F*ckface

by Leah Hampton

  The sky looked like dirty quilt batting, and we walked past the sausage and peppers stand, the bluegrass gazebo, and a bunch of other stuff, waiting for a drop of sunlight. Mavis was right; some of the music was pretty good.

  We got to the center of the park, and I showed James to Dolly’s house, the one she grew up in. It’s right where Dolly wants it, beside a bunch of lit-up signs for attractions and souvenir shops, with about five different places to eat circled around it. The cabin is on an island in the middle of all that bustle, just below the railroad bridge at the main intersection, so nobody forgets where Dolly came from.

  James stepped up on the walkway with just his toe tips and read the sign carefully while I stood behind him. Then he said, “Are we allowed in?” He turned to me, and his face was like a boy’s. I don’t imagine very many people ever get to see his face like that.

  I nodded and pointed to the sign, and we went inside. The tour only takes a minute, because Dolly grew up in a three-room house. They put most of the historical stuff, like her gowns and her coat of many colors, in her personal museum farther down in the park. Here in the cabin, glass barriers keep everyone out to preserve the place exactly as it was when she was a little girl. A sack of flour still sits by the stove, and the wallpaper is nothing but old newspapers.

  All the noise of the park, the rides, the railroad, all of it drains away inside Dolly’s cabin. The only thing we could hear was the boats swirling through the Smoky Mountain River Rampage down the hill. Each boat goes around a track and gets to a point where the fake rocks squirt river water all over the passengers. The whole thing works on a timer, I guess, because James and I walked along so softly inside the old place, and he whispered all his comments and questions to me, and everything hushed into respectful silence, except for about every twenty seconds or so, when we’d hear thock-thock-shwhoosh.

  We finished the cabin tour and came out by the railroad bridge, and James said, “Well, that was incongruently tasteful.” He knitted up his forehead and walked up toward the blacksmith shops. “She’s really something, isn’t she? Quite a beginning.” He turned back to the cabin and regarded it from a higher vantage point.

  Then he peered at me. His face wasn’t boyish now; he looked detached, like he was researching something. He lifted his head and jutted his chin back down the hill toward Dolly’s cabin. “Did you grow up in a place like that?”

  Well, I mean please. My face went hot, and my stomach whomped fiercely. I couldn’t decide if I was heartbroken or pissed. I tried to slow my breathing so my gut wouldn’t hurt.

  “No, Professor,” I said. I crossed my arms and looked up the hill, away from him, toward the sunlight diffused behind all that dirty cotton batting. I was looking for the blue wings of the eagle coaster way up top. “I had plumbing and everything.”

  “Oh. Oh, right. I’m sorry, Beth.”

  “Heck, I even read a few books when I was a kid, when I wasn’t losing teeth.” I turned back to him and raised my chin. “Even managed to gra-jee-ate college.”

  “Of course. I didn’t mean…”

  “You want lunch?” I started walking. “Let’s get some peppers and sausage.”

  “Beth, I’m sorry.”

  “Sure, fine. Just … you know. I’m not a country-fried fool or anything.”

  “I know that. I know it.”

  The whitewater boats thock-shwooshed again, far down the hill.

  “It’s just—I think you’re like her,” James said. He sounded far away. “Like Dolly.”

  “Quit looking at my tits, Doc.”

  “No, really.” I knew he was trying to smile, but I wouldn’t look at him. I followed a crack in the blacktop under my foot. It went on forever.

  “I intended it as a compliment,” he said. “Of course, you dress much more simply.” He seized on a word and blurted, “More refined.”

  Then he rubbed his head, put his hands in his pockets, and shrugged roughly. He rocked on his feet and leaned against the sign for Aunt Granny’s Restaurant. I remembered then not everyone thinks James is as beautiful as I do. Scientists move like awkward birds, and he does have that thing with his left eyeball, after all. So I let go of the insult. At least he’d tried to make up for it by calling me refined.

  “How long till two thirty?” I asked.

  James bent deeply to pull his hand from his pocket and frowned at his watch. “We’ve got about an hour.” He turned and squinted at the eagle coaster on the hill.

  For the record, the eagle coaster at Dollywood kicks ass. It looks like a giant bird, and the seats don’t have a floor. People swing their legs free and scream their faces off on that thing. I’ve never ridden on it because every time I’ve been to Dollywood that coaster is shut down for bees. Apparently there are bee colonies up on top of the hill, and Dolly doesn’t want to mess with them or move them. So instead, if the bees are lively in summertime, they put up a special sign with honey pots and smiling bumblebees on it, and no one can ride the eagle coaster until they settle down into their hives.

  It was late autumn now, with all the sun and leaves over, so no bees. The eagle was running—a giant raptor swaying above us, all blue and shiny, even under the dark, low clouds.

  James watched the blue wings of the coaster for a second and said, “I don’t really do stuff like that anymore. It twinges my back.”

  I watched a few little kids run screaming up the hill toward the bird and clenched my jaw. My mother never used to bother telling me to have babies because she knows I don’t want any. Kids are supposed to make you tender, but I never feel any closeness inside me when I see one. Anytime I see children, they seem far away.

  But lately when she visits, Mama says it—get pregnant already. Then she shakes her head at me and says I’m gloomy. She says our house is too quiet. It took her years to figure out Pete doesn’t hit me, because she just figures that’s what everybody lives with. She thinks the way I grew up is normal.

  My mother. She sees I’m missing something, but she doesn’t know what it is.

  It took me a second to let go of the idea of finally riding the eagle coaster. I breathed out slow and said, “Well, you want lunch then?” I put a little singsong in my voice to tease him, “Yo-u can have can-dy af-ter…”

  He smiled, but only from one side of his face, then bowed and swooped his hand toward the food stalls like a butler in some old movie. “Sausage and peppers, it is, madame.”

  We found a picnic area with seats made out of old barrels sawed in half and smooshed butt side up into the concrete. James didn’t talk much over lunch, so I told him another story about Bigun to entertain him. This story was more recent, after Bigun grew up, a year or so before I met James. I told about Bigun getting drunk and shooting his rifle into the Dairy Queen sign when they forgot to put the peanuts on his sundae. I didn’t tell James about Bigun crashing his pickup a few days later, or how he lingered in the ICU, broken and swollen like an angry tick, for six weeks before he finally passed. I didn’t say how I spread out my textbooks on the plastic sofa outside his room and studied for all my semester exams, peeking in every now and then to see if Bigun’s fingers would twitch hello for me. I didn’t want to talk about sad things before we saw Dolly. Bigun’s real name was Charles, so I told him that instead.

  A little after two we wound our way to the theater. We went to the orange doors just like Mavis said, and it turned out Mavis is kind of a blabbermouth because there must have been two hundred people already in line. A lot of them were suited-up types, with name tags from a bunch of different theme parks pinned to their lapels. But about half the crowd was regular people like us. I wondered where they’d all been hiding up to now; the park had been empty all afternoon.

  “Betrayed,” James said, shaking his head. “I assumed our ticket lady was keeping this between friends.”

  “It’ll be fine. We’ll get a seat,” I replied. “Doesn’t matter as long as we get to see her.”

  James nodded, and we got in line. We
filed in through the big orange doors, and we found seats way at the back of the main floor, off to the far left. The seats were dark blue and thick cushioned. Everything on the stage was blue, too. Blue curtains and a big TV screen with nothing on it except the royal emptiness you get on channels you haven’t paid for. James said he figured we’d have to sit through some conference talk before we got to see Dolly, and he asked if I was up for it. I said yes, I’d sat through my share of boring presentations with Pete. Turned out we didn’t have to wait long at all.

  A round, standard-issue Yankee in a navy suit came up onstage to give a speech about the national federation of theme park executives, or whatever it was called, and how pleased they were to be there, and what the schedule for today’s keynote event would be. He was just getting to the part where he asked everyone to check their conference schedule booklet when a gleeful surge rumbled over from the right side of the house. I looked across the stage, and there she was.

  Dolly Parton, right there in front of me.

  They say celebrities look smaller in person, and it’s a disappointment because you expect them to be taller or more imposing. When Dolly walked out, my mouth dropped open, and I shot out of my seat. As I watched her, I thought two things at the same time: she was the littlest, tiniest thing I’d ever seen, and she wasn’t a disappointment at all. All the typical stuff you think of when you think of Dolly Parton—shine and light and makeup and hair and boobs—all of it was perfect. She looked so totally and exactly like I wanted her to, I almost didn’t believe it was her. Her being so little made me think she was a doll, a fancy toy for rich kids. Then I forgot about her smallness and held my hands together tight and watched her walk toward the guy in the suit. He had dropped his conference booklet and was beaming silently.

  I don’t care who you are. Everybody in that room was overcome. James shot to his feet right along with me, and he was clapping and watching her, then turning to me and laughing, back and forth. Dolly looked so beautiful, and she was smiling and waving to everyone. She stood there for just the right, dignified amount of time, not too long, and let the crowd applaud her. A sound guy in a black T-shirt ran out and handed her a microphone.

  “Well, hey, everybody!” Dolly Parton giggled at us.

  We all waved and applauded some more, and she waved back. James crossed his arms and put one elbow on his hand so he could raise the opposite hand to his chin and rest it there. Every last one of us, even the suits who were acting businesslike while we were in line, all of us were transfixed.

  Dolly must have known they’d have all blue up there, because she had chosen a gold outfit that stood out against the blue backdrop and popped off the stage. She had on a slinky gold satin dress, sleeveless. It glistened softly down to her knees. That dress would have been a classy number by itself, but it’s Dolly, so over the dress she wore a jacket I won’t ever forget. The jacket looked like the finest lace, only it was bright gold and twinkly everywhere. It had to have been handmade, and it didn’t look cheap. She stood in front of the big blue TV screen, and between that and the spotlight hitting her, the gold jacket reflected and refracted back and forth to build a fine, warm halo around her. I know that sounds crazy, and I’m not going to say she looked like an angel on top of a Christmas tree, but I’ll bet that’s what a bunch of us were thinking. James studies light-refracting particles, so he probably knew exactly what was making Dolly shine.

  She didn’t stay for long. Mavis was right; she had only come to welcome the conference attendees. Apparently that conference is a big deal in theme park circles. Dolly said she had come out today to tell all the theme park executives how glad she was they had chosen Dollywood to host their big meeting. She talked about the history of the park, how it used to be called Silver Dollar City before she bought it and fixed it up.

  Some woman behind me said, “That’s right, you remember, Dan? She saved the place. I used to come here and ride that ol’ run-down silver mine coaster.” I nudged James to see if he’d heard.

  Then Dolly made one of her usual jokes about her boobs, and she told the suits to be sure and tell her what they thought of her little ol’ theme park, because she and her staff had worked hard to make it a great place for folks to come with their families. Then she thanked us again and thanked the boring guy in the navy suit for letting her steal some of his time. She handed him the microphone and walked off waving and blowing kisses.

  The audience clapped and hollered, but Dolly didn’t come back out to sing. We settled down slowly, but the whole theater tingled for a long time after. Whatever electrons James shoots into me when he’s nearby, Dolly’s got a billion more of them, because everyone in there felt warm and happy. Mr. Blue Suit never stopped beaming while he said three times Dolly was “marvelous.” Then he said his colleagues should wait a minute for park visitors to file out of the theater, and then the conference would proceed on schedule.

  We were all in such a good mood nobody minded bustling and squishing past each other in the narrow aisles. As I shimmied toward the orange exit, I checked everyone’s faces. All the suits looked tickled and loose. James and I said excuse me and I’m sorry a hundred times, and we got patted on the shoulder if we accidentally stepped on a foot or a briefcase. Dolly eases people.

  When we got outside, I could tell James was impressed. I asked him, “Well, was that the highlight of your week?” He put his hands on his hips and smiled with all his teeth; then he shrugged big. He didn’t have to say anything. My whole body shook, but I kept my own thoughts inside so I wouldn’t spoil his.

  “You want to get that caramel apple now?” I asked. “The shop’s over there.”

  James put one hand on his belly, and I noticed his fleece jacket was the same color as our theater seats. His face darkened. “I probably shouldn’t. I just ate that sausage. Besides,” he said, “who needs candy when you’ve got Dolly Parton?”

  I laughed. “Nothing sweeter, right?”

  “Yes, she really does have something. I was impressed. Dazzled, even.” James patted his stomach, then arced his hand to indicate the park, the rides, Dolly, the wide, bright paths, Mavis in the ticket booth, everything. “All that glitters,” he murmured.

  We strolled through the candy shops but didn’t buy anything. James took one look at the caramel apples and said they were as big as a baby’s head. I pretended to look at cookbooks. Mostly I peeped at James between the bookshelves, especially when he walked through the lollipop section. Some of those lollipops span a foot across, and they stack up in rows along the walls. Against the swirling candy behind him, the subtlety of his dark-blue jacket and his brown hair popped. He stood out the same way golden Dolly had popped on that blue stage, but it was like James was doing it in reverse, a negative of an old color photograph.

  There’s not much left to Dollywood once you get past the candy stores. We’d left all the rides and kids’ stuff behind us. James wasn’t interested. It was pretty much just the gift shop left. You can’t leave Dollywood unless you go through the gift shop; it’s the only exit.

  I figured James would buy something since he hadn’t ridden any of the rides. A little part of me hoped he’d buy me something, to thank me for bringing him, signify the day, so I remarked on a few items. I made sure not to be girly about it, but he didn’t pick up or touch anything. I even found a mug exactly like the chipped one I bought at the Methodist thrift store. I showed him. He nodded and mm-hmmed in a friendly way that meant no.

  “You don’t want a souvenir?” I finally asked. “It’s the same as my mug from this morning, but without the crack on her tit.”

  James tilted his head. “I’ve got a bunch of luggage I need to take home.”

  “So, but, you had fun, right? Isn’t this place a kick?”

  “Yes, I’ll admit I did have fun, actually.” He smiled again and turned away slightly. Then he mumbled, “To be honest, I was expecting Araby.”

  I rolled my eyes. What a thing to say. James squinted and leaned toward me.
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  “Araby,” he said again slowly. “That’s, uh … It’s a story.”

  “Yeah.” I plonked the Dolly mug back on the table and glared at a row of shot glasses to my right. “There’s a copy of Dubliners on the shelf in the spare room. You can borrow it later.”

  “Oh, right. Sure. Sorry, I just assumed you wouldn’t…”

  “We should head back,” I said. “It’ll take us at least an hour. More if it starts to rain.”

  Those shot glasses. They all looked so clear and clean. The fluorescent bulbs above us shone straight down to the bottom of each one and made a pool of light that splashed up through their silver lettering.

  “Yes, you’re right,” said James. “Hey, did you want to get anything for yourself? Those hats are sort of neat.” He pointed to a high shelf lined with baseball caps covered in glittery butterflies. Butterflies are Dolly’s mascot.

  “I don’t wear hats.” I leaned into my hip. “We can catch a trolley back to the car.”

  As I moved to go, I felt my fingers reach out to the shot glasses on our way past. I grabbed one and stuffed it in my pocket in one blunt, smooth swipe. There.

  We walked past the stuffed animals and toys to the door, back out into the cold late afternoon. To the right, a series of ropes wound along a plain concrete tunnel. The end of each rope marked where visitors could wait for a lift. We moseyed along the tunnel, me with my hands shoved in the back pockets of my jeans, shoulders wide, James hunched over thinking to himself about something that was probably far away from here. I wondered whether he even noticed the mountains glowing lavender at their edges in the late afternoon gloom.

  When we got to the front of the line, he said, “Well, I guess we can die happy, now that we’ve seen Dolly Parton in all her glory.”

  I snorted. “Hardly.”

  I don’t know if it was his question about living in a shack, or not getting to ride the eagle coaster, or skipping the gift shop, or what, but all of a sudden I felt hard toward James. He didn’t know. It wasn’t his fault, but I hated him then, and I wanted the trolley to come soon, fast.