paint, a bad blue that lodged in your eye after looking too long. I found out why Hobart’d nodded when I’d told him fifteen, turned out he was paying me under
minimum because, he said, I wasn’t yet sixteen. “That cheap bastard,” Jimmy Make would say. “I’m gonna report him.” But he wouldn’t.We needed even that little bit of money too bad. The gas took off most of the paint on my skin, but then I couldn’t get rid of the gas, and how much would it take on you to catch fire? Hard to tell. I painted every day in the same cutoff white jeans, in one of two paint-ruint T-shirts I handwashed every night to get out the sweat. I wore those paper caps that came with the paint, but my hair was so used to falling forward to cover my face it was always dragging in the cans and matting up blue. And then, more gasoline.The miners drove nice trucks with out-of-state tags—Illinois, Wyoming, Indiana, Kentucky—and I learned they worked twelve-hour shifts running heavy equipment unless the company wanted them to work longer, and then they did. Few were union, so they had no choice. Besides working, they couldn’t do much but eat, shower, and sleep, but still, to get from work to bed, bed to work, they had to climb the wooden stairs, walk the porches that ran around the place. They had to pass me.
Squatting in my paint clothes, a cloud of gasoline and sweat, drawing my brush or roller back and forth, back and forth, I’d feel the steps shake as they came my way. I’d feel the floor tremble. I’d turn away on my knees, draw up closer to the wall, and stare at my brush, it flicking. Hump my shoulders, toss my hair forward to screen my face. But there was no way to keep their eyes off me. Just them passing at my back put a bad heat in my skin, and then it was not just the paint, the gas, and Hobart I had to suffer, it was being looked at by strange men, too. Although, it is true, they said little to me. Except the one who asked, “You got a sister?” The fat one who teased me for hiding my face. And the youngest one, a skinny boy, who drove a big Ford pickup with Ohio plates.
Then my best friend Sharon started going away from me. We’d been friends since second grade, two of the few girls from then still
around. I had helped her through the grades, let her copy off me. She lived not far from Hobart’s in one of the made-over company houses as you headed out of town, and although she never ate lunch because she was trying to lose weight, she’d sit with me when I did. While I was made of boards, Sharon, she was made of bubbles. She wasn’t fat yet, no, she was what they liked to look at, thigh-squeezing shorts, her chest lunging against last summer’s tops, but she’d be fat soon, Sharon knew. Despite the copying, Sharon was what you’d call a good person, always worried about hurting someone’s feelings, went twice a week to church, struggled over the right thing to do. For the last six months, she’d been going with Donnie, five years older than us, and since Donnie, she’d closed shut to me in places. It was already familiar to me, how a girl’d get with a boy like that. Places you could no longer go with her even when she’d talk about the boy nine-tenths of the time. But Sharon had never gone away on me like that, and now that she did, it made me wonder more than it made me mad. I had been a lot of places, but these closed places were one place I hadn’t yet seen. And at times, I’d think on it. Donnie. He didn’t look like much to me. Then I’d think about Lace and Jimmy.
For a long time, I never saw that Ohio boy clean. I only saw him in the mornings when he was coming off night shift, so pale-blown with dust I couldn’t even tell the color of his hair. By the time he went back in the evenings, I was gone. In the mornings, I’d feel his eyes on me, like I did the others’ eyes, but one time, with him, I turned and looked back. Pale-blown, he was, no black on him. A different kind of miner.
minimum because, he said, I wasn’t yet sixteen. “That cheap bastard,” Jimmy Make would say. “I’m gonna report him.” But he wouldn’t.We needed even that little bit of money too bad. The gas took off most of the paint on my skin, but then I couldn’t get rid of the gas, and how much would it take on you to catch fire? Hard to tell. I painted every day in the same cutoff white jeans, in one of two paint-ruint T-shirts I handwashed every night to get out the sweat. I wore those paper caps that came with the paint, but my hair was so used to falling forward to cover my face it was always dragging in the cans and matting up blue. And then, more gasoline.The miners drove nice trucks with out-of-state tags—Illinois, Wyoming, Indiana, Kentucky—and I learned they worked twelve-hour shifts running heavy equipment unless the company wanted them to work longer, and then they did. Few were union, so they had no choice. Besides working, they couldn’t do much but eat, shower, and sleep, but still, to get from work to bed, bed to work, they had to climb the wooden stairs, walk the porches that ran around the place. They had to pass me.
Squatting in my paint clothes, a cloud of gasoline and sweat, drawing my brush or roller back and forth, back and forth, I’d feel the steps shake as they came my way. I’d feel the floor tremble. I’d turn away on my knees, draw up closer to the wall, and stare at my brush, it flicking. Hump my shoulders, toss my hair forward to screen my face. But there was no way to keep their eyes off me. Just them passing at my back put a bad heat in my skin, and then it was not just the paint, the gas, and Hobart I had to suffer, it was being looked at by strange men, too. Although, it is true, they said little to me. Except the one who asked, “You got a sister?” The fat one who teased me for hiding my face. And the youngest one, a skinny boy, who drove a big Ford pickup with Ohio plates.
Then my best friend Sharon started going away from me. We’d been friends since second grade, two of the few girls from then still
around. I had helped her through the grades, let her copy off me. She lived not far from Hobart’s in one of the made-over company houses as you headed out of town, and although she never ate lunch because she was trying to lose weight, she’d sit with me when I did. While I was made of boards, Sharon, she was made of bubbles. She wasn’t fat yet, no, she was what they liked to look at, thigh-squeezing shorts, her chest lunging against last summer’s tops, but she’d be fat soon, Sharon knew. Despite the copying, Sharon was what you’d call a good person, always worried about hurting someone’s feelings, went twice a week to church, struggled over the right thing to do. For the last six months, she’d been going with Donnie, five years older than us, and since Donnie, she’d closed shut to me in places. It was already familiar to me, how a girl’d get with a boy like that. Places you could no longer go with her even when she’d talk about the boy nine-tenths of the time. But Sharon had never gone away on me like that, and now that she did, it made me wonder more than it made me mad. I had been a lot of places, but these closed places were one place I hadn’t yet seen. And at times, I’d think on it. Donnie. He didn’t look like much to me. Then I’d think about Lace and Jimmy.
For a long time, I never saw that Ohio boy clean. I only saw him in the mornings when he was coming off night shift, so pale-blown with dust I couldn’t even tell the color of his hair. By the time he went back in the evenings, I was gone. In the mornings, I’d feel his eyes on me, like I did the others’ eyes, but one time, with him, I turned and looked back. Pale-blown, he was, no black on him. A different kind of miner.
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