His strong hands cradle the ice beer like a mother with a newborn baby. He always likes to nurse a cold one after a brutal days work. Many things have gone misunderstood: woman, love, life, and God, but ever since he was a young child Francis understood the importance of a cold beer after work.
Papa used to sit at the rickety card table with beads of black sweat rolling off of his eyebrow onto his forearm. From his forearm it would cascade down the dusty skin and disappear. It was as if he reabsorbed his own sweat because his arm was thirsty. Or maybe it was the damned dust that sucked the life from anything it touched. Francis remembered his father vividly as he drank his first sip.
He remembered sitting at that old card table pretending that he was his father. Drinking water out of an empty glass Coca-Cola bottle he had saved from last Christmas. He looked across to Papa holding his bottle with one eye closed, trying to create a mirror image of his dad. Even Francis’s expression had been born of Papa’s. It looked pretty authentic now, even though 30 years ago it looked like a little boy pretending to be a man.
Now Francis finds himself at the kitchen table. The old card table had expired years ago. Since then it has been replaced by a soiled workbench that Francis asked his boss for at the mine. It might not look like a kitchen table, but it could sure as hell support up to 750 pounds of raw coal. Of course Francis had washed it thoroughly before he brought it into his kitchen, but everything on the mountain is stained with black dust.
Every part of Francis’s life had been taken away or tainted. How is it, he wondered, that he could have given life to such a beautiful daughter? How is it, he thought, that his only daughter could have ever stopped loving him? After Louise passed away, Hope had become so distant that Francis did not spend Christmas or Easter with her. It seemed as though Francis was to blame for his wife’s death; well at least in the eyes of Hope. He went to sleep with memories of the last 20 years dancing in his head, accompanied by the hiss from the cast iron stove burning wet wood.
His late wife, Louise, was a beautiful woman with a perfect likeness to his daughter. His wife had been a homemaker and a best friend for years; she used to make the holidays feel genuine to Francis. He smiled in his sleep when he dreamed of her. He played all of their memories in his unconscious mind: the first time he laid eyes on her, their first time making love, their wedding day, and the hospital bed that wiped out their life savings and claimed the one woman he had ever loved.
She fought a pathetic and short battle with cancer that lasted about a year and ended on a mountain hospital bed. He remembered being angry about not being able to bring flowers to her that spring. He had picked some Black-Eyed Susans in the field adjacent to their mining camp. That was the central theme flower from their wedding. He thought that if he could bring her back to a happy time that he could bring her back from the edge of darkness. The hospital was so clean, that they would not allow any flowers because the pollen could be dispersed. Francis was the only person in that hospital that paid for an operation using paper money. He could not understand how a few weeks in the hospital could equal fifteen years of backbreaking work, but he did not hesitate to pay.
Hope had just turned 16 years old. She was a bit too young to understand the finality of the situation, but she was plenty old to know that her mother was drying out—the glue that held their family together. Her body went from a healthy 140 pounds to 85 pounds in less than one year. It was that God-dammed town; the coal dust. Hope knew for sure that her mother had the black lung from the mining camp where they all lived and he worked. When the rain did not come, the dust got bad. The soot tainted everything beautiful and turned it old. When it touched the inside of Louise, a delicate blonde-haired creature, it destroyed her.
About the same time Louise had smiled goodbye, one of the teachers or students at Hope’s school must have brought her up to speed on her mother’s condition and inevitable death (probably in good faith). This knowledge translated into Hope’s hatred of Francis; he could not understand it. She began coming home late, after Francis was asleep. Following what seemed like a short while, Hope had left town.
The wakeup whistle from the mining camp pierced the cold Appalachian air accentuating the splitting migraine Francis had from not eating dinner. He had saved much of his money hoping to patch up things with Hope by buying a setting to make her a ruby ring for Christmas. Although he could not bring her mother back, he could try to make things better now.
Francis did not identify with the reasoning behind his daughter’s anger. He never was able to understand women, and despite all of his efforts, he could not feel the necessary emotions. He was never taught sensitivity during his childhood. Among the lessons learned from his father were never to cheat on one’s wife, never cry, and never let a cold beer get warm. His wife Louise had lost the battle against lung cancer, and Francis had not only lost her, but his daughter as well. The true paste of the family was always Louise he thought. She organized, she cleaned, she cooked meals; these were all important things he thought. In addition to her functionality, she was like sunshine that illuminated his dim world. He missed her, the only woman whom he had ever loved.
He was already nearly a mile under the earth, while his thoughts were back in the camp. The only reason he woke up from his dream like fantasy state was the intense heat of his pneumatic cutter burning his hand. He took his water jug and poured it over his charred hand. The filthy water soiled the ground like a plague. Anything young that went into that mine came out old.
It was nearly the end of the day as the distant sound of the whistle meant a cold beer waited at the camp for Francis. As he rounded the last corner to his trailer he noticed a fair skinned woman in his doorway. Her blond hair was such a stark contrast to the dull trailer that she seemed to have been a mirage. She turned briskly and looked toward Francis as she heard his footsteps in the dirt. She looked down, as if the sight of him deflated her confidence. She nearly whispered, “Hello Pa’.”
Francis was shocked by the surprise visit by his daughter Hope. He did not know why she had come. All he knew at that moment was that he wanted her to stay. He struggled to say anything, knowing that anything he said was likely to make her leave. His words must have always been repulsive to a beautiful creature like her.
“Yerlo’ Hope”, he bleated.
He spoke like a true hillbilly who just emerged from a mineshaft. When he spoke, coal dust came off of his lips. She must have saw every wrinkle and line on his face, enhanced by the filth that was worn into his skin, he thought.
Francis was filled with optimism when he remembered the ring he would make for her. He had never been able to afford much by the way of gifts for Christmas, not like the families in story books that Louise had filled Hope’s head with when she was a girl. He would finally have something to give her that was worthy of her. It brought a smile to his face when he thought of the ruby ring. He had dreamed about giving it to her for Christmas.
“How’s my most beautiful daughtr’ doin’?” he followed. “Before ya’ answer, I reckon’ I gota’ tell ya’ somthin’.”
“Daddy, I’m your only daughter, and I came back for Christmas, seein’ how you’re all alone and all.”
She looked and sounded just like Louise. The sight and the prospect of having his daughter back in his life flushed his emotions. His face turned a garnet red color beneath the dust. He could not help but to break out in tears when she spoke. He had not shed a tear since the age of ten. The tears streamed down and he collapsed to his knees. The salty water carved brooks on his face that pooled at the corners of his rusty lips. It tasted like the day his father made him a man.
Hope had grown up as well. She was now a proud woman. Her childish loathing had been replaced with empathy. The concerned look on her face spoke volumes about her newfound respect for her father. Her body relaxed and her face lit up.
“I have a surprise for you Pa’”, she said with excitement.
He can see the diamond ring on her finger. It resembles the one he keeps on a chain tied around his neck. He wonders to whom she is married. This day is one Francis will never forget.
“Pa’, I’m married to a wonderful man. You have a beautiful granddaughter. I’m sorry I did not come back for so long. You are spending Christmas with us.” Hope continued, “I just thought that our first Christmas together as a family should be here.”
She calls her husband, Joseph who carries Francis’ tiny granddaughter to him. Francis washes his hands and arms in a bucket of rainwater sitting to the side of his trailer. He emerges clean, his red face with no tint. He pauses with pride when he sees his own reflection in the aluminum trailer door with his daughter behind him. He wishes only that his father could see the happiness he now knows.
The sky opens as snow flurries descend over the tiny mountain town. The color white powders the trees and comforts the countryside. As the trailer melts into the wondrous new landscape and the wood burning stove whispers its warmth, a family nestles together sharing memories.
