Home to Big Stone Gap (11 page)

The first snow of winter has turned our holler into a fairyland. The treetops look like crystal chandeliers as daggers of ice hang from the branches. The brook in the woods has frozen into ribbons of clear spun sugar, and the sun, now far away in the December sky, is a cold white diamond set in the vast cornflower blue.

I hope we get a good snow when Theodore arrives. Christmas is only a week away.

I pull on my old boots and yank the laces tight. I throw on a knit cap and Jack’s barn jacket and head down the hill to the mailbox for the paper. I inhale the pure, clean winter air, almost gulping it down. Is there a more perfect spot on earth than right here, right now? It’s so clear. It’s a day you can put your hands through.

The paper boy who drops off the Kingsport
Times-News
every morning is very dependable. I open the rusty door on the mailbox and pull out the newspaper. I feel something else in the box. It’s a fat business envelope. It’s addressed to Jack, but there’s no postage on it. In the return address box, it says “T. Hutchinson, Bituminous Reserves, Inc.”

Jack is flipping pancakes in the kitchen. On a plate, there are two that folded funny. “I’m practicing,” he explains. “Company’s coming.”

“Theodore loves your cooking. It’ll be nice.” I smile and put the paper on the table and give Jack the envelope. “What’s this?”

“I asked Tyler to run some numbers for me.”

“What sorts of numbers?”

“He’s pitched out a couple of scenarios for me as consultant.”

“So you’re still thinking about it?”

“Yeah.”

“Jack!”

“Okay, how about a little support?”

“Don’t make me the bad guy. I’m very proud of how you’ve made a living all these years—and to be perfectly honest, I’d be ashamed if you hooked up with these people.”

“Ashamed?”

“Ashamed. They’re ruining the mountains. People over in Kentucky are devastated. There is no way to reclaim a mountain that’s gone forever.”

“They are required to put fill back where they mine. Okay? And if I hook up with them
—if—
I would have a say as to where they did the mountaintop removal—”

“Strip mining.”

“It’s not called that anymore.”

“Of course not. It’s a red-flag phrase. The people in these hills would beat them back with sticks if they knew what this company was planning.”

“I don’t think this company is like the others.”

“Then you are a gullible sitting duck, darling.”

“You know, Ave, I’m not a stupid person.”

“I never said that!”

“You don’t listen. You have your ideas, and that’s the end of it.”

The pancakes begin to burn, their black edges starting to curl with smoke. Jack lifts the pan off the stove and scrapes the burning batter into the sink. I move to help him. He turns away.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him sincerely.

“Do you ever think that maybe I know what I’m doing? I’m fifty-four years old, and I collapsed on the job three months ago. I don’t have a lot of options for the rest of my working days. I can’t do what I used to; I can’t lift what I used to.”

“Your strength will come back.”

“You’re dreaming. I’m not thirty years old. Maybe in your fantasy mind, I’m as young as the day I murried you, but trust me, I have aged, and I took a hit with this thing. I am not the same man I was.”

Panic races through me. In all the travails in the hospital, and the entire time Jack was mending, he never once admitted that the surgery took a toll on him, or that he had changed in any way. To hear him say these words aloud terrifies me. “Okay, okay, take the job,” I say quickly.

“That’s not what I want to hear you say.”

I raise my voice. “What, then?”

“How about ‘Do what’s right for you. And what’s right for you will be right for us.’”

I can’t say the words.

Jack continues, “I was born in this house. The morning I was born, my father cleared the back field so I’d have a place to play. Silly, right? He had a couple of years before I’d use the field, but when I was born, he got right to it. And that mountain over there—Stone Mountain—it was there that I learned to hunt and shoot a gun. It was the first place I camped with Pa. I saw a bobcat up there, and I wanted to shoot it, and my pa told me that there weren’t many bobcats left in these hills, so let ’em be. So I did. We ate the berries that grew in those woods. Mama cured us with the herbs she found there. When I had the colic, she made catnip tea that grew wild under the brush. She’d make a poultice from the milkweed she found growing near the creek, and Pa knew which mushrooms we could eat and which were poisonous. All those things came from these mountains. I would never jeopardize this place. I love it as much as you do. But you seem to think I don’t.”

“I know you love these mountains,” I say.

“What is precious to you is just as precious to me,” Jack insists.

“Okay.” I have a way of ending an argument that has always worked in my marriage. I give up; I stop fighting. I pretend to agree, and then we move off the hot topic and on to the business of life.

Men are very delicate instruments. Their egos are like delicate eggshells, and yet physically, they have the brute strength of a bear. When their health is challenged, they recede quickly and quietly into such despair that no one can pull them out of it.

A woman has a whole different way of coping—at least the women I know. We make things pretty when the road gets rocky. We put a new dress on an old body and temporarily fix what ails us with something new: a big ring, a dangling bracelet, anything with a lot of shine. I can go to the third aisle at the Mutual’s and turn my hair back to ebony. I can perk myself up with the right lipstick and beat back the fine lines on my face with alpha hydroxy acid. I’m more than happy to rent a cabin in the Revlon land of delusion when I need a lift.

My husband won’t. He is wood and nails. He wants facts, answers, and drop-dead ultimatums. Though I like to pass through pain as if it’s not really happening, that’s not the Jack MacChesney way. He feels everything, and he holds it close. He’s a true mountain man.

The next day I load up all my overdue library books in the Jeep. They’re just an excuse, really—an excuse to go and see Iva Lou. I have a conflict going on inside me: to do as Fleeta says and ignore it until Iva Lou says something about her daughter, or to follow my gut and open up the conversation. I roll down the hill in reverse, watching our old stone house against the lavender sky. There’s a part of me that wants to throw it in drive and go back up the mountain and mind my own business.

I take the road into town slowly; it gives me a chance to think.

Iva Lou and I became closer after Theodore left Big Stone Gap to live his dream in Knoxville as the band director for the University of Tennessee. It was a great job, but he took it for personal as well as professional reasons. It was time for Theodore to begin living a real life, to find himself, to fall in love. That wasn’t something he was ever going to do in Big Stone Gap—not with me here, and not with old attitudes about new freedoms as firmly in place as chin straps on the Tuckett twins. So off he went, leaving Iva Lou and me, and we’ve been close ever since.

I’ve never had an argument with Iva Lou. We’ve never had a rift in our friendship; we could always talk about anything. So the silence between us has led us into unfamiliar emotional territory. I very much want to hear Iva Lou’s side of things. I pull in to the library parking lot, and instead of parking next to Iva Lou’s Miata, I park at the far end of the lot. I’ve never done this, because there’s always a space next to her car. (Iva Lou parks a certain way because she’s afraid of getting dinged. As meticulous as she is with her appearance, her car is a close second. It’s always washed, buffed, and waxed—thank you, Gilliam’s Car Wash). Tonight I park with the public. I need a little distance.

I pull the tote bag out of the backseat and climb the steps to the library. I push the door open and inhale the sweet smell of books. I take my tote to the front desk. Serena Mumpower, the assistant librarian, is working behind the desk.

“Hey, Serena. Iva Lou around?”

“She’s in her office.”

“Thanks.”

Serena grunts. She hasn’t been friendly since word got out that my daughter married Stefano Grassi. Serena and Stefano went out on a few dates the summer he came to work in Big Stone Gap, and you would think my son-in-law jilted Serena for Etta. The last thing I need is to get caught up in some stale drama from years ago.

I make my way back to Iva Lou’s office. The break room is filled with posters from book campaigns. There’s one from the 1970s of Bette Midler in pajamas announcing National Book Week. I knock on Iva Lou’s office door.

“Come in,” she says from inside. I open the door and enter. She says, “Hey, girl. Take a load off. Are you here to fire me from the musical?”

“God, no. You’re the best thing in it. Well, you and the dark horse, Ravi Balu. He’s really doing a good job as Rolfe.”

“Imagine that.” Iva Lou offers me a seat. She gets up and reaches for a tin of cookies on a shelf. She opens it and offers me some. “Faith Cox’s ginger snaps. She only makes ’em at Christmastime, so I try to make them last.”

I take one as well as a deep breath. “I’ve got a problem,” I say nervously.

“Spill.”

“I don’t know how to say it.”

“Honey-o, you just tell me. You know I take any morsels about you and Jack Mac to my grave.”

“It’s not about him.”

“Who, then?”

“You.”

“Oh, Lord. What have I done?” Iva Lou rolls her eyes dramatically heavenward, like Saint Teresa in the alcove of Sacred Heart Church.

“Lovely Carter came to see me.”

The mention of the name causes Iva Lou to snap the tin shut and put it on her desk. I wait for Iva Lou to say something, but she just sits there.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask her.

“Tell you what?” Now, Iva Lou is a smart woman, and she knows she’s stonewalling. I won’t let her.

“That you had a daughter.” I try not to sound accusatory, but I’m hurt, so it comes off as shrill.

Iva Lou rolls her seat away from me. It’s a small office, so she has nowhere to go. It reminds me of the time we had a squirrel in the house, and the only way to get it out was to corner it. Iva Lou turns her back to me. It seems like minutes go by. I don’t know what to do, whether to stay or go.

“Iva Lou?”

“Yes?”

“Are you going to talk to me?”

Iva Lou turns to me so quickly that I lean back. “What do you want me to say?”

“I want to understand why you didn’t tell me and why…”

“Why I’d give my own baby away? Is that what you’re concerned about?” Iva Lou asks angrily.

“Hey, I’m not judging you.”

“You most certainly are. You set me up. Trapping me in here like this. It’s my place of work. I can’t hardly have feelings here, can I?” she whispers.

I lower my voice. “I’m sorry. I should have come to your house. But I didn’t know if Lyle knew—”

“Of course he knows!” she thunders.

I’m confused. “He knows?”

“He’s my husband. Of course he knows.” Iva Lou stands and starts shuffling papers.

“Do you want me to go?”

“I think that’s a good idea.”

I turn to open the door. My heart is pounding. I can’t believe what is happening between us, and at the same time, she is so dismissive of me, it makes me angrier still. Instead of opening the door and leaving, I want to shake her. I feel rage burn through me. I want to hold her accountable. I turn and face her as I stand against the door. “How dare you.”

“What?”

“How dare you treat me this way? Who do you think you are? I’m not here on some small-town gossip mission. You’re my friend, and I found out something—not from you, by the way, from an outsider—that you should have told me.”

“I didn’t want to tell you.”

I ignore the comment. I am angry, and I want her to hear why. “Fleeta knew. Spec knew.”

“Oh, so you didn’t get to know, and that’s why you’re upset with me?”

“Partly. I guess,” I stammer.

“Maybe I didn’t think I
could
tell you.”

“What? Why?”

“You have definite ideas about things. There’s very little room for human error with you.”

“Maybe I don’t look at Lovely Carter like she’s a mistake.”

Iva Lou’s eyes fill with tears. “I want you to go.”

If I leave, it will be one of the biggest mistakes of my life. I should stay here and work things through. But it takes two people to solve this kind of problem, and Iva Lou doesn’t want to.

“Good night,” I tell her as I go. She doesn’t answer. As the door snaps shut, I wait outside for a moment, hoping that she will push it open and say, “Come on back in here, we need to talk.”

But she doesn’t. And I can’t.

Wildcat Holler

I
t seems whenever I drive from Big Stone Gap to Kingsport, I’m in a rush. I’m either late to pick up someone at the airport (today!), or worse, somebody’s sick and I’m on my way to Holston Valley Hospital. It’s a shame, because the road to Kingsport is plenty scenic, meandering through the Wildcat and out of town toward where Virginia turns into Tennessee. As far as the eye can see, the landscape is a lush patchwork quilt of deep blue farm fields set among wild green pine forests.

I have dreaded Christmas this year. The thought of being alone, just Jack and me without Etta, has been too much to bear. Theodore, who has managed to save the day so many times for me in the past, is landing at Tri-Cities Airport. Boy, do I need him now.

I pull in to the parking lot, jump out of the Jeep, and run into the airport. I see throngs of people coming off the escalator. They haul carry-on bags filled with foil-wrapped Christmas boxes. “Is this the flight from Atlanta?” I ask a stranger.

“Yep.”

I scan the crowd for Theodore. During the holidays, there are delays everywhere, so you never know if a plane will reroute and throw off the schedule. I don’t want to wait another second to reunite with my best friend.

Then I hear that familiar voice behind me.

“Ave!”

“Theodore!” I run to him. “Sorry I’m late.”

“You’re always late, so I went ahead and picked up my bags.”

I throw my arms around him and refuse to let go.

“No one has ever been this happy to see me.”

“Thanks for coming.”

Theodore holds my shoulders and surveys me from head to toe. “You look good.”

“You look better.” And he does. Theodore is always in excellent shape (“It’s the walking in the city”). His hair has a dusting of gray through the red, but it’s as thick as the day I met him thirty-some years ago.

“With all I’ve been through, it’s a miracle.” Theodore gives me a small tote and picks up his suitcase. He puts his arm around my shoulder as we push through the crowd and outside to the parking lot.

“What happened?”

“The Radio City show is over. But good news: I’m working on a new musical with a terrific composer. She’s amazing. Marcy Gendel, heard of her?”

“Nope. Then again, I only know Rodgers and Hammerstein these days. Broadway! You must be thrilled.”

“It sounds glamorous, doesn’t it?”

“Isn’t it?”

“We’re developing it at the Cherry Lane Theatre. A sweet little theater in the Village. Off-Broadway. Until we have the guts to blow it up big and take it to Broadway.” Theodore and I walk to the Jeep.

“Isn’t that theater in your neighborhood?”

“Walking distance.” Theodore throws his bags in the back of the Jeep. “This is just like the old days. You and me and the Medicine Dropper.”

I give the old Jeep a pat. “I can’t give her up. Or maybe I can’t stand change.”

“Get used to it. Now is when change starts happening fast and furious. We don’t have the luxury of time anymore, Ave.”

We climb into the Jeep. I’m in the driver’s seat, Theodore is in the passenger seat.

“You sound like my husband,” I say.

“He got a wake-up call, huh?”

“A big one. Jack thought he wasn’t going to make it.”

“How is he now?”

“Much better. You want to drive?”

“Sure.”

Theodore and I get out and exchange seats. He turns the key and backs out of the space. It’s so funny; back when I thought he’d be the man for me (can it be twenty years have come and gone? They have!), I always let him drive. It just seemed right. It also gave me a chance to look at him, really look at him, for hours on end. How many evenings we’d go for long drives in the mountains and never run out of things to talk about. I miss those conversations a lot. My husband is many wonderful things, but he’s not a yakker. “What happened with Max?”

“I got tired of his long hours at the restaurant, and he got tired of mine at the theater. We didn’t see much of each other, and neither of us was willing to compromise. So here we are.” Theodore adjusts the rearview mirror. “How about you and Jack?”

“He’s obsessed with money lately.”

“Money. That doesn’t sound like Jack.”

“He wants to leave me comfortable—whatever that means.”

“Jack’s at that age where retirement is ten years away. He wants to put away savings while he can.”

“I guess. But I’m worried about him. He’s taking a job as consultant with a mountaintop removal company.”

“Consultant?”

“It’s a fancy title for a man who can show outsiders the terrain. They need someone who knows the mountains around Big Stone. And with Jack’s mining experience, he’s golden. These companies know what they’re doing. They find a local guy who’s trusted by the community and use him to swing the popular opinion their way. The last thing they want is resistance from the natives.”

“You don’t like it?”

“Not one bit.”

“How’s Iva Lou?”

“She’s cordial at rehearsals, but she doesn’t call or come around anymore.” My eyes fill with tears. I wasn’t expecting that. “Sorry.”

“You have to make up with her.”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I just can’t.”

“Are you angry she kept a secret from you?”

“Well, it wasn’t much of a secret. Fleeta knew.”

“That makes it worse for you. You thought you were her closest friend.”

“I guess I did.”

“You have to talk to her.”

“It’s so weird. I like to think that I can talk to anybody about anything. But lately, it’s so hard for me to say what I’m feeling, because I don’t
know
what I’m feeling.”

“You’re in shock.”

“About what?”

“Oh, let’s see: that your daughter’s moved abroad; that your husband has been sick; that your friends aren’t perfect; that life goes on even when you’re terribly disappointed in people. No wonder you don’t know what to say; you can’t believe what’s happening. Well, life goes on. Not much you can do about it.” Theodore smiles.

As we head toward home, we fall into a comfortable silence. I realize how good it feels to have a neutral party to listen and help me sort through my feelings. Theodore knows me as well as anyone. “You know exactly what’s wrong with me.”

“I’m on the outside looking in. It’s the best seat in the house when it comes to empathy. That’s all. By the way, I kept a secret from you for years, and you had it in your heart to forgive me. The same should be true for Iva Lou.”

“Yeah, well, your secret was about you. It didn’t involve a third party.”

“True. Still, I think Iva Lou deserves a little slack.” Theodore veers off to take the road through Gate City and into the mountains. “I can’t believe I remember how to get around this part of the world. I guess it’s in my bones.”

The story of
The Sound of Music
is simple and perfect for Christmastime. At its center, it’s about love and family and overcoming outside forces of evil while learning to sing in harmony. It’s set in the late 1930s in Salzburg, Austria. A young nun goes to work as a nanny for a handsome widowed sea captain and his brood of seven children. With her guitar and gumption, she turns the kids from glum to happy, finds herself falling for the Captain, goes back to the convent in horror that she is attracted to a man, then is forced to return to the children by the Mother Superior, who insists she face her demons instead of running away. When she returns, the Captain is engaged to be married to the haughty Baroness Elsa Schraeder, who ends up getting dropped by the Captain when he realizes he is really in love with the almost-nun. All of this happens on the eve of World War II, with the destruction of the world looming at every turn. Show business also looms, as the kids form a singing act under the nun’s direction.

I’ve tried to keep the production simple, but between Carolyn’s costumes and Nellie’s casting, I couldn’t. I like to think the overly ambitious production is not my fault but due to the egos of my producer and cast run amok. Community theater is an excuse for normal folk to become show people. I watch as plain, simple women put on false eyelashes, bold lipstick, and high heels (even when playing nuns) and become sexpots. Bored husbands put on their costumes and pancake makeup, becoming their version of Cary Grant. Our leading man puts a little too much into the kissing scenes (the script doesn’t call for much woo pitching, but our Captain grabs Maria every chance he gets, and she pushes him away every chance she gets).

Our annual musical is the closest most folks in Big Stone Gap get to stardom, and they milk it from the first rehearsal to opening night like the cows at Pet Dairy. Our cast parties are all-night and elaborate, rivaling Truman Capote’s infamous Black and White Ball at the Plaza Hotel in New York City back in the 1960s (granted, our parties are held in a smaller venue—the Fox house—but still). After the final curtain, folks dress up, drink up, and then come Sunday morning, fess up. More than one drunken chorus member finds a way to ask for forgiveness for a theatrical indiscretion at the United Methodist Church during testimony (the Methodist version of Catholic confession, except they don’t go into a booth, they stand up in front of everyone at the end of the service and admit their sins. It takes a lot of guts!). We can’t blame ourselves entirely, though; it’s the path of all art. The theater brings out the gypsy in all of us and, evidently, our share of sin.

The Botts family has done a lovely job painting the scenery, a series of trompe l’oeil backdrops that will fly in and out on a pulley system operated by our stage crew. There’s a cathedral with an altar for the opening number and a palace on a lake for the Von Trapp family home. The abbey is a black velvet scrim with a gold cross on it (it’s slightly creepy, but it works); and for the finale, there’s a scrim of an endless blue sky and clouds. Our chorus of nuns turns upstage and flips their veils to reveal green velvet foliage, thus becoming pine trees to conjure the Alps (it was Nellie’s idea, and I liked it).

“I need to make an announcement,” says Carolyn, our costumer, coming out from the wings.

“Go right ahead,” I tell her.

Carolyn sighs.

“Lordy Mercy, I know what your mama went through, sewing for all these plays.”

“She loved every minute of it.”

“She was a better woman than me, that’s for sure.”

“The floor is yours.” I turn to the cast, assembled in the first three rows of the auditorium in their Act One, Scene 1, costumes. They’re giggling and chatting with anticipation. “Everyone. Please. Listen to Carolyn.”

“Just a reminder about costume etiquette.” Carolyn takes her place, center stage of the Powell Valley High School auditorium, with a set of pinking shears in one hand and an extra nun’s wimple in the other. She attempts to straighten her shoulders, but years of bad posture won’t let her, so she makes her point with the big scissors. “I need y’all to be careful. I ain’t got time to wash and press these costumes during the run. Therefore. Do not eat or drink in your costumes. And for the love of sweet Jesus, use the makeup hoods before applying the pancake. Iva Lou, please demonstrate.”

Iva Lou stands in the first row and turns to the cast. She pulls a sheer hood over her face.

“Makeup is a killer of fine fabrics. Be careful of smears. I ain’t got time to fix them neither.”

“Is that it, Carolyn?” If I let her continue, she’ll harangue all night, and we’ll never get the Lonely Goatherd puppet show set.

“One more thing. Please, and I’m begging you. Return the costumes to the proper rolling rack in the Glee Club practice room. And mothers of the Von Trapp children, don’t allow them damn kids outside in their costumes. I had to dye Gretl’s white party dress celery-green on account of the grass stains she got on it when she was allowed to play out back. Remember: it might be a costume to you, but to me, it’s about three nights of sweatin’ over my sewing machine. I wouldn’t piss on your performances by banging a pot during your solo, so give me the same consideration when you wear your costumes.”

“Thank you, Carolyn. Round of applause for our costumer, please.”

The cast applauds. Carolyn is less than galvanized for opening night. She slinks offstage like an old cat.