"Coveralls"

I wrote this short story when given the prompt "Soot" by a competitive writing community. I grew up in eastern Kentucky, the mountains of Appalachia, the heart of coal mining country. Appalachia, the mining industry as a whole, and the people associated with both, often get poor publicity. And although prescription drug abuse has infected the area like a plague, most people from the area have always been hard working, salt-of-the-earth individuals, simply providing for their families. Among them are my father and grandfather, who both went into coal mines for as many years as their bodies would allow. My grandfather's name is Elmer. 

"Coveralls" 

His knees ache so badly when he lowers himself into bed that, for just a moment, the releif takes his breath away. The springs creak with his weight. A slow exhale, from a breath he didn't realize he was holding, escapes his lips in time with his body sinking into the matress. 

"Elmer? Did you get in bed with your boot on?" 

He looks down. He's just in a t-shirt and his undershorts, but bunched around his feet are his coveralls. When he'd arrived home, he'd been in such a hurry to unbutton the coveralls and take them off that he hadn't removed his boots. Now the coveralls are bunched around his feet. When he wiggles his toes, though, he can still feel the boots' protective steel plate, laced in place. 

He looks like a banana with a persistent, blue peel. "I did, Betty. I'm sorry. Will you help me get them off?" 

There are footsteps through the house, but it's not his wife that enters. Instead a bright little face, framed by bouncing brown hair, charges into the room. "I'll help you, daddy!" She says, stumbling to a stop by the end of the bed. 

Sweet Cathrine. "Thank you, Kitty," he says with a smile, sitting up and dropping his legs over the side of the bed. His knees make him wince, but Cathrine doesn't notice. She simply busies herself with unlacing the tall books and yanking them with all her might. He still does most of the work, but seeing her desire to help warms his heart like nothing else. 

After all, it's why he goes into that mine every day. 

With the boots now discarded on the floor, he is free to extricate himself from the coveralls. His wife enters the bedroom with their youngest, his son, on her hip. Cathrine wipes her brow with her hand, smearing a black streak over her eyebrows. 

He laughs. Betty frets, with a smile, "Kitty, look at you! You've got coal dust on your face!" 

Cathrine looks at her mother, then he father, and exclaims, "I look like daddy, now!" With reckless abandon she climbs into her father's lap, over his aching knees. He barely notices as he takes her into his arms. 

"Will you make sure she gets washed up before dinner?" Betty asks him, smiling. 

Careful not to make her even dirtier with his own blackened face, Elmer smiles and nods.