by Joan Pedzich

Rose was hanging clothes. It came to her on the air, faint, but plenty foul enough to make the fine hairs on her arms stand up. Methane, sulfur dioxide - what the earth gags up. She had pins in her mouth, and the damp laundry in the busted basket by her feet. Brill's jeans and flannel shirt from yesterday were already hung, dripping, too heavy to take the breeze. Brill's old dog whined on the stoop while she burrowed in the basket for something white. A sock, a hankie, her church gloves. She blew into the right-hand one and pinned it on the line, palm facing her. It was all of a minute, and there it was, pale gray soot on the cupped palm and fingers, the evidence of things unseen. The siren at the mine office went off, and let everybody else know.

She hung the rest, spitting the taste of clothespins off her tongue into the pansies as she climbed the stoop. She changed out of her house dress, and stood by the kitchen window to wait for Lacie. Their cups were still there by the drain, hers and Brill's. Rose put all her fingers around Brill's and finished it for him, the half inch of syrupy coffee in the bottom, gone cold on the iron sink.

There was Lacie, pick-up huffing on the driveway, her muffler giving up the ghost, skimming the gravel. The friends saw each other, faces softened through pitted window and windshield. Between them there were two miscarriages, then a set of twins born still, lay-offs with nothing coming in at all, a boy dead at the war, and how many trips to the mine to wait. It was the time before last that took Lacie's Albert. Flash fire meant it ended fast. Some called that a blessing, but Lacie took it double hard because he'd always feared fire the most.

Rose walked out of the house normal, and stood by the car window. Lacie cracked the door open.      

"Window's stuck shut. Let's go."

"Not this time," Rose said.

"No?" Lacie reached out the door to squeeze Rose's hand. "Don't like you waiting by yourself."

"You don't have to go neither. Nobody'll think less of you. You done your time."

"Can't back up. Transmission's took the devil into it. Got to pull around you." Lacie yanked the door shut. "I can't not go," she said. "You want Pastor back here to set with you?"

"He should stay where people are still buying what he's selling. Say I'm okay to everybody."

Lacie chugged an oval around Rose. She spun dust climbing to the main road. By the time the truck sound faded, Rose was already in the way-back of Brill's closet looking for his white shirt. She made sure it wasn't in need of a button, or a seam stitched. She hung his suit from the molding of the door and checked the pockets. There was a tore open packet of stale Dentyne, two quarters, and the folded up church bulletin from Easter Sunday. The picture on the front showed the empty cave where Jesus got buried and walked out of, resurrected, sunbeams behind it.

Rose laid the suit and shirt out on their bed. She took the brush to Brill's wingtip shoes, raised what passed for a shine, and found a new pack of laces. She carried them out to the porch and set in the rocker. The old laces wanted to stay put, but she made the switch. She rolled the used ones around her two fingers, and poked them in her pocket.

She set there, paying no mind to the brittle chill that blew down from between the house and her hen coops.

It was going dark when Lacie's car banged back up the drive toward Rose. She had Pastor with her. They got out of the car slow. Lacie wiped her nose, and Pastor squeezed his prayer book like it was something that needed its neck wrung. Rose didn't tell them she already knew. She regretted it after. She could've spared them having to say it.

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