Big Cherry Holler (35 page)

Don’t miss the latest Big Stone Gap novel
by Adriana Trigiani

Available in bookstores everywhere.
Published by Random House, Inc.

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please turn the page…
.

T
he Wise County Fair is my daughter’s favorite event of the year, and I think it’s safe to say that includes Christmas. Etta has been on her best behavior for the past two weeks, so perfect down to the smallest detail (including unassigned chores like making
my
bed and weeding
my
garden) that I’m worried. Her face, with its clean lines, small chin, and rosebud lips, is beatific as she reviews her plans for this long-awaited night. We have the window flaps of the Jeep down; the warm August air whipping through is sweet with honeysuckle, but it is no match for Iva Lou’s perfume, which wafts through from the backseat whenever we peel around a curve. Etta looks out the window for road signs, looking for actual proof that we’re almost there. I’ve taken the quicker route, the valley road out of Big Stone Gap up to Norton. As we ascend the mountains in twilight, we pass Coeburn, nestled in the valley below, where the lights pool in a clump like a fistful of emeralds. Etta smoothes her braids and settles back in her seat.

“Here’s the plan. First we eat,” Iva Lou announces as she unfolds the special supplement to the newspaper. “I myself am having a jumbo caramel apple with nuts, and if I have to go see Doc Guest for
a bridge on Monday, then so be it. Them caramel apples are worth a molar.”

“I want the blue cotton candy,” Etta decides.

“I want a chili dog with onions,” I reply.

“I have a lot of money,” Etta says proudly as she sifts through her change purse.

“Ask Dad to spring for dinner. That will leave you more money for the games of chance,” I tell her.

Etta smiles and counts her money carefully without lifting it out of the purse. I see a five-dollar bill folded neatly into a small square (some lucky clay-pigeon operator is about to earn a windfall).

“What if we can’t find him?” Etta asks.

“We’ll find him.”

“Just go straight to the outdoor the-a-ter. He’s up there with all them men checking out the rehearsal for Miss Lonesome Pine.”

“He built the stage,” I remind Iva Lou in a tone that says
Don’t start with that again
.

“That’s as good a reason as any to be hanging around up there then.” Iva Lou winks at me in the rearview mirror.

We find a parking spot under a tree overlooking the fairgrounds. Iva Lou climbs out in a pair of dark blue denim pedal pushers and a red bandana print blouse tied at the waist; her Diamonelle hoop earrings peek out from under her bob like giant waterwheels. Iva Lou is ageless; you would never know she is fifty-something. Her look, however, is best viewed from a distance, like a fine painting. You don’t want to get so close that you’re lost in the details; it’s the overall effect that works.

Etta looks at the fairgrounds with a clinical eye. She surveys the faded striped tents surrounded by torches like birthday candles. She smiles when she spots the Ferris wheel. “Ma, will you go on the rides with me?”

“Sure.” I agree to go but Etta knows that at the last second, when
we’re standing in line ready to go up the metal plank, I’ll send her father with her instead.

“Do we have to go to the beauty pageant?” she asks.

“I thought you liked it.”

“I like the dresses all right. The talent’s always terrible.” Etta shrugs. She’s right. Last year, leggy blond Ellen Tierney, representing Big Stone Gap, did a dance routine to “Happy to Keep Your Dinner Warm”; her tap shoe flew off when she did a high kick, clocked a man in the first row, and knocked him out. The victim was rushed to the hospital and eventually revived, but may have the imprint of the metal tap on his forehead for life.

“And I hate the physical fitness part when they come out and jump around in bathing suits. Anybody can do that stuff. ”

“Etta, hon, it don’t take a lot of talent to look good in a bathing suit.
That
you’re born with.” Iva Lou breathes deeply and straightens her shoulders. “I ought to know.”

“I’m never gonna be in a beauty pageant,” Etta announces.

“Me neither.” I give my daughter a quick hug.

The benches in the outdoor theater are filling up fast. The aisles are covered in AstroTurf runners; the stage is banked in garlands of red paper roses; the backdrop is a cutout of a giant pine tree with
MISS LONESOME PINE 1990
written in gold leaf.

It’s August, so I’ve had eight months to get used to it, but I still can’t believe it’s 1992. Etta is twelve years old. My mother would have been sixty-six this year. I feel oddly lost between them, not old yet and not young anymore. I thought motherhood was a job with security, but it’s not; it’s the least permanent job in the world. It’s the only job in which your skills become obsolete overnight. When I finally got a handle on breast-feeding, it was time for solid food; I worried that Etta wasn’t turning over in the crib on her own, but soon she was crawling and then, almost overnight, walking; and when she went to school, I thought she’d need me more, but all of a sudden
she had a life apart from me and she was just fine. And now, after we have established a routine as a family, in which Etta has responsibilities, she has a newfound independence and her own opinions. This is, of course, the point of all of this—to prepare them to leave you—yet I’m so afraid to let go. I know the next six years will fly even faster than the past eleven, and that scares me. I wish my mother were here to lead me through these changes.

“Dad!” Etta waves to Jack, who waves back to her from a platform at the side of the stage. He helps the spot operator set the light levels, then climbs down the ladder to join us. My husband is still agile; his strong arms hook down the ladder rhythmically. His faded jeans are crisp in the twilight, and his white T-shirt frames his gray hair beautifully. He’s damn cute, my husband. His fine nose and lips are surrounded not by wrinkles, but expression lines. I try not to hate him for aging well.

Otto, spiffed up in new overalls, wiping his face with a bandana, and Worley, his son and partner, toting the tool kit, join us from the back of the theater.

“We barely got that stage up in time,” Otto tells us.

“It was rough,” Worley adds.

“ ’Cause you ain’t got your minds on your work. Too busy ogling the girls, I bet,” Iva Lou tells them.

“We did us some looking.” Worley smiles.

“Can’t hardly help it, they’s so purty. Of course, I ain’t never seen me no ugly women, just some that’s purtier than others.” Otto shrugs.

Jack gives me a quick kiss and takes Etta’s hand. “You want to watch from up there?” he asks Etta.

“Yeah!”

“We’ve got a couple of seats down front for you.”

I turn to Iva Lou. “Do you want to stay?”

“What do you want to do?”

“I’d rather wander around.”

“Let’s wander, then.” Iva Lou turns to go up the ramp.

“Okay, we’ll catch up with you later.” Jack Mac takes Etta to the ladder and helps her to the top. She kneels down on the platform as her father explains something about the equipment. She listens carefully and nods. I can’t believe she’s my kid and not afraid of heights. In fact, she’s fearless about everything—stray animals, speaking in public, boys. Etta cares about how things work; in that way, she is just like her father. She is all MacChesney, and that’s not always easy for me to accept.

“What are we gonna do?” Iva Lou asks.

“We’re going to see Sister Claire.”

“Who the hell is that? A Cath-lick?”

“No. A mystic. She’s a fortune-teller.”

“No voodoo for me, girlfriend.”

“Come on. After she makes you drink a cocktail of eye of newt and puts a spell on you, it’s all downhill.”

Iva looks at me, buying it for a moment, and then she laughs.

Sister Claire has a small dark-green tent by the edge of the grounds. Two folding chairs are set up outside the flap. I’m surprised there isn’t a line. Sister Claire is well known in these parts; she’s from the mountains of North Carolina near Greensboro. A customer who was visiting Big Stone Gap encouraged me to see Sister if she was ever in the area. A small, gentle woman of sixty, with a heart-shaped face and skin the color of strong tea, emerges from the tent and smiles.

“Are you here to see me?” she asks.

Iva Lou turns away and grabs my arm to return to the hub of the fair, back to the music, the lights, and the fun.

“Yes ma’am. We are. I am,” I tell her earnestly, not knowing exactly how to address a mystic.

“I’m Sister Claire. Welcome.”

“I think most of the people are at the beauty pageant,” I tell Sister, absurdly apologizing for her lack of clientele.

Sister Claire turns to Iva Lou and looks her straight in the eye. “I
understand if the idea of a reading makes you uncomfortable. I don’t like to have my own cards read.”

“Really?” Iva Lou says in a high pitch I’ve never heard before.

“Really. It’s a commitment to believe. It takes blind faith. Sometimes I don’t have that.”

“Well, it’s not that I’m scared, and I certainly believe in the comings and goings of the spirit world. It’s just that I, well, I live my life a certain way and I don’t want to know where it’s all going.”

“I understand.”

“Wait here then. Okay?” I give Iva Lou a wink and follow Sister Claire into her tent. There are two more folding chairs and a red lacquered table. There is an electric wire attached to a small generator, from which a bulb dangles in a protective metal sleeve. Sister Claire motions for me to sit, then pours us each a glass of water from a bottle. She sits down at the table and rests one hand on a deck of large picture cards.

“Are you an Indian?”

“Cherokee. Descendent of the great Chief Doublehead. ’Course, all of us that’s Cherokee claim that.” She smiles.

“Mother and father both?”

“Yes. But, I did have a grandmother who was African American and a grandfather who was Irish.”

“The green eyes give you away.”

“Yes, they do.”

“How did you discover your talent for this?”

“It’s not so much a talent as a way of being. It tends to run in families. My mother read cards and had visions, and so do I.” She shuffles the cards and asks me to pick one. “How can I help you?”

I was prepared with an answer, but for some reason I can’t speak. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Let’s look at you.” Sister Claire shuffles the deck and then places cards down on the table, creating an intricate layered pattern.

“What is your name?”

“Ave Maria.”

“That’s unusual.”

“Especially in these parts.”

“That’s the name of the Blessed Mother. Some people think she’s the first goddess. But it doesn’t mean that you are a goddess; it tells me that you will always be surrounded by them. You’re very lucky. You are loved and protected, and I see many women around you, almost making a fence. Your mother passed?”

“Yes.”

“She did and she didn’t. She’s with you always.” Sister Claire sits back in the chair and closes her eyes. “She’s wearing purple.”

“My mother?”

“Yes.”

I buried my mother in a purple suit, her favorite suit made of silk wool. She made it herself out of fabric she bought on one of Fred Mulligan’s buying trips to New York. She told me that she didn’t want to make anything out of the fabric for the longest time because it was so beautiful, she couldn’t bear to cut it into pieces.

Sister Claire continues, “And she is showing me a house with many rooms. She is hanging curtains in one of the rooms.”

“She used to make curtains.”

“There’s a boy in the room. He just walked in. He has brown eyes and curly brown hair. Who is he?”

“My son.”

“He passed?” she asks me quietly.

“Yes ma’am.”

“Very young.”

“He was four years old.”

Sister Claire laughs. “He’s a funny kid. He’s happy with her. She is looking out for him.” She opens her eyes and looks at me.

Sister Claire goes on to tell me lots of things—about work, about Jack, about Etta. She sees us traveling together, and she sees Etta
taking a new path, which validates my feelings that my kid is going to go where she wants to go and do what she wants to do with or without my blessing.

“Sister, how does the afterlife work?”

“What do you mean?”

“Will my son always be four years old and my mother the age she was when she died? And when I die …”

“What do you think?”

“I thought that they were in a holding pattern, waiting for Judgment Day.”

Sister Claire laughs, but I wasn’t being funny. “That’s a possibility, and it all depends. Your mother and son wanted you to know they’re okay, so they came to me in a way you would recognize them. This doesn’t happen every time.”

“So they are … somewhere, right?”

“I like to think the
idea
of them is somewhere, but that their energy is eternal and that it’s very possible that they return to life as a different person to learn new things.”

“So they could be here?”

“Anywhere.”

“Should I be looking for them?”

“You won’t have to look for them; they’ll find you.” Sister Claire shuffles the cards, this time lining them up in a single row. She asks me to pick another from the deck. “Now for your future.”

I take a deep breath. “I’m ready.”

“You’ve set many goals for yourself in your lifetime. And you’ve met most of them. But what I see here is that you have to begin anew. You have to decide where your life is going; you must re-dream.”

“Re-dream?”

“You have to invent your life again. You’ve reached many of your personal and professional goals, and now you have to think about what you want your life to mean from here on in. Do you
understand?” I nod that I do, but I don’t really, or maybe I just don’t want to talk about the rest of my life. Maybe I’m not ready to talk about it.

I pay Sister Claire, and she helps me up out of my seat and to the doorway; I am a little stunned that my mother and son might be looking for me but I won’t know them. The smell of Iva Lou’s cigarette brings me back to the present. Iva Lou is sitting in one of the folding chairs, puffing away.

“I’m ready to go,” I tell her.