Big Stone Gap

by Adriana Trigiani

  “Nice suit, though.” Theodore shrugs.

  Elizabeth Taylor has just pulled up. We know this immediately because the headlights from the staff car are bright and aimed directly into the restaurant through the bay windows. The entire restaurant is flooded with light, and now with anticipation. It was one thing to see her in a convertible last night; she was still far away and dreamy as she is on a movie screen. But tonight she will be sitting in a room with us, having dinner! We’re going to be way up close. It’s thrilling.

  Johnny Wood is giving directions to the TV crew, and the crowd, full of anticipation, chatters loudly. Theodore and I kneel on our chairs to watch her entrance over the crowd.

  Several aides precede her through the entrance, clearing a path for her and the candidate. Elizabeth enters, wearing a floor-length royal-purple caftan with three-quarter-length dolman sleeves and a boat neck. Her hair is down, blown straight to her shoulders. What look like large Indian beads, in agates of gold, purple, and brown, hang around her neck like royal jewels. She is absolutely breathtaking again tonight. Nellie Goodloe greets her at the entrance and gives her a quick hug. Elizabeth points to the rose tucked over Nellie’s ear; Nellie blushes.

  John Warner, a former undersecretary of the U.S. Navy, looks presidential in his deep-navy-blue suit, white shirt, and red, white, and blue striped tie. He has the tall good looks of a Northern Virginia land baron. He is confident but impatient. He scoops the shock of thick gray hair away from his forehead with his hand a lot—it reminds me of President Kennedy. Folks say he’s lucky to be running for the Senate at all. He came in second to Dick Obenshain in the primary last year. Then, in an unexpected tragedy, Mr. Obenshain was killed in a plane crash. The Republicans went to their runner-up, Mr. Warner, and asked him to run in Mr. Obenshain’s place. He politely obliged. The papers say Mr. Warner is an old-fashioned political pot sticker; you lose a man, and he’ll seal the hole. You can see he’s a little put off by the attention his wife receives, but he can’t exactly make her sit in the car. She brings out the voters, and that’s exactly what this dark-horse Republican candidate needs to win. I wonder how he feels about always coming in second, first to Obenshain and now to his wife. Maybe he doesn’t care, as long as he’s in the race. He looks amazingly well-rested for a man with only ten days until the election. That’s probably just good breeding. Grace under pressure is a Virginia gentleman’s calling card.

  Zackie Wakin strolls past the aides toward Elizabeth Taylor. He extends his hand to her. She extends hers to him, and he kisses it like a prince. The crowd woos. Zackie, the feriner peddler, charms the movie star. Zackie is small but so is she. As they stand eye-to-eye, he and Elizabeth take on that romantic Moviola glow that comes in those love scenes when the man looks down, not at the woman, but into her soul. Elizabeth, forever the game girl, throws her head back and laughs a few times. We can hear snippets of their conversation. She knows a lot about Lebanese culture. She accompanied Richard Burton to the Middle East when he was making a picture in the late sixties. When the aides hear her speak of a former husband, Elizabeth is hustled away, following her current husband into the kitchen to greet the staff. She turns and looks over her shoulder at Zackie, shrugs as if to say, Sorry we were interrupted, and waves to him.

  The kitchen doors swing open, and we hear the candidate say, “I’m John Warner, candidate for the United States Senate. I’d like to count on y’all on November fourth.” I read in the paper that this is something John Warner likes to do. As much as he likes the muckety-mucks out front, the folks who make the meal are the ones who vote en masse.

  Theodore and I are close to the galley doors that lead to the kitchen, so we scoot to the circular windows and peer in as Elizabeth and Warner take their tour. The deep aluminum serving pans are full of golden fried chicken. One pan holds only wings; they look so succulent, I want to go into the kitchen and grab a few. Elizabeth Taylor has the same thought, and as Warner blah-blahs to the chef, she bends over and samples a breast. She holds it with two hands, pinky up, and bites into the meaty part near the bones carefully, so as not to smear her perfect peach lipstick. Warner refers to Elizabeth, and she nods as she chews. He shoots her a dirty look when he sees she’s sampled the chicken. She downs a large hunk quickly to finish it off and get back to the campaigning. She swallows, but something is terribly wrong. She gags. I know from Rescue Squad training that she is choking, so I burst into the kitchen. She is holding her throat and looking helpless. She cannot speak. I can see the scar on her creamy neck from an operation she had years ago. It is still pink.

  “Miss Taylor. Let me get help.”

  I hear the aides murmur, “Who is she?” and the staff tells them I’m with the Rescue Squad. Theodore hollers for Spec, which triggers a buzz throughout the dining room. Spec pushes through the swinging doors like John Wayne, scans the kitchen, finds Elizabeth, and runs to her. Theodore follows.

  “She swallowed a chicken bone, Spec,” I say.

  “Jesus Christ. Run git the ambulance around tout suite.” Spec tosses me his key ring. Theodore and I run through the dinner crowd, out the entrance, and into the ambulance. We speed around back, open the rear chute, pull out the gurney, and wheel it into the kitchen. Warner is yelling at Spec and his aides, but mostly he seems frustrated with Elizabeth for choking.

  Spec works like a pro, lifting Elizabeth onto the gurney. He carefully straps her in and checks the wheel locks. You know, folks complain that Spec runs around town in the ambulance, using it for personal reasons, but I bet they’re mighty glad that he drove it here tonight. It just may save Elizabeth Taylor’s life.

  Spec and I load Elizabeth into the ambulance. Warner is now extremely upset, holding his wife’s hand and stroking her face. Luckily, Dr. Gladys Baronagan, the Filipino physician from Lonesome Pine Hospital, came to the dinner with her husband and was recruited to help in the emergency. I hear her tell Spec that she may need to operate.

  Even in tragedy, Elizabeth could not be more beautiful. She lies on the gurney like a lavender lily. She takes pain like a trouper, and believe me, I’ve seen all sorts of suffering and sometimes folks act pretty crazy. But she is almost beatific, like she expects that bad things will happen, and by God, you just deal with them and go through them and don’t let them kill you. Her eyes say, I won’t die. Just get the damned bone out of my throat!

  Theodore and I jump into his car and follow the ambulance up to the hospital. When we get there, Miss Taylor is whisked through admissions and brought directly to the emergency room. A small crowd has gathered but no words are spoken. It’s a hell of a thing. Spec paces nervously outside the ER. We pray everything will go smoothly.

  Theodore and I are starving, so we eat a variety of junk from the vending machines and wash it down with instant coffee. Candidate Warner is in a special room right outside the emergency room, so we can’t see him. Several aides mill about, one more worried-looking than the next.

  Finally, after about an hour, a nurse comes out to talk to us. Dr. Baronagan ran a rubber pipe down Miss Taylor’s throat, pushing the bone down into her stomach, where it would dissolve in digestion. No need for surgery. Miss Taylor will be fine. Johnny Wood and his crew enter and make a beeline for the nurse; he wants an exclusive for the eleven o’clock report. She holds up her hands and asks the men to leave, telling them, “This is a hospital, not a circus.” Johnny Wood shrugs and takes his crew outside. He films his story on the sidewalk.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Theodore asks as he turns to me.

  “I’m fine,” I tell him, holding my head in my hands.

  “Let me see.” He lifts my face with his hands and examines it carefully.

  “You look pale,” he decides.

  “I ate too much candy. That’s all.”

  “Let’s go.” Theodore laughs.

  But I don’t think it was the candy. I kept replaying the scene of Jack Mac telling me I was bitter and lonely until it upset my stomach. But I don’t have to share that
with Theodore. You don’t have to tell your best friend everything.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  We never saw Elizabeth Taylor again. After the bone was dislodged, she rested for several hours; then, in the wee hours of the morning, she was transported out of Big Stone Gap by helicopter to a large hospital in Richmond, on the other side of the state. She recuperated there for the remaining days of the campaign. John Warner won the election by a hair; many thought he got a lot of sympathy votes because his wife suffered an accident while on the stump for him. It’s a shame that Big Stone Gap will be remembered not for the way we honored her but as the campaign stop where Elizabeth Taylor swallowed a chicken bone. Folks ’round here have a theory about it all: Maybe there’s some old Scotch-Irish curse on us. After all, the coal-mining boom never made us the Pittsburgh of the South; now we’ve choked an international movie star; maybe we’re just not meant to be part of the Big World.

  After all the hoopla (which gave me a chance to put my life on hold), I face myself again. I finally sit down and write my Aunt Meoli a letter. The letter writing is cathartic. I figure she’s in her sixties now, so I start the letter with a request for her to be with somebody before she continues reading the letter, in case she passes out or something. It is very hard for me to write about my mother’s death, but knowing that this is my mother’s sister, I give her every detail to the best of my recollection. Mama always expected the whole truth from me—how ironic—so I assume her sister would, too. I don’t know why Mama didn’t tell me about her family, especially since we had thirteen years without Fred Mulligan around. What was she still afraid of? Why didn’t she see our trip as an opportunity to clear her conscience and share the truth with me? There were so many opportunities for her to tell me her story. When our passports arrived, she could have told me everything then. She could have told me on the plane to Italy. Pick any number of days, of moments inside those days, when it was just the two of us, here alone in this house, in private, without the threat of any outsider. She could have unburdened herself. What a gift the truth would have been! We could have flown to Italy together and reunited with the people I come from. She could have introduced me to her family. We could have stayed with them, learned about them, caught up on all the time that had gone by. I would have aunts and uncles and cousins who loved me. Look at all I missed in the bubble of a lie.

  I’m about to dig into a nice slice of a chocolate layer cake that the Tuckett sisters dropped off (the other half was delivered to Theodore). I’ve been getting a lot of covered dishes since I was part of the team that saved Elizabeth Taylor’s life. I whip up some fresh cream. I have a nice steaming mug of coffee. I’m in my softest flannel pajamas, with my feet up, when the phone rings.

  It’s Spec. (Who else?) He needs me to go down to the Church of God with him. I beg him to make the run alone, because I’m tired (and by the way, I forgot to tell you, Spec, I’m quitting). But he begs me, so I agree to go with him. About five minutes go by before Spec honks, and I run, grabbing my kit on the way out.

  As we speed across town to the church on the riverbank, Spec fills me in. Reverend Gaspar was preaching a revival to a packed house when he took two poisonous rattlesnakes out of a cage and started handling them. One bit him.

  “Relax. I gave Preacher Gaspar a serum a while back. Doc Daugherty made him take the prescription.” Spec doesn’t respond, he just takes a deep drag off his cigarette. This is one of those go-nowhere runs I got suckered into because Spec insisted. A snakebite is a one-man job. Wash and dress the wound, and out. I picture that moist layer cake sitting on my coffee table at home, and it makes me real cross.

  The Church of God is a one-room building made of sandstone. The simple roof has a cross painted on it. The front door is painted bright red to keep the Devil out. Spec and I can hear wailing from the congregation, but this is typical for a revival. People come to cleanse themselves of their sins and seek redemption. That can get loud.

  We enter through the rear of the church. Dicie Sturgill, a small sturdy woman with a shock of red hair, meets us at the back pew. She is very upset. She leads us up the aisle to Reverend Gaspar, who is lying on the floor of the altar with someone’s coat wadded up under his head for a pillow. About twelve believers are laying their hands on him and speaking in tongues. I recognize one of the faces from a Rescue Squad run last year: a rambunctious fifteen-year-old troublemaker named Den-Bob Snodgrass. During girls’ PE one morning he came out of the boys’ dressing room bouncing a basketball, buck naked. The girls saw him, started screaming, and ran out into the hallways, creating a stampede. Den-Bob was suspended, but he never returned to finish school. He went to work in the mines instead.

  Reverend Gaspar moans softly. His wrist is wrapped in a wad of paper towel, and the blood is seeping through. I dress his wound while Spec quizzes him. Spec asks Reverend Gaspar if he took the serum. The preacher cannot focus; his response tells me he hasn’t taken the serum, but I can’t be sure. I ask his wife, who is crying and praying at his feet, to take a seat. She is wailing loudly, asking Jesus to save him. I tell Spec to finish wrapping the wound; maybe I can get through to the preacher. I ask the hand layers to take to their seats, as the patient needs air. They oblige. One of them puts her arms around Mrs. Gaspar and leads her to the front pew, a simple wooden bench. Spec prepares a shot to administer to the preacher. If he already took the serum, it won’t hurt; and if he didn’t, I pray this will do the trick.

  “Reverend, can you hear me? It’s me, Ave Maria. You got a nasty bite.” He smiles as though he understands.

  Then Den-Bob Snodgrass leaps up, pulls a pistol out of his pants, and shoots the snakes writhing in the cage on the altar. Blood and thin strips of brown and green snakeskin explode everywhere. The congregation screams out in horror.

  “Goddamn rattlers!” Den-Bob cries. Two men grab him, take the gun, and hustle him out of the church. Spec and I keep our cool and continue with our business, though I feel I might throw up. I have a fleeting thought that no one ever changes; Den-Bob Snodgrass was a loose cannon before he chose the Lord, and he’s a loose cannon now.

  “Reverend, did you take the serum?”

  He does not answer me.

  “We have to take you to the hospital.”

  “No,” he says clearly.

  “We have to. You got bit.”

  “No!”

  Spec looks at me like, We’re taking him anyway. Let’s wrap this up and get him out of here. Preacher Gaspar’s face has begun to swell. As we lift him onto the gurney, a small vial falls out of his jacket. It’s the sealed bottle of serum I sold him. I slip it into my pocket, hoping his wife didn’t notice.

  Spec barks for folks to clear the aisle. We get Reverend Gaspar outside and hoist him into the back of the ambulance. Spec drives, and I stay in the back with the reverend.

  I hold his hand. He still has the strength to squeeze my hand, and I tell him to keep squeezing. He asks for water, and I give it to him. He has something he wants to say to me. First, he takes another sip.

  “Why didn’t you take the serum, Preacher?” I ask him.

  “Faith,” he says. His grip on my hand loosens.

  “Hurry, Spec.”

  I look down at Preacher Gaspar. His expression is one of contentment. I can’t understand this. He’s in pain. Why isn’t he crying out?

  Men look so very small when they’re dying. He seems like a child to me. I hold his hand and squeeze it gently, awaiting a response. I don’t get one. He still has a pulse, though; he has quietly slipped into a coma.

  Spec drives me home. We are silent most of the trip from the hospital. Reverend Gaspar died at 3:33 A.M.; some folks noted that Christ died at the age of thirty-three, and maybe there is some connection. Spec and I have never lost a patient, so we’ve never walked this territory with each other before. He drops me off and I walk up the steps, into my old house, but I don’t feel like it’s home anymore. I left all the lights on; the cake and coffee are where I left them, the w
hipped cream now a flat sandy pool. I take the dishes to the kitchen and throw everything out. I wash the plate and the fork and the mug. I don’t cry, but I can’t get Reverend Gaspar’s face out of my mind.

  It is a glorious late-November day, perfect for apple picking or a funeral. In a simple pinewood casket Reverend Gaspar is laid out in a white gown. Field flowers are gathered with ribbons and set about the foot of the casket. The Church of God has never been so crowded. Almost all of the local preachers from the other denominations flank the altar, including my Catholic priest, a gentle old Irishman out of Buffalo, New York.

  The Mormon brothers peruse the crowd and nod to me in recognition. I smile at them in appreciation; they sent me a family tree researched by the Mormons on my behalf. The only problem was that they were off in the spelling of Mario Barbari’s name. They researched the Bonboni family instead. While the Bonbonis were talented olive oil pressers, they were not related to me. I didn’t have the heart to tell the boys they made a mistake, so I sat through their spiel and acted excited about the discovery.

  There is much singing and revelry. Folks stand and talk about Preacher Gaspar, how he helped them find Jesus; how he prayed with them and for them; how he was a real preacher, a genuine apostle who could tell a story and make you believe it. I couldn’t help thinking about his preaching at our school when I was a girl. We were a little scared of him, and also in awe. The word faith keeps popping up, and I remember how he said it the night he died. It sends a chill through me.

  At the end of the funeral, after Pee Wee Poteet plays “In the Sweet By and By” on his fiddle, Dicie Sturgill gets up to read a letter that the reverend wrote to his flock in the event of his death. The very mention of this letter sends the women in the church into a wailing spell. When it goes on a tad too long, Dicie gives them a look that says, Do you want to weep, or do you want me to read this here letter after all? The wailing trails off to nose blowing and sniffling. Then she reads: