Jack's story

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Jack opened the closet in the hall. From the top shelf he took the battered, yellow mining hat his father wore for 20 years. In the week since the funeral, it hadn't accumulated any dust, but still he polished it on the sleeve of his flannel shirt.

"Be careful," his mother said.

He smiled.

He has his father's grin.

"I'm 16, Mom. You don't have to keep worrying about me."

Of course I do.

She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. He flexed a muscle for her. "We'll be eating steak again by Friday," he said.

She stayed in the doorway after he left, to watch him walk down to the corner and wait for the company bus.

When it came, he turned back as he stepped in and waved.

He can't even drive himself. What am I doing?

The bus coughed gray smoke and drove off into the West Virgina hills. Helen wiped away a tear and went back to the kitchen. She saw the redness in her daughter's eyes. I've sent her brother off to the mine that killed her father. What does she think of me?

Kay turned her face away from her mother, just a moment too late. When it swung back, the teenager was smiling. "He'll be fine, Mom." She tucked her chin into her neck and used the mock-serious voice in which she used to narrate the plays that she and Jack put on. "Today, he is a man."

A smile flickered on Helen's face. She took the bowl of batter and poured enough onto the griddle for two pancakes. They'd bubbled up and been flipped over before she spoke again.

"I don't know if I want him to be a man... just yet."

"Pretty soon, Mom - he'll find a woman, start a family."

"I hope not."

Kay almost dropped her plate into the empty sink. "Why not?"

"That's what your father did. And his father before him. And Pappy before that. Get a job, get a wife, get a family, like dominos falling over. I was thinking... maybe Jack could be different. Maybe he could build himself up first."

Kay leaned back against the sink. "You mean save some money, don't you? There's not much else he'll accomplish down there."

"Money's something."

"Granddad always said there's more to a man than how much money he has."

"Granddad never had any money." Helen sighed. "I used to say the same thing, when I was young. I met your Dad and money was the last thing I thought about. But now... when you don't have enough, I guess it's all you can think about."

"You and Daddy had five children. That's where your money went."

"I know it. And that's why I don't want my youngest starting his family just yet." Helen looked up. "Or my next-youngest either, young woman."

"I can't wait to get married."

"Is that a fact? And with who? How long's it been since you had a date? Since you ran off Paul Beckett, wasn't it? You were still 14 then."

Kay folded the dishtowel exactly in half and then in half again. She placed it on the counter. "I guess I'm an old maid. What do you want me to do, get a job?"

"School's enough for you now. But, someday -- yes. Do for yourself."

"What if I want to get married?"

"You do what you want, honey, when it's time. But, nothing says you can't work first. Get some experience. Have something of your own, just in case."

"But Bill has--" Kay stopped herself too late. Or she told me just as much as she wanted.

"Do you love him?"

"Yeah... I guess. At least... It's not like with Paul. I feel something. Something that makes me warm inside."

Helen ran her fingers through her hair and let the split ends slip away. I can almost feel the gray. And it'll be white before I can afford to visit Betty Lou's again.

"That feeling doesn't last," she said. "And when it ends... Trust me. Having money of your own will keep you warm, too."

"Maybe it won't end, if I think more about keeping my husband happy."

Well, there it is. And I thought the children didn't know about that lawyer.

"You don't understand, sweetie. Sometimes, even if a man and a woman do love each other, money makes a difference. If he's the only one making money, he'll have all the control. That ain't good. You've got no bargaining power."

"You're crazy, Mom! Bargaining power?"

"Imagine you caught your husband sleeping with another woman." Yes, just imagine. "You tell him you don't like it and that he shouldn't do it anymore. If he makes all the money, then he can just say, 'I am who I am. Take me or leave me.' Sure, you can leave him, but you've become dependent on his money. You couldn't live without him. Really."

Kay had been folding and unfolding the towel nervously. She put it down one last time and patted it in place. "Is that what happened? I mean..."

"You're old enough to understand, I reckon. And wise enough. I just wish... Can't do nothing about that now. Just know: Your father was a good man. Sometimes being a good man isn't enough. Something happens when there's hardly any money and you're the only one bringing it in. When you know your whole family depends on you, what there is left of it. Some men break, just can't take it."

"So Daddy ..."

"No, I mean like Ed Ledbetter putting a shotgun in his mouth, last Labor Day. And there's some, good men, too, they feel that darkness comin' over them and try... try to run out from under, I guess. And that was your Dad."

Kay's tears started again. "Sounds like there ain't no good way out, then."

"Oh, honey." Helen put her arms around her daughter's shoulders. "Maybe there will be, for you. Now you see why I want you working? It's being poor that does it. In a poor house, the man with a dollar's a king, you know? And sometimes he gets to feeling like he should act like one." She gave Kay a squeeze. "Well. 'Bout time for school, now, isn't it?"

The days went by. Every Monday through Thursday Jack came through the door dragging his feet, but on Fridays he swung his lunch bucket and made "Mother" into a six-syllable song. Every Saturday they had steak, just as he'd promised. Round steak, not sirloin, and the plates were more fried potatoes than meat, but they were real meals.

Four weeks gone, Kay broke up with Bill Jones. Nothing serious, she told her mother, he was just looking for something she wasn't ready to give. Good for her. I wish I'd had her strength. Must come from her father. I just hope she didn't get his weakness, too.

After a week of moping around the house, Kay disappeared early on that Saturday and was gone all day. She got home just in time for what had become their traditional Saturday night dinner.

"Mom!" At Kay's shout from the front door, Helen and Jack looked at each other over the kitchen table. They didn't have long to wait. Kay tore into the room, flushed and almost airborne. "I got a job! A job!"

She told them about it over dinner. Evening shifts at First National Burger, a fry pit that was called Clay's when it was in the pint-sized storefront over on Crawford Street, on the same side of the tracks as Helen's house. It had moved downtown a year earlier, into one of the three abandoned bank buildings there. Somehow, though the equipment was new and the bank had been kept spotless for a century, Clay Masters had managed to recreate the ambiance of his old place down to the coating of rancid grease on the windows and the scuttle of the roaches on the floor.

"But, Mom, it's a job. Who else is hiring around here? I can't go to the mine with Jack."

The boy grinned. "Betcha some of the guys wouldn't mind."

Kay rolled her eyes. "Them dirty gritpickers? I got finer tastes."

Jack's grin vanished. "I'm one of them gritpickers."

He's been getting touchy lately. That's the first sign. Helen soothed relations by bringing out her special treat, half a rhubarb pie from the Martin's.

That evening, in front of the TV, Helen thought about the burger joint. I should be happy she's listening to me. But what will that place do to her?

A lot of poor folks turned to fatback and junk food to get by. Not Helen. Her way of making their money stretch involved beans and more beans, vegetables and rice, and staying away from fast food. With that diet, and the natural exercise she and Kay got trying to keep coal dust out of their house and clothes, both women were in excellent shape. Twins from the neck down, people said. Same long legs, same narrow waists. Not big-breasted, "but what there is, is choice," her own father used to tease. And still is at 50. Smooth skin, which came of not having the money to spend on anything fancier than Ivory soap and not having the time to lollygag at sunbathing.

From the neck up ... well, Helen had earned her crow's feet, and the tiny wrinkles at the corners of her full lips, and her husband could take credit for the way her green eyes always had a glint of suspicion in them. And she liked her hair long, down to the small of her back. So what if there were gray strands? A lot of brunettes would pay good money for highlights.

Kay had the fresh face of a 15-year-old who'd never been able to afford chocolate. The same full lips as her mother, same just-longer-than-necessary nose, same slightly pointed chin and V-shaped hairline. But her hair, the color of an autumn sunset and chopped short at the base of her neck, that was Clairol's doing and a pair of scissors. Helen wasn't happy about the cost but if that was her daughter's only act of teenage rebellion she wasn't going to complain.

But that face won't stay unblemished for long on a diet of cheeseburgers and french fries. I remember when we were first married and spending like fools. I was fatter before the kids started coming than after. And fat girls, they got no power at all.

Helen waited for a commercial. No one would interrupt "Survivor."

"Tell you what," she said. "If you're going to work at Clay's, I just got one rule. You bring your dinner with you."

"What?"

"You heard me, young lady. I don't want you getting sick on that man's fly-speck meat. I'll even pack it for you myself."

Kay fussed, but Helen won the argument in the end by invoking her nuclear option: "I'm the mom, that's why." It worked. I wonder how much longer I'll be able to get away with that.

A week went by. An increasingly lonely week, for Helen. She had a few minutes with Kay in the mornings, if the girl got up in time to have breakfast before school. In the afternoon, Kay hardly stopped to say hello on her express train through the house, changing clothes, picking up her dinner and scooting off to First National Burger. Jack grabbed his breakfast on the run, and came home later and later. Overtime, he said. That Friday, he didn't come home at all. Showed up Saturday morning, stinking of alcohol and vomit, dirty, disheveled and dragging his ass.

That argument lasted awhile. "I'm the mom" was met with "I make the money." And so it begins. But Helen still had the upper hand for one reason: She wasn't the one with the pounding headache, the sour stomach and the sidewalk rash. Any guilt she felt about taking advantage of his condition was washed away by her utter faith that she was doing the right thing.

"All right, Mom, I promise. No more drinking. Can I go to bed now?"

"Sure. But I want you coming straight home after work, every night, you understand? Every night. No gallivanting around."

"Yes, Mom."