Big Cherry Holler (2 page)

As the bell sounds and the green double doors swing open, the kids pour out onto the wet playground like beads from a sack. Etta stands at the top of the stairs, surveying the fence line. When she sees me, she hops down the steps two at a time and runs toward me. She has a hard time holding on to her red plaid umbrella in the fierce wind. Her rain slicker flaps about. I give her a quick kiss as she jumps into the Jeep.

“Did you remember my socks?”

“Are you nervous?”

Etta peels off her mud-splattered white kneesocks and pulls on the fresh ones. “Very.”

“Uncle Theodore sent you a present.”

Etta rips into the box. Her light brown hair hangs limp and straight. (I’m glad Fleeta can put it up in a braid tonight.) Her little hands are just like mine, made for work. Her face is her father’s, the straight nose, the lips that match top and bottom, and the hazel eyes, bright and round. Etta has freckles—we don’t know where those came from. Jack told Etta a bedtime story about freckles when she was very little, which she believed for the longest time: God has a bucketful of freckles, and when he’s done making babies in heaven, he lines them up right before they’re born and sprinkles freckles on them for good luck. The more freckles, the better your luck. Let’s hope the freckles do
their job tonight. Etta holds up the corsage. “I shouldn’t wear it if Jane doesn’t have one.”

“Not to worry. He sent one for Jane and a boutonniere for Billy.”

“Just like a wedding,” Etta says. “But I ain’t never gonna marry Billy Skeens. No way. He’s too short.”

“He’s probably gonna grow,” I tell my daughter, sounding like someone else’s annoying mother. “And we don’t say ‘ain’t never.’ Do we?”

A horn blasts next to us. “Daddy!” Etta shouts, off the hook for her bad grammar. The van from Sacred Heart Church careens into a parking spot. My husband smiles and waves to us. Etta climbs out of the Jeep and runs to the van, where Jack has thrown open the door. She shows him her corsage, which he admires. I watch the two of them through the window as they laugh. They look like an old photograph, black and white and silver where the emulsion has turned.

Jack must feel me staring through the rain and motions for me to join them. He shoves the van door open, and I jump in and climb into the seat behind him.

“How was your day?” I ask.

“Fine.”

“Daddy, kiss Mama.” Jack kisses me on the cheek. “Why do they misspell ‘college’ in
Kiddie Kollege
?”

“I don’t know.” Jack defers to me.

“Maybe because it matches the ‘K’ in ‘Kiddie,’ ” I tell her.

“That’s a dumb reason. If you’re smart enough to go on a show called
Kiddie Kollege
, you’re smart enough to know that college starts with a ‘C.’ ”

Jack looks at me in the rearview mirror. The corners of his hazel eyes crinkle up as he smiles. He finds Etta’s know-it-all tone funny; I think her loud opinions are just nerves before competition. Or maybe it’s confidence. I’m not sure.

My family cheers when I announce I’ve brought along red pepper sandwiches. As I cross to the Jeep to get the cooler, Jack gets out to
help me. He looks beautiful to me, fresh-scrubbed from the mine. He’s gotten better-looking as he’s aged. (Men are so lucky that way, and in others —don’t get me started.) His hair, which receded in his late thirties and looked like it might fall out, stayed in. It’s all gray now, but with his hazel eyes, it looks elegant. He lost some weight, determined not to be Fat and Forty. I smooth down my hair, which has frizzed in the rain.

“I’ve got it,” Jack says as he lifts the cooler over my head.

“What’s wrong?” I ask him.

“Nothing.”

“Something is wrong. I can tell.”

“Ave. Nothing’s wrong.”

“Are you sure?”

“I can’t talk about it right now. I’ll tell you later.”

“Tell me now.”

“No. Later.” Jack looks at me and then through the window at Etta. She looks out at us. “I don’t want to get Etta all riled up.”

“Okay,” I say impatiently. “But you can tell me.” Why won’t he tell me what’s wrong? What is he protecting me from?

“The mines closed.”

“No!”

“Yeah,” he says under his breath angrily.

“I’m sorry.” That’s all I can say? I don’t throw my arms around him? I don’t comfort him? I just stand here in the rain.

“I am too.” Jack turns toward the van.

“Let’s not ruin Etta’s night,” I say to his back. Jack turns around and looks at me as though I’m a stranger; it sends a chill through me. He straightens his shoulders and says, “Let’s not.”

The day we have dreaded has come. My husband is out of work. But it’s worse than that; Jack’s identity and heritage is tied to the coal in these hills in a deeply personal way. The MacChesneys have been coal miners for as far back as anyone can remember. My husband is a proud miner: a union man who worked his way up from a pumper to
chief roof bolter. Some say it’s the most dangerous job in the mine. Now what will he do? What kind of work can my husband find at his age? He has no degree. How are we going to make it? I only work three days a week at the Pharmacy. We count on his benefits. Sure, we own the house, but it doesn’t run on air. I wish we didn’t have this show tonight, or all these people coming. Why do I always have to make an event out of everything? I had to arrange the van, fill it with friends, make sandwiches. I couldn’t let it be just the three of us.

Iva Lou Wade Makin pulls up and parks across the street. Her glorious blond bouffant is protected by a white polka-dot rain cap with a peak so pointy, it makes her seem medieval. Actually, Iva Lou looks more like the state bird as she puddle-hops across Shawnee Avenue. Her lips, her shoes, and her raincoat are ruby red. She hoists herself into the van (hips first) with a Jean Harlow grin. Her gold bangle bracelets jingle as she lifts the rain cap off her head.

“Whoo. That storm is a bitch.” Iva Lou turns to Etta. “Now, don’t use that word ‘bitch,’ hon. It’s a grown-up word.”

“Thanks for the clarification.” I give Iva Lou a look.

“Nellie Goodloe ain’t coming. She’s gonna watch the show with the Methodist Sewing Circle at the Carry-Out.”

“Is Aunt Fleeta coming?” Etta asks.

“I saw her at the Pharmacy. I got the last rain bonnet. She’ll be along presently.”

Etta’s teacher (and mine way back when), Grace White, a petite lady of almost seventy, holds an umbrella over Jane and Billy, dressed for television in their Sunday finest. Jack gets out and helps them into the van.

“Jane, we got corsages!” Etta squeals. “Billy, you got a carnation.”

“Okay,” Billy says, less than enthused.

Fleeta Mullins’s old gray Cadillac with one bashed fin pulls up next to the Jeep. She barrels out of it quickly, tossing off the butt of a cigarette. Fleeta is small, and she’s shrinking; smoking has ruined her bones. I try to get her to take calcium; I’m sure she has osteoporosis.
She’s still a nimble thing, though. Fleeta leaps up into the van after Iva Lou pulls open the door for her, then wedges into the middle seat next to Mrs. White, bringing a waft of tobacco and Windsong cologne with her. “I had me a line at the register, and folks was surly. Pearl Grimes needs to hire more help over to the Pharmacy,” she announces over her foggy reading glasses. I shrug. I am not the boss, haven’t been for almost ten years. But old habits die hard with Fleeta.

“No problem. We’re right on schedule,” Mrs. White promises.

“Pearl made peanut-butter balls.” Fleeta gives me the tin. The kids beg for them, but I tell them, “After the show. Okay? We don’t need your winning answers sticking to the roofs of your mouths.”

As the kids chatter, Fleeta sticks her head between Jack and me. “I done heard. Westmoreland’s out.”

“Don’t say anything, Fleets. The kids,” Jack says to her quietly.

“Right. Right. I got me half a mind to get on the bus to Pittsburgh and go meet them company men myself and tell ’em to go straight to hell. After all we done for ’em. Sixty years of profit on the backs of our men, and now they’re just gonna pack up and clear out.” Fleeta grunts and sits back in her seat.

As we drive out of our mountains and into the hills of East Tennessee, Billy regales us with the capitals of all fifty states in alphabetical order. Jane divides fractions aloud. Etta squeezes into my seat with me and faces her father.

“Are y’all mad?”

“No,” Jack and I say together, looking straight ahead.

“Then what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Jack tells her as she shuffles through her homemade flash cards.

“Daddy, the coal of Southwest Virginia is …”

“Bituminous.”

“That’s right!” Etta smiles. “I hope they don’t make me spell it.”

“If they do, you just stay calm and sound it out,” I tell her.

“And if you can’t, we love you anyway, darlin’,” her father tells her.

“I want to win.” Etta’s eyes narrow.

“Etta, do you know how much coal there is in our mountains?”

“How much, Daddy?”

“Enough to mine for the next seven hundred years.”

“That much?”

“That much.”

“If they ask me that, I’ll know,” Etta says proudly.

“I don’t think they’ll ask you that,” Jack tells her.

“You never know.” Etta hugs his neck and returns to her seat.

I look over at Jack, who keeps his eyes on the road. I wish I could fill up the silence between us with something, anything, a joke maybe. I used to know what to say to my husband; I used to be able to comfort him or cut to the center of a problem and dissect it. I could always make him feel better. But something is wrong. Something has shifted, and the change was so subtle and so quiet, we hardly noticed it. We pull against each other now.

“Jack?”

“Yeah?”

“Is there really seven hundred years of coal in our mountains?”

“At least,” he tells me without taking his eyes off the road.

The WCYB television station is a small, square, brown-brick building nestled in the hillside outside of Bristol, just off the highway.

“Is that it?” Etta asks as she wedges between us and looks through the windshield.

“That’s it?” Jane echoes.

The building does look lonesome sitting there on the side of the road. It’s hard to believe that it’s the center of communications for the Appalachian Mountains. The kids were expecting WCYB to be a comic-book skyscraper with mirrored windows and an oscillating satellite dish shooting menacing green waves into the sky.

“Now, see, that’s not so scary,” Jack Mac says to the team.

“That ain’t scary at all. It looks like a garage,” Billy adds, disappointed.

“It ain’t how big it is. It’s if they got cameras. All you need is a camera and some wires and some electricity. That’s what makes TV,” little Jane says definitively. (I hope Jane doesn’t get any questions about modern appliances. If she does, we’re in big trouble.) Mrs. White leads the kids into the studio.

Fleeta needs a smoke. Iva Lou is so tense from the trip, she bums a cigarette. The rain has stopped in Bristol, but it’s still damp, and the fresh smell of the surrounding woods makes the place feel like home.

“I don’t know how you people with kids do it.” Iva Lou lights up, folds an arm across her waist, and perches her other arm with the cigarette in midair. I’ve always liked how she leans in to smoke, sort of like the cigarette might be safe to smoke if it’s off in the distance a bit.

“It weren’t easy, let me tell ye. That’s how I started with these.” Fleeta holds up her cigarette like a number one. “My nerves was so bad from the day-in-day-out with my younguns, I turned to tobacky and it’s been my friend ever since. Thank you Jesus and keep the crop pure.”

“Our kids are well prepared for the show. Sounded like,” Iva Lou says hopefully.

“I want ’em to whoop the asses off Kingsport,” Fleeta says as she stomps her cigarette butt. “I been watching every week, scopin’ out the competition. I had Ten to Two Metcalf run some stats for me.” Fleeta exhales. (Ten to Two is a bookie out of Jonesville. He got his name because he has a permanent tilt to his head, forcing his neck to crick over his shoulder at the ten-till mark.) “I got twenty bucks ridin’ on our team. And I don’t like to lose.”

If the exterior of WCYB is a big fat disappointment, the interior doesn’t do much to impress the kids either. The check-in desk is an old wooden table with a backless stool on wheels. A fancy plastic
NBC peacock sign spreads over the back wall. A wide electrical cord dangles down from it like a hanging noose (it must light up). I peek in the small rectangular window of a door marked
STUDIO.
The familiar
Kiddie Kollege
set, an old-fashioned schoolroom with six desks for the contestants, is positioned in front of the camera. The portable bleachers for the audience fall into shadow. The host’s desk, complete with a large spinning wheel full of tiny folded question cards, is bathed in a bright white light.

A perky young redhead with a small, flat nose meets us at the studio door. “I’m Kim Stallard. Welcome to the WCYB studio.”

“We can read, lady.” Billy Skeens points to the sign.

“Aren’t you smart?” Kim says sincerely. “You must be from Big Stone Gap. Would you like to see the studio?”

“You better do something with them damn kids. They’re squirrelly as hell, cooped up in that van for pert’ near two hours,” Fleeta tells Kim, popping a mint.

“Right. Okay. Follow me.” Kim motions us into the dark studio. There is a small path to the set; on either side are painted flats, which serve as backdrops for the news shows.

“Isn’t this interesting, kids?” Jack asks.

“It’s a mess,” Etta decides.

“These are sets for the shows,” I tell her in a tone to remind her that we are guests in TV Land.

“We’re what you call an affiliate. We are a multipurpose studio. Is it smaller than you thought?” Kim asks.

“Much,” Jane Herd tells her as she cranes her neck to look up at the rafters rigged with lights.

“Well, TV isn’t all glamorous.” Kim smiles.

“Look, a bike.” Etta points to an off-camera bike.

“That’s mine,” says the familiar deep voice of Dan DeBoard, the debonair fiftyish game-show host/weatherman/anchor of the six o’clock news (he shares these responsibilities with Johnny “Snow
Day” Wood). He doesn’t seem one bit nervous as he reviews his notes. He is tall and slim; his black hair is parted neatly and slicked back. The
Bristol Herald Courier
once proclaimed him “East Tennessee’s Burt Reynolds.” The resemblance is definitely there, and so are the
Smokey and the Bandit
sideburns.