BY JASON FRALEY
Until now, this story does not mention God, the rapture, baptisms, hellfire, or rebirth despite ample symbolic opportunities.
Some stories treat God as an incantation that cannot be unsaid.
Some stories reduce the divine into a pill. Take once daily.
But only once and only for one day.
* * *
Miner recalls church. In doing so, he recalls them all. Freewill. Pentecostal. Non-denominational. Seventh Day Adventist. Brethren. The one with snakes. Southern Baptist.
Quaint chapels that salt the woods.
* * *
The first blooms are not Bradford Pear permafrost. Chapels peek through November’s sticks and brambles until April tucks them under a new leaf.
Miner doesn’t know God. He sees the hills draped under a white sheet half the year.
And if God gives it another tug, then he won’t be spared.
* * *
Pastor baptizes Miner straight after his shift. Mud congeals into different patterns on Overalls. Water drips from Miner’s lashes, into his pupils without a ripple. The baptismal darkens into a slurry pond. Coal dust slithers down Miner’s face, a covenant unbinding.
Miner bows his head. Pastor glimpses a zipper running lengthwise down Miner’s neck.
* * *
It’s easy to invite God into a story. Here’s a story in need of rescue, of miracle. Deus ex machina.
It’s harder to let Him hang low in the valleys. Thicken the air. Try to distinguish Him from the mist and woodsmoke and refracted candlelight and train engine diesel.
And be disappointed when you can’t.
* * *
After one service, pastor comments on the zipper.
Some men wear scars. A jagged bear scratch forearm length. The blotch and smooth skin from a deep-fried turkey accident. A missing finger from a hungry table saw. An eyepatch no one questions.
Other men flip their flannel collars upwards, look skyward for healing.
* * *
The pastor booms sepulcher. Pickaxe rocks uncontrollably. Pickaxe carves amen into the pew. Pickaxe bites into Overalls buttons.
Miner is confused. Miner asks the be-cardiganed woman to his left the meaning of sepulcher.
So this is God? A God who buries believers in the rocks?
* * *
By this point, God is tired. God believes in Himself but not to this extent. God hisses like warped vinyl: as a fractured spirit best engineered away.
Miner hears this hiss everywhere he goes. Tall grass twists and bows. A puncture in each dump truck tire. A whistle from dry lips. A prelude to another blast.
He’d love you to be right.
* * *
Headlamp enjoys church the most. Headlamp learns to whisper like a votive. To flash when pastor pounds his fist. To hang bright in the Christmas play.
One morning, Miner wants Headlamp to behave, so he removes her batteries. Headlamp scuttles to a sunbeam and aims at Miner.
The black blotches fade just in time for Miner to dodge Pickaxe, who only knows how to love one way.
* * *
Miner tells pastor of his life’s work. Cavern after cavern connected by rail. Rock-cleansed rain purified. Darkness excavated, replaced by rows of shoulder-height suns. A sourceless heat that enveloped.
He spits black on the church step. It’s enough to take his breath away.
* * *
You’ve been to this church before, whether service, wedding, or funeral. It’s all exposed wood. Pews. Rafters. Lectern. Crown molding. Trim. The communion wafers more sawdust than flesh.
The cross.
* * *
Maybe that’s the point. Every object prepares itself as another cross. Varnish fades. An open window lets the wind whip and chafe. Pickaxe is left unattended during the potluck.
After a splinter nibbles through his thumb, Miner stops running his hands across bannisters and rails. Best keep his hands to the worn rocks. Best not let the wood inside.
Best his bones remain naïve to the wood’s secrets.
* * *
Why does Miner fixate on the cross?
- If it holds Christ, it will hold the mountain.
- His mistaken belief that tying himself to a bedpost would keep him faithful.
- A blasting machine plunger sends an electric pulse through wire. None of the apostles describe a wire. It must be threaded through the upright beam. One end bundled high in the shape of a crown.
* * *
A blasting machine plunger has teeth. The teeth rotate gears inside the box. This generates an electric pulse through wire, which triggers the detonator cap.
Miner’s neck itches uncontrollably.
* * *
Miner stove-fires water for a bath. He unzips.
You’d expect muscle, veins, vertebrae, a little blood. Instead, a metal box luminescent like a polished crucifix. Inside: wires.
Not wires coated red and blue. Not copper wires. Just wires. Wires that you wouldn’t give a second glance no matter where they may lead.
* * *
You’ve traveled these wooded routes. Distance marked by church signs and puddled rut. Where you roll down the window, extend an arm into darkness only to have night reject it.
Miner slaps the side mirror in frustration. He seeks a reason to refuse today’s lunch pail. The mirror falls away.
The windshield collapses into Miner’s lap without motion or plea.
* * *
Summer dries the adjacent creek into a stubble of worn stones.
Still, the turmoil of restless water fills Miner’s ears.
* * *
It gets lonely. No taillights bloom ahead. Deer remain wood-cloaked and fur tight. Two small thuds, from front to back, in quick succession.
Sometimes the dirt curtsies, revealing the road’s gravel stockings. Sometimes a small sycamore limb grows tired of the sky.
* * *
Miner remembers Overalls soft from creek water, buttons sun-kissed and scalding.
Miner hasn’t felt that spark in a long, long time.
* * *
Miner watches dawn perforate treetops. Jerky sticks between his back teeth. He tries to suck it free. To dislodge it with his thumbnail.
That’s when he discovers a button beneath his tongue’s soft folds.
* * *
A piece of last week’s bulletin does the trick.
When Miner opens his eyes, dawn has illuminated the entire hillside.
Pastor promised the God of Hebrews 12:29 was alive and well.
* * *
Miner unfolds a letter and map. His relations own land. His relations own a mountain haloed in trees. His relations suggest its smooth face is an invitation for countless doors and rooms and chambers.
Pickaxe whimpers. Not over what was lost but over what may be found.
* * *
Follow the ash.
Follow the ash until it darkens into soot.
Follow the soot until it softens into a cloud.
Follow the cloud until it scatters as gnats.
Follow the gnats until they harden into cicadas.
The thing with cicadas is they’re either long-dead or almost ready to unearth themselves.
To come alive.
* * *
Miner isn’t the first to tuck a hymnal under his arm.
Miner isn’t the first to leave before his trailer sold.
Miner isn’t the first to leave embers warm.
Miner isn’t the first to leave the mines clean.
Miner isn’t the first to try the same thing twice.
It’s spelled hollow for a reason.