away from the stove; it's mine. She stays away from the coal. When I need more I ask Chester and he brings it up from the cellar, where there seems to be an endless supply.

‘Here's some coal,' he'd whisper, away from my mom, and toss it into the squat black iron stove, his red-ringed eyes large and rotating too quickly, like a squirrel's.

When Chester isn't in the basement he paces, like my mom, the shadow of his long, lean body hunched down by the weight of his head and shoulders, passing like a black cloud the grinning faces of magazine models and race cars pasted up as wallpaper by some long-ago tenant.

I enjoy watching the shadows his always busy hands make. Six-headed dragons, ferocious bears, multihumped camels as they attack and destroy entire happy, catalog families. Back and forth his waving empty hands slice and mutilate.

I wait as patiently as I can till he disappears again down into the basement, and I take out my red pencil I keep in my back pocket. I spit between my fingers and squeeze them close together. Then I slide the red lead point between them. I turn the pencil till it begins to leak red in my bubbly spit. I go to the wall, to the shiny blond lady smiling down at her redheaded, freckled child that Chester's flying dragon's tail has sliced across her mouth. With the wet pencil tip I gash blood through her lips and pour it down her chin. I spit on my fingers, bleed the pencil more, and continue the blood gushing down her face and onto her child's head, splattering into his eyes. I watch Chester's dragon carefully. I'm pretty sure that's all that happened to her, though just to be sure I gash her arm, the one that's around the boy, but I only bleed it some in case I'm wrong. They're surrounded by black-and-white racing cars, and though I know some damage was caused, at the very least a smashed windshield flying into the faces of the passengers, and I am within my rights to bleed them, I savor my mercy and my self-control.

I step back and examine the bleeding woman and boy. It's perfect except for the finishing touch, what I always do. I don't lick the pencil for this; if it's too wet, it won't work. Around her eyes I draw faint red rings.

I wake up in the backseat, my stomach churning with broken glass. Before I lift my head I smell the stench of vomit. I peel my face off the backseat, my cheek glued
to the vinyl with drool. The windshield and dash are still coated in a clumpy liquid sheen. My mother isn't in the car, but I call her anyway. I feel my stomach heave, and I pull open the door that feels suddenly heavier than I'd ever felt it, and I spit up sour water. With my arms wrapped around my stomach, I look around. We are still in the empty lot, the sky starting to lighten and painting the white concrete parking bumps a veinlike pink as they rise like exposed arteries from the sealed black pavement. A light from inside the closed Burger King flickers, casting a grayness of winks and flutters in its tinted windows. My Dumpster stands open, its small dark green metal lid flipped over like a hatch into the underworld. I cross the parking lot hunched over, walking like a drunk to the Dumpster I'd been inside of, the greasy smell of it causing me to gag. I cover my nose and push the lid closed, erasing my entry inside.

The fluorescent street lamp switches off with a loud hum that makes me jump. I make my way back to our car, avoiding the puddles of vomit surrounding the passenger's side like a moat. As I climb in the backseat, leaving the door open, a large green car with it's headlights on pulls into the lot. I sit up and watch it come closer, my heart beating hard. It stops near the Dumpster. I squint to catch the first glimpse of my mother coming back with help, with someone, maybe my grandfather; even though he'd be furious, he'd know what to do. He knows how to cut through and pull out the pure soul from the
temptations and conflicts of sin, especially when it's black coal evil.

I strain to see a man, alone, get out of his car, slam his door, rattle keys outside Burger King, and enter. She isn't with him. My stomach lurches, and I puke some spittle up. I'm thirsty, so thirsty, and I'm freezing, and I need more antidote. I didn't take enough to counteract the poisonous food. I need to be better so I can clean up the car before she gets back, but I bet she's at a bar trying to find a replacement for Chester, someone that's good at cleaning insides of cars.

I climb over the front seat, my stomach sliding on wet piles stuck on my T-shirt. I lean down on her seat, retching and spitting nothing up. A loud ringing is starting in my ears, and my eyes feel bathed under a heat lamp. I push my fingers around the metal bars under her seat, searching for antidote. My fingertips graze the smooth plastic, and I lean my arm under farther, deep into the guts, until I grasp the bottle. I sit in her seat holding the bottle, watching the lights flicker on in Burger King. Another car pulls up to the back, and more people enter. None of them my mother. I unscrew the lid. Singing birds are competing with the high-pitched squealing in my ears, and it all sounds like guitar feedback.

The sticky smell of antidote makes me gag. I'll clean the car, I'll get wipe-ups and napkins from Burger King. I'll tell them my little sister got sick, I'll tell them I'm a girl, I'll be pretty, I'll pretend I know nothing about the coming evil of the coal destroying the world.

I close my eyes and drink the Ipecac.

It finally happens one morning, after months of trying the lock. My mother and Chester run out screaming at each other about the money, about the delivery, about the ashtrays. Well, that's not what they call it, but I figured it out what they do down there. They make ashtrays. Special ashtrays. Like the one in my grandfather's study, a small round crystal bowl, with smooth dents like rivulets cut by rain in its walls. Every now and then there'd be a faint gray dust of ash clogging its bottom, but never the smoky scent. Tobacco, he always said, was a sin, a tool of Satan.

So my mother, Chester, and his friends hide their sinful creations, but I hear their fights and the words thrown around: smoke and crystal.

Chester had given me a glass ashtray to use as a cereal bowl when mine disappeared down into the cellar and came back blackened and cracked. I know they tried to use it for the crystal, I heard Chester say the crystal needs water and my mom carried my bowl outside, I heard her pump the water and carry it down the squeaky wooden steps. I guess the ashtray I got was not one of their fancier, more enticing ones. Probably it was the ‘Shit from the Competitor's'. When Chester would pace and make flying sea monsters and machine-gun shadows, he'd also mumble about the ‘Shit from the Competitor's'.

‘Nobody's crystal is better than mine!' he'd shout. Before I filled my ashtray bowl with my Cap'n Crunch,
I'd spit in it loud so he could hear. ‘Stupid, fucking crystal!' Sometimes it'd make him laugh.

They're in such a rush, they don't even close the front door. I listen for the car pulling away down the dirt road, and I run for the cellar door. There it is, the padlock hanging open, the door closed but not locked.

The black wood door squeaks as I push it. Even though I know what is down there, I want to see for myself the rows and rows of rainbow-colored diamond-cut crystal ashtrays, the containers of sin that my grandfather forbade but also possessed: the crystal ashtrays created in secret revenge despite the horrendous danger.

The darkness glares up at me, and an acrid, curdling smell burns my nose. I run up and grab my flashlight and return to the blackness. I shine my flashlight into it. Light bulbs hang from the wooden beam, with wires crisscrossing them like a freeway, and a switch dangles down past the door. Before I can think, I reach up and click it. The cellar lights up. My mouth drops at the electricity I was told we didn't have upstairs, though I'd never tried 'cause there were no lights to flick, no plugs to plug in, not even on my TV. There is no real stove or refrigerator; a flashlight Chester gave me is my only protection to chase hungry ghosts away at night. I keep my flashlight on and walk down the wobbly stairs into the cement cellar. I shine my light on tables, slate on wood horses covered in burners. Tubes, vials, containers, scales, plastic bags, and razors cover the rest. Even though it is incredibly bright, I inspect
COAL it all with my flashlight; sometimes things can hide by being too exposed.

There is a beat-up uncovered mattress in the corner with blankets and pillows and, a little past it, a fridge as tall as me. I go over to it and run my hand over its smooth, round door. I press my ear up against it to listen for breath or a heartbeat. All I hear is its steady, electric hum. It has a silver handle lever across it, and I tug hard, pulling the heavy door open. It's dark inside, no fridge light. I shine my flashlight on the contents, lots of plastic containers and beer. I yank open the freezer, which is almost frozen shut. Inside, sitting in an ice-filled window, are more plastic containers and a stack of the TV dinners Chester always gets for me. I slam the fridge and freezer doors closed. ‘We have no fridge,' he's always reminding me, so I can't get anything that'll go bad, 'cept he's been nice enough to stop off every day and pick me up my frozen dinners.

‘Liar.' I spit on the fridge, hook my flashlight onto my belt loop, and continue my walk around. But there are no ashtrays or crystal anything, just stuff steaming and bubbling. They probably took it all to sell.

In a corner is a burlap-covered pile. I know it's the coal. The coals in my stove are almost all sooty ash, and I hate asking Chester for more 'cause it's a big secret, and he has to sneak it out past my mom. I reach over to the brown potato-sack-type cover and lift it off the pile. I jump as a huge spider scuttles under the coals and away from me.

Staring at the mound of coals makes my heart thud. I've never actually touched the coal myself; Chester puts it in the stove. He usually lights it, though he showed me how to use the newspapers all twisted up. But I'd just as soon wait for him to do it. If I stare too long at those red eyes glowing in the black heart of the coal, it starts talking to me, hypnotizing me just like my mom said it would.

I once burned my hand badly because the coal wanted me to touch it. I had told my mom its evil thoughts. She held my hand, pressing it to the hot stovetop until I screamed. ‘The coal has to be fed,' she said. That was my lesson. I never stared at it again.

But unlit it isn't really bad, I think. Unlit it doesn't seem alive and I don't feel too afraid. I grab a couple of coals from the side, but I decide I might as well take more and hide them under the house so I don't have to ask for them. Chester won't notice. He always says, ‘Goddamn, I just gave you coal yesterday. You eatin' the stuff ?' I reach over and start filling my pockets. I'm taking them off the pile, grabbing the loose ones off the side, stuffing them in my jeans. I pick up one big chunk and another spider jumps as if he's been thrown at me. I scream and hurl the coal at the pile. It hits the side, knocking loose coal, making it slide in a small avalanche. The spider scurries over my Keds and under the new pile on the floor.

‘Jesus Christ,' I whisper. The stairway door creaks behind me and I spin around, but it's empty, just the morning sun sliding in bars down the stairs, dissolving
into the overly lit brightness of the cellar. Coal lies all over the concrete floor. I want to run up the stairs and hide in my bed with my blankets over my head. I take a step back toward the door and feel a lump of coal crumble under my foot. I look at the flame glowing blue from a burner on the tables and then down at the coal. ‘The flame can't jump out,' I tell myself and the coal. ‘I'm not gonna feed you,' I tell it, and kick a piece. ‘You're not gonna get me.'

I wipe the sweat from my hands on my T-shirt, painting black sooty streaks on it. ‘Goddamn it!' I kick some chunks; they bounce off the pile, causing more to roll to the floor. ‘Fuck . . . OK . . . I'll get you . . .', I swallow hard, bend down, and start to collect the spilled coal. I imagine how I will torture the tarry, charcoal pieces. I'll smash them with rocks behind the house, bleed them with my red pencil, drown them in water so they'll never have hope of burning. I smile, biting my bottom lip, as I decide which pieces get put back and which I will put to death. I pull off my T-shirt, lay it on the ground, and toss the coals I condemn onto it. I hold a baby coal up above my head in the sour-smelling cellar air. ‘You're gonna die,' I tell it. I get ready to smash it but stop and pick up a grown-up coal that had been next to the little one.