Sweet Sue stops by our table with her carry-out sack. “Jack, let’s go.”
Jack gets up to leave, but for a moment I don’t think he wants to go. I think he wants to sit and talk with Iva Lou and me.
“Y’all take care, now,” Jack says, and follows Sweet Sue out the door.
Iva Lou rises up off the seat about three inches to catch the rear view of Jack Mac as he goes. “Nice sculpted hindquarters. Very nice. There ain’t nothing like a working man.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I love carpenters, plumbers, construction workers, and coal miners. The Jack Mac type.”
“He’s a type?”
“Uh-huh. Had to narrow it down. When you’ve known as many men as me, you start making lists. The working man is a solid man. They can fix things that are broke. They’re practical. I like that. How about you?”
“I never thought about it.” I really don’t want to talk about this.
“I’ll bet you haven’t,” Iva Lou says, and looks at me, shaking her head. “Let me tell you what. Those men that sit behind a desk all day, the office types, stay away from them. They are the weirdos of the world. They don’t get out and get air and get physical every day, so their blood pools in their brains, and they get very strange sexual ideas, believe you me. Kinky. I mean it.”
I try to get Iva Lou off of this subject and back to the Mormons’ notes. She is talking her favorite subject, though, and is therefore persistent.
“I tried to have sex with him once,” Iva Lou announces.
“With whom?”
“Jack Mac.”
“Really?”
“I got nowhere. Nowhere.”
“Why? You’re so pretty and fun. What happened?” Why am I asking her this when I don’t want to know? I do this. When folks make me uncomfortable, instead of removing myself from the situation, I try to make them comfortable.
“Well, one night, before he started going with Sweet Sue, he was up to the Fold and we had a couple of beers and a couple of dances and I was frisky, and he was frisky, so I suggested a rendezvous up to Huff Rock. I find it inspirational up there. The mountaintop, the sky, the big old rocks to lie on. You’re getting the picture.” I nod. “Well, we kissed a couple of times. Good kisser. Uh-huh. Good kisser. And then it was getting time to move things along toward some sort of something, and he stopped.”
“He stopped?”
“I asked him why he stopped, of course. I’m not bragging, but that sort of thing never happened to me before. I said, ‘Jack MacChesney, why on God’s green earth are you stopping now? Aren’t you having fun?’ ”
“What did he say?”
“Well, he looked at me with those eyes of his, and he said most sincerely, ‘Iva Lou, you are a doll. But I ain’t in love with you. And I’m one of those men that has to be in love to carry on like this.’ ”
“No!” I shriek.
“Yes. That’s exactly what he said. And it was funny. My feelings weren’t hurt; I wasn’t embarrassed or any of that. But I’ll tell you something: I couldn’t believe that there was a man like that walking around in this world. I persisted a little with him, and he, very gentlemanly, kept declining my advances, so I yanked my bra straps back up and called it a night. I don’t know, I guess I admired him for his principles. I didn’t want to mess with it. I respected him.”
Iva Lou shrugs and picks up the last crumbs of cake with the back of her spoon. “Does that beat all? I mean, did you ever?”
“No, that’s quite a story.” What does she want me to say?
We sit quietly for a few moments. I look at Iva Lou. As she studies her notes, she looks like a little girl. I can see exactly who she was when she was little. A curious girl with a big appetite. What happened to the girl I used to be? Where did she go?
When I was seven, Mrs. White took our second-grade class to Clinch Haven Farms. It’s high up the mountains; I remember being scared in the bus. It was pretty once we got there, though. There were vivid green meadows that rolled back like folds of white icing, covered in flowers, dotted with cows, just like the picture on the milk bottle. The first thing Mrs. White showed us was a creek that twisted down the rocks and flowed into a pool. Mrs. White gathered us on the bank of the creek and explained the way water worked—how it rained and came down the mountain, making rivulets that pool and fall and then turn into rivers. We were allowed to drink of the creek. Mrs. White taught us how to kneel and, without disturbing the sediment at the bottom of the creek, cup our hands to drink the clear water off the surface. As I knelt, I examined the stones through the water. They were glassy brown and black stones, like the antique buttons my mama kept in a cupcake tin in her sewing closet. Then we followed the creek down to Buskers Farm and she told us how explorers always followed water. Even now, if I get lost when I’m making deliveries up in the hollers, I just remember to follow the water, and I always find my way back to town. That simple rule, for whatever reason, has stayed with me all these years and held me in good stead.
Buskers Farm was gigantic. There was an open field, a barn, and a main house. There was an outhouse; we all made jokes about it, even though some of my classmates still used outhouses.
I was with Nina Kaye Coughlin, my best friend. She had straight, shiny red hair and a turned-up nose splattered with freckles. When she smiled, her front teeth turned inward to make a V shape; it didn’t look bad, though. Crowded teeth are a sign of someone with lots to say. At one point I whispered to Nina Kaye that we ought to go look in the barn. So we separated from the group and went around the back of the barn to find the door. There, in a clearing, was a hog, strung up on three long poles, suspended by the head. Its gut was split from throat to groin. Two farmhands were cleaning the open gash—I guess they were removing the organs. Their hands were full of squishy blue and red entrails. They were being careful with the parts, placing them on a small, clean tarp, pulled tightly over a barrel. The hog’s eyes were wide open, staring up to the sky, as if in prayer. There was a ruby-red pool beneath the hog; his blood was so voluminous that it filled a small pit. We froze. Nina Kaye was holding my hand so tight, her fingernails made grooves on the side of my palm. Finally, the farmhands looked at us. For a moment they seemed annoyed, but when they saw how scared we were, they softened.
“Girls, we done drained the hog,” one of the men explained.
Nina Kaye looked as though she might faint. We both lived in town; the only farm animals we saw were on these field trips or at FFA camp in later years. We backed away from the scene and tore around the side of the barn. Nina Kaye cried and I comforted her. “Ain’t you skeered?” she said to me. “We can’t both be scared,” I told her.
“There you go again,” Iva Lou says. “Off in space.”
“Sorry, Iva.”
“What were you thinking?”
“How I used to be so brave.”
Bullitt Park, our high school football field and town park, is full of fog. It fills up with gray mist like a soup bowl some nights, especially in early fall when Mother Nature is making her temperatures drop. It’s a little dreary, and tonight it’s all business. After two months of intense practice, the Powell Valley High School marching band is going to run the final rehearsal of the Elizabeth Taylor Halftime Show Salute full out, no stops. Theodore is on the fifty-yard line giving some last-minute tips to the flag girls. In their gold lamé short shorts, you would never guess they were high school sophomores; they look like they could be in Cleopatra’s harem.
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 ne
rvous 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 a
sks.
“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.