Coaxing the Coal Back to Life
Adam Vines
Some call the concoction a depression plant, but my nanny says she’s coaxing the coal back to life—the same way my grandfather mixed water and carbide, dropped a gravel stone into his lamp to make the sunshine he rarely saw. When the leaves fall from the sparse line of cottonwoods and the only colors are the green needles of knee-high scrub pines struggling with the overburden, the older pines dropping daily for pulp and roof chocks, she gets her wedding vase down from the shelf above the stove, dusts it off and mixes the recipe:
6 tablespoons salt
6 tablespoons water
1 heaping spoon ammonia
a couple squirts of mercurochrome
and a few drops of food coloring
She sends me out to fetch a handful of coal from the seam splintering the bank behind the livery stable, though there’s coal in the bucket next to the stove. Fingering pieces into the glass vase, a few at a time until she piles up a small cairn, she pours the purple liquid over the coal. A few days later, the black mound starts to crystallize, and compressed acres shine like a prism: cranberry lace gills, butterscotch carp roe, pewter channel cat skin, teal bream beard, mimosa’s pink pappus, the skink’s indigo flame.