Big Stone Gap (18 page)

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 whipped 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:

My dear Friends in Jesus the Lord:

In my life I found Jesus, my Lord and Savior, in all things, in work and play. Jesus wasn’t Somebody I turned to when I was sick or sad. I had fun with Him, too. He was with me wherever I went, whether it was to preach up at the school or fishing in Powell Valley Lake on a Saturday morning. He was always with me and I hope I knew Him well. Instead of a punch-and-cookie reception in the Fellowship Hall, I’ve arranged for all of you to go to Shug’s Lanes and bowl the afternoon away. I want you to have some fun with Jesus. Listen to one another, laugh, and see the great glory of God in each other. It is there, my friends, believe me. Sometimes we just don’t have the eyes to see it. Have a set on me.

Devotedly yours, Reverend Elmo Gaspar

One thing we do very well in the Gap is follow instructions. So after we put the reverend in the ground, the funeral procession headed right down Shawnee Avenue to Shug’s Bowling Lanes. Midge and Shug Hall had the lanes ready, the balls polished, the Nabs out, the pop poured, and the scorecards empty.

We pour into the bowling alley, teaming up to play a series or two. No one is impatient or competitive. We each wait and take our turn and enjoy watching others play. Even the old ladies join in the fun. There are tears here and there, but mostly there is laughter and storytelling and good eats.

Iva Lou and I excuse ourselves to go to the ladies’ room. You have to walk down one of the far aisle lanes to get to the back where the bathrooms are. I remember how self-conscious I was in the first buds of puberty when I made that long walk to the bathroom. One week I was a kid with a wad of bubble gum, bouncing all around this place; within a month or two, I hit adolescence and was horrified to be on display and draw attention to myself on the way to the bathroom. Today, as Iva Lou and I make the long walk, the self-consciousness is gone. We just hope a ball doesn’t pop over the aisle and hit us. Shug’s is packed with lousy bowlers; balls are flying everywhere.

When we get to the back, we pause for a moment, because instead of
LADIES
and
MEN
printed on each of the rest room doors, there are two pictures to choose from:
POINTERS
and
SETTERS
. The
POINTERS
door has a picture of a hunting dog; the
SETTERS
door has a picture of a dog sitting by a hearth. “We’re setters,” Iva Lou announces as she shoves the door open.

June Walker is at the sink, washing her hands. “Ain’t this awful about Preacher Gaspar?” We nod sadly. June continues, “You know death comes in threes, so I done guess we got two more to go.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about that old superstition. There have already been three deaths,” I tell June’s reflection in the mirror.

“How do you figure?” June asks.

“Well, there was Reverend Gaspar and the two snakes. That makes three.”

As we primp at the mirror, we hear the balls rolling down the lanes toward the pins. When the balls hit the back wall of the lanes to go into the return aisle, they sound like they are going to bust right through the ladies’ room wall. June can’t help but jump a little with each crash. Iva Lou and I laugh. The last time I was in this bathroom I was a little girl. I had forgotten how the balls smash the wall.