Harlan County Horrors Part 13

"And no different from any other Harlan woman's story either, Peter. But they don't use it for an excuse to treat their children like dirt underfoot." Sissy held her anger for a few moments, then sighed. "Guess it's over now. Don't do any good to hold on now, does it?"

I hid my grimace behind the cup, already empty, and pretended to drink.

While the family hosted the post-funeral dinner at the church bas.e.m.e.nt, I excused myself and said I needed to take care of some things. I spent the drive over to Harlan biting my thumb and letting the "scan" feature run endlessly on Becca's radio.

I pa.s.sed the old company houses, including the one where we'd lived until Sissy was born, and drove through Fisher's Hollow. I glanced down the road toward Gertie, her rusting tipple poking through the pines. I rubbed my eyes with one hand and accelerated.

With Becca and the kids at the church, I figured I wouldn't get a better chance to go into the attic so I took it. I didn't stop at the front door, just bounded up the steps and then up into the attic, walking sideways to fit my feet.

The boys had two camp mattresses set up under the window in the back. I stepped around the puddled blankets and inched toward the front of the room. The stuff there hadn't been moved for ages. Trying not to raise too much dust, I sifted through the piles of junk until I spotted the rotting steamer. Its rust-speckled latches creaked as I flipped them. I brought my keys out of my pocket and found the one Mama had sent me. It slid into the lock with surprising ease, clicked, and the trunk seemed to sigh with release.

I choked back the tears from my nose and inched open the lid. On top of a tattered, moth-eaten wool blanket was a letter in a yellowed, unsealed envelope. The letter read, "I'm sorry. Jesus forgive me."

I replaced it on top of the blanket and secured and locked the trunk. No one knew. No one had seen. Now I had to get it out of the attic and get rid of it. Alone.

Mama hadn't had much, so it surprised us that we had to go to a will reading. She'd had a little savings, which she'd left to Becca for taking care of her. There was also a letter for each of us. Mine was much thicker than the others, but I made a joke about being the oldest and it seemed to settle any reason for it. She also left a short list of possessions she wanted distributed a certain way.

Sissy looked at Becca and said, "Keep 'em" when the list of things Mama had bequeathed to her was read. JR got a few things that had belonged to Pop, like his medals, uniform and dog tags, both from the service. To me she left "your father's purple heart, the old steamer trunk, and Ching-Ching." The lawyer raised his eyebrows and said, "What's a ching-ching?"

I felt a flash of nausea while the others laughed. JR spoke up. "It's this G.o.dawful thing our pop brought back from Vietnam." To me, he added, "Guess you win, Pete."

"Ching-Ching's gonna get you," Sissy added with an extra laugh.

I forced a smile and pressed my fist against my mouth.

The boys ran straight upstairs when we got back to Becca's. As I stripped off my jacket, I asked, "So where is Ching-Ching anyway?"

"On the shelf." She lifted her chin toward a bookcase beside the TV stand. "It's up top so I don't have to look at it. Go ahead and pack it. Jesus, I'll be glad to be rid of it." As she took the baby up for a nap, she added, "It gives me the w.i.l.l.i.e.s."

I spotted it right away in the back, on the topmost shelf, half-behind a framed photo of our dad in his uniform. I lifted it out and blew the dust off it. It had always reminded me of a coconut, but egg-shaped, with the flatter end on the bottom and covered in coa.r.s.e brown hairs. It had a thin white line around what would be its waist and, near the top, an engraved and painted face with narrow, angry eyes and a firm mouth. It had more hairs sprouting from the top of its head, worn at the ends and frazzled but originally in a freakish bowl cut meant to emphasize its eyes. JR and I used to play GI Joes with it until Mama caught us, whupped us, and put it on top of the refrigerator. When Pop died, she moved it behind his photo and we were all glad to be rid of the sight of it.

I remember him bringing it back after his second tour. Sissy was walking already and he had gone back into the mines. He pulled it out of his duffel and showed it to Becca, JR and me. We gathered around, simultaneously repulsed and attracted. He explained something about it, using words that sounded so exotic I decided that if the war started up again, I would go. All I caught out of it was something that sounded like "Ching," so we named the little figure "Ching-Ching." Pop kept it on top of the chiffarobe, beside Mama's bottle of Skin So Soft. When he found out we'd played with it, we thought he'd kill us. Instead, he said, "I didn't bring that halfway across the G.o.dd.a.m.n world for you to break it."

I put Ching-Ching back in its spot and went out to the kitchen. Becca surprised me hot on my heels. "You want some coffee?" she offered.

I considered a moment and asked for something stronger.

She got the coffee going and opened a high cabinet. "What do you want?"

"Anything."

She poured. When I asked if she'd join me, knowing I shouldn't, she shook her head. I watched her lean against the counter, her body language exactly like Mama's as she lit a cigarette and tossed her lighter back into her purse. She half-filled a cup of coffee, topped it with milk and three spoonfuls of sugar. As she came over to join me, I saw something out of the corner of my eye and gasped.

Ching-Ching sat in the pa.s.sage between the kitchen and the living room, its gouged, white eyes staring in my direction.

"d.a.m.n it," she said, slamming her mug down on the table. Becca stomped over to it, s.n.a.t.c.hed it up, and headed into the living room. I heard her set it back in place and yell up the stairs, "Y'all leave this thing alone!"

The response was a creak of the floor in the attic and a ripple of feedback on the baby monitor.

"Of all days," she said, taking her seat at my knee.

I sipped my drink and kept my eyes on the doorway.

"Becca."

"Yes?"

"How come you weren't gonna follow Mama's wishes and cremate her?"

Becca took a long draw on her cigarette, her fingers trembling, then tapped it on a breakfast plate. "I wanted to see her, Peter."

"You'd seen her for months."

"Sick." She flashed her filling eyes at me. "I wanted to see her made up and pretty one more time, all right? I saw her all sunken and ashy and vomiting blood every G.o.dd.a.m.n day. I didn't want that to be how I remembered her. We didn't get to see Pop and I wasn't going to be cheated out of seeing Mama."

"You know why we didn't see Pop."

She opened her mouth and snapped it shut just as quickly. In the silence, I stole a glance at the doorway. Nothing.

I said, "I suppose now she's gone, we can talk about it. Why he k-"

"I don't want to talk about it."

I nodded and finished my drink, my eyes locked to the spot where the kitchen's linoleum met the living room's s.h.a.g carpet.

At around 3 a.m., I woke out of a sound and dreamless sleep. I rolled onto my back and stared at glow-in-the-dark stickers on the bottom of the bunk bed overhead. There wasn't a lot of moonlight, but there was enough that I could make out shapes on the dresser. A baseball in an acrylic box. Stacks of folded clothes waiting to be put away. Something small, almost round, with white eyes...

I sat bolt upright and began to hyperventilate. I clapped my hand to my mouth, partly to calm my breathing and partly to keep from being sick. I knew the boys hadn't brought it in. I knew Becca wasn't playing a practical joke. I'd locked the door and put a useless beanbag chair behind it.

I stood and s.n.a.t.c.hed up Ching-Ching. Warmth. And underneath its hard sh.e.l.l, a pulse-single, almost electric, combined with a constant hum. In that moment, I suspected what Mama had told me was true. But it wasn't enough. Without letting go of the thing, I shoved my feet into my sneakers and grabbed my keys and jacket.

It only took four and a half minutes to drive to #17 and another thirty seconds to run as far as I could into the shaft. I didn't want to follow the tracks into the four-foot-high maw that lead to the collapsing and crumbling mine.

"Where are you?" I yelled into the darkness. My voice echoed off the stone that glittered with threads of virgin coal. After a while, I yelled again. "I know you're here. I know it."

Silence.

I stomped toward one of the seemingly bottomless air shafts along the walls. "Get out here or I throw this thing down the chute."

"You know it'll just come back."

I gasped so hard that I choked. The voice came from the darkness of the mine, where the trams sat rusting.

"What is this?" I growled toward the voice as I held out the throbbing mutant coconut.

"It don't matter, Peter." He stepped from the darkness into shadow, the slightest bit of moonlight creeping in as far as where we stood, defining his hands and the line of his jaw. "What matters is that now it belongs to you."

I poised over the manway. "I don't want it."

"Yet you know that if you drop it, you'll drive home and find it waiting on your pillow."

I shook to the point that I had to grip the wall for support. I nodded and waited for him to speak again.

"You don't seem surprised to see me."

"'Surprised' isn't the word for it, Pop."

"She told you. She told you what I'd become."

I nodded again. Desperate for something to do, I turned Ching-Ching over in my hands. Its pulse grew stronger and it became downright hot, almost too hot to hold. I set it on the ground at my feet.

I said, "I couldn't hardly believe her, though."

"So you spent your life trying to prove creatures like me don't exist, that it? 'Cause if you can do that, it was all in her head. And what come after, well, that would've been in yours."

I slumped against one of the support pillars, my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands.

He walked toward me, but not with the gait of a sixty-something-year-old man or a thirty-year-old one. He moved slowly, as though forcing an illusion of grace. He knelt beside me as I looked up. My eyes had adjusted to the light, and I could see the reality of him. He was no ghost, no figment of my imagination. He was exactly as I'd remembered him, which was impossible. Longish hair and sideburns, now with strands of silver but styled as they had been in the years after he'd crossed the ocean. But how? I said to myself. How is it possible?

I opened my mouth to say something, but before I could decide what to ask, he said, "Your mother's trunk."

His eyes held mine. I nodded and exhaled. "Yes."

"Where is it?"

"The attic. Becca's attic."

"She left it to you."

"The trunk? Yeah."

"Get it and bring it here."

"But I can't-"

"We can get it down the cage, you and me. After that, I'll take care of everything."

"Take care of it?"

"I know what's in the trunk, Peter."

"She told you?"

He nodded. "I know your hand in it, too."

I felt sick. My father sat cross-legged on the ground beside me and picked up Ching-Ching. As he talked, he pa.s.sed it between his hands, as I had. I felt its pulse under his words and in the rock that surrounded us. Everything in the mine came alive with exotic, living energy.

"I was hurt bad at Xuan Loc. Real bad. A hole in my chest big enough to stick two fists in. I watched medics pa.s.s me by, over and over. I laid there with my eyes staring into the sun, then the dark of night, unable to die."

"I can't believe that, Pop."

As if I hadn't spoken, he continued. "Locals come by, pointed at me, whispered. I couldn't move my head, my eyes even, to see what they were doing. They used a blanket for a gurney and carried me through the jungle to a thatch hut so camou'ed, you didn't even realize it was there. I felt solid ground under my body. An old man with long white hair bent over me. I felt his hands on me, inside me. I couldn't speak. I heard his voice in my head. He spoke Chinese and I could understand him, Peter. I knew a language I'd never heard and I knew what language it was. He said 'Your p'ai is strong.'

"I told him I wanted to go home, that I had a baby I'd never seen and I had to see her, had to see my wife, had to see you. I told him your names. While I spoke to him with my mind, he worked and nodded. Aloud he spoke Chinese, and I couldn't tell what he said but he used the word p'ai again. Room smelled like incense and blood. In my head, he said, 'I will make you strong but your body will be weary.' I closed and opened my eyes. I felt tears on my cheeks. It was a miracle. A true miracle, son. This old witch doctor was fixin' me up and I was goin' home. Layin' on the floor of that hut, I promised Jesus I would never leave you all again. If it meant I had to stay in these mines the rest of my life, I'd never, ever leave none of you."

He paused, turning Ching-Ching over in his palms. He traced its engravings with his fingertips.

"I thanked him inside my head and he said he was gonna give me something to make me sleep, that it'd be easier for me to get home but they'd have to smuggle me. They could send me back with the dead men from my unit so's I could sleep. He gave me this," he held out Ching-Ching, "and told me that my return, as a whole man, depended on the care of it. I told him I'd do anything to get back here."

He unb.u.t.toned his s.h.i.+rt down to the middle of his chest and opened it. I knew then why he'd been the only dad in the hollow who wore an unders.h.i.+rt to cut the gra.s.s or barbecue. His scar was a twisted ma.s.s of smoothed, hairless flesh.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you what, Peter? That I'm dead?"

"You're not dead, Pop. You're right here."

"Peter..."

"Why did Mama tell us you shot yourself?"

His hands stilled and he sighed.

"Why'd y'all lie to us? You have any idea what we all've gone through thinking you come down here and done that? Especially Sissy? Rumors went around you ate a shotgun down in #17 'cause you found out she wasn't yours. Then Mama tells mejust methat you're still alive but I can't see you or talk to you or tell anyone? Don't tell me 'vampire,' neither, 'cause I won't believe it." I can't believe it, I said to myself.

"It was near impossible to keep it up, Peter. I needed more energy than your mama could give me. It was better for me to sleep here, hibernate like, than to keep asking her to provide-"

"Wait," I said, my legs shaking. "What do you mean, 'energy?' "

"I needed ying energy, Peter, to stay alive, so to speak. Female energy, to balance mine. To feed my p'ai. Your mother gave me what I needed as best she could, only way she knew how."

I pushed myself to my feet, using the pillars to guide myself to the chute I'd threatened to throw Ching-Ching down, and vomited. Pinp.r.i.c.ks of light danced in the blackness before my eyes. The trunk. What Mama had done. What she'd asked me to be complicit in helping her do. It came together.

I flattened my palms on the wall over the chute and let my words tumble into the depths of the mine. "Chiang-s.h.i.+h. Not ching-ching. You're chiang-s.h.i.+h. A dead sh.e.l.l that houses a living minor soul. My G.o.d. Chiang-s.h.i.+h."

"Chiang-s.h.i.+h," he confirmed in a whisper. I turned to see him. He held Ching-Ching in his left hand, near his hip. "I don't want blood. I don't need it. I don't need food or water. All's I need is energy."

I stood silently for a solid minute. "Did you kill Mama?"

"No, Peter."

I clarified through clenched teeth. "Did you take her energy, then?"

I saw the flicker of a smile in his young, pale face and a s.h.i.+mmer in his eyes. "She called for me her last night and I came. When I come back from Xuan Loc, I seen her in new dimensions. Soft yellow-green energy around her, flickering with her mood, turning clover green every time she'd get pr-"

To stop him and to bring him back into the present, I said, "Pop. Her energy?"

"When I went to see her last week, she couldn't speak but I could talk to her like I talked to that old Chinese voodoo man. She asked me to help her. Said she couldn't stand the pain. Couldn't stand Becca's pain. If I could just bring her to the edge of death, she would take that last step herself and then we'd be together forever like I told her. I didn't do more 'n what she asked me to, Peter. I drained her energy, the last bit of yellow light until she burned bright white, and I became more alive than I'd ever been."