6. Noel
6
Noel
“B runo?” Of course, she meant Bruno. “Why does he want to see me?” Noel wiped his mouth with his napkin and leaned back in his chair. But it was a fair question; his father had made it abundantly clear that Noel was the last person he ever wanted to see again.
Aunt Gigi sighed, then said, “He’s softened, Noel. That’s the only word I can come up with to explain it. I probably wouldn’t even go so far as to say that he’s changed, but he’s mellowed. In some ways,” she added hastily.
Which meant that in most ways, Bruno was still Bruno. Noel frowned, stood, and started gathering the dirty dishes from the table. Gigi didn’t stop him, which was telling. He stacked her plates on top of his, then carried the pile to the sink. “Do you think that’s a good idea?” he asked, although he didn’t need to hear her response to know what it would be. It was why she’d wanted him to return so soon after his last visit.
“I don’t know that I’d call any idea of your father’s ‘good,’” she conceded. “But I do think his request comes from a genuine interest in knowing how you’re doing.”
“And that’s not something you can tell him? Fill him in on how great my life has been without him in it?”
“Noel.” It was a gentle reprimand, and he felt it in his gut.
“Sorry." He stood at the sink with his back to her, waiting for the tap water to turn hot enough to wash the dishes. Glancing over his shoulder at her, he asked, “Why didn’t you just tell me this on the phone?”
Gigi pressed her lips together and gave a one-shoulder shrug. “I guess I was worried you’d find excuses to avoid coming if I did.”
“You know me better than that, Aunt Gigi.” It was his turn to gently reprimand her. “When have I ever not taken care of my responsibilities?”
“I know, I know,” she said, practically over the top of him. “I also know your plate is full with that new job of yours. You work so hard, Noel. I just didn’t want it hanging over your head like a black cloud.”
A black cloud, indeed.
N oel tossed and turned in his aunt’s tiny guest room for most of the night, and when he crawled out of bed the next morning, he felt weighed down by trepidation and doubt. But he would go through with paying his father a visit, if only to make Aunt Gigi happy.
At sixteen, Bruno Stewart’s first job down in the mines was to push the full tubs of coal gouged from the black seams over to the pit eye, where it would be hauled up the shaft to the earth’s surface. Even as a young man, he was hard and hungry and more than a little mean. He was also determined to outwork everyone, and he quickly moved up the ranks. In his late twenties, Bruno had served his country for two terms in the military, and when he returned home, it was with a quiet, young—and pregnant—wife, Nita, a nurse he’d met at one of the field hospitals where he’d been stationed. He’d moved her into the home he’d grown up in, then picked up his tools and his safety gear pack and headed back into the mines.
The war didn’t make the man any less mean. Nor did having a wife and baby at home.
In fact, the opposite was true. Bruno came out of the mines each day coiled like a rattler ready to strike, and his wife and son learned quickly just how volatile he was. Down in the pit, Bruno kept his rage in check—the crew members were brothers in arms to him, and he’d once told his wife, "Them boys are my real family, and don't you ever forget it."
Noel hadn’t been much more than a toddler when he was old enough to witness his father lifting a hand to his mother. Old enough to remember the sound of that massive palm striking his mama’s cheek, the way her head flung sideways at an impossible angle before she righted herself, her shoulders hunched, her chin down, and apologized for whatever it was that she’d done.
There were times when the gunshot of those slaps still ricocheted in Noel’s memory.
When Noel was eleven, there’d been a methane explosion in the mine where his father worked. Bruno, the crew foreman at the time, had been delayed near the entrance, working out some details on a piece of equipment that needed repair, and had sent his crew on ahead of him right before it happened. The explosion had triggered a roof collapse, trapping eight miners in a chamber almost three hundred feet deep for four days.
Although he’d been knocked off his feet by the blast, in an act of superhuman resilience, Bruno had gathered himself immediately and began organizing a rescue strategy. Over the next four days, he’d proven himself to be a hero time and again, heading up one of the teams that went into the shaft to pull the men—or their bodies—out of the rubble.
Three of the miners had been killed outright in the explosion, two men sustained horrific crush injuries and didn’t survive the four-day ordeal, and one more died in the hospital a few days later. The other two survivors had suffered injuries that caused long-term disability, and neither of them was able to work the mines again.
Bruno had never quite recovered, either. That explosion had taken his whole crew, his brotherhood, his family, from him and he’d been unable to save them. The dark cloud that he’d always dragged around with him roiled thick and murky with the impotent rage he felt over not being able to get his boys out of the collapsed shafts.
News crews and photographers had camped out in Bald Knob for weeks as the aftermath of the explosion and loss of life played out in their tiny community. Like a pack of prowling wolves, they’d pressed in, made rabid by the town's despair. Their empathetic expressions couldn't mask the twisted desperation that spurred them on to capture the most shocking moment, the most heartbreaking interview, the award-winning, iconic image that would represent to the world just how horrific life and death could be.
And how remarkable humans could be.
Bruno Stewart had been photographed hauling a broken miner out of the rubble, carrying him in a fireman’s lift, the man’s head and limbs dangling lifelessly in the macabre image. Tear tracks had streaked Bruno’s coal blackened face, and the journalist had asked the right questions at the right time.
When the story came out, the whole town bought copies of the popular magazine, and Noel’s teacher had given him his own issue.
Bruno had read only about half the article before he launched the magazine across the room in a fury that would burn for days. The journalist had quoted Bruno verbatim when he said, “I should have been in the mines with my crew, but since I wasn’t, I should have saved them. I failed my brothers and their families, and I don’t know if I can live with that.”
Survivor’s guilt, they’d called it.
Noel had hidden his own copy of the magazine under his mattress, taking it out only when he was certain his father wasn’t in the house, or he was passed out in the other bedroom. The photos in the article were stunning, somehow capturing the relentless battle between suffering and hope during that terrible time, as the rescue operations worked day and night to free the men below. The community held a round-the-clock prayer vigil at a local church, and in one of the pictures, Noel and his mother huddled together in a pew, their heads bowed as they gathered with other believers to beg God for intercedence.
There was another photo in the magazine article, one that made Noel's gut churn. It was a different shot of Bruno, taken two days into the ordeal, looking like an avenging angel accepting a bottle of water from an adoring child.
The child had been Noel, and the water bottle had been his mother’s idea. It had taken him over an hour to get his father’s attention long enough to offer him the water… only to have it slapped from his hands in an angry outburst.
Bruno had grabbed him by the shoulders and shaken him until his teeth rattled. “You think my boys have pretty little plastic bottles of fresh water down there? You think they’re okay sitting in that—that coffin, while I sit back and indulge in refreshments?” He’d spit the words out between clenched teeth, then shoved Noel away from him, making the boy stumble backwards. Noel had somehow managed to right himself and stay on his feet, but as he turned to flee, his father had roared, “Do you have rocks for brains, boy?” Then Bruno had slapped him in the back of the head so hard that he’d gone sprawling, face first, into the mud.
He had lain there, the pulse throbbing loudly in his ears, holding his breath, hoping against hope that his father was finished with him, that he wouldn’t drag him up out of the mud and start in on him again.
When he’d finally convinced himself that he was alone, he’d pushed gingerly to his hands and knees and lifted his head slowly. Standing in the shadows between two of the news vans was a rail-thin girl dressed head-to-toe in black, her eyes huge in her pale face, her hands clutched tightly to her chest. She’d seen the whole thing; he could tell by the combination of fear and shock and concern on her face.
She took one hesitant step toward him, but Noel lurched to his feet and ran in the opposite direction.
The photo in the magazine had made the moment look like something good, something pure, hopeful. Everything that it had not been.
Noel hadn’t even seen the photographer who’d snapped the shot. He’d been too busy focusing on keeping his neck from snapping under his father’s rough handling. The fact that the wraith girl had witnessed it all had affected him even more than the abuse, and Noel had avoided the mine and the news crews like the plague after that, making sure he’d never have to lay eyes on her again.
It was after the mine disaster that Bruno had gone from being an angry, volatile man to a real-life monster. One of his favorite pastimes was breaking things. Dishes, mirrors, windows. Or punching things. Walls. Doors. His wife. Sometimes his son, too, if his wife wasn’t available.
Everyone knew, but no one stepped in. Folks didn't do that back then, at least not in Bald Knob. And besides, Bruno Stewart was a hero, after all. Aunt Gigi would come to check on them, sometimes bringing food or first aid supplies when things got really ugly. Sometimes she’d bundle Noel and his mother up and take them home with her, the lines between her brows etched deep with misery. Sometimes she’d even courageously call Bruno out for being the cowardly monster that he was, raising his hands against the ones he was supposed to love and protect, but usually, only when the man was drunk enough not to care.
In fact, the only time Noel and his mother felt remotely safe was when they were holed up with Aunt Gigi and Uncle Thomas. It was a much-needed reprieve from the storm, even though they always feared there’d be retribution awaiting them on their return.
Today, Noel would lay eyes on the man that had far too many times laid rough hands on him, and his stomach churned just picturing his father’s scowling face. “Let’s get this over with,” he muttered to himself, scrubbing his fingers through his spiky, sleep-mussed hair. Then he made his bed up and headed out to the kitchen, the smell of muddy coffee beckoning him.
Aunt Gigi took one look at him and clucked in sympathy. “Sit. I’ll get you a cuppa Joe.”
“Thank you,” he said, pulling out a chair from the table in the middle of the small kitchen.
When she brought him the steaming mug, she leaned down and planted a kiss on top of his head. “It sure is nice to have a man sitting at my table again.” She pulled a small, foil-wrapped chocolate heart, a leftover from Valentine’s Day, he guessed, from the pocket of her apron and set it on the table in front of him. With a wink, she said, “Don’t spoil your appetite now.”
He picked up the chocolate and peeled back the fuchsia foil. He flattened the wrapper on the table and read the message printed on the inside of it.
“What does it say?” his aunt asked, glancing over her shoulder as she filled her own coffee mug.
“You are the sunshine in my day.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Gigi said with a firm nod. “You are my sunshine, Noel Stewart. And don’t you ever forget that. Now, would you like some breakfast? I’ll scramble the eggs so it’s different from last night, and we’ll have sausage gravy on our biscuits.”
“Sounds great,” he said as brightly as he could muster. His stomach was in knots, and the thought of a heavy meal right now wasn’t exactly appealing.
“You don’t have to go visit him, Noel.” Aunt Gigi pulled a jug of milk and a box of sausage links from the fridge. “He doesn’t know you’re here. I can see it’s weighing heavy on you.”
“I know,” Noel acknowledged. “If he really wants to see me, then I’ll go, but honestly,” he added, frowning down into his mug. The coffee was good and strong—and actually fresh—this morning. “I’m not completely convinced he really means it.”
“Of course he does. Your father doesn’t say anything he doesn’t mean.”
Noel studied her as she bustled around the little space. She pulled a can of prepackaged biscuits from the fridge door, walloped it much harder than necessary against the counter, and it popped open. “Woo-hoo,” she chortled. “Don’t you just love that sound?”
“Some things never change,” he said, smiling at her antics. She was trying to brighten his spirits, he could tell, and he loved her for it. “You’re just as crazy as ever, you know.”
“Thank you very much,” his aunt retorted, propping one hand on her hip. “May the day never come when I stop being this crazy.”
“Amen to that,” Noel chorused, but his thoughts went right back to his father. Was it possible that the man had, indeed, softened so much that he wanted to see Noel again? And why? Could it really be the first step in reconciliation?
Did Noel even want to reconcile after all this time?
Or was there something unsavory up the man’s sleeve? Knowing Bruno, Noel couldn’t help leaning toward the latter. The man wasn’t known for his kindness, and Noel had never heard him apologize to anyone for anything in his entire life. Reconciliation was not a word that he could ever imagine associating with Bruno Stewart.