Big Cherry Holler

  “You know what I think about sometimes?” my husband says as he pulls me closer.

  “What?”

  “How it all seems like a bad dream.”

  “I know.”

  “Remember the day we had all of Joe’s school friends over?” Jack asks me. We had taken Joe out of the hospital so he could be home with us, with Shoo the Cat, in his own bed. Joe felt pretty good one morning and decided that he wanted to see all his buddies from school. So I called all of their mothers and threw a party.

  “The boys were running and playing inside, and next thing you know, they took off in a pack and went outside into the snow. Joe took off after them. And he got as far as the middle of the field in front of the house, but he couldn’t keep up. So he knelt down alone in that field. And he didn’t call for us. He just knelt there. And waited. God, that broke my heart. When he couldn’t run anymore.”

  “I hope we never forget him.” I turn and face my husband.

  “How could we?”

  “I don’t know. People do.” I hold my husband so tight, it’s as though he’s in pieces and the only thing that can hold him together is me. I close my eyes and remember how close we have been. What is worth saving in this life? What is worth holding on to? Does anyone know until they lose it?

  I look over at our daughter. Etta holds a red ribbon in her hand as she watches the two of us. She is smiling.

  This Christmas is our best yet. Maybe it’s because Etta feels it’s a real celebration again; or because Theodore made good on his promise to spend the holidays with us; or that Jack and I seem to have come to a good place in our marriage (maybe it’s temporary, or maybe it’s the holiday spirit, I don’t care, it’s nice!). We’re sitting on a Lily Pad of Calm amid a year full of setbacks and arguments. When I tell Jack we’re on a pretty lily pad, he takes his fist to his head and mockingly pounds it. But the more I think of this image, the more apt I think it is. Lilies bloom on the surface of dark and murky water. There is a lot under the surface of this marriage, and I don’t forget that for a second.

  “Can I help?” Theodore stands behind me as I maneuver the turkey into the oven.

  “Get the potatoes. Please.”

  “Sweetie, where’s the wine?” Jack wants to know as he passes through to gather Etta and our guests.

  “On the porch in the cooler. I needed the space in the fridge for Fleeta’s Jell-O mold.”

  “Which no one eats,” Theodore whispers.

  “It makes a nice centerpiece.”

  “Until it melts lime-green goo all over the table.”

  “It’s Christmas. Green is good,” I tell him. “Thank you for coming. And being here. Especially this year. Thank you.”

  “You owe me. I stayed up until four-thirty putting that Barbie thing together for Etta.”

  “I know.”

  “I know you know,” Theodore tells me, and kisses me on the forehead.

  The phone rings, at least four times; just as I’m about to yell for someone, anyone, to pick it up, I hear Etta in the hallway.

  “Ciao, Nonno!” she says, giggling. Jack takes over carving the turkey and motions for me to take the phone.

  “Merry Christmas, Papa.”

  “How’s my daughter?”

  “I’m great. Just wish you were here.”

  “How is Christmas?”

  “Hectic. Nuts. How about you?”

  “Mama took a little fall, so we—”

  “How? Is she all right?”

  “Nothing broke. Thank God. She’s bossing everyone from her chair.”

  “May I speak with her?” My father gives my grandmother the phone; she sounds hearty and robust and not broken at all. She tells me all the news of Schilpario in a run-on sentence, ending with the news that my father is seeing a woman seriously. Her name is Giacomina, and she’s only forty-four years old! “Put Papa on the phone,” I tell her. I know she must be important to him; my father has always had lots of girlfriends, so to bring home someone special must be a big deal, and for my grandmother to mention it, it’s got to be serious.

  “Yes, yes, it’s true. I love this woman,” Papa says to me, and laughs.

  “Are you getting married?” I ask him.

  “Thinking about it. Yes. I would prefer to only think of it and never do it.”

  “Don’t you do a thing until I can be there!” I yell into the phone.

  “When are you coming?”

  “I don’t know. But don’t do anything until we can be there. Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  Jack takes the phone and talks to my father. I go into the dining room and catch Theodore up on all the goings-on in Italy as he places serving pieces on the table.

  The dining room table, a rustic farm table with thick legs, is dressed with my mother’s china, a pattern I have always loved, which is called “English Ivy.” I have placed crystal plates filled with celery, carrots, and black olives at either end of the table. Sterling silver open-weave baskets are filled with fresh rolls, and pats of butter in the shape of Christmas bells and fluffy buttermilk rolls (thank you, Hope Meade) are placed on each guest’s bread plate. I dim the lights (my mother’s simple crystal chandelier from our Poplar Hill house) and light the twisty red taper candles in their Santa holders (a special from the Mutual’s).

  Etta runs in and offers to ring the dinner bell. She grabs it and runs through the house, clanging it in every room as if she’s a goatherd. Jack says good-bye to my father and goes into the kitchen for the turkey. The company drifts in, though they aren’t company at all, really, but family. Iva Lou and Lyle take their places opposite Jack; Etta sits next to Iva Lou; Pearl and Dr. B. sit to one side of me, Theodore to the other; Fleeta, Dorinda, and baby Jeanine sit in the center; Otto and Worley and Leah fill in the rest. In the beauty of the moment, surrounded by my favorite people, I want to cry.

  “Don’t, Ma,” Etta whispers.

  “No, no. I’m happy. I was just thinking how lucky we are. To have each other. That’s all.”

  My friends murmur in reply, no one ’fessing up to their holiday emotions, and maybe not wanting to deal with them, either. I miss my mother terribly; my father is a big ocean away; Mrs. Mac is gone. My son, who loved Christmas, is not here. I wonder if they’re looking down on us, sorry they can’t be with us. I stare into the candle for a second, hoping that the bright white of the flame will center me and help me from having a sobfest right here in the sweet-potato casserole with delicate marshmallow crust. Dr. Bakagese winks at me. Maybe he knows where my thoughts have taken me.

  “Honey, why don’t you lead the prayer?”

  “Catholic or Baptist?” Etta offers us a choice.

  “If we’re goin’ by the numbers, go with Baptist. We got you Cath-licks beat by about six.” Fleeta moves her head around the table, counting Protestants. “ ’Course, Doc, I don’t know what religion you is but I’m perty sure it’s one of them that meditates.”

  “Fleeta, with all due respect, my daughter is Catholic,” Jack offers, avoiding the Cracker’s Neck version of the Great Schism.

  “Well, I don’t much care. Jesus is Jesus.” Fleeta takes a stand.

  “Well, I’m half Baptist,” Etta says, looking at her daddy. “ ’Cause you’re a full Baptist. So I will say a prayer in half and half. Bow your heads. God, the Baptists thank you for the turkey. The Catholics thank you for the cake …”

  “And I’d like to thank the ABC store for the whiskey. Amen,” Lyle says, finishing Etta’s prayer. Etta makes the sign of the cross with me and shrugs. The phone rings. Etta excuses herself to go and answer it.

  “Tell whoever it is we’re eating dinner, Etta,” I yell as I pass the gravy to Pearl.

  “Probably one of ’em phone-solicitation deals,” Fleeta grumbles.

  “On Christmas?” Dorinda wonders.

  “That’s the best time. They know yer home.” Fleeta takes the last drag off her cigarette, then dips the butt into her ice water. It is so quiet, I hear
the sizzle. Then she places the soggy butt on her bread plate.

  Etta runs back into the room. “It’s for you, Mama.”

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s Captain Spec.”

  “I bet that Edens boy shoved another button up his nose. That boy is forever cloggin’ up the holes of his head with somethin’ or another.”

  I excuse myself and go to the phone in the hallway. I barely hang up the phone before running in to tell our guests, “I have to go. I’m sorry. There’s a fire at the Trail Theatre.” Chairs push away from the table, and our group moves into action, putting out candles, grabbing their coats and purses, gloves and hats. “Hell, we’ll all come,” Fleeta says. “It could spread to the Pharmacy.” Instead of arguing with Fleeta, I turn to Iva Lou. “Watch Etta for me, honey, will you?”

  “I’m going too, Ma!”

  “Don’t worry. She’ll stay with me,” Iva Lou promises.

  “I’ll drive you,” Jack says, helping me gather my gear.

  By the time we reach town, four fire trucks have parked in front of the theater. Black smoke billows out of the second story; flames pour out of the lobby below. Jim Roy Honeycutt, his white hair askew, is pacing behind the fire trucks, distraught.

  “What happened?”

  “My prints! All my movies is in there! From the beginning!”

  I leave Jim Roy with his wife and duck under the hoses, which are being pulled off their giant spools and up to the building. A fireman from Appalachia taps the hydrant in front of Gilley’s Jewelers. Barney and his son work furiously, emptying the window display into a sack. The sight of them tipping the velvet necks modeling pearls and chains reminds me of Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief. The chug and grind of the ladders as they extend to the roof drowns out Spec, calling to me. Jack, who is helping a volunteer fireman with an unwieldy hose, motions to me to go to Spec.

  A crazy series of loud pops, followed by billows of black smoke, comes from the building. Cinders from the ornate wooden molding cascade from the building in small sprays of orange.

  “Must’ve hit the storage room. The oil and popcorn has gone up,” Spec tells me. How strange to smell the popcorn burning outside. Jim Roy’s popcorn was so good, folks would stop in and buy a sack even if they weren’t staying to see the movie.

  “There’s a man inside,” a fireman shouts to us. Spec and I move in with our oxygen and gurney.

  The streets are filled with onlookers, including all the merchants. Zackie gathers them together, and the postmaster from across the street manages the crowd, pushing them back and onto the Post Office steps.

  Then, in a cloud of gray smoke, the captain of our Fire Department emerges from the side door to the ticket booth, carrying a man over his shoulder. Spec and I help him place the man on the gurney. He is not breathing; we administer oxygen. Doc Daugherty joins us and takes over.

  “Who is he?” I ask Spec. I’ve never seen this man before. Spec shrugs.

  Across the street in front of the Pharmacy, our Christmas dinner guests stand in a huddle watching. Pearl grabs Fleeta’s hand as she watches Dr. Bakagese help a fireman who has taken in too much smoke. The crowd points and sighs as red sparks blow off the roof and out into smoke, disappearing into the cold blue air.

  Spec searches the man’s pockets for identification, finds his wallet, and opens it. “His name is Albert Grimes. He’s from Dunbar.” Dunbar is a coal camp over by Appalachia. What was he doing in the closed theater on Christmas Day?

  “I wonder if he’s kin to Pearl,” Spec says, waving her over.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let me see,” Pearl says, running up behind me. She leans over the stretcher. “He’s my father.” Spec looks at her—“What?”—and then looks at me; I had no idea Pearl’s father was alive or lived around here. I glance at Pearl, who gazes down at the man on the gurney. She isn’t afraid for him; there is detached concern in her eyes, but certainly not worry. Spec and I lift him into the Rescue Squad wagon. I look at Pearl again and hold back a thousand questions—this is not the time.

  “The building’s empty!” the Fire Chief yells to his crew. “Let her have it, boys!” In earnest, they begin hosing the building through the windows; the gold flames disappear, replaced with thick black smoke.

  Doc Daugherty rides with Albert Grimes in the back of the wagon. Spec and I speed up to Lonesome Pine Hospital’s emergency room, which is not more than a five-minute drive through town and out through the southern section. The fireman whom Dr. B. treated did not require oxygen, but he is behind us in Appalachia’s rescue squad wagon for a thorough check at the hospital.

  Albert wakes up and moans; his blue eyes are fuzzy, and he cannot focus. As we wheel him into the emergency room, Tozz Ball wants to ask him a few questions, but Spec tells Tozz to beat it. Pearl and Leah sweep through the automatic doors and search the room for Albert. Pearl sees him through the window in ICU and goes to him. Leah joins Spec and me.

  “Is he all right?” Leah asks.

  “We think so. He took in a lot of smoke.”

  “He didn’t mean no harm.”

  “I’m sure he didn’t.” I put my arm around Leah.

  “He’s basically good. He just had a bad run of it.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of everything. Things didn’t work out between us. He lost his job with the railroad on account of the disability and it all went downhill after ’at. He just lost his way, you know.” Leah goes through the doors and into the ICU. She puts her arm around Pearl, who rests her head on her mother’s shoulder.

  I can’t believe that Leah is making excuses for the man who left her and a baby. She doesn’t love him anymore; she’s going to marry Worley. Maybe she just feels sorry for him. Pity is a dangerous thing in a woman: it gives the man the power to treat you any way he wants; he can stay and be cruel, or he can abandon you. As I watch Pearl lean on her mother, I think of my own mother, who I could always count on when I was hurting. My mother pitied my stepfather, Fred Mulligan, felt compassion for a man who could not feel, and it left me in the middle, feeling sorry for a man who could not love me.

  “I think we ought to run down and check on Jim Roy. This thing could give him a nervous breakdown,” Spec tells me, and I follow him back to the squad wagon.

  We pull up in front of the Pharmacy. Fleeta has opened it, turned on all the lights, and it looks as though the whole town is stuffed inside, where it’s warm. The mechanical choir in the window nods and waves as though nothing has happened. There is one truck left on standby across the street outside the theater. Jack Mac and Etta stand on the sidewalk outside the Pharmacy, watching the firemen as they secure the building.

  “Mama, look!” Etta points to the marquee, which has burned off the facade of the theater.

  Before the fire, the bright white marquee used to have a green plastic pine tree anchoring it in the center, and THE TRAIL in plastic cursive on either side. Underneath THE TRAIL was always the title of the movie, or at least as close as Jim Roy could spell it. As the years went on, letters got lost or broken, and Jim Roy didn’t replace them. So you’d see titles like GO WIND for Gone With the Wind or SUM 42 for The Summer of ’42. Now the modern plastic is gone, and under it, in bold letters carved into the wood, is AMAZU.

  “What’s Am-a-zoo?” I ask my husband.

  “Amaze You.”

  “What’s ‘Amaze You’?”

  “That was the first movie house in Big Stone Gap. Way before Jim Roy bought the place and modernized it. My mama used to tell me about it. They saw silent movies there. Lillian Gish. Buster Keaton. Charlie Chaplin. And there was an organ and a stage. And before every show, old Possum Hodgins, who owned the theater, would get up and tell the audience, ‘Today we’re-a-gonna Amaze You!’ ”

  I look up at the old marquee, and it sends a chill through me. How strange to see the past exposed under layers of the present.

  “Honey, it’s cold. Go inside,” I tell my daughter.

  “Fle
eta opened up the Soda Fountain. She’s pushin’ pie and cake and coffee,” Jack Mac tells me. I’m not surprised. As much as Fleeta complains, if she’s not in the center of everything, she ain’t living.

  Spec is over at the Trail with the firemen. Jim Roy is standing out front, talking to them. I take Jack’s hand, and we cross the street to join them.

  “It’s gone. It’s all gone,” Jim Roy says sadly. “All my movies. My prints done burned. All my years of collecting. Gone.”

  “We were able to save some, sir.” A fireman joins us, just a kid of maybe twenty, and he shows Jim Roy a stack of black tin canisters which he salvaged and placed in the doorway of Gilley’s Jewelers. Jim Roy sees the canisters, and his eyes light up with joy.

  “Here, I got a flashlight,” Spec tells Jim Roy, who rushes over to the canisters and runs his hands over the wheels of tin as though he were patting a baby.

  “Let’s see what we got, buddy,” Spec says to Jim Roy. Then he reads the tape on the sides as I hold the flashlight: “The Thin Man, Dancing Lady, My Man Godfrey, Stagecoach, The Heiress, Midnight with Don Ameche and Claudette Colbert. That would’ve been a tragedy right there if they burned up.” Spec shuffles through the reels: “There’s Bachelor Mother, yeah, Ginger Rogers was sexy in that one; The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Topaz, Pride and Prejudice, Jezebel, It Happened One Night …”

  “Clark Gable!” I shriek. Spec gives me a look.

  “Let’s see, there’s The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Song of Bernadette, Test Pilot, Wuthering Heights, Dinner at Eight; Goodbye, Mr. Chips, The Women, Sullivan’s Travels; there’s Claudette agin with The Palm Beach Story, the Duke in The Quiet Man, How Green Was My Valley, thank you Jesus, it looks like we saved most of Maureen O’Hara. And lookee. Henry Fonda in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine. It’s here, Jim Roy!”

  “How ’bout Kay Francis? I had all of Kay Francis,” Jim Roy says nervously.

  “They’re here.” Spec shows Jim Roy a neat stack of her movies, safe on the ground. He places a double reel on top of the stack. “National Velvet … that’s Etta’s favorite, isn’t it?” I nod.