potato salad. For heaven’s sake, keep me company…”
The kitchen was no less chaotic than the rest of the comfortable house. Two high school boys with their father’s jowls were stomping in the back door, peeking at sealed containers on the crowded counters as they sauntered through. A woman with stern features and a smile of pure sunshine started a second conversation with Anne as Carla continued chattering. Anne caught her name-Alice. Carla placed some deviled eggs in front of her, to be transferred to a serving plate, and tied an apron around her waist. They had shouted down her earlier offers to help, but this just wasn’t the kind of household where one could sit on the sidelines and worry about being shy.
Gradually, Anne sorted out what was happening. When Reed’s mine was open, he and Carla celebrated Thursdays. The people in the other rooms were their kids and neighbors, miners, people who worked in the town. Two were mining professors from Spokane; another was a doctor. They all seemed to get together regularly once a week. Each guest brought a dish to pass and a six-pack of beer.
“Usually the beer is warm, since my fridge’ll only hold so much,” Carla admitted. She leveled a worried stare at Anne. “You like the punch? It’s a mixture of crushed apples and cherries. I made it myself in the fall, but it doesn’t turn out the same way every year.”
“It’s delicious,” Anne said truthfully. The drink was tangy and cool; her throat was parched, and she’d drunk two glasses already.
Dinner was set out haphazardly on the kitchen table, to be collected in equally haphazard fashion and eaten wherever one could find a seat. The menu was simple: ham, potato salad, bright red Jell-O, sweet potatoes in a hickory-nut sauce, chestnut bread. Anne caught a glimpse of Jake an hour later, when he came in to get a plate- and, perhaps, to check up on her. His palm made a circle at the small of her back. “Doing okay?”
“Absolutely fine.” Her smile was meant to tell him she didn’t need taking care of. She’d seen he was engrossed in a nonstop conversation with one of the mining professors and a burly man she assumed was a miner.
“Anne?”
She glanced up from filling her plate.
“Watch the punch, honey.”
She glanced at the table and noticed that the punch bowl was almost empty and that her hostess had her hands full. When she’d found the pitcher in the refrigerator and refilled the bowl, Anne meant to sit next to Jake, but Reed claimed her, steering her to a seat next to him in the already crowded living room.
“He’ll talk your ear off,” Carla warned Anne. “When you’ve had enough, just call out for Jake.”
“We’re going to talk about our divorce,” Reed informed his wife.
“Yeah, yeah. You’ve been promising me that for eighteen years.” Carla handed her husband her plate and went to retrieve a sprawling six-year-old from the top of the bookcase. Carla then reclaimed her own dinner and wandered among guests, a bright red bird with ceaseless energy.
“I love that woman,” Reed informed Anne.
Anne chuckled as she speared a forkful of food. “Have you two always lived here?”
“Our families have been here four generations. Always the silver… Once it gets in your blood, it’s damn hard to get it out.” He gestured in Jake’s general direction. “He’s the exception to the rule. Most times we’re friendly people here, but to have someone new arrive and try to settle down as one of us…” He shook his head. “Just doesn’t happen. He’s nothing like the rest of us, but he still fits in, if you get my meaning. You going to marry him?”
“Mmm,” Anne said expressively-savoring the taste of the ham.
Reed nodded to his eldest son, who filled Anne’s glass yet another time with Carla’s delightful punch. The room grew increasingly warm; Anne grew increasingly thirsty. Talk finally turned to mining. Anne had the feeling that was inevitable. She settled back next to her host once she’d finished her dinner.
This mine was open; that one just closed; Harvey had been hurt; there had been an explosion and a fire… Anne listened, feeling like a foreigner trying to absorb the flavor of their lives. The men lived with real danger day by day in the mines. There was always the chance that a mine would close when the economy shifted or a vein ran out. No one ever considered leaving, though. Even Harvey, who’d been hurt, would stay in the mining community; they would care for him until he was well enough to get a job. These people cared for their own, and had for generations. Their loyalty to one another touched her heart.
Reed kept reaching over to pat her knee.
“You sure can hold your wine, can’t you, sweetheart?” Reed patted her knee yet another time. “I respect a woman who can hold her liquor.”
“Me, too,” Anne answered blankly, wondering what on earth he was talking about. She hadn’t drunk anything but cherry punch…but even as a sudden, alarming thought registered, Reed’s eldest son was in front of her again, filling her glass to the brim and sending her a twinkling grin. She made a hurried attempt to count exactly how many times she’d seen that twinkling grin…when a hiccup erupted from her throat. Anne turned tomato-red.
“I should have known any woman of Jake’s could drink ’em under the table,” Reed roared in approval.
“Enough of this mining talk. Music, everybody. You have any favorite songs, darlin’?”
“Thousands,” Anne agreed brightly. She loved music. From across the room, Jake’s pewter-colored eyes suddenly came into focus. He looked distressed. Distressed? She waved a vague reassurance in his direction.
“Rafe and Benjy!” Two men got up to take their fiddles from their cases, with laughter and clapping approval from the rest. “Stand up, honey,” Reed ordered her.
Anne obediently stood, for the first time in two hours. Jake’s face went out of focus, but that really didn’t matter. Everyone was laughing. Laughing and happy. The fiddlers’ bows were dancing lightly over the strings.
“You first, darlin’. What do you want to sing?” Reed asked her.
The question made no sense. Anne cleared her throat. “Not sure I understand,” she admitted happily.
“We play Round the Horn. All of us get a chance to sing our favorite tune. Doesn’t matter what kind of music you like-anything goes. Here, honey.” Reed handed her another full glass of Carla’s delightfully refreshing cherry punch.
Jake was suddenly, miraculously by her side, apparently having traveled at the speed of light. He intercepted the glass. Anne looked at him in surprise, took her punch back and leaned contentedly against his shoulder. “Jake wants to sing first,” she told Reed, and took another sip of the homemade nectar. Was she really going to have to sing in front of all these people? Normally, the thought would have struck an appalling note of panic in her. Regardless, she was certainly in a mood to hear everyone else. Especially Jake. He was handsome as the very devil, an oddly watchful spark in his eyes for Anne as he took up the challenge, clearly having been through this before.
Leaning back against the edge of the couch, he took Anne with him; an iron hand crept around her waist. Which was nice, because her knees suddenly felt like Jell-O, and being locked between his thighs was not unpleasant. She took just one more sip from her glass before he started to sing. She seemed to have been dying of thirst all evening. In the meantime, Jake’s first song fell flat. “Violets for Her Furs,” an old jazz melody. It failed because no one else could conceivably know the connotation but Anne, and secondly because Jake, sad but true, was tone-deaf. His second song enjoyed a better reception.
It was “She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain When She Comes,” except that Jake’s verse had nothing to do with chicken ’n’ dumplings. “She’ll be teasing up a tempest when she comes” was how it started-and it deteriorated drastically from there.
These people liked their songs ribald. Lord, they went crazy, stomping their feet and laughing. They were really a hard-drinking bunch, Anne thought vaguely, although Jake, behind her, was still nursing the beer he’d started out with. The man to the left of Jake sang a mountain tune about a nubile young lass. The lyrics turned his wife’s ears red; but then, she certainly had a song to match his for lewdness. Carla, the sweet homemaker, came up with a Western melody about cowboys and what they did on lonely nights. As each person took a turn, the tunes grew even lustier. The fiddles had everyone’s feet stomping.
One by one, around the circle of the room, all of the guests offered songs. Anne’s cheeks were flushed from laughter and heat when Reed thumped her shoulder. “Your turn, darlin’.”
With her limbs sheer liquid, Anne was not about to spoil the party. But what song did she know of that nature?
