Red Helmet, Page 2

  “You have a figure most women would die for,” he said.

  “My hair! It’s so straight. There’s not a bit of curl in it.”

  “I love your hair,” Cable said, although now there was a touch of weariness in his tone. “Don’t touch it, don’t cut it, don’t curl it, leave it alone. I love everything about you, I swan—!”

  “I swan? You always say that but I never knew what it meant.”

  Cable explained, “Coal miners think it’s bad luck to say ‘I swear’ in the mine. It’s sort of like taking God’s name in vain. So we say ‘I swan.’”

  She pondered him. “Am I going to have to learn a new language with you?”

  “I swan you might,” he said, allowing a smile, and his dimple appeared. But both vanished when he saw Song was not smiling. “You’re really serious about all this, aren’t you?”

  She scrutinized him. “We’ve done the most romantic thing, Cable. We got married at sunset on one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, and we did it on the spur of the moment. But now we’re having a business meeting to decide our proper course.”

  “A business meeting? In bed on the night of our honeymoon?”

  “Yes, Cable. Now pay attention. In any business meeting, it’s good to start with a little truth. Do you know what makes me happy? I mean besides you, of course.”

  “Not really,” he confessed.

  “My work. I crawl up inside a company for my father, see what makes it tick, then mentally take it apart. After I understand everything about it, I either recommend moving on or buying it. If we buy the company, we maximize its profits by making it better. Sometimes that means we fire everybody and start over.”

  Her job description didn’t surprise him, but her attitude did. “You make yourself sound ruthless.”

  “I don’t mean to be, but I have a job to do and that’s to make my father money. It’s a family business after all.”

  “A job is an important thing,” he said. “My job is also my town. That’s why I can’t leave it. It’s a responsibility I took on. I can’t walk away.”

  They fell silent for a few moments.

  “Well, I can’t leave New York.”

  He rested his head on his pillow and looked at the ceiling where there were only shadows, not counting a stray gecko.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, after what she considered too long a time. “We’ll figure it out.”

  “How will we figure it out?” she pressed.

  “We’ll talk.”

  “When?”

  “Soon. Not now. I’m sleepy. You know. We just made love and all.”

  Cable clearly didn’t understand they were having a meeting, and Song knew it was important never to leave a meeting with a critical question unanswered. She was quiet for a long while, knowing he probably hoped she’d gone to sleep.

  “Do you know who else got married on the same beach we did?” she asked, spoiling his hope.

  “Well, I’d say about a million other folks,” he answered. He made a show of yawning.

  “Renée Zellwegger and Kenny Chesney.”

  “Who are they? Did we meet them?”

  It didn’t surprise Song that Cable wouldn’t know who the actress was. He didn’t seem to know anything about movies or the people who acted in them. But Kenny Chesney? Surely he knew country music. She identified the pair and said, “They had their marriage annulled, Cable. Some say it was because she wanted to live one place, he another.”

  That got his attention. He sat up. “Honey, don’t talk like that! It’s bad luck.”

  “I don’t believe in luck—except what you make for yourself.”

  “Don’t say that, either! Saying you don’t believe in luck is bad luck all by itself.”

  “Cable—”

  “No more,” he shushed her. “Miners are the most superstitious of fellows. Don’t you know that? Talking about annulments and such on the night of our marriage is like whistling in a coal mine. It just isn’t done.”

  “All right, Cable,” she said, shaking her head at his little rant.

  “Things will be better in the morning. My mother always said that.”

  Song turned wistful. “I wish I’d known my mother. They say she was beautiful and brave. But why she chose to risk her life with a baby at home, I don’t know. I’ve missed her my entire life. I know my father never really got over losing her.”

  “My daddy had something to say on that,” Cable replied. “He told me—it wasn’t too long before he got killed—you ever find yourself a good woman, son, don’t you ever let her go, no matter what. Good women don’t come around that often.”

  She crawled into his arms. “I am not a good woman,” she said, resting her head against his chest. “I’m complicated.”

  “Daddy didn’t say a good woman had to be simple,” he answered, stroking her hair. He adored her long hair and tried to remember to tell her fairly often. Women were always cutting off their wonderful long hair, and men could never figure out why.

  “Will it be okay, Cable?” she asked quietly. “Tell me it will be okay.”

  “It will be okay,” he said. “I swan.” His big hands began to explore her again, and she arched her back in pleasure.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said.

  “I almost believe it when I’m with you.”

  The business meeting was adjourned.

  Two

  It wasn’t long ago that Song had been standing in Times Square watching some street dancers. She looked up and there he was, about as retro a man as she could imagine. A snap-brim hat right out of Indiana Jones, blue jeans, a plaid shirt, and work boots, a country boy in the big city if she’d ever seen one. He wore a bemused smile, as if what he was seeing, not just the dancers but everything and everybody around him, was strange and exotic. Their eyes met across the dancers, and something clicked. One of the dancers lost his balance and fell into her.

  Cable pushed through the bystanders to pick her up. He did it so easily, as if she weighed nothing. To her astonishment, he doffed his hat, just like in an old movie.

  “I hope you’re okay, ma’am,” he said in a twang that somehow spoke to her of coal mines and mountains. He smiled, and that’s when she first got a look at the dimple in his right cheek. What is it about a dimple in a man that can fire the heart of a woman?

  “I’m okay,” was her answer, but it wasn’t true. Her heart felt as if it were going to beat itself right out of her chest. “I was just going for a cup of coffee.” It wasn’t pertinent, just something to say.

  He stuck out his hand. When she didn’t grasp it, he reached down and took her hand anyway. His hand was vast and strong and warm and strangely potent. “My name is Cable Jordan, ma’am, and I’m from West Virginia. Coffee? Don’t mind if I do.”

  And so they sat down together in a coffee shop, and it was as if they had been friends for life, desperately needing to catch up. She told him everything, of her lonely childhood without her mother, and of her father, whom she adored, and something of her education—MIT and Princeton—and a little of her job as property and acquisitions manager for Hawkins-Song, Inc.

  He in turn told her about Highcoal, his hometown in southern West Virginia, and his parents, and how his father, whose name was Wire, had been killed in a coal mine just before Cable graduated from high school, and how he’d joined the army, then gone to get his engineering degree at West Virginia University. Now, he said with pride, he was superintendent of the mine in Highcoal, a position he’d always wanted. Atlas Energy, Inc., the company that owned Cable’s coal mine, had its headquarters in New York, and he was there for a meeting with his boss.

  She wouldn’t have much cared if he had told her he’d been raised on Mars by Martians. From that moment on, she wanted to be with him. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that she’d recently been rejected by another man, and not for the first time, and now here was Cable with his charming but raw masculine energy. What was a woman supposed to do w
ith a man like that? Run away? She was astonished that he even liked her, and in complete disbelief when he told her, after they’d known each other for a few months, “I’ve totaled things up, and I’m pretty sure I love you.” She had laughed at the way he’d put it, but then she had sobered up. Fast. She could scarcely believe her response. “I’m pretty sure I love you too!”

  Her friends made light of him after she’d brought him around. They called him “Garth Brooks,” refusing to remember his real name and constantly imitating his mountain twang. Song acknowledged that Cable’s cheerful demeanor, his big dimpled grin, and his easygoing attitude were mindful of the country singer, although with much better hair, of course.

  She also agreed he wasn’t much like the other men she’d fallen for. He seemed at times to be of another age. He opened doors for women. He even stood when a woman entered the room. He was unfailingly polite during conversation to everyone and could not be drawn into debate about much of anything, certainly not anything that had to do with the usual arguments of the city, of the decisions of the mayor, or the rudeness of taxi drivers, or the meaning of the latest play by a radically left (and therefore praised) playwright.

  He did not, in fact, seem much curious about the world. Highcoal, the town where he’d been raised and the site of the coal mine he now managed, seemed to absorb his mind. When he spoke of either, Song noticed her friends would automatically roll their eyes, but he took no notice at all. These things worried her, not that her friends thought less of him, but that they might be right in their assessment. He was too different, yet seemed impervious to change.

  But when Cable held her, Song wanted to melt into him, to be as one with his enormous strength. She wanted him, needed him, and adored him. That was all she knew. It was all she cared to know. Any flaws he might have could be changed. Over time, she would see to that. She would make the man into the man he could be. Wasn’t that, after all, a woman’s prerogative?

  The morning after their wedding and their romance-interrupted business meeting, Song rose while Cable was still asleep. Just as she’d anticipated, the major problem left over from the night before still existed. She still lived in New York, and he still lived in West Virginia. She slipped out on the veranda of their beach cottage to use her cell phone to call her father, who was naturally astonished at the news of her marriage. When Cable came outside, anxious for coffee, she handed the phone to him.

  “How you doing, Sir?” he said. “Pretty morning here. Sky’s blue as a robin’s egg, I swan. And you should just see this ocean—it’s as clear as air.”

  “I don’t care about the ocean,” Joe Hawkins grumbled. “And I don’t care about the sky. Or even the air. What I care about is my daughter. Cable, you idiot. You know I like you, but you’ve messed up now, son. What were you thinking? Did you get into the rum? Now, listen to me. Song isn’t going to move to West Virginia. The only thing for you to do is move to New York.”

  “But I can’t do that, sir,” Cable protested. “I have a job to do in Highcoal and I’ve got to keep doing it. I’m not being selfish, not at all. The people there depend on me. Surely you understand.”

  “I should come down there and thrash you is what I understand.”

  “If I was in your place, I’d feel the same way,” Cable acknowledged. “But I do love Song, I really do. That’s why I married her, after all.”

  To Cable’s surprise, Hawkins chuckled, and his voice dropped to a conspiratorial level. “I just wanted to yell at you a bit, son. You understand. Truth is, I’m glad you married her. I was afraid Song would end up with one of those girly men she’s mostly dated. You at least strike me as a man’s man.”

  “I’m happy that’s your opinion, sir,” Cable said. “So you agree she should live in West Virginia?”

  “No, I don’t!” Hawkins snapped. “I need her exactly where she is. She’s made me a lot of money, and I want her to make me a bunch more. She’s a sequential thinker, boy, which is rare in a woman. She does A, then she does B, and she keeps going until she’s run through the alphabet and anybody standing in her way. Never met a man who could stand up to her. She’s a bit cool and sharp-tongued with most people. Won’t give them a chance. Maybe you can warm her up a little.”

  “She’s warm enough already for me,” Cable said, in defense of his wife who, he noticed, was wandering off alone on the beach, kicking at the sand, her head down. She didn’t look very happy, not like a woman on her honeymoon should look. He wondered if he should be worried.

  It was as if Hawkins was there beside him with his arm around Cable’s shoulders, confiding in him. “Well, I’m glad you think she’s warm, Cable. I don’t know. Maybe it’s because she lost her mother so young. She’s kept to herself most of her life. She doesn’t have many friends, just a few gal pals who live for business just like her. Most of them think men are weak and spineless. I was afraid Song would join them, be an old maid, get harder and tougher than she already is.”

  Hawkins barely paused for breath. “I can tell you this much,” he went on. “You married an interesting woman. She’s like her mother in that regard. That is not necessarily a good thing. In my experience, interesting women are a great deal of trouble. My daughter also generally gets what she wants. I would hate to be in your shoes right now. Surrender and get it over with, that’s my advice.” Then, after welcoming Cable into the family, he hung up.

  “What did he say?” Song asked when she came back from her unhappy walk.

  “He said he was going to thrash me.”

  She smiled. “How I love that man,” she said. “You too, of course.” She took her cell phone back. “Are you ready to talk?”

  “About what?”

  “Where we’re going to live.”

  He picked up his mask, snorkel, and fins. “I’m ready to go snorkeling.”

  She scowled. “You’re going to put this off, aren’t you?”

  Cable was honest. “Yes, ma’am, I sure am. We’re on our honeymoon. Let’s make it a good one. The last day will come soon enough. We’ll decide then.”

  But when the last day of the vacation that became a honeymoon arrived, nothing had been decided. On the ferry from St. John to St. Thomas, Song and Cable stood on the outside deck watching their magical island shrink until it disappeared in the mist of an encroaching storm. Song wondered if the magic that had brought Cable to her was also disappearing in that mist.

  “Cable . . . ,” she began. “We have to talk.”

  “Not yet, honey,” he said, gathering her in his arms. “Let’s just savor our last moments here.”

  As the rain pattered down, they took a taxi to the airport. Her plane was the first one to leave, and when they called her to the gate, he held her until, after an awkward kiss, they parted with him promising to call her, to get everything settled. “It’s all going to be okay,” he said.

  “But how?” she asked.

  “You’re my destiny,” he answered. “It has to be okay.”

  She waved away the umbrella the attendant tried to hand her and walked through the rain across the apron to the airplane, allowing the raindrops to mix with her tears and hide them. She climbed the steps and looked back. He was there, holding his hat, watching her. He started to smile, but she turned away and walked inside the airplane. All the way home, she brooded and plotted and schemed, ultimately solving nothing but managing to make herself thoroughly miserable.

  THREE WEEKS PASSED. Song and Cable talked every day on the phone. At first, their talks were long, detailed, but they began to get shorter. She was busy at work, and so was he. He became increasingly difficult to call. He had no cell phone, which struck Song as odd, and his home phone rang and rang. It was only at his work phone, usually answered by a man named (incredibly) Mole, that she had any chance of catching him. Though she kept bringing up their forced separation, he kept saying it was all going to work out because it had to. After a while, she realized he was trying to wear her down.

  And to an extent,
it worked. On a lonely day, after a string of lonely days, Song called Cable. “I miss you,” she said, which she’d said before, too many times.

  “Well, honey, I miss you too,” he replied. “Tell you what. In a couple of weeks, if I’m running some good coal, I’ll come up to New York for a day or two.”

  “No, Cable,” Song retorted. “I want to see this little town you love more than me. I can visit for a week. How about if I fly in next Wednesday?”

  “That new section is giving me fits,” he said. “Time is somewhat limited.”

  It didn’t matter what he said because she wasn’t listening. She’d already made up her mind.

  “I’ll be there on Wednesday.”

  After a short pause, Cable said, “Well, come on then.” It was scarcely a declaration of his aching need for her, but she let it pass.

  Arrangements were made. Song would fly to Charleston, West Virginia’s capital, and Cable would pick her up and drive her to Highcoal. She would stay for a week, get to know the town, and then they’d see what happened next. Everything was incremental—judgments would be made, understandings would be forged, love would be allowed to carry them like an inexorable river to where they needed to go. First there was A, then there would be B, and so on, until she and Cable lived wherever they were going to live, as long as it was together. What Song didn’t expect, could not even imagine, was that she was embarking on a journey that would not be sequential, but as chaotic as the jumbled hills of West Virginia.

  Three

  There he is! She was so excited. It was like something out of a movie. Waiting for her at the airport gate was Cable, wearing his snap-brim hat, a blue denim work shirt, and khaki trousers tucked inside high brown leather boots, and a big hey lady, I sure am glad to see you grin. She ran to him and threw herself into his arms while her fellow Mountain Air passengers walked past with small smiles.

  After a sweet kiss, she told him about the landing. “It was scary, Cable. The man beside me pointed at this little runway on top of a mountain and said that’s where we were going to land. I thought he was joking!”