Big Stone Gap Part 10

"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 circ.u.mstances 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 s.e.x 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. h.e.l.l, 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 d.a.m.n 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 b.u.t.ter 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 asks.

"It's Jack MacChesney."

"What does he want?"

"His mama sent some apple b.u.t.ter 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s, 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.

"You're dressed up."

"No. I just cleaned up after work."

I curl my stockinged feet under me. I think my left sock has a big hole in it. My hooded sweatshirt from Saint Mary's is fifteen years old, and the overalls I threw on over it still have nails in the pockets from the roof patching that Otto, Worley, and I did a while back. My hair is a rat's nest of curls held up by a thousand pins. I am a mess. "I wasn't expecting company," I tell him, apologizing for my appearance.

"You look just fine," he rea.s.sures me. He points to a set of white pearl rosary beads in a small crystal candy dish on the coffee table. "Are those yours?"

I nod.

"Do you use them?"

"Not enough."

"How do they work?"

"Well, the rosary is a devotion to the Blessed Mother."

"Mary, who you're named after?"

"Right. And each of these beads is a Hail Mary that you say. Is this boring to you?"

"No, not at all."

"Each of these ten beads represents a time in the life of Jesus. The joyful mysteries, the sorrowful mysteries, and so on."

"The Cherokees have meditation beads. They sort of look like these. Mama has them. She's part Cherokee, you know. From way, way back. She had jet-black hair when she was younger."

"I don't remember her having black hair."

"That's because it turned when I was just a boy."

There is a long silence. I look at the statue of Mary on the mantel. In her blue cape and crown of stars, she reminds me of the lady in my mother's letter, the Ave Maria I'm named after. I remember the Dieter's Prayer: Lovely Lady dressed in blue, make me skinny just like you. I bite into a biscotti. It cracks in half loudly, and a shower of crumbs goes down the front of my overalls. Luckily, most of it lands in the front utility pocket. I brush the rest away.

Jack breaks through the quiet. "Rick Harmon quit the mines."

"He did?"

"Well, he lost the two smallest toes on that foot of his, and the doctor told him he needed to find other work. So he got a job over at Legg's Auto World."

"Good for him. That was a pretty bad injury. How did it happen?"

"When I went back into the mine, it took me a while to get to him. There was so much smoke, he couldn't see, so he was trying to crawl out. He caught his foot under a fallen rock. When he tried to get loose, it was bad."

"I . . . everybody was nervous when you went back in the mine for him," I say, speaking on behalf of the entire community.

"You . . . or everybody?" Jack says, trying not to smile.

"Everybody. Including me." I don't think I speak this man's language. There are so many weird gaps.

We sit for a moment in silence. Finally he speaks. "My daddy and I fixed the furnace over here once."

"You did?"

"Remember that summer you went to FFA camp?"

How could I forget the Future Farmers of America camp? Living with a bunch of surly girls in a cabin on a farm in East Tennessee, surrounded by farm animals that we had to feed, brush, and milk. Fred Mulligan thought it would be good for me. I hated it. "That was around sixth grade, right?"

"Yeah. After we fixed the furnace, your mama made us some kind of little sandwiches. My daddy was mighty impressed. I guess they were some sort of Italian specialty or something."

"They were probably roasted-pepper sandwiches. She used to take a bunch of red peppers and broil them until the skin burned to black. Then she'd peel off the charred part, leaving the soft pepper underneath, and soak them in olive oil. Then she'd slice them up thin as paper-I still can't do it like she could-and put them on the bread with a little salt."

"They were the best sandwiches I ever ate."

I want to thank him for paying my mother a compliment, but I can't speak. All of a sudden, there is a knot in my throat. So I just nod and smile. I haven't cried much since Mama died, but thinking of her sandwiches, and her in the kitchen, and now she's gone forever-tears come to my eyes.

"I'm sorry," Jack Mac says, putting down his beer, "I didn't mean to upset you."

"No, no. I'm not upset. I just haven't talked about her much."

"The wound is too fresh."

For a moment I don't understand what he means. She's only been gone a few months now, but I started to let go of her when she got really sick, which was almost four years ago. The loss doesn't seem new to me; I felt it long before she actually pa.s.sed on.

"n.o.body told me how much I would miss her."

"She was a fine lady," he says plainly and truthfully.

"The morning after she died, I went into her room. I had to go in there and pick a dress for her to be laid out in. So I went in her closet. And I found . . ." I am so embarra.s.sed. My voice is breaking, and it never does. Why am I crying in front of this man? I remember myself and stop. "Anyway, I found eight new blouses. They were beautiful, perfectly pressed, on hangers. Four white cottons and four patterned gingham: red, blue, yellow, and black-and-white checked. She had made them for me. She made all my clothes. But I never remember her working on them. I thought she had stopped sewing entirely when she got sick. She had pinned a note to them. It said: 'Fresh blouses. Love, Mama.' " I laugh and Jack smiles.

"She even made my coats. I never had to buy anything, just blue jeans. And now that I've got the blouses, I won't need to shop for a long while."

"A good mother is a precious thing," he says. "You were very lucky."

I guess I was. But I know I never saw myself as lucky. I looked at my life as a series of small struggles and gentle, intermediate plateaus of peacefulness. But anything that I am, I owe to my mother. She taught me to revere gentleness. She brought out my good heart by example. She taught me how to read and to love books. All the places I went when I read, all the adventures I had, stayed inside the books, though. I never came into anything on my own, really. I never ventured far from my potential. I never tested myself and tried things. I wasn't afraid, I just wasn't particularly daring. It's fascinating that anyone would look at me and think I'm lucky. I don't have natural talents. I am so slow! I have to study things, ruminate, decide. I don't have grand thoughts that could change anything. I'm smart enough, and it is the enough that defines me. I am adequate. Hardworking. I have a sense of humor, but that's due to my prism, my point of view, and even that I cannot take credit for. Very often my odd sense of humor is lost on folks. I don't know what Jack is seeing when he looks at me. I'm not particularly special, and to me lucky is special. There's a lightness to it, an elan. I'm not that. I am fixture and hardware. Not a spritely thing.

"Would you like to go for a walk?" I ask. Jack Mac looks at me oddly-he wasn't planning on going for a walk. "We don't have to."

"No, no. Let's go." He waits for me to stand up. I look around for my loafers, which I spot, shoved under the dining room table. I look down at my feet. Thankfully, the hole in my left sock is on the bottom. I scoot to the dining room and slip on my shoes.

"Let me go get my jacket," I say.

"No. Here. Wear mine."

"Won't you be cold?"

"No, not at all."

Jack Mac helps me into his jacket. It is soft, and the shoulders hang down roomily over my arms. I thought I was about his size, but I'm not; I'm smaller.

"Nice lining." It's an olive-green tufted satin. The st.i.tches are perfect harlequin diamonds.

"Your mama put that lining in."

"She did?"

Jack Mac opens the door and lets me go outside first. It is cooler than I thought. I pull the collar up around my neck. It smells like sandalwood and lime.

We walk through my neighborhood, an area called Poplar Hill, in the oldest part of town-some would say the best part of town. I live in the smallest house on the block, a 1920s clapboard cottage-style home. It is sweet: whitewashed, with a big porch. It sits back off the road, so it looks picturesque. There's a front-porch swing, and pink squares of stained gla.s.s frame the front windows. I look back at it as I walk with Jack, thinking for the first time that it is not my father's house, it is really mine.

"How's Sweet Sue doing?"

"Well, I broke off with her."

I stop in the middle of the road. This stuns me momentarily and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I saw them practically get married on the stage of the Outdoor Drama. I remember her terror when Jack Mac went into the mine, and how she claimed him when it was over. Sweet Sue is perfect for Jack Mac! Her kids. Her pep. Her community involvement-they seem to fit so nicely with the quiet dignity of the MacChesneys of Cracker's Neck Holler.

"She's a wonderful person, very caring," he says, and kicks a stone.

"But you were getting married."

"Not exactly, ma'am."

Does he have to call me ma'am? He's exactly my age, for G.o.d's sake. I decide right then and there to take a box of Loving Care Chestnut Brown from the store and soak my head in it. I thought I only had two or three gray hairs, but obviously I am mistaken.

"What happened?" I ask, knowing full well it is none of my business. But I feel I have to know. I'm curious. I don't think I'm being rude or forward. Plus, reading his face, I can see that the lines from his nose to his mouth have deepened in expression. These come from guilt.

"I began to have feelings for someone else."

"Dear G.o.d!" I shriek. I am a judgmental shrew, but usually I keep it under wraps. "Who?" I ask, again knowing it's none of my business.