Put My Little Shoes Away

The explosion at Goad Mine happened at the moment I learned Nat Sawyer went

missing.

A few miles east of Regency Shopping Strip, the mournful whine of the siren

permeated my eardrums as Kenny Lurch, the owner and general manager of Lurch Thrift,

informed me that the 10-year-old boy had vanished – and that he’d last been seen among

the stained blouses, cracked one-dollar VHS tapes, and torn floral lampshades that

landscaped Kenny’s store.

“Virgil, you seen this kid around?” Kenny thrust a low-res printout of a school

picture in my face, with pixels big as Legos. I looked up from stuffing my wallet and

oversized LURCH THRIFT t-shirt uniform into my secondhand messenger bag for the

two-mile walk back home.

“Yeah. He was in here earlier, around ten, maybe.”

“So he was in here? How long?”

“Not very.” I shrugged into my windbreaker, an employee-discount score from a

couple months back, embroidered with the name of some 1990s track star hotshot from

Paintsville High School over in Johnson County.

Kenny grimaced and spit into his mug. “Well, he’s gone. Been missing at least

eight hours. Didn’t come home for lunch or dinner, I guess, so Mom snapped and called

the police department. Said it’s not like him to stay out long, thinks someone swiped him.

Sheriff Dodds say it’s a little too early to file any missing person reports, but the mother

swore it ain’t like her kid to disappear like he done.”

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Like a dying man moaning in pain, the wail of an alarm rose sluggishly over the

rooftops of the coal company housing, over the trailers, the rusted, forgotten pickups of

Bass. Anyone who’d lived in Kitching County knew that sound meant someone was

buried under three-thousand tons of coal, or someone had almost been, and Tabernacle

Baptist on Engels Street might’ve gained a new god-fearing member in its congregation.

I vaguely remembered the lump that would rise into my throat when I used to hear

that siren, before my father Les had been fired by Pinnacle Power and ended up where

he’d been for the past two months: glued to the couch, a can of beer in one hand and a

little orange cylinder of Vicodin in the other, inhaling cheap whiskey and hydrocodone

like he used to inhale coal dust in the sulfuric bowels of Goad Mine.

Like many dwellers of Bass had learned to do (our best defense was pretending

the threat wasn’t there), Kenny ignored the siren and snapped the picture around in my

face. Nat Sawyer’s smiling buck-toothed grin and freckle-spattered cheeks crinkled and

rumpled before my eyes.

I said, “huh?”

“I asked if he talked to you.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I kicked him out, actually. Not long after he came in.”

Kenny exerted a sigh heavy with frustration and traces of a deli sub from

Goldsmith’s. Now this?

“Chrissakes, Virgil, you let a little kid leave the store alone? You didn’t think for

a second that the goddamn pervert store was twenty feet away and some baby-raping

freak would drag him into his semi and drive off?” Flecks of spit leapt from his mouth as

his Skoal-stained teeth hovered uncomfortably close to the tip of my nose. It was bad

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enough for business that Lurch Thrift occupied the same shopping strip as Linxy’s Adult

Emporium and the ever-crusty Shine Motel, both popular haunts for truckers who wanted

to get off before roaring west to St. Louis. Shoot-a-load, haul-a-load, Kenny had put it

once. And now this?

Though I knew no explanation would be sufficient, I feebly offered, my stomach

constricting, “he wasn’t alone when he left.”

It had been a slow Saturday, which wasn’t saying much for Lurch Thrift. The

usual odor of old shoes and peeling vinyl handbags hung in the air, and my coworker

Dreema had stepped out back for one of her 30 cigarette breaks of the day. I sat at the

register and plinked at my mandolin, the one with the worn fingerboard that’d been

dumped in the Donations bin months ago, which Kenny agreed I could have in exchange

for a week’s pay (“biggest mistake I ever made – now you won’t put the damn thing

down”).

The tin doorbell tinkled as a rag-tag gaggle of preteen boys stumbled in, drunk off

pissy beer stolen from someone’s father’s Igloo cooler. Five of Kitching County’s Finest.

I pegged the gawkiest of the pack as a member of the Morrow Clan; notorious for their

overbites and penchant for tomfoolery, the family’d been living in Mad Calf Holler for

generations. Most of the Morrow men earned a few dollars here and there, selling moss

and bloodroot they collected in the woods near their shanty compound off of Fletcher

Road. By-and-large, they relied on welfare, like everyone else in Bass – though it was

somehow unanimously agreed upon that the Morrows were far less deserving of

government aid than the rest of us.

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Three of the boys were typical redneck stock, clad in cheap camouflage hoodies

and mud-caked sneakers, tracking clods of dirt all over the floor I’d just swept. The fifth

boy was the youngest, seemed sober and considerably cleaner – hair combed with no

visible dandruff, hands shoved into the pockets of his crisp jeans, which didn’t appear to

be plucked from the clearance bin at Wal-Mart like everyone else’s.

With scrunched, blackhead-ridden noses, they stood around surveying the place

with adult airs of authority, like city yuppies fixing to rent an apartment. My hackles

went up when I noticed that they seemed to be completely disinterested in anything the

store had to offer – which, I admit, wasn’t much.

“Y’all need something?” I put on my best Not Playing Games voice, attempting a

tone that translated to: if you’re not going to buy anything then get the hell out.

The bulkiest boy snidely looked me up and down from behind the counter and

snorted, the snot rattling in his nose like a milkshake being sucked up through a straw.

“You a boy or a girl?” He sneered, noting my shoulder-length hair. His chums

chuckled around him, save for the youngest, who stared down at the toes of his shiny

sneakers.

“I think it’s a guy,” one of the others chimed in, pointing at my peeling plastic

nametag that announced VIRGIL in all-capital Comic Sans. “But it’s prolly a faggot.”

“You a faggot? My daddy say faggots with long hair’re worse than nigras.” His

beady blue eyes narrowed with drunken ignorance.

“Worse than nigras?” One of the boys asked.

“If’n they got long hair.”

“My dad has long hair!” The Morrow boy piped up.

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“Mullets don’t count, dumbass.”

I brushed my fingertips against the bolt action centerfire Kenny kept under the

counter. “I think you all better leave before we have some real trouble.”

“Oh yeah? Fuck’re you gonna do, faggot? Force us to leave?”

“Maybe.”

“Who’s this little cocksucker think he is?”

I glanced toward the locked door of Kenny’s office, wishing he were around to

crack skulls so I wouldn’t have to bother. But he divided his time between Lurch Thrift

and losing pool games at Warwinsky’s on Grint Road, and Dreema was still outside

adding her own share of pollution to the coal-smeared sky. I was left to face the idiots

alone.

Then the big one blurted out, “wait! I know who you are. Virgil Pencey, ain’t

you? Your mama took a switchblade to your throat because she thought you were

possessed by the devil. My daddy told me about you. No wonder you’re such a fuckin’

freak.”

My hand flew up to the thick, ropelike scar that snaked across my throat, hideous

and discolored like an axe-wound in a tree trunk. The boy laughed and went on.

“You gonna slice my throat now? Bet you’re a psycho, just like that crazy-ass

bitch. You can get sent to the shithouse in Lexington just like ‘er.”

Without another second of thought, I whipped out the rifle and pointed it right in

his cratered face.

“Get out. All of you.”

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He stared down the barrel of the gun and grinned at me, his teeth already corroded

from drinking Mountain Dew since he was an infant.

“Let’s go, Dirk,” the youngest boy chimed in quietly. Nobody acknowledged him.

“Think I won’t?” I said. “I’m not afraid to join her there.”

Snickering, Dirk turned away and motioned for his pack to move on. They

elbowed each other in the ribs and kicked over a rack of clearance neckties before

shoving off. The youngest boy lingered in the doorway, looking back at me, then at the

mess that littered the floor.

“I got it.” He kneeled down and began picking up the ties, patterned with tacky

cartoon images and obsolete designs.

I lowered the gun and glowered at him. “No, I got it. You can just get the hell

out.”

Standing, he kept his eyes on the ground and rubbed the back of his neck. “I know

they ain’t nice sometimes.”

“Then why do you hang out with them?”

He shrugged, fingered the seam of his vivid blue Levi’s. “They’re my friends.”

“You got shit taste in friends, kid.” I laid the rifle to rest under the counter and

turned back to my mandolin as he silently stepped out, his exit punctuated by the tink of

the bell.

Kenny massaged his leathery brow with his fingertips as I recounted the

morning’s events.

“You know that rifle ain’t even loaded, right?”

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“Guess I do now.”

He shook his head. “Why didn’t you tell me about this after it happened?”

“Figured it was over and done with.” Drunken juvenile assholes starting trouble

was not an unusual occurrence around Bass. I expected him to announce that I was fired,

but he merely sighed and turned towards the door.

“I need a smoke. Sheriff Dodds is talking to the owner of the pervert store over

yonder.” He gestured in the direction of Linxy’s. “Wait till he comes here, in case he has

anything to ask you. Then you can go home.”

Dreema had silently approached as I spoke to Kenny. Her arrival was announced

only by the heavy smell of Marlboros that clung to everything she wore. Slinging her

purse over her frail shoulder, she regarded me with her vacant, sunken grey eyes,

moistened her yellowed lips. “I been straightening up the stock room. Someone gone

missing?”

“A ten-year-old boy. He was in here earlier today. Kenny says they think he was

kidnapped.”

She furrowed her brown and shook her head solemnly. I studied her face,

expecting her to say something. Instead, she brushed by me in her usual ghostly manner,

floated through the door and into the parking lot. Reverend Vance blustered in from

Golgotha Trinity Baptist down the strip, face flushed like a bloated tomato.

“We’re closed,” I said mechanically.

“Nobody was hurt!” he bellowed, leaping up and down, his tie slapping his belly

with each jump. “Praise the Lord Almighty! Not a soul!”

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It took me a moment to realize he was talking about the mine. Before I had time

to answer, he galloped back through the door as quickly as he came, off to spread the

jubilation around Regency Strip.

Kenny stepped back in, this time with Sheriff Dodds.

“Jesus, Virgil, I thought that boy looked familiar. Got any idea who he was?”

My throat tightened. “Who?”

“Nat Sawyer. Son of Dick Sawyer.”

Everyone in Bass knew the name – Dick Sawyer was the regional manager of

Pinnacle Power, the richest man in Kitching County. That wasn’t saying much, but it did

mean his kids were among the few in town who didn’t look like they needed a good

thorough scouring. His neat two-story brick house sat on a hill that provided a clear view

of Goad Mine, which meant every union man in the county wanted him rode out on a rail.

“You the one who let the kid get kidnapped?” Sheriff Dodds wedged his thumbs

into his belt loops, made no secret of scrutinizing my round glasses and chipped black

nail polish.

“I asked him to leave the store because he was with a group of boys who were

giving me a hard time.”

“Your name?”

“Virgil Pencey.”

“Your father Les Pencey?”

“Yes.”

“He worked for Dick, no?” Sheriff Dodds asked.

“Seems like you know well enough,” I said.

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“Fired because of a pill addiction, if I recall correctly. Pretty messy situation.”

“You don’t need to remind me of my own family history.”

“Watch that attitude. He still unemployed?”

“Still unemployed,” I replied contemptuously.

His beady black eyes gleamed as he picked up the scent of fresh gossip. “You

sure you didn’t know who that boy was?”

“You saying I let this happen for revenge?”

“I ain’t saying anything. But it all fits together a little too well. Don’t you think?”

“Even if I had known who he was, it’s not like I knew he would get kidnapped.” I

slung the strap of my bag across my chest “Besides, it’s been eight hours. It’s a little

early to assume kidnapping, don’t you think? Excuse me.” I started around him toward

the door, but he made sure to drop one more line before letting me through.

“Just be sure to let me know if you think of anything else. That’d be a lotta guilt

to bear in silence, boy.”

I’d shrugged off the implications before I even left the store. Sheriff Dodds was

more full of shit than a septic tank the size of Kentucky, and everyone knew it. In a

county where few scandals occurred, he was fond of creating sensation where there was

none – he alternated between shoving post-expiration-date-discount Krispy Kremes from

the Kroger down his gullet and rooting around in everyone else’s business. As for me, I

was more bothered that a boy had been kidnapped on my watch; if I’d let Nat stop and

pick up those ties instead of sending him off, maybe one of his asshole friends would’ve

been swiped instead. Or maybe nobody would have. Regardless, I had to do what I had to

do – it wasn’t worth dwelling on. But I knew I would.

9

Les was sprawled in his liquor-stained recliner when I came home, deep in a

substance-induced slumber. Madsy sat on the couch, her chubby legs crossed Indian-

style, throwing cheese balls at Les’s gaping mouth and giggling at the results.

“Stop it,” I warned. “You’ll make him choke. You eat dinner yet?”

“This is my dinner.” She plunged a plump hand into the bag and drew out a

fistful of cheese balls. I smiled as she tossed one my way. It missed and hit the only

picture frame we kept in the living room, of Les and Mom, me, and Madsy as a baby,

riding the ferris wheel at the annual VFD carnival. We seemed happy enough, even

though Les was drunk when the photo was taken and Mom was taken to Lexington six

months later.

“You know a Nat Sawyer?” I asked her. “I think he’s your age.”

She nodded eagerly. “Nice boy, he is. He’s in Ms. Adkins’ class with me. Tells

me he likes my paintings. Yelled at some boys who called me fat during recess. Why

d’you ask? Don’t his daddy own the mine?”

I let my bag slide to the floor and headed to my room.

When, as Reverend Vance had preached, no one had been injured at the mine,

attentions turned quickly to the ensuing search and investigation of Nat’s disappearance.

Those eight hours had turned into eight days, then sixteen, then twenty-three. A vocal

few from the union maintained that, while tragic, Ol Dick got what was coming to him –

Nat was kidnapped because the Lord was furious with Sawyer’s perceived exploitation of

the miners.

10

Through a certain someone, a couple others had heard about my own role in the

situation, and the revenge theory lived a little longer than I would’ve liked it to: “That

Pencey boy knew’t he was doin’,” some said between bites of T.V. dinners and puffs of

unfiltered Winstons. “Sawyer fired ‘is daddy, so ‘e let Sawyer’s son get taken.” I’d hoped

that even the people of Bass weren’t dumb enough to believe that for too long. Still, it

meant the Pencey name had taken its second tour around town; everyone sure got a kick

out of Lori Pencey Goes Batty And Slices Son’s Throat; that wasn’t something that

happened often, even in Eastern Kentucky. Les Pencey Sacked From Pinnacle Power For

Being Deadbeat was less reported on – near everyone in Bass went about their days in a

pharmaceutical haze, so nobody was in any damn position to comment on that. Still, the

revenge rumor didn’t die before it gave me its fair share of grief.

Heading into work Wednesday afternoon, I kept my hair in my face, my scrawny

shoulders folded inward, away from the damp high-altitude chill and the sooty wind that

kicked up from the mine.

“Virgil,” a metallic, grating voice called from across the parking lot.

Instinctively, I looked up from the toes of my tired Converse. Standing by the dumpster

were Mindy Newton, one of six eleventh graders over eighteen years old, and Craig

Jacks, her boyfriend of six years. Craig had dropped out of Kitching County Consolidated

High School ages ago, but his presence persisted – the slate-grey skies over Bass were an

impermeable layer of coal dust and fog that sealed you within the town boundaries for

good.

Mindy elbowed Craig in the side. “Told you it was ‘im.” I could see her nipples

through the clingy coral-pink tank top she wore, like she’d dropped two peanut M&Ms

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down her shirt. Craig watched me over her shoulder, his prune-like pockmarked face

twisting into a sneer.

I crossed my arms tightly over my chest. “What?”

“We just wanted to see what a freak looks like.” She laughed huskily. I turned

away. Walking the remaining twenty feet up to the door of Lurch Thrift felt like crossing

the goddamn Cumberland Gap itself.

On the counter by the register, a pile of Hylo Brown records sat in disarray, their

flimsy covers peeling and fuzzy at the edges. Kenny knew I was the only person who’d

have any use for them. I ran my fingertips over the once-glossy lettering, slid the LP

gently into my hand and put it on the record player. Wearing the same faded button-down

he’d had on for the past three days, Kenny emerged from behind a rickety metal shelf of

stuffed animals, their fur nappy and clumped like an unwashed child’s hair.

“New developments about that kid, I hear. They think it might’ve been a guy in

Hooper County,” he said.

Dreema, who had been hanging blouses in the women’s clothing section, stopped

to listen.

“Where’d they get that from?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Guess they’re investigating it.”

“They think the kid’s still alive?”

“Don’t know about that.” He sighed and ran his fingers through his thinning hair.

“Damn, Virgil, I know you didn’t know what you were doin’ at the time, but damn –”

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I waited for Kenny to continue. But he said nothing else, just spit some turd-

colored juice into a smudged coffee mug and walked into the storage room.

It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your fault. I’ve heard two claims: the more you say

something to yourself, you either convince yourself it’s true, or it loses all its meaning. I

wasn’t sure which argument applied this time.

I drew my mandolin from under the counter and plucked along with the tune that

crackled and warbled from the speaker, softly singing the words in my long-practiced

high lonesome voice:

Tell my loving little schoolmates that I never more shall play,Give them all my toys, but Mother, put my little shoes away.

For the first time, I noticed Dreema’s mouth moving along as I sang, though she

made no noise. I studied her features as I played, recalling her resigned expression

Saturday afternoon. I thought of the time Sheriff Dodds searched her trailer three months

after she moved to Bass from Mingo County in West Virginia. His justification was the

“numerous accounts” that she sold Percocets and Valium, which were apparently stashed

under the yellowed mattress in her spare bedroom. After a thorough search, however,

they found nothing unusual save for a large pile of Salvation Army purchases: pink

striped turtlenecks, purple corduroy skirts, Keds sneakers, a horde of knockoff Barbies

with synthetic blonde hair and immaculate frozen faces, a Fisher-Price stove with a

chipped plastic coffee pot. Word spread about the strange discovery; people speculated

that Dreema was just some sterile unmarried nutjob who desperately wanted a daughter,

and Bass moved on – though not without mothers putting protective arms around their

female progeny when Dreema passed them in the aisles of the IGA, not without Clint

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Druker leaving a busted-up purple stroller by her front door as a prank that nobody found

funny.

Thinking all this over as I observed her weary movements, it occurred to me that

Dreema wasn’t desperate for a daughter she couldn’t have – she was mourning one she’d

already lost, maybe even one who’d been taken, just like Nat Sawyer. I stopped picking.

“Sounded good,” Dreema murmured, so I went on.

A few weeks later, I let the screen door smack closed behind me after returning

from an exploration of the defunct Lexington line, now mostly yanked up from the

ground for scrap metal and firewood, its remains a rusted and exhausted testament to

Bass’s lucrative glory days. I’d needed respite from the MISSING and HAVE YOU

SEEN HIM? signs on every telephone pole, the lopsided sign by Tabernacle Baptist that

urged everyone to PRAY FOR THE SAWYERS. Several local news stations had come

rumbling into town with their decaled white vans, and I was sure to keep my distance

when pushy reporters shot segments in front of Regency Strip. Everywhere I turned, Nat

Sawyer smiled down at me, subtly suggesting that perhaps I could’ve stopped it all,

maybe.

Madsy was curled up on the couch, hugging her scraped knees. “He was so

sweet,” she sniffled. “Why’d God let him die, daddy?”

“God ain’t kind to most people.” Les cracked open a Bud and let foam spill onto

his easy chair. In the corner of his eye, he spotted me, my mandolin slung over my

shoulder like a toy soldier’s gun. “News said Sawyer’s kid was found. Face-down in a

quarry outside Jesterville. You makin’ dinner tonight?”

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Dreema lived off KY 30 and walked to work; she only drove her little hatchback

when she needed to visit her mother over in Perry County. It crouched lopsided in the dirt

and gravel driveway, the wheels turned almost at right angles. She’d opened the door for

me in her housecoat, a cigarette burning down to the quick between her lips, hair hanging

limp at her shoulders.

“I wanted to – to –” I shuffled my sneakers as she eyed me silently, furrowed her

brow at the mandolin tucked under my arm. “–To see how you were doing. I mean – I

guess you heard about the Sawyer boy and all.”

She opened the door wider, a soundless invite inside. The odor of unfiltered

Marlboros saturated the air, and I smiled sadly upon spotting a dulcimer and an autoharp

tucked neatly under the shabby coffee table.

“You wondered about me, huh?” She chuckled low and raspy like Mindy Newton,

but gentler and wiser. “Kitching County never forgets itself a home-grown scandal, isn’t

that right?”

“It’s not like that,” I said quickly. “It’s just – well, I – I thought maybe you’d lost

someone too.” She lit a cigarette with her back to me. “And you’re right,” I added. “They

don’t ever forget, do they?”

“I guess you and I both’d know that well as anyone.”

I stepped forward, hugging the mandolin to my chest. “How long ago did –”

Dreema sighed and sank onto the sofa. “Twenty-five year in November. Back in

Mingo County. Cora was walkin’ home from school alone for the first time. I had a

traffic court date that day. Ccouldn’t fetch ‘er like usual. Told her to just keep her eyes

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ahead and be brave.” Her own eyes were like the sky over Bass, overcast and leaden with

sadness. “They never even found out –”

She fell into silence and I knew she wouldn’t keep going. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“It weren’t your fault.” She wasn’t talking about Cora. She was talking about Nat.

“Blaming yourself don’t get you nowhere. Nothin’ you can do about the past.”

“How’d you – how’d you know that was how I felt?”

She chuckled huskily. “Same way you knew about Cora without havin’ to ask, I

reckon. Guess the burdened find each other somehow.” Her eyes lingered briefly at the

scar on my neck.

“Was she –”

“I don’t want to talk about my daughter no more.” She nodded at my mandolin.

“You came to play, didn’t you? So let’s play.” She pulled the autoharp from beneath the

table and held it against her chest. “What d’you know?”

I smiled. “Know any Hylo?”

“Course I do.”

So we strummed and she sang, her melancholy voice soaring high over Bass like

the siren at Goad Mine, though far sweeter:

You will do this, won’t you, Mother? Please remember what I say,Give them all my toys, but Mother, put my little shoes away.

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