Coal Town, 1982      

by Margaret Coombs
                                                                                   

I lived in the basement of a house on a ridge, a newcomer from another landscape. From my open door I saw rows of gray and green asphalt rooftops descend to a narrow valley where a transmission line shadowed a swing set. I had come from a dry, flat place of red clay roofs and Cyprus trees. Although I feared my new home might be lonely, the new geography stirred me. The showy displays of wealth that I encountered in Texas were gone; this city resembled the factory town where I grew up.     

Soon after my arrival, I saw four men return home from the mines, two in the back of a decrepit car, one riding shot gun, their faces covered in coal dust except around the eyes. I thought they wore black masks. Laid off, sent home, one said to me. They didn’t even let us shower off.

My second week there, the younger of his two boys greeted me on the street. The older one punched his arm. Are you going to talk to the señorita? The foreign word floated over the sidewalk, retrieved a memory of my fourth-grade Spanish class, offered me a tenuous connection to the neighborhood.   

Their mom disappeared, so we moved here from the coal fields, their dad told me later. I was fresh out of grad school, confused. I just stood there repeating, “What? What do you mean?” until he walked away.

That fall the boys visited me a few times on Saturday mornings. They tiptoed into my cinder block living room, peered at my pile of New Yorkers, politely refused the healthy snacks I offered. They bore no visible mark of tragedy. The younger one asked me, Why did you move here?  I thought—to escape—but answered Because I found a job here.  

One night I drank vodka shots with a man I trusted: the landlord. I had been feeling hopeful, befriended, remembered too late not to assume the best in others without an accumulation of evidence. He told me that my drunkenness was consent. I felt degraded, prayed that the boys wouldn’t find out. Unmarried, I was an unguarded mine, an unclaimed resource. That was why I wedged a kitchen chair under the outside doorknob at night. Delma from my previous life taught me that. I was grateful to have met someone with such grit. Some nights all three doors in that shotgun place had chairs tipped under their handles and I still couldn’t sleep, wondering how long the structure would hold if pressed.

For groceries, I slogged through wet tongues of snow, a mile there, a mile back, straining my arms with a brown paper sack loaded with a week’s worth of food. There was a house I liked on that route. Someone adorned its picture window with paper cut-outs and finger paintings. My mother had taped up my sister’s art like that in our childhood home a thousand miles away and two decades earlier. I felt love flow from the drawings like a lighthouse beam. I sent back my love and thanks to that unknown family, prayed for their wellbeing.  

One spring day the boys and their dad offered to weed whack my steep back yard. They quoted me such a small fee I had to agree, though it was not my responsibility. My landlord called now and then; he wanted to marry me. He decided we’d have two kids who would be all excitement and wide eyes at Christmas. I declined his proposal three times. The next time he called me a bitch. Why you little bitch, in a thick, clumsy voice. Reluctantly, I realized it was time for me to marry. I was tired of fortifying my defenses, the ongoing battle to protect my privacy, the struggle for dignity.   

One summer day I rented a small car and drove due south on the turnpike to a wood-paneled library on a sunny ridge. White pines grew next to the interstate, reminded me of my quiet mother. Her cool, soft hands. I swear they were like a tenderness that came smelling of rain. I asked the trees for luck, and they swayed toward me in a quick burst of wind.

One of the librarians offered to show me around campus. He was awkward, funny, red-headed, midwestern. His hometown neighbored the city where my favorite brother lived. When I considered this stranger’s face I thought—I could marry you. We’d get along fine. In a week or two, I received a job offer.

I didn’t seek out the boys to say I was leaving. It never occurred to me that anyone in the city of my unhappiness might have wanted to tell me goodbye. But word got around. While I was packing, the older one stopped by. I knew you wouldn’t stay.


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Margaret Coombs spends her days seeking the consolations of literature and finding herself richly rewarded. She lives in a waterfront city on an inland sea. Last year she changed her writing name to her birth name to re-connect with her former self, a young woman who dreamed in poetry. The Joy of Their Holiness by Peggy Turnbull was her first chapbook.