Big Cherry Holler (9 page)

The grand opening of the Soda Fountain is December 1. (Otto and
Worley are practically living in the Mutual’s, trying to finish the job.) We’re having specials and giveaways all month. (Maybe we can unload some of that partially used Estée Lauder cream that Fleeta pinches.) Pearl has sifted through lots of employment applications, looking for two waitresses and a cook. She has decided to hire Tayloe Lassiter as head waitress, who, despite having two babies now (Misty was joined by baby Travis last year) is still a looker and can draw a crowd. Sarah Dunleavy, the high school teacher who replaced Theodore when he left for the University of Tennessee, directs the Outdoor Drama and has taken Tayloe under her wing. She gives her acting lessons, and everyone in town agrees that Tayloe has gone from amateur to semiprofessional actress beautifully. Sarah has also encouraged Tayloe to model. Occasionally, we see Tayloe in the
Kingsport Times
on the hood of a new truck or in an ad for kitchen appliances.

Pearl comes in with a large packing box. “Fleets, the tinsel is in.”

Fleeta takes the box and rips into it.

Pearl comes behind the counter. “I’d like you to come over to Lew Eisenberg’s with me.”

“Right now?”

“Yeah. If you don’t mind.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Just need your help on something.”

“Okay.” I grab my coat and follow Pearl out.

Lew Eisenberg has gone from the best local lawyer for the coal companies to representing the townsfolk in all matters from wills to divorces. He’s always busy, and he’s very good. He’s even happy now that his wife, Inez, has gotten back her race-car body. She is a Weight Watchers leader, having kept off fifty-eight pounds for over seven years. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard Lew mention moving back to Long Island, New York.

Lew’s hair is completely gray; other than that, you’d never guess he was flirting with sixty. “Hey kids,” he says from behind his desk. “Ave,
your husband was in with his buddies incorporating last week. What do you think of that?”

“If you can’t keep Westmoreland Coal Company in town, we’ll take it,” I tell Lew.

“We’re real busy over at the Pharmacy,” Pearl tells Lew, cutting the chitchat in half.

“Okay, so let’s get to it. This is easy. Ave Maria, Pearl wants to make you her partner at the Pharmacy.”

“A partner? Why?” I turn so that I’m facing Pearl. She glances at Lew, then looks at me.

“Because I need a partner now. We’ve grown so much that I can’t oversee everything alone.”

“I can’t do it.”

“Sure you can.”

“No I can’t. I have more than I can handle.” I can’t tell Pearl and Lew that for the first time in three years I feel my home life is returning to normal, that the hole left by Joe’s death is slowly being filled by time, routine, and change. How could they understand that?

“I’m going to hire more help for you.” Pearl offers.

“No, I’m sorry, Pearl. No.”

“But you need it,” Pearl blurts. It’s no secret that with the mines closed, anyone with a miner in the family is struggling.

“We’re doing fine.”

“Let’s say that you
are
doing fine, I still need help. I’m looking to expand, and I want to keep the flagship going strong. I’d have to hire a manager; who better than you?” Flagship? Little Main Street Mulligan’s Mutual Pharmacy a flagship? What is Pearl talking about?

I turn to Pearl. “You’re expanding?”

“I’d like to open a pharmacy in Norton. I’ve been looking at a building.”

“You’re serious?”

Lew pulls out a file and shows me a picture of the old insurance
building, which has been abandoned for several years, in downtown Norton.

“We’re talking to the realtor right now,” he tells me.

“I think my concept of a down-home variety drugstore is one that can work anywhere. And Norton needs a pharmacy. They have two hospitals but no pharmacy.”

“Pearl’s on to something here. You should consider this,” Lew says, peering at me over his glasses.

I know I should. I’d have fewer Night Worries about the bills, college, and pensions. And the other part of all of this is just selfish. I’ve missed my pharmacy. I loved making the day-to-day decisions; I used to be a person who
ran
something. Being in charge gave me a sense of accomplishment that I don’t get working part-time or at home scrubbing the oven. I still have to scrub the oven, and that’s okay, but I love my job.

“Ave, please do this. I wouldn’t have anything, I wouldn’t be anything, if you hadn’t helped Mama and me. It forever changed us. I owe you.” Pearl looks off for a second, and then that familiar concentration crease between her eyes deepens. “And I don’t like owing people. So let me at least begin to pay you back by sharing in the success of Mutual’s.”

“The chain,” Lew pipes in.

“Let me see what you’ve got there.”

Lew hands me papers; Pearl lets out a whoop and claps her hands. It’s a simple deal. On the flagship store, I will be salaried as a manager and pharmacist and take 50 percent of the profits; the other share goes to Pearl. As I sign my name, I am thinking of my daughter and her future. She needs security. My husband will never leave Cracker’s Neck Holler, and now that he’s found work he enjoys, I have to contribute all I can, however I can.

As Pearl and I walk back to the Pharmacy, she chatters on about her business plans, and I think about my family. This break will help us;
I’m tired of worrying, and maybe this will help me stop. Ever since Joe died, when something wonderful happens, I have a moment of elation, then I remember my son and feel a pang of doom. What good is anything without my son to share it with? Now that I’ve ruined the moment for myself, I plunge further into despair. I feel a strange sense of defeat: here I go again, I’m tied down to a business I didn’t choose in the first place. When I gave the Pharmacy to Pearl, it was a no-strings deal. I knew the power that guilt can have over a person because it had defined my life. How I wanted to do the choosing and be free to invent myself. I had made a plan. I was going to leave Big Stone Gap and find myself out there in the world, seek my happiness, own my destiny, have a life of adventure before it was too late. Instead of going away, though, I fell in love and stayed here. I married Jack Mac and believed that the only cage I had been in was one of my own creation. Why do I now have that old boxed-in feeling when I should feel relief?

Jack’s truck is parked in front of the Mutual’s when we return. “I hope Etta’s all right,” I tell Pearl.

When we get inside, we find Jack, Rick, and Mousey working with Otto in the Soda Fountain. Etta is wearing Fleeta’s smock and painting one of the wood panels on the base of the counter.

“Hey, what’s going on?” I say to the men, who look up but keep working.

“Well, we was worried that we wasn’t gonna make our deadline. So I called old Jack Mac and I done tole him my troubles and he come over and here we are,” Otto explains.

“I’m painting, Mama!” Etta says proudly.

“I can see that,” I tell my daughter, who haphazardly streaks paint down the wood.

“Don’t worry, Ave. It’s just the base coat,” Otto says under his breath.

“Try not to get any paint on Fleeta’s smock.”

“She can ruin it for all I care,” Fleeta says as she stacks boxes of Christmas tree lights onto the shelf.

I watch my husband as he stands on a ladder, maneuvering a ceiling tile into place. I consider what I told Pearl about spending fifteen years in this town without a boyfriend. Suddenly, I am not in the present—I am the woman I was ten years ago, when I worked in this Pharmacy and it was my life. My husband swivels on the ladder. I don’t think any man could look better in a pair of old overalls and a bandanna. We’re so different; he’s talented with his hands, and the last book he read was
Moby-Dick
in the eleventh grade. I can’t hammer a nail, and I wait for the Bookmobile every Saturday. I must be attracted to what I don’t have, but I wonder what I fill up in him. He catches me looking at him and smiles. “What are you looking at?”

“You,” I tell him.

“Jack, you gots a call.”

My husband and I are really looking at each other in a way we haven’t in a very long time, and I don’t want this moment to end.

“She says it’s important,” Fleeta says impatiently.

“Who is it?” I ask. My tone of voice causes every man in the room to look at me.

“Karen. Karen somebody,” Fleeta barks.

“I’ll be right there,” Jack says, and steps off the ladder. He touches my arm as he passes; I’m going to take that as a sign of reassurance for now. I look over at Rick, who studies the trim of the counter a little too intently.

“Who’s Karen?” I ask him. Without looking up, he shrugs.

Mousey interjects. “She manages the lumber store up in Coeburn. We git our lumber there.”

I’m so glad I asked.

“Hel-looo?” Iva Lou calls out from the front of the Pharmacy.

“We’re back here,” I holler.

“Well, lookee here. This is gonna be some soda fountain.” Iva Lou
inspects the job. “All we need is Lana Turner on the stool and we’re in business.”

“Who’s Lana Turner?” Etta asks.

“She was a sweater girl in the movies when I was a boy,” Otto tells her.

“A sweater girl?”

“Yeah, she made me sweat.” Otto laughs.

“Mr. Honeycutt shows her movies sometimes. I just haven’t taken you to any of them yet,” I tell my daughter.

“I got tickets over to the Barter The-A-ter in Abingdon for tomorrow’s matinee,” Iva Lou tells me.

“What are you seeing?”

“
Fiddler on the Roof
. Remember that Womack girl who used to understudy June in the Drama? Well, she’s playin’ one of the sisters. I put a group together. I was hoping I could take Etta.”

“I want to go to the show!” Etta says. She puts down her paintbrush and shoves her bangs out of her eyes.

“Okay, honey.”

“I’m gonna be all alone this weekend without my women,” Jack Mac says from behind me.

“Really? You throwing me out?” I tease.

“Kind of.” Jack kisses me on the forehead and pulls a ticket from his pocket.
UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE VS. ALABAMA
, it says in orange letters.

“What’s this?”

“You’re going to Knoxville to see Theodore.”

“You’re kidding.” I’m thrilled. Utterly surprised and a little confused, but thrilled at the prospect of a weekend without chores and errands and worries. I have the most thoughtful husband in the world.

“Go on home and pack. Your bus leaves in an hour.”

“Etta, you’ll be all right?”

“Mama. Go,” she says, and rolls her eyes.

“Okay. Great. I’m leaving.” I kiss Etta and then my husband.

“I’ll follow you home and give you a lift back down to town,” Iva Lou says as I head for the door.

Once I’m home, I throw together a duffel bag of clothes, feed the cat, and turn up the heat so it’ll be warm when Jack and Etta come home later.

“You need to git away,” Iva Lou tells me as we descend the mountain into the Gap.

“I do?”

“Honey, you’re worn to a nub. We’ve all noticed it.”

“I thought I was fine.”

“Not to those of us who know ye.”

We travel in silence for a moment. I dismiss the fact that folks are discussing my moods behind my back.

“There was something I meant to ask you a while ago.”

“Shoot.”

“Do you remember a woman with blond hair buying books at the Halloween Carnival? She was small?” I was going to use the word “petite” but that sounds too pretty.

“There were so many people there.”

“This one kind of had a tan?”

“Hon, I don’t remember.” Iva Lou looks at me. “Why do you ask?”

“I just never saw her before. I thought maybe you knew her.”

“No. I could ask James. Maybe he knows her.”

“No, no, that’s okay. It’s not important.”

“Are you sure? James is a bigger gossip than any woman I know. He’s carried more stories across this county than there are miles on the Bookmobile.”

“Nope. It’s okay.”

I have always loved bus rides. When you grow up in a small town, they really are your ticket to the outside world. I’ve been to Washington, D.C., Cincinnati, Nashville, Memphis, and Charlottesville by bus.
Last year, I took Etta and two of her friends to Knoxville for “Holiday on Ice.” Theodore showed us the town, even let the kids run on the football field at the U.T. stadium. Jack stayed home. (You couldn’t pay him to go to an ice show—another one of those facts that surface after you marry someone.) I love ice shows: the cold stadium, the crowd, the smell of carmel popcorn, the pale blue ice rink, the crisscrossing beams of red and tangerine spotlights, and of course, the Stars of the Show, the skaters, lean and graceful, who shoot past in their glittering tulle skirts.

The bus is nearly empty tonight. I’m sitting behind the driver (my favorite seat), with my feet resting on the aluminum bar separating his area from the rest of the bus. As we speed along in the dark, the soft lights of the distant farms fade into the black, creating a hypnotic effect that begins to lull me to sleep. I am exhausted, so I take my duffel bag and place it on the seat next to me. As I begin to stretch out and lie down, a sudden thought causes me to bolt upright. Why did Jack rush me out of town so quickly? Does he have a date with that mysterious blond? The driver must have heard me shift quickly because he looks at me in the rearview. Honestly. Stop this, I tell myself. You’re making things up. I lean over onto the duffel bag. If I sleep, we’ll get to Knoxville all the faster.

“Hey. Sleepyhead. Wake up,” the familiar deep voice teases me.

“Theodore!” I sit up, refreshed from my nap. “God, you look great!” And he does. He is trim; I can see the cut of his biceps through his T-shirt. “What’s with the arms?”

“The beauty of working at a university is the free gym and trainers.”

“Get me a job here. Immediately.”

Theodore takes my bag, and I catch him up on everything as we charge through the bus station. We stop under a crosswalk light so I can show him Etta’s new school picture.

“Hungry?” he asks me as he loads the bag into his car.