Big Stone Gap

by Adriana Trigiani

  Nellie Goodloe finally got a meeting with Theodore and impressed upon him the importance of Elizabeth Taylor and John Warner’s visit coming up at the end of October. All eyes will be on us to deliver a weekend to remember. There is an excitement in the air anyway, as it is fall, our most luscious season. The mountains around us turn from dark velvet to an iridescent taffeta. The leaves of late September are bright green; by the first week of October they change to shimmering gemstones, garnet and topaz and all the purples in between. The mountains seem to be lit from the ground by theatrical footlights. Autumn is our grand opera. It even smells rich this time of year, a fresh mix of balsam and hickory and vanilla smoke. Friday nights are football-game nights, and Saturday nights find everyone in town over at the Carter Family Fold.

  The Fold is famous because the originators of East Tennessee–style bluegrass music are the legendary Carter Family, led by Mother Maybelle Carter. She had a bunch of daughters, one prettier than the next, including June Carter, now married to Johnny Cash. Yes, it is their homestead and a magnet for bluegrass celebrity (like the great Stanley Brothers out of Dickenson County), and every once in a while somebody famous from the Carter Family does pass through, though that’s not why we go there. We go there for the live music and dancing. You can eat there too—chili dogs and fries, the best anywhere. I usually go with Theodore; and ever since we didn’t have sex, we’re seeing even more of each other. The storm cloud of my lust has passed for now, so he’s safe and I’m back to normal.

  We enter the Fold, an old barn with flap sides, which are opened to the night air. The Fold is like a gypsy amphitheater—it has the feeling of a place that could be packed up and moved quickly overnight. And indeed, during the daytime when you drive by, you could mistake it for any old weathered barn in a field. But at night she comes alive. Folks sit in rows around the concrete dance floor on bales of hay. The bandstand is high and set back against a permanent wall rigged with electricals for when WNVA Radio broadcasts shows live. A colorful mix of Japanese lanterns and old Christmas lights dangles over the stage. I love the crazy-quilt mess of it; it is homespun yet dramatic. I enjoy the wondrous sight until the sound of my Aunt Alice Lambert’s voice ruins it. I turn to look at her and find she is busy examining Theodore from the tip of his shoe to the top of his head. Her lips are pursed so tightly, they look like two red firecrackers looking for a match.

  “So, A-vuh Maria”—she, too, mispronounces my name—“Hit finally come out!”

  “What?” I ask, squinting up at the lights.

  “The truth. You know what I’m talking about, girl.” I never imagined Aunt Alice would approach me on this subject.

  She senses she caught me off guard and uses it. “This changes everything. Don’t it?” she snarls. “My brother’s estate?”

  “Your brother died thirteen years ago and left everything to my mama.” I say this pleasantly, like I’m commenting on the weather.

  “It ain’t right. You ain’t his. You never was—”

  Before she can gear up, I turn and look her directly in the eye. “I am not going to discuss my business with you. Ever. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m here to be with my friends and have a good time. Good night.”

  I can see her mouth—Well!—as I walk away. I’ve had time to think about what Pearl said and what Iva Lou implied. I guess there were signs all along that I wasn’t Fred Mulligan’s daughter, but for me it was just something I never questioned. He seemed like my real father. Of course, I liked my mother more, loved her more, but I thought that was because I was an only child and a girl. I figured every child liked her mother more than her father. I wasn’t completely unaware something was wrong, though. I do remember whispers at family functions, the fact that my first cousins never played with me, the teasing that went on at school about my first name (feriner-sounding). But I never put it all together. I hope I figure out why I didn’t. I’m angry with myself for being such an idiot.

  Otto and Worley spot us.

  “Want to see my snake head?” Worley asks. Before I can say no, he pulls a small jar out of his back pocket and shows me a fresh snake head, floating aimlessly, with a permanent grin and threadlike tongue, which bounces against the glass.

  “I got three more of ’em at home. Caught ’em up at the Roaring Branch.”

  “Why did this one make the cut?”

  “He had the longest tongue.” Worley throws his head back and laughs hard.

  “Dance with me, Miss Ave?” Otto asks like a gentleman.

  “Later, Otto. I got some business to tend to right now.”

  Otto and Worley move off in time with the music. Theodore goes off for our chili dogs. Lew Eisenberg sits alone on a bale of hay licking a blueberry Sno-Kone.

  “I got a bone to pick with you,” I say to him.

  “You can’t make me feel worse than I already do. I’m stuck in a barn with hay up my ass. What can I do for you?” Lew says pleasantly.

  “Everybody in town knows about my business. I think Inez is the leak.”

  Lew licks his Sno-Kone and looks off to the chili-dog stand, where Inez lays hot dogs on the grill. She is talking a mile a minute; from here we can only see her bright pink mouth moving. She looks angry, her eyebrows knit into one black V. I see my dreadful Aunt Alice with her, as well as the other ladies of the Band Boosters Club. The epicenter of the town gossip fault line rips open cellophane bags of hot-dog buns and shakes them onto the counter.

  “What happened to my life?” Lew asks, and licks his Sno-Kone. “I was so happy on Long Island. Alone. All alone. I had my little practice, my little apartment, my little problems. I like things little, Ave Maria. Little, I can hide in. Instead, I’ve got this.” He flails his arms around. “I lie awake every night and wonder what went wrong.”

  “I don’t know what to say, Lew.” And I really don’t. We don’t usually talk personally like this, and it’s making me slightly uncomfortable.

  “One mistake.” I believe Lew is referring to Inez’s unplanned pregnancy. “One mistake and . . . this. Inez was such a nice, quiet girl. So lovely. So soft. Like a picture. Now she’s impossible. When she isn’t talking, she’s eating, but any way around it, that mouth is going ’round the clock.”

  “You have to think back and remember why you fell in love with Inez in the first place.”

  “She had a great body.” A moment passes. “A sleek, tight, little English race car of a body. She was the TR-6 of Big Stone Gap. She could’ve been in a magazine.” Lew looks at me. “Is that terrible of me to say?” He sighs. He really misses the old Inez.

  “You’re just being honest.” Then we look over at Inez, completely unaware that we are talking about her. Gossips never think anybody is talking about them. “Do you think she knows how you feel?”

  “I cannot tell you one thing that has gone through that woman’s mind in five years. I would know a stranger better.” He sighs.

  “I bet she knows. Maybe that’s why she eats so much.” I’m annoyed at myself for going down this road with Lew; this is not what I wanted to discuss with him. As out of touch as he thinks he is, he reads my mind.

  “What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

  I don’t answer him because all I see are lovers on the dance floor. Fleeta and Portly nuzzle as though they have just found each other after having been put to sleep for a hundred years. Girls I went to high school with are out on the floor, dancing close with husbands they’ve been married to since we were kids. They look content. (So much for the advice “Don’t marry young.”) Rick Harmon, a rugged tugboat of a guy, All District Shot Put in high school, now a miner, places his hand on his wife Sherry’s behind as they’re dancing. She casually removes it, and they laugh privately. Worley dances with Nellie Goodloe, who waves his snake head away with a shudder. I look all around for Theodore. I want to dance. I want to be out there on the floor, gliding. Forgetting. But I can’t find him in the crowd. I think he may have wandered out into the field and kept walking,
never to return. He’ll disappear like everything else. My heart begins to race in a way it hasn’t since I pulled an all-nighter at Saint Mary’s, drinking pots of black coffee and knocking back NoDoz. I put my hand on my chest and look down. My hand moves up and down against my blouse.

  “You all right?” Lew asks.

  “I don’t feel well.”

  “What are your symptoms?”

  “My heart is racing.” I keep my hand on my chest, and as suddenly as it came, the rapid beating stops.

  “That’s an anxiety attack,” Lew says, and swats a fly away from his glasses.

  “I’ve never had one before.”

  “Welcome to the club. Once you have one, you never know when they’ll strike. Part of getting older.”

  “I am not old!” There she is, old maid Ave Maria again, poking through the fence like a cuckoo. Not old! Not old! Not old!

  “I didn’t say you were old. Older.”

  My palpitations slow to a normal rhythm. I breathe deeply. I remember my medical training: Take in oxygen. As much as you can stand.

  “Would you like to dance?” a voice says from behind me. At last! Theodore! He didn’t leave me! I stand up. But I don’t smell peppermint and apples: Instead it’s a new smell, sandalwood and lime. Pleasant but unfamiliar.

  “Would you like to dance?” Jack Mac repeats, extending his hand graciously.

  I look all around for Theodore. But he is not there to rescue me.

  “Okay, well. Sure.”

  “Have fun,” Lew says, and waves bye-bye to me as though I were a child.

  Jack Mac takes my hand. We shuffle into the mix and move toward the center of the dance floor. He pulls me close and rests his hand on my waist. He moves slowly, so he’s easy to follow. He seems much taller to me as we dance.

  “Where’s Sweet Sue?”

  “She took her boys over to their daddy’s.”

  “He’s living over in Coeburn, isn’t he?”

  Jack Mac nods.

  “I remember him from high school. Do you?”

  Jack Mac nods.

  “Mike Tinsley was the best in everything. His varsity jacket was decorated like a four-star general’s. Remember? All-state in this and that.”

  “Things have changed since high school,” Jack Mac announces, and looks off to get me to stop yapping about Mike Tinsley. Hadn’t I heard about his philandering on Sue and his terrible temper and how she moved home most weekends of their married life? Besides, don’t I know that no man wants to be compared with the man who came before?

  Jack Mac pulls me close; his cheek rests above my left ear.

  “How’s your mama?” I ask. He doesn’t answer for a moment. I feel him pull away to look at me. He looks me in the eye. Then he pulls me close again.

  “To be honest, I wasn’t thinking about my mama right then.”

  For God’s sake, Ave Maria! Asking a man about his mother. Who does that? You are an old maid! You have forgotten how to talk to a man. Say something smart.

  “Could we just dance and not talk for a minute?” Jack Mac asks.

  I nod. Don’t talk, Ave Maria. This is a man who prefers silence. You are getting on his nerves. You don’t have to think of something funny to say. You don’t have to entertain. Let go. Listen to the music and dance. Just dance. That’s all.

  The song ends. Jack Mac bows graciously and formally like a duke. “Thank you, ma’am,” he says, and goes.

  I am careful to park behind Theodore’s house so as not to start any more rumors. (I don’t need to be the town spinster, the town bastard, and now the town tramp all rolled into one.) And Theodore is, after all, a teacher in the Wise County public school system with a sterling reputation. He flicks the lights on. His home is simple and neat. It could be any high school teacher’s house, except for the elaborate display on the dining room table. The only indication that this is a dining room is its proximity to the kitchen. Theodore has removed all of the chairs and dishes. He has turned it into a workshop, where he choreographs his halftime masterpieces.

  Tonight, meticulously lined up in rows, are one hundred toy soldiers; now they represent our high school marching band. A small turntable and speakers face the table on an antique server. Albums are stacked neatly next to the turntable. He’s got Sousa, classical, and Al Green, the rhythm and blues singer. The table is covered in butcher’s paper. Theodore has drawn the field’s yard lines onto the paper with chalk. The figurines fan out in perfect lines, in the formation of a star, leading to three small paper pyramids on the fifty-yard line. The pyramids are made of tissue paper and are scaled to size.

  “You’re making pyramids?”

  “The shop boys are going to build them. The Vernon girl is doing the craft work. Remember her? She made the giant globe for last year’s prom, ‘Color My World.’ ” How could I forget? I was Theodore’s date. I couldn’t believe I finally attended a prom at Powell Valley High School. I was never asked to go when I was a student. Dancing under the tinfoil stars sixteen years later was sweet retribution.

  “Who’s going to get them out on the field?”

  “The flag girls. Two under each pyramid.”

  “Flag girls? Are you kidding?”

  “Papier-mâché. They’ll be as light as fritters.”

  “Great. Any blackouts?” There is a concert section in each halftime show in which the band faces the home stands and plays a number. This is traditional, but it can be dull. Theodore came up with a way to ignite the show; at the appropriate moment, the field lights shut off to reveal our lovely majorettes, with batons lit up like torches, spinning wheels of fire and spelling out words like Win or Go.

  “The flag girls will have industrial flashlights under the pyramids. I’m using selections from the scores of Elizabeth Taylor’s movies, starting with National Velvet. As the band plays the theme to The Sandpiper, we’ll black out and the pyramids will light up. Then, as we segue into the love song from Cleopatra, Tayloe will emerge from behind the center pyramid, dressed as Cleopatra, and twirl fire.” Theodore moves the pieces around the table to show me the choreography. Then he turns out the dining room light to show me the lit-up pyramids. They do give the effect of being there, right there, in downtown Cairo.

  “I think this is spectacular, Theodore,” I say, meaning it with every fiber of my being. “It’ll knock the socks off of a movie star.”

  “Think so?” Theodore says as he moves the woodwinds with a ruler.

  I can feel the pressure on his shoulders myself. “Elizabeth Taylor has probably had more salutes than all the presidents combined. She’s seen it all! And in a million different countries. She’s going to cry or something when she sees this kind of show in little old Big Stone Gap. You’ll be famous!”

  Theodore lights up at the mention of fame. Who among us wouldn’t? What a grand concept: to be appreciated and sought after for your God-given talent. To be revered and consulted as an expert in your field. To have the awe and respect normally reserved for movie stars.

  “I don’t want to be famous, Ave. I just want to be really, really good.”

  “You are that! You are.” I have no problem being passionate around Theodore. I really believe in him.

  Theodore moves a line of soldiers, turning the star into a triangle. I watch him masterfully make shapes and study the table as though it’s an algebraic equation. Theodore loves his work. He is forever thinking about it, studying, trying things, improving. That’s how my mother was. She was never satisfied with her sewing. She ripped out as many seams as she completed, probably more. There was a level of craftsmanship, a pride in her work that I have never known. She was so hard on herself. When she sewed, she would talk to herself, criticizing her work, then mumble in approval and smile when the fabric met the thread in glorious, tiny, uniform stitches that disappeared into the fabric in their delicacy. That was the hallmark of my mother’s work: In order to be perfect, the seam had to disappear. The overall effect of the final garment was important. The line
. The fit. The movement. Her work was never obvious, so it went unrecognized.

  I am not an artisan like my mother, or a visionary like Theodore. I am a pill-counting pharmacist. I simply follow the orders of doctors; I don’t even make a diagnosis. My work is not about expansion, it’s about precision. Maybe this is why Theodore wants my input. Details. That’s what I’m good at.

  “To pull this show off, you’re going to need a crew on the sidelines. I can get the folks from the Drama to help. I could put a crew together for you, and then you could boss us around.”

  “You’d do that for me?”

  “Of course I would. Now, all you have to do in return is sleep with me.”

  Theodore and I laugh so hard at this, we shake the table and all of the soldiers fall and rattle across the table like they’ve just lost a war. We keep laughing until we’re crying, and I’m wondering what the neighbors will say. What a boring life I’d have without Theodore. I wonder if he knows.

  I gave Pearl the week off to study for her PSATs, the junior version of the college-entrance SATs. Since she’s been working for me, Pearl’s grades have gone from C’s to B’s. Dillard Cantrell, the high school guidance counselor, called me to express his thanks. She might make the honor roll next term. Girls like Pearl often fall between the cracks, he told me, and he would be personally thrilled to see a mountain girl exceed expectations.

  Fleeta has the day off, and I’m running the store alone. June Walker, the most wrinkled woman in town, is driving me nuts with questions about face creams.

  “June, you’ll have to wait for Pearl to get here from school. She knows all about moisturizers.”

  “Well, she better damn hurry because I got me an emergency situation.”

  The Bookmobile stops outside the Pharmacy. Pearl gets off. Iva Lou waves at me from her window and motions that she will be over at the gas station. (Things must be hot and heavy with Kent Vanhook because her usual spot on the street is open.)