Big Stone Gap (19 page)

I don’t know why I’m not sad about Reverend Gaspar’s passing. I guess it’s partly because he died on the heels of my mother’s death and I’m still not over that, so anything on top of it seems surreal. When I get back from the funeral, Otto and Worley are putting in my storm windows on the ground floor. I tell them all about the bowling and they laugh. I’m running out of chores to assign them, and it gets me to thinking about the future. I don’t know when it happened, but Otto and Worley have gone from the town junk haulers to my home-and-business repairmen. Otto left a stack of mail on the kitchen table for me. I grab it and go upstairs. I change out of my Sunday best and into my overalls. I take the mail up to the attic, through the window, and out onto the roof. I haven’t been out here since we patched the roof. Where does the time go? I kept meaning to come up here and look out over town and collect my thoughts. I guess I’ve been busy. Or maybe I didn’t need to be high up and above everything until now.

There are three requests for magazine subscription renewals. Instead of opening them and putting them in the
TO PAY
stack, I tear them in half. I get plenty of magazines at the store; I’ll just read them there from now on. At the bottom of the stack is an onionskin envelope with swirly blue writing: The return address is Meoli Vilminore Mai! Finally!

I’m careful to open the envelope without tearing the thin paper inside. It’s a three-page letter, in Italian. I must admit, I worry about losing my Italian reading and speaking ability since Mama died; each day that goes by without her, I get rustier.

In the letter Aunt Meoli tells me how sad she is to hear of my mother’s passing. She had been hopeful that someday they would reunite. She tells me my mother would be happy to know that she and I found each other. She also tells me how happy she is that I am fine and asks if I could send a photograph of myself. Visions of Italian
comarei
gathered at the
groceria
with my picture, fighting over me as a potential bride for their toothless sons, gives me a shiver, so I decide not to send one just yet. Zia Meoli goes on about her life in Italy. Her twin sister, Antonietta, practically raised her two kids, since Meoli was a schoolteacher with a full-time job. Toward the end of the letter, I see the name Mario, so I skip past the newsy chitchat to the real reason for the correspondence. Zia Meoli tells me that she does not know my father well; he lives in Schilpario, up the mountain from where she lives. She does hear of him from time to time, as he is still mayor! She does not know if he’s married, but she assumes he is not; when she last heard about him, he was known to be something of a ladies’ man. She promises to try and find out more about him.

I lie back on the roof. It is quiet except for the sliding sounds of storm windows being tested from below. I know I should be happy that my father is alive and well. Instead, the news makes me cry. I don’t know what to feel or how. So I cover my face with my sleeve so Otto and Worley won’t hear me.

I have so many books to return to the Bookmobile that I half joked to Iva Lou she ought to just park it in my front yard. I gather them up in two carryalls and head for town. Pearl and Fleeta are handling the store today—I decided I need a few days off. I don’t think they miss me much. Fleeta loves to clear the register, take the money sack to the bank, and put it in the night-drop slot. She says it gives her a sense of completion at the end of a hard working day.

The Bookmobile door is open, which is unusual. I hear giggling from inside; I think to knock but don’t. Iva Lou is sitting on one of the snap stools next to Jack MacChesney, who is perusing one of the three national newspapers she has on board. The paper, attached to a large bamboo holder, is unwieldy, and watching Jack Mac try to balance it cracks Iva Lou up. I haven’t seen Jack Mac since the Elizabeth Taylor Choke Night. He doesn’t seem one bit happy to see me.

“Hey, y’all.” I empty out the two canvas sacks and turn to leave.

“Why are you in such a hurry?” Iva Lou says with a look that means
Stay
. I look back at her with a look that says:
I’m not staying
.

“I have to check on Pearl and Fleeta. Otto and Worley are over to the house.” Why do I have to justify myself to them? Can’t I just drop the books and go?

“Call me sometime,” Iva Lou says with a twinge of sadness. The truth is, I was looking forward to some time on the Bookmobile with Iva Lou. It would have been fun, but He is here, so forget it. All it took was Jack Mac’s scowl to change my mind; I’m disembarking pronto.

Now that I’ve told Iva Lou I was checking on Pearl and Fleeta, I have to stop at the store; they can see where I’m headed through the windshield, and I don’t want to be a liar. So I park my Jeep in front of the post office and go into the Pharmacy. Pearl and Fleeta are back by the makeup counter. Pearl is plucking Fleeta’s eyebrows. Fleeta smokes.

“I’m not checking on you two. I was forced to come in here due to circumstances.”

“Who you avoiding? Spec?”

“No.”

“He’s been looking fer ye. He done got your letter that you quit the Squad. He don’t want to come over by your house, so he keeps stopping by here and bothering us.”

“Did the reverend’s snakebite skeer you that bad?” Pearl asks.

“I wasn’t scared. It was just the last straw. You know what I mean?”

“Well, all I know is that I don’t like no damn quitters,” Fleeta remarks as she inhales her Marlboro deeply down to her diaphragm.

“I’ve been working on the Rescue Squad as a volunteer for years! I am not a quitter.”

“Defensive,” Fleeta decides under her breath.

I’m in no mood to argue with Fleeta. So I walk over to the post office to check my box, which turns out to be a waste. There are a few flyers for quilt shows, tours to Knoxville for the University of Tennessee football games, and several bills.

There’s a truck parked next to my Jeep, so I have to squeeze in between the two vehicles to climb into my driver’s seat. I hate when people park too close. There’s plenty of space for everybody when you park at the correct angle. I pull my door open and I’m about to climb in when something on the passenger seat of the truck catches my eye. The word
Schilpario
pops out at me. The afternoon sun is bright, so I cover my eyes and peer into the truck through the window. It’s very strange. The book I just returned to the Bookmobile,
Schilpario: A Life in the Mountains,
is sitting on the seat of the truck. Who would check that out? And why? It was a special checkout, too, so whoever borrowed it must have convinced Iva Lou to bend the rules. As I pull out, I look down the street for the Bookmobile, but it’s gone. The truck is familiar. It’s new. Then I remember: It belongs to Jack Mac. I don’t have a good car memory, but I do remember that he pointed this one out to me long ago when I made a delivery to his mama up in the holler.

Instead of waiting to ask Jack Mac why he checked out my book, I throw the Jeep into gear and peel up to the stoplight. In the rearview I see him come out of Zackie’s with a brown sack and jump into the truck. As he turns over the ignition, the light turns green. I hang a left and drive off.

Theodore and I have something special we do every once in a while. We call it our field trip. We go over to Jonesville to Cudjo’s Caverns, a deep cave in the side of one of the mountains. It is full of stalagmites and stalactites, nature’s majestic mineral and stone deposits—“God’s Jewelry Box,” or so the sign says.

At the entrance to the cave, there is a flat area where we wait for the guide, an old man named Ray. He senses when there are visitors; we hear his footsteps down the path. “Oh, it’s y’all. Ye ain’t been up here for a while.” He chuckles. Then he leads us into the cave along a path that weaves through carved-out halls and catacombs left behind by the Indians. The rock formations that hang from the ceiling look like glittering candle-wax drips, all shapes and sizes, including some that are quite large. The ones that come up from the ground look like shimmering fingers.

Theodore and I used to keep notebooks describing the various formations. After a while, we got bored and gave it up. Still, we come back so often, the guide knows us, so he treats us to special areas of observation. Our favorite is a small crystal lake deep in the heart of the cave. Ray never takes regular folks back there because it was a sacred place of Indian prayer. It is also very dangerous; the bank of the lake is only about a foot wide, and there is one shelf of rock above it, room enough for two people to crawl up and sit. The water in the lake itself is hundreds of feet deep. Ray is afraid a visitor could fall in. He allows us to go to the lake because he knows that we’ll be careful and not touch anything.

The surface of the lake is quite small, maybe ten feet across. Ray told us to imagine a deep cylinder of stone filled with water, like a tall, slim vase. I can see why the Indians prayed here; it is so quiet, the only sound you hear is water trickling down the walls. The lake reminds me of the baptismal pool at Reverend Gaspar’s church. There is just enough room to immerse a body or two at a time. (I wish I would have brought him here to show him how the Indians worshipped.) Theodore points out the far wall with the large flashlight he is holding. The water reflects off the stalactites, throwing iridescent colors all over the water-washed walls. It looks like a moving painting of blues and silvers.

Theodore, ever so sensitive, knew I needed a treat. He thinks between Elizabeth Taylor’s choking and Preacher Gaspar being bitten by a deadly snake, I haven’t quite been myself. He’s right. I feel like the last year of my life has been one unpleasant event after another. So much for something exciting happening to me while I’m thirty-five. (Maybe I’m growing a mole or something on my face somewhere that signals disaster instead of joy.) I do have five months to go until I’m thirty-six; maybe things will change for the better—if not, I fear I will lose my faith in the ancient art of Chinese face-reading altogether. Theodore and I stay by the lake for a long time, never tiring of the color swirls nature makes.

On the way home we stop at the Dip & Cone Barn, a hamburger shack between Jonesville and Pennington Gap. Theodore orders a lot of food. We sit outside on a picnic bench even though the final day of November has a strong chill to it.

“I want to talk to you about something.”

“Sure.” I start tearing open the little ketchup packets. I like to have a substantial pool of ketchup before I start eating fries. I don’t like to eat a couple and open a packet, eat a couple, open a packet. I like an orderly dinner setup.

“It’s been a wild time,” Theodore offers diplomatically.

“No kidding.”

“And I don’t think that I’ve been thinking straight.” He looks down at his hands.

“About what?”

“About us.” I look at Theodore and see a sincerity in his eyes that, I must confess, scares the hell out of me. He never said “us” like
us
before. We were always buddies, except for that night I threw myself at him and was rejected (a night I would like to forget).

“Remember the night of the halftime show for Elizabeth Taylor?” Remember it? Is he kidding? It was a night of nights for me.

“When those two dogs were humping in the middle of my masterpiece, I wanted to quit. But I looked down at you from the announcer’s booth, and you were wearing that red velvet coat, and you smiled up at me and did this funny thing where you checked your watch like,
How long can two dogs screw? It can’t be forever,
and I actually felt the burden lift off of me. You saved my life that night. I’ll never forget it.”

“You’re welcome, Theodore.”

“I mean it. You’re always there for me. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

The only other person in my life who ever told me that she didn’t know what she would do without me was my mother, when she was dying. I make note of this, in case I have to come back to it later.

“I think we should get married.”

It’s as though a shade, the kind on a roller in an old window, starts being pulled by the circle tab from the top of my head, slowly down my face, neck, torso, and limbs all the way to my feet. I want to stay behind this shade forever.

“What do you think?” he says after a moment.

“Oh, Theodore.”

“It’s what you want, isn’t it?”

What I want? Can’t he tell that’s what’s wrong with me?I don’t know what I want. I have spent my entire life trying to give everybody else what they want. I’m not complaining. I like to be of service. I find great purpose in it. And no one was more surprised than I when my old routines didn’t work anymore. Somewhere along the way, I got sucked dry and started feeling like the mountain mother with sixteen kids who wakes up one morning and realizes that she’s just a vessel, a way station where life passed through before it passed her by. When Reverend Gaspar was dying, and he held my hand and muttered, “Faith,” I didn’t know what he was talking about. Okay, maybe he meant the traditional Jesus story, to have faith in that, but I don’t think so. I think he was talking about a deeper concept. A concept I cannot comprehend. I’d like to but I haven’t yet. What did he mean? Faith in God? Faith in myself? Faith in others? Faith in the unknown? I don’t know. And as for the things of this world, I am even more confused about them! I don’t know what makes me happy—okay, maybe Ledna and Edna Tuckett’s coconut layer cake, a letter from Italy, and the lining in any of my winter coats, hand-sewn and tufted by my mother. Those things make me happy. But getting married? Is that happiness? Or is it just a container to keep happiness in? I don’t know. Theodore can see that I am confused.

“I sprung this on you too quickly,” he apologizes.

“No, you didn’t. I’ve been thinking about marrying you since the day we met.”

Theodore looks relieved that he’s getting somewhere. If there’s one thing I know about men, it’s that they fear rejection.

“You know, I think you and Jack MacChesney asked me to marry you because you knew I’d say no.”

“This isn’t about Jack.”

“No, it’s not, but it sort of is. I’m the town spinster, and I’ve gotten two wedding proposals in the past six months. Something’s up.”