Sister Mine (8 page)

“And in order to get any of this money from these deals in the first place, you have to get an agent to negotiate things for you and a lawyer to make sure everything's on the up-and-up, including what the agent's doing. So by the time you pay all these people and the government and you buy everyone in your family a new dishwasher, there ain't really that much money left. Especially if your wife makes you buy a bigger house and she goes out and buys a sports car along with a bunch of other stuff.”

I check on E.J. He has his cap pulled down as far as it can go without interfering with his drinking. It looks like he'd crawl into his glass of whiskey if he could.

I can't tell if he's reacting to Ray's tendency to talk too much or if he's hiding from a woman he jilted.

I scan the patrons and notice a blonde standing by the pool table in a pair of low-rise, acid-washed jeans, with a Tweety Bird tattoo on her shoulder and her tits practically popping out of a too-tight black halter top, shooting daggers at him from between her heavily frosted blue eyelids.

“But, see”—Ray moves closer to Kozlowski, taking him into his confidence—“no one wants to hear this. No one wants to hear us bitch about the fact that some TV company gave us each $100,000 for doing nothing just so they could make some movie about something that happened to us that was beyond our control.

“Everybody wants to think we're millionaires so they can either hate us or be happy for us, but at the very least we give them something to talk about.”

E.J. noticeably cringes at the thought of people talking about him.

“What about the other three? Are they still working in the mines, too?”

“Our boss took early retirement. E.J.'s dad, Jimmy, lost his leg, so he's not working anywhere anymore. Dusty took his money and opened a restaurant. It just went out of business a couple weeks ago.”

Sandy comes by with a bottle of Jack Daniel's to refill E.J.'s glass.

“You want another beer?” she asks me.

“Is it on the house, too?”

“Sure. One more.”

“Why are you getting drinks on the house?” Ray asks.

“I escorted Choker out of the bar earlier today.”

“I heard about that,” Ray replies. “What was that about? Unfinished police business?”

“I heard he made fun of her tits,” E.J. comments.

He winces the moment the words leave his mouth. I can tell he regrets it, but he won't apologize and I'm not going to cut him any slack.

I notice a table opening up near the door, and I tap Kozlowski on the shoulder.

“Let's go sit over there,” I shout at him over the noise. “I want to talk to you alone.”

I say good-bye to Ray and turn my back on E.J.

“Why did you want to come over here?” Kozlowski asks me before we're even seated. “I didn't get a chance to ask them if they know Shannon.”

“You don't need to ask them because they would have told you what I'm about to tell you.”

I let the tension build for a moment while a country-western star on the jukebox sings about a flag he's proud of and a life he can hang his hat on.

“Shannon Penrose is my sister,” I announce. “She ran away eighteen years ago, and I haven't seen her since. Up until meeting you, I didn't even know if she was dead or alive.”

He sits back in his chair and cradles his drink in his crotch.

“Why did you lie to me?” he finally asks.

“I didn't know anything about you. I didn't know if I could trust you. Maybe you wanted to hurt her. But then I thought about it and since I can't tell you where she is, I figured I might as well be honest and see if in return you'll tell me what you know about her.”

He thinks about my proposition while swirling the ice in his drink. The bar is loud, but all I hear are the cubes clinking against the glass.

“Shannon and I have known each other for several years,” he tells me.

“In New York?”

“In New York.”

“Is that where she lives?”

“Yes. During that time we've worked together on several projects. She recently broke one of our business agreements, and that's why I'm trying to find her.”

“What kind of business?”

“That's as much as I'm going to tell you.”

“You said you had something you wanted to give her? What is it exactly? A bullet in the head?”

“No. Nothing like that. I don't want any harm to come to her. On the contrary, I want her healthy. I don't have anything to give her. I just want to talk to her and try and convince her to come back to New York with me.”

I wonder if he's the father of the baby, but if he is, why would he say they have a business arrangement? What could Shannon possibly do that would lead her to get professionally involved with a lawyer? Then again, he could be lying about everything.

“What makes you think she'd be here?”

He doesn't answer for a few minutes. I can tell he's trying to decide how much he should tell me. He doesn't trust me either.

He takes a sip of his drink, then leans over the table so I can hear him better.

“In all the time I've known her, she never told me anything about her past. Nothing about her family or the place where she grew up.

“Then one day a couple of months ago I was visiting her at her apartment, and she had the TV on. An ad from General Electric came on. It was a group of sweaty, half-naked, gorgeous models—male and female—strategically streaked with dirt, pretending to be coal miners. The point of the ad was to say that now there's technology that can make coal a viable energy source again. The catchphrase was something about coal being beautiful.

“She flew into a rage. I've never seen anything like it. Especially from Shannon. She started ranting about how there's no way coal can ever be a clean fuel. There's no technology that can accomplish this. Anyone who's ever lived in a coal town knows this. It's all lies. And the new technology they're talking about is all automated so it's not going to bring back any jobs. It's not going to help any of the people living in coal mining regions, but what it is going to do is continue to ruin the land that's finally begun to heal and contaminate the water and pollute the air. And for what? To make rich people richer. All the coal companies are owned by oil companies now. It's all the same thing. They're all owned by the same men. It's not an alternative to oil. It's not going to give us cheaper energy. It's going to kill us. They're trying to kill us.”

He pauses to take another drink.

“I couldn't believe it. Shannon is the least excitable woman I've ever known, not to mention I've never heard her utter anything that could even remotely be construed as political. For the longest time she thought Condoleezza Rice was the name of that little Hispanic actress on
Desperate Housewives.

“After she calmed down, I was able to get her to talk a little bit about what set her off,” he goes on. “That was when she told me her father was killed in a coal mine in Jolly Mount, Pennsylvania, a long time ago.”

“Twelve years ago,” I supply for him.

“I asked her if that wasn't the same town where the miners had been rescued a couple of years ago. She said it was. She never talked about the town again, but I'll never forget how upset she was and how attached she seemed to be to the place. If I hadn't known any better, I would have thought she'd just left it a couple of months ago instead of years ago and that she was terribly homesick. It was so out of character. Coming here was just a hunch.”

His attention swings away from me. He's watching someone walk toward us.

He stands with his handshake at the ready.

“I'm heading out,” I hear E.J. say.

“It was nice meeting you,” Kozlowski says.

“Same here,” E.J. replies.

He looks down at me, says nothing, and walks away, the son of a bitch.

“Excuse me,” I say, getting up out of my chair.

“Where are you going?” Kozlowski asks me.

“I'll be right back,” I assure him.

I rush out the front door and down the porch steps. E.J.'s already around the side of the building heading for his truck in the parking lot.

“Where are you going?” I shout after him. “Looking for fresh meat? Nothing left for you around here? Pretty soon you're going to have to start crossing state lines to find someone new to plug.”

“Look who's talking,” he replies over his shoulder. “You had to cross state lines twenty years ago.”

“Go to hell!”

He keeps walking toward his truck. I can't believe he's not going to stay and fight.

I run after him.

“So it's okay for you to screw around because you're a man, but it's not okay for me because I'm a woman,” I say once I catch up to him.

He takes his packet of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket and taps one into his waiting fingers.

“Don't start this again, Shae-Lynn,” he says, looking tired and annoyed. “You know I don't feel that way. You just want to get in a fight. You don't even care what the fight's about.”

“And why would I want to get in a fight?”

“Because it's the only thing you're good at.”

His words stop me cold. I feel like I'm ten years old again and he's just made fun of my inferior aim with his BB gun, or he's beat me again in our daily race to the top of Union Deposit Road where we used to throw down our bikes and walk to the guard rail, with our lungs bursting and our T-shirts stuck to our backs with sweat, and stare across the valley at the railroad tracks cut into the mountainside waiting for the 4:05 freight train to go by.

He seems to sense how much he's hurt me and once again he looks sorry like he did in the bar, but he doesn't apologize.

He lights up his cigarette, takes a drag from it, and blows a frail stream of smoke into the thick black country night.

“There's nothing wrong with me getting laid now and then. I never use anyone,” he tells me.

“Depends on what you consider using someone. I have a feeling acid-washed Blondie in there feels used,” I say more to myself than to him.

“I never lie. Women are the ones who lie,” he responds, his voice turning unexpectedly harsh. “They're the ones who say they don't mind if it's just for one night, when actually they do mind. They think if they can get you to sleep with them just once, you're going to be under their spell for life, and they can make you do whatever they want. I'm not looking for a wife. I'm not even looking for a girlfriend. I have sex with women because it makes me feel good. And I don't have to justify myself to anybody. Least of all you. Why don't you go back to your date?”

“He's not my date. He's a client.”

“You don't have to make up a reason to be with him. You think I care about you hanging out with that guy?”

“She's back,” I announce before I can stop myself.

I feel a lump in my throat, and I swallow it quickly.

“Shannon,” I further explain. “She's here. She's sleeping in my guest room right now.”

“You're kidding. When did this happen?”

“She just showed up at my house today after I talked to you.”

“Holy shit. So what's she got to say for herself?”

“Not much. I didn't really push her. I wanted to give her some time.”

“What's her tie to this Kozlowski guy?”

“I still don't know. I didn't tell her about him, and I didn't tell him I know where she is.”

“Why not?”

“I'm not sure what's best for Shannon. I think she's in some kind of trouble, but I don't know what. I'm pretty sure she's lying to me about everything. And it turns out there's someone else here in town looking for her besides Kozlowski: a woman who's running around with Shannon's photo but knows her by a different name and is accusing her of something criminal.”

“For Christ's sake, Shae-Lynn.”

We've reached E.J.'s truck. He leans against the hood and smokes for a minute before he offers any more advice.

“You can't let Shannon jerk you around. Tell her what you know. See if her explanation makes sense. If not, get Clay involved.”

“Why are you against her?”

“I'm not against her. I just don't want her taking advantage of you.”

I can try and convince myself that Shannon never meant much to E.J., that to him she was just my pesky younger sister who I had to let tag along with me a lot since she didn't have a mom at home to watch her. For the most part, I think he regarded her as less interesting than a puppy and more burdensome than a shadow, but he understood she was as devoted to me as the first and as impossible to get rid of as the second, so he tolerated her presence.

Yet at the same time, I know he cared about her, too, in his way. He would have never dreamed of giving her a hug or calling her by her name instead of “midget,” but he built a toy box for her in junior high wood shop, and he used to sneak out of his own house on Christmas Eve after we were in bed and stand below our window with a string of sleigh bells pretending to be Santa's reindeer for her, and he was always available any time she had something that needed to be fixed, whether it was a flat tire on her bike or the mysterious inner workings of the Easy-Bake oven I found for her at the Goodwill Store for a dollar and fifty cents.

When she left she hurt him, too, even though he'd never admit it. He's entitled to his opinion of her, good or bad.

“She's a grown woman who hasn't wanted anything to do with you for almost twenty years,” he continues. “She's not your responsibility anymore. If she got herself into trouble, let her get herself out of trouble.”

“It's not that simple. She's pregnant. She's going to have a baby any day now.”

He shakes his head.

“So that's why she came back. For help with the baby.”