American rust by Philipp Meyer Page A

them, pass under the two tall bridges that spanned the gorge. It was a beautiful place to live. But that did not put any more money into her pocket, and besides, Steiner could wake up tomorrow and move his operation somewhere else.
    The year previous she'd visited the university across the river at California, talked to a counselor who had figured it would take her four years to get a bachelor's if she went to school at night, that was taking two classes a semester, a load she was not sure she could manage. And how to pay the tuition? You only got loans if you went full- time, and she was falling behind on bills as it was. Snap out of it, she thought. Choose to be happy.
    She got into her car and was quickly out of Brownsville, onto the winding road through the woods that separated Brownsville from Buell. She passed a big black bear standing on the ridge overlooking the road, its spring coat full and glossy. It watched lazily as she passed. The bears were definitely coming back, as were the coyotes and deer. They were about the only ones that seemed to be doing well.
    As she came into Buell and the wide riverflat, the few old mill buildings still standing, she passed the house she'd grown up in, now abandoned, the windows broken and the shingles blown off the roof. She tried not to look at it. She remembered when the whistle blew and shiftchange clogged the streets with men, their wives, other workers, even twenty years earlier there had been so much life in Buell it was inconceivable, it was impossible to wrap your head around the idea that a place could be destroyed so quickly. She remembered being a teenager and being sure she would leave the Valley, she had not wanted to end up a steelworker's wife—she would move to Pittsburgh or even farther. As a kid, she would get out of school and some days the air was so heavy with soot the streetlights would be on, the middle of the day and all the cars driving around with their headlights. Certain days you couldn't hang your laundry outside for how dirty it would be when it came off the line.
    She had planned to leave, that was always the case. But at eighteen she'd come home from her high school graduation and found a new Pinto in the driveway and a book of pay stubs. Whose car is that, she asked her father. Yours, he said. You start at Penn Steel on Monday. Bring your diploma.
    Both then and now, she thought, it's some man making half of your decisions. She'd done a year on the rolling line, which was where she met Virgil. Then she was pregnant and they got married. She half- wondered if she'd done it to get out of the mill. Nothing to wonder about, she thought. She'd started going to school right away, first pregnant, then dragging a baby around with her, was nearly through her AA when the layoffs came. Virgil had made it through six rounds but then his number was up. You had to have whiskers to keep a job in those days—at first ten years’ seniority then fifteen. Virgil had five. He had been so proud of that job—doing better than the rest of his family they were hill people, coal- patch people, their father had never worked a day in his life.
    Things had been lean. They had waited and waited for the mills to reopen. But the mills just kept laying people off, all up and down the Valley, and then they were closing, and Grace had a young child and that was the end of school for her. There was not a single job to be had. Not two nickels to rub together. Meanwhile Virgil's cousin, who had nine and a half years in the mill and big payments, a nice house with an inground swimming pool, he'd lost his house, his wife, and his daughter on the same day. The bank changed the locks and his wife took the daughter to Houston and Virgil's cousin broke into his own house and shot himself in the kitchen. Everyone in the Valley had a story like that—it was a horror show. It was when Virgil started talking to his family again. Which was when he began to change, she thought. When he started