Big Cherry Holler (8 page)

Why is he still talking to her? What does he see in her? I have my answer. She laughs a final time and pats the small of his back. (That’s a little low on a married man’s body to pat, in my opinion.) She turns and walks away. My husband watches her as she goes. She rolls off the balls of her feet and up onto her toes to give her hips just the right swivel. Jack Mac doesn’t miss one movement. I am officially sick to my stomach. Then, as if his conscience has bitten him on the ass for eyeing hers, he turns his attention innocently to the shooters at the spinning duck booth.

The popcorn-ball eaters have left. I lean forward and drape myself over the back of the seat in front of me as though I have been shot and left for dead. (I don’t consider this too dramatic in light of all Iva Lou just told me!) Suddenly, as if marital radar alarms have gone off, Jack Mac feels my presence overhead and looks up at me. He smiles sheepishly. Well, maybe it’s not sheepish; I don’t know what it is, but whatever it is, I haven’t seen that smile on his face in a long, long time. It’s the kind of smile he gave me on Apple Butter Night, the night he first proposed to me. I lean back in my seat and exhale a long, deep breath toward the ceiling. (I must have been holding my breath the entire time!) The big black spider swings overhead, its crooked legs caught in the ropy web.

I’d rather die than let my husband think I saw him flirting with the Blond Mystery Woman, so I wave to him from my perch and survey the gym floor as though I’m looking for someone. He looks up at me, confused. I want to stand up and scream, in front of the entire Halloween Carnival, “Yes! Yes! Yes! I’m spying on you!” Instead I smile and give a thumbs-up to the decorations. Spec joins him. Jack points up to me. Spec motions for me as he taps the red emergency cross on his orange vest. As I run downstairs to join them on the floor, I’m hoping the kids didn’t have an accident in the Spookhouse; the tile floor in there can get slick.

“We got a call up in Wampler Holler. Let’s go.”

“What happened?”

“Not sure. Police radioed me,” Spec tells me, handing me my gear.

“Honey, look after Etta,” I tell Jack, and go with Spec. I look back as we leave. God, he looks good to me all of a sudden in his white cotton shirt and his oldest jeans. (Are all men better-looking when other women want them?)

Spec takes a road up to the holler that I’ve never been on before.

“So what’s going on?”

“We’re cuttin’ through Don Wax’s farm, goin’ to the old Mullins homestead.”

Most of the Mullins family (no relation to Fleeta) has moved out of our area; some to Kingsport, others north to “O-high” (I don’t know what the industry is in Ohio, but lots of our folks have gone north to whatever awaits them there). All that’s left of the Mullins family is its matriarch, Naomi, who still lives in Wampler Holler. I love this holler; it cuts into the mountain in the highest point in the cliffs, and it has a great view of East Stone Gap and the dairy farms that make up this side of Powell Valley. As Spec speeds along the ridge, I figure it’s a real emergency—Naomi must be close to ninety years old. She still comes to town to trade on the first of every month; her face has not a wrinkle, and her hair is still coal black—must be that Cherokee blood.

“Is Naomi all right?”

“I ain’t got no details, Ave, so don’t ask me. The Fraley boy from the next house over was gittin’ some firewood out of her barn and saw something and called it in.”

“Fine, Mr. Testy.”

Spec smiles and keeps his eyes on the road. It’s just like old times, with Spec’s complaining and my prying. As we approach the Mullins log cabin (which has since sprouted extra rooms and been covered in aluminum siding), we are stopped by burly Tozz Ball, a deputy in the Big Stone police department. He directs us to pull into the clearing next to the neighbors, take our gear, and approach on foot. Spec and I make our way on a small footpath that leads to Naomi’s front porch.
I see a group of men, most from neighboring Norton’s rescue squad, looking in the windows on the side of the log-cabin portion of the house. Spec and I join them. One of the men turns to us and motions us to be quiet.

“Lordy mercy,” Spec says as he looks into the window. (He’s tall enough to see over all the heads.)

“What is it?”

“You ain’t gonna believe it.” Spec pushes me to the front of the group so I can see in the window. There in the living room is Naomi, in a long pale green flannel nightgown, standing completely still and staring into the eyes of a six-point buck. The buck seems twice as big as any horse I’ve ever seen, and he doesn’t seem agitated, he just looks deeply into Naomi’s eyes. Naomi does not move; she stares the buck down.

“It’s been pert’ near an hour we been waitin’. But the buck ain’t flinched, and neither has Naomi,” a man holding a stun gun tells me.

“What are you gonna do?” I whisper back.

“I got ten bucks on Naomi,” he whispers back.

“Boys, we’d better make a move,” Spec warns the group. But no one can make a move; we’re in that strange place where awe and fear intersect, and it has paralyzed us.

Naomi takes a step back without breaking her stare. As she shifts, the deer cocks his head. We hold our breath outside the window. Naomi holds up her finger.

“I’m a-gonna go, Ben,” she says to the buck. “Now, you go when I go. Go on. Git.” Naomi disappears down a hallway and we hear a door close.

“Who the hell is Ben?” Tozz whispers.

Then the six-point buck rears up. For a second, it looks as though he, like Naomi, may back out the open front door. Instead, in a panic, he charges the bay window at the far side of the living room and jumps through the window, tearing away the wood frame with his antlers. We hear a small yelp from deep within him as he breaks
through the glass, which shatters onto the wood floor like crushed ice. In what seems like a long time but is only a few seconds, Tozz leads the charge around the side of the house to the front, to see where the buck went. As we get to the front porch steps, we see his silvery-brown rump as he leaps majestically back into the dark woods.

Spec and I run into the house to Naomi. The bay window is destroyed. The simple voile sheers are torn where the buck’s antlers caught; there is fresh blood on the sash, where the glass pierced his underside. This makes my stomach turn. Spec opens the door to the bedroom for me.

“Naomi, honey, are you all right?” I ask her.

She sits on the edge of her bed in a state of calm with her hands folded neatly on her lap.

“Naomi?”

“Check her breathin’,” Spec barks.

“What happened?”

“Oh, Ava Marie,” Naomi says and sighs. Naomi’s pale skin has a pink sheen to it; there is a little dew on her forehead (from the standoff, no doubt). Her long hair, which I have never seen outside a braided bun, is loose and hanging around her shoulders in shiny ropes. Her bedroom is small, with a bed with a red and white Irish chain quilt, a small lamp, and a table. She looks like a doll in a simple cradle as she sits. “He come to me. I dreamt it, and he done come.”

“Who?”

“Ben.”

“Ben?”

“My husband, Ben. Ye know.”

“Naomi, we always called your husband Mule. Mule Mullins.”

“His Christian name was Ben.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Benjamin Ezra Mullins. That was his name in full. I had a dream a while back where he was a buck and I was a doe and we was talkin’ to each other like we was human.” I make Naomi cough three times
as I listen to her heart. “I been restless, thinkin’ about him here lately. And I prayed that I could talk to him dye-rectly as I was feelin’ his presence here. I been thinkin’ ’bout selling this farm, and I couldn’t decide on nothin’ on my own, so I called on Jesus and then, o’ course, my Ben.”

“How did the buck, I mean Ben, get into the house?”

“He just walked right in. I had left the door open for air.”

“How do you know it was him?”

“The eyes.” Naomi smiles.

“What did he tell you?”

“To stay.”

“Well, if that was his message, he tore up the window in the living room pretty good.”

Naomi chuckles. “He never did want me to put that window in. He said we got enough light with the front windows. But I wanted me some big windows, so that I could put me some purty curtains up, like I saw in the movies. I always wanted me some big windows where the breeze comes through and moves them curtains around like fancy skirts.”

“Honey, it doesn’t seem like there’s anything wrong with you. Your heart is beating normal, your blood pressure is good …”

“I wasn’t skeered of that old buck.”

“I know. But the excitement might’ve caused you some trouble.”

“Aww, I feel fine,” Naomi tells me, and gets up.

Spec has cleaned up the glass in the living room. Two of the men are taping cardboard along the frame where the glass had been.

“I’m gonna put on some coffee, boys. Any takers?” Naomi offers.

The men grumble appreciatively. Spec leaves his number with Naomi.

“Now you call me, youngun, if you need me.”

“I will.”

The ride down through the veiny roads of East Stone Gap is dark except for our high beams and the occasional jack-o’-lantern on a
porch. As we speed through the black night, I have a sense that time has stopped. I am somewhere in the past, when I was younger and wore the same orange vest and sat beside Spec in this very wagon that forever smells of tobacco and spearmint.

“Ave?”

“Yeah, Spec?”

“That there was a good run.”

“For everybody but the deer.”

“Yup.” He smiles.

“It was a mystical experience.”

“Don’t start that stuff, Ave.”

“Spec, that was a visit from the beyond.”

“It was a visit from the woods. That deer saw a light through an open door and went in Naomi’s house uninvited. And that there is the end of it.”

“Nope. Naomi thinks it was a visit from her husband on the other side.”

“You’re givin’ me the creeps.”

“I thought you were a believer.”

“I am. If it’s Bible-approved, or if it makes any goddamn sense. People don’t come back as animals. That’s nuts.”

“I wish I knew where we go when we die.”

“What good would that do?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’d live differently. Maybe I wouldn’t be so afraid to lose people. I get scared that I’ll never see my mother again. My son.”

“I shore would like to see my mama agin. And my pap, too. ’Cause if I could see ’em agin, I would ask ’em a lot of things. Things that weigh on my mind.”

“Like what?”

“Like why both of ’em died on me before I could git to ’em. Both of ’em. Ma went in her sleep, and Pap died at the hospital. But I never did say good-bye to neither of ’em. I wish that were different.”

“I wish I would have made my mama go to Italy. She never went home, you know. That bothers me.”

“I knew your mama. You couldn’t make her do nothin’ that she didn’t want to do. So you got to let go of that one.”

“I guess so.”

As Spec drives us up the holler road, I wish for a minute that the run weren’t over. There are things I’d like to talk about.

“Thank ye, Ave. You done good.”

“Don’t flatter me, Spec. It ain’t your style.”

Spec smiles. I grab my gear and go into our old stone house.

Etta must be asleep, I can see the glimmer of her nightlight from the bottom of the stairs. I place my gear on the bench and head back to our bedroom. Jack is propped up in bed, reading.

“How’s Naomi?”

“How’d you know?”

“They made an announcement at the carnival. A guy from the Norton fire department called down the mountain with details.”

“It was something to see.”

“I’ll bet.” Jack goes back to his reading. When I see my husband, so comfortable in our house, in our bed, I feel as though we could last forever. I want to tell him about Naomi’s dream, and I wonder if he believes in that sort of thing. We never talk about things like that, so I don’t know.

“Do you ever dream about Joe?” I ask him.

Jack puts down his newspaper and looks at me, surprised that I brought Joe up. “No, I don’t,” he says softly. “Or maybe if I do, I don’t remember it.” We never talk about him; it’s just easier that way. I turn to go into the bathroom to wash up for bed.

“Why do you ask?”

“I wonder where he is.”

“In heaven.”

“God, Jack.”

“Don’t you believe that?”

“I tell Etta that; I guess I’m hoping it’s true.”

“I thought you believed.”

“Oh, I believe. I just don’t know in what,” I say. Jack looks at me funny. “What?”

“Ave, sometimes … I don’t know. I don’t get it.” He shrugs and goes back to his reading.

“Honey?”

Jack puts down his paper. “What?”

“Sometimes you don’t get
me
.”

I go into the bathroom and take a good, long time brushing my teeth. Jack appears in the doorway. “Is everything all right?”

I want to say, “No. I’m scared. Who was that woman at the carnival? Are you tired of me?” Instead, I look at my husband and say, “Everything is fine.” He buys it and goes back to bed. And that, I am sure, is the root of our problem.

F
or the first time in his life, Jack MacChesney is officially his own boss. MR. J’s Construction Company opened its door on November 20. MR. J stands for Mousey, Rick, and Jack. Very clever. Rick finagled a small office for them at the car dealership. Morgan Legg, the owner, was happy to oblige them, as Rick was his top salesman on the floor last year. I have never seen my husband so happy. And they’re off to a good strong start. They bid on a job to renovate the Fellowship Hall at the Methodist Church, and they won. Jack is having a ball designing the new space. No money coming in yet, but it doesn’t matter, my husband’s smiling face is payment enough. Jack’s new job frees up extra time for Etta too. When he was a miner, he left before dawn and often came home after dark. Now he controls his time, so we see more of each other. I feel our troubles lifting a bit. A real reason to celebrate come Christmas.

I’m back to working full-time, and I like it. Jack didn’t like the idea at first, but I was so supportive of his new company that he let go of any misgivings he may have had about my schedule.