Big Stone Gap (13 page)

The drum majorette blows her whistle, and the band falls into formation in the end zone, spaced across in a straight line from fence to fence. The band is magnificent in their Carolina-blue and ruby-red uniforms. From the visitors’ side, the pyramid crew runs out onto the field and places the pyramids. The drum majorette barks, “Horns up!” The band begins to play.

The show is truly a wonder, but over it there is a veil of trying too hard. We are overcompensating and overprepared, but we don’t know what else to do with the nervous energy that runs through us. We aren’t used to famous people gracing these parts, though the great baseball player Willie Horton of the Detroit Tigers was born over in Arno. The only star that has ever passed through here was Peggie Castle from
The Lawman
, and frankly, without her makeup she didn’t look like her TV self. And of course, George C. Scott (General Patton) was born in our county seat: Wise, Virginia. Until now, they were the Big Names. But we’re about to top them with the biggest star of all. Everybody in Big Stone Gap has a stake in making Elizabeth Taylor’s visit a success. Mr. Honeycutt has been running a “La Liz” film festival at the Trail, and this has only fed the feverish excitement. Nellie Goodloe keeps reminding us that this is an election year and the visit is really about politics. But no one seems to care about that. John Warner is a Republican, and most folks around here are Democrats, so I don’t think coming through here will do his campaign much good. This is Jimmy Carter country all the way. But if anyone can sway some votes for Mr. Warner, it will be his movie star wife.

Even Tayloe Slagle is a nervous wreck. She threw up behind the bleachers before her big solo number, sending a shudder through the entire marching band. Luckily, I have a pack of Tums in my pocket—I’ve been carrying them around since the panic attacks started—and I run them over to her. She is embarrassed about being sick and grateful for the Tums to settle her stomach. Sitting on the ground in her mother’s arms, Tayloe looks like a little girl. She is a little girl. We forget that, because kids around here marry so young. From my perspective now, at my age, she looks so small.

After he checks on Tayloe, Theodore runs onto the field, rallying the kids to focus and concentrate on the routine. You can see the fear in their faces, though. If the most perfect girl in town is a nervous wreck, it wouldn’t take much for the entire band to keel over in group panic like dominoes. Thankfully, Tayloe revives quickly and returns to the field. Now she can add
vulnerable
and
indomitable
to her long list of desirable attributes.

I join Spec up in the bleachers. He just went on a Rescue Squad run to Wallens Ridge, so I’m dying to hear details.

“What happened?” I ask Spec as I sit down beside him.

“Larry Bumgarner done shot his sister.”

“No! Is she okay?”

“She’s fine. He missed. Put a hole in the sleeve of her shirt is all.” Spec lights a cigarette.

“Why . . . why did he shoot her?”

“She was on the phone too long. He wanted to ask a gal, you may know her, she’s a majorette, Bree Clendenin?” I nod. “Well, Larry wanted to ask Bree to Homecoming in the worst way, and his sister was tying up the line. He got fed up and went in the bedroom and got his papaw’s gun and threatened her, and he says it accidentally went off.” Spec exhales.

I look off at the mountains covered in a veil of sheer gray and decide for sure and forever that I am quitting the Rescue Squad.

Spec must read my mind. “I could have used you up there. You’re good at talking sense.” Spec thinks a compliment will keep me on the job. I’ll let him think so. “You know, I had to ask him one thing. The kid. Larry. I had to know what in God’s name was so special about Bree Clendenin that he had to shoot his sister off the phone. And do you know what he said to me?”

“I can’t imagine.”

“He said, ‘Her hair.’ He loved her hair. Does that just beat all?” It does beat all. But what did Spec think Larry would say? That he loved Bree for her character, her mind, and her sense of humor? Isn’t her thick copper hair enough to drive any boy wild? Everybody knows the old mountain wisdom: Women love with their ears and men with their eyes.

I take a good look at Spec. I spend a lot of time with him, but I’ve never really studied his face. His profile is outlined against the concrete wall of the bleachers like a tintype. Spec has a face of contradictions. He has the high forehead of a leader, the short, turned-up nose of a procrastinator, and no chin. According to
siang mien
, he has the big ideas but no follow-through.

“Spec? Are you happy?”

Spec exhales a puff of smoke from his cigarette. The question makes him laugh, and then he has a coughing fit. The fit lasts a few seconds. He sputters and clears his throat.

“What is so funny?”

“What kind of a question is that?”

“Are you happy? That’s the question.”

“I don’t think about that.”

“You don’t?” I can’t believe him.

“Hell no.” Spec flicks the butt of his cigarette. “Happiness is a myth.”

“Why is it a myth?”

“I got murried when I was fifteen years old. I got me five kids. One a bigger disappointment than the next. Course, it’s not their upbringing. It’s the world. It’s gone to hell, and ain’t nothing nobody can do to stop it.”

“If you could live your life over again, would you do anything differently?”

Spec clears his throat. The definitive set of his mouth tells me that this is a question he has thought about many times.

“I’d have murried Twyla Johnson instead of my wife I got now. Twyla is The One That Got Away. Everybody got one of them, you know. That’s the person that you know you ought to be with, but circumstances play out a certain way and you get sidetracked and wind up settling. I think it’s hard for a man once he starts having sex with a woman regular and so young, like I did with my wife. It’s hard to break it off. You get into a flow and it’s comfortable and you don’t know nothing else, so you can’t give it up. Hell, you won’t give it up. I was fifteen, and let’s face it, I got me a taste of the honey and I wanted the whole hive. My wife didn’t know no better neither. She just wanted to get murried and have our babies. Course I had to murry her, so that might have had something to do with the decision-making process. I made a big mistake very young, and there weren’t no turning back or going forward. I got myself stuck, plain and simple. I try to tell my kids, don’t never settle, but they don’t even have the gumption to get off the damn couch. They’re born settlers like their mama. Ain’t nothing I can do about it. Life gives you what you git, and you got to live with it.”

“Where’s Twyla now?”

“She works at the bank down in Pennington.”

A knowing smile crosses Spec’s face; for a moment he has a chin.

“Do you see her?”

“We do have lunch.”

“Just a meal?”

“Now you’re getting personal.” Spec smiles at me to let me know that I haven’t done anything wrong by inquiring but he’s finished talking about it. Men are like that. When they’ve closed shop on a conversation, there’s no mulling left to be done.

Spec offers me a lift home. Theodore has to put the equipment up and I’m tired, so I accept. He drops me at my house, then speeds off to the south, toward Pennington Gap. Inside, I sort through my mail—nothing exciting, only some circulars from the Piggly Wiggly and Collinsworth Antiques. I have begun to dread the mail, though I do feel a little relief when there’s no word from the Mormons. I don’t need any bad news. Theodore calls for my input on the halftime show. He drills me about every aspect of the rehearsal; what a perfectionist he is! There’s a knock at the door. I figure it’s Spec. He probably got up the road and got a radio call and did a U-turn to fetch me. I really have to talk to him about quitting. I’m sick of running around all hours of the day and night on calls. I peek out the window. No Spec. It’s Jack MacChesney, carrying two jars. Still holding the phone with Theodore on the other end, I open the door.

“Mama made her first batch of apple butter for the fall, and she wanted you to have some.”

“Thank you. Would you like to come in?”

Jack Mac nods. “You’re on the phone,” he comments.

“Yeah. I’m just wrapping it up. Would you like coffee or tea or something?”

“Do you have a beer?”

I nod and go into the kitchen to fetch a can. I carry the phone into the kitchen with me.

“Who’s there?” Theodore asks.

“It’s Jack MacChesney.”

“What does he want?”

“His mama sent some apple butter down for me.”

“Is that all?” Theodore asks this with just enough envy to make me smile.

“No. I think he’s madly in love with me and tonight we’re going to make a baby.”

Theodore starts laughing, and then I do.

“Look, it’s rude of me to be on the phone when company comes a-calling. I’ll call you later.”

“You do that.”

Theodore hangs up. He’s never been jealous before. This is interesting. I get that little jolt of adrenaline; it’s probably hormonal, but it’s a catlike feeling of being in charge and on the prowl.

I poke my head into the living room to tell Jack that I’ll be a second. He is standing at the fireplace, looking at a small ceramic statue of the Virgin Mary on the mantel. When my mother was alive, she always put fresh flowers near it. Since she died, I’ve lit a candle next to it most nights. I don’t know why. I’ve just done it.

“That’s the Blessed Mother. I’m named after her.”

“You are?”

“
Ave Maria
means ‘Hail Mary.’ ”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I hope Budweiser is okay. All I got in the beer department is whatever Theodore brings over here.”

While I’m in the kitchen, in the reflection of the window, I see Jack Mac removing his barn jacket and folding it neatly on the rocker. He doesn’t sit down. He stands and looks around the room. I pour myself a glass of water and place the fixings for his beer on a tray. I reach up into the cabinet for my mama’s can of biscotti and place a few on a plate.

“The Blessed Mother is my patron saint,” I yell from the kitchen.

“Baptists don’t have saints,” Jack replies. “All we got is Jesus.”

“There’s something to be said for keeping things simple,” I say as I return to the living room. Jack Mac is now seated on the couch, sort of leaning forward. He places the beer, the glass, and the napkin neatly on the coffee table. I sit in Fred Mulligan’s easy chair, a few feet from him, and give him the once-over. He is spiffed up. His navy blue cords are pressed; his crisp sage green shirt seems new. He’s wearing cowboy boots. He looks like he’s dressed to go somewhere.

“You’re dressed up.”

“No. I just cleaned up after work.”

I curl my stockinged feet under me. I think my left sock has a big hole in it. My hooded sweatshirt from Saint Mary’s is fifteen years old, and the overalls I threw on over it still have nails in the pockets from the roof patching that Otto, Worley, and I did a while back. My hair is a rat’s nest of curls held up by a thousand pins. I am a mess. “I wasn’t expecting company,” I tell him, apologizing for my appearance.

“You look just fine,” he reassures me. He points to a set of white pearl rosary beads in a small crystal candy dish on the coffee table. “Are those yours?”

I nod.

“Do you use them?”

“Not enough.”

“How do they work?”

“Well, the rosary is a devotion to the Blessed Mother.”

“Mary, who you’re named after?”

“Right. And each of these beads is a Hail Mary that you say. Is this boring to you?”

“No, not at all.”

“Each of these ten beads represents a time in the life of Jesus. The joyful mysteries, the sorrowful mysteries, and so on.”

“The Cherokees have meditation beads. They sort of look like these. Mama has them. She’s part Cherokee, you know. From way, way back. She had jet-black hair when she was younger.”

“I don’t remember her having black hair.”

“That’s because it turned when I was just a boy.”

There is a long silence. I look at the statue of Mary on the mantel. In her blue cape and crown of stars, she reminds me of the lady in my mother’s letter, the Ave Maria I’m named after. I remember the Dieter’s Prayer:
Lovely Lady dressed in blue, make me skinny just like you.
I bite into a biscotti. It cracks in half loudly, and a shower of crumbs goes down the front of my overalls. Luckily, most of it lands in the front utility pocket. I brush the rest away.

Jack breaks through the quiet. “Rick Harmon quit the mines.”

“He did?”

“Well, he lost the two smallest toes on that foot of his, and the doctor told him he needed to find other work. So he got a job over at Legg’s Auto World.”

“Good for him. That was a pretty bad injury. How did it happen?”

“When I went back into the mine, it took me a while to get to him. There was so much smoke, he couldn’t see, so he was trying to crawl out. He caught his foot under a fallen rock. When he tried to get loose, it was bad.”

“I . . . everybody was nervous when you went back in the mine for him,” I say, speaking on behalf of the entire community.

“You . . . or everybody?” Jack says, trying not to smile.

“Everybody. Including me.” I don’t think I speak this man’s language. There are so many weird gaps.

We sit for a moment in silence. Finally he speaks. “My daddy and I fixed the furnace over here once.”

“You did?”

“Remember that summer you went to FFA camp?”

How could I forget the Future Farmers of America camp? Living with a bunch of surly girls in a cabin on a farm in East Tennessee, surrounded by farm animals that
we
had to feed, brush, and milk. Fred Mulligan thought it would be good for me. I hated it. “That was around sixth grade, right?”

“Yeah. After we fixed the furnace, your mama made us some kind of little sandwiches. My daddy was mighty impressed. I guess they were some sort of Italian specialty or something.”

“They were probably roasted-pepper sandwiches. She used to take a bunch of red peppers and broil them until the skin burned to black. Then she’d peel off the charred part, leaving the soft pepper underneath, and soak them in olive oil. Then she’d slice them up thin as paper—I still can’t do it like she could—and put them on the bread with a little salt.”