The Bighead (9 page)

Despite the tragedy of this
place, the social grimness that reality had racked upon Appalachia,
Charity felt the core of her own realities dissipate to nothing.
Her admin job where she’d be lucky to get a raise to $15,000, the
stifled city and all its impersonality, and—particularly—her
absolute failure with men… This generally ran amuck in her
thoughts, but not now, not here.
I’m
home,
she thought obtusely, for it really
was an obtusion. Coming here from the city could be likened to
moving from one world to another.

“
Here?” Jerrica
asked.

Charity focused. The white facade of
St. Stephen’s Church approached before the orange tint of dusk.
“Yes,” she said. “Veer left onto Old Chapel Road. If you go right,
you’ll end up in the boonies.”

Jerrica’s slim, tanned arm moved
adroitly as she downshifted. The car hitched slightly, the engine
revving. They passed the church in a smooth sweep, and Charity felt
suddenly blitzed by disappointment. St. Stephen’s Church, once
grand and cleanly white, stood now in something close to ruins.
Time and neglect had blistered its pristine paint. The fine,
glittering stained-glass windows were either boarded up or punched
out, showing only tarnished lead lacings. One of the front
double-doors hung off its hinge.

Gone to rot,
Charity thought. It was a sad realization; in her
childhood, the church had always been a proud landmark. Now,
though, it remained only as a symbol of everything else around
here. Dilapidated, sucked dry of its blood by ongoing recession and
apathy.

Jerrica paid it no mind. “That
church—it reminds me. Your aunt said something about a priest
coming to stay at the house. To reopen Wroxeter Abbey. Will you—”
Her words trailed, softened. “Will you take me there?”

“
What? To the
abbey?”

“
Yeah.” Jerrica’s blue eyes
thinned excitedly. “I’d love to see it.”

“
I’m sure there’s nothing
much to see. You heard Aunt Annie; it closed down years ago. It’s
probably in worse shape than the church we just passed.”

Jerrica downshifted through another
bend, her hair flying. “So? I’m dying to see it. I need it for my
article. Come on. Let’s go there now.”

“
I don’t even know where it
is, Jerrica. You’re forgetting, I left this town over twenty years
ago; I don’t know anything about the abbey accept what Aunt Annie
said. We’ll have to ask her for directions tomorrow.”

“
All right. But I’ve
just
got
to see
it. I want to find out all about it. I want to know
everything
about this
area.”

Charity admired her
companion’s enthusiasm, however overstated. But why on earth would
she want to visit an old abbey, or a still site, for that
matter?
I guess this place is as new to
her as the city was to me…
“Here we are,”
she said next. They slowed as the road descended, and just as
quickly, “downtown” Luntville was upon them. Main Street looked
washed out—uneven, drab buildings to either side. A red light
winked from afar. “Luntville’s only traffic light,” Charity
remarked.

“
But…there’s no
traffic.”

“
Most of the stores close
at six.”

“
But—” Jerrica decelerated
before the light, glancing around as if stunted. “There are barely
even any stores. Look.”

Another sad realization, and more
proof of this town’s disease. A good many stores along the drag
were locked up tight, FOR RENT signs taped to their plate-glass
windows. At least Hodge’s Farm Market hadn’t gone under, nor had
Chuck’s Diner, which actually seemed to have a few patrons
inside.

“
Turn here,” Charity said,
pointing right. The car purred through the turn, proceeded past
another block of closed shops. Then Charity, staring aside,
muttered, “Oh, no. I don’t believe it. Even the school is
closed.”

Jerrica pulled to a stop, eying the
shabby brick building full of broken windows and chained doors.
“Did you go there?”

“
Yep. Clintwood Elementary.
I was just starting the third grade when the state took
me.”

“
Then where do the local
kids go to school now?”

Charity made a tiny shrug. “I don’t
know. I guess they bus them to Filbert or Tylersville.”

Jerrica idled on in low. “So far this
little trip into town must be real depressing for you. Most of the
stores are closed, your school is closed. The whole town looks
dead.” But then Jerrica gazed over the open top. “Wait—there’s
something. Those buildings there.”

Several three-story buildings faced
each other at the end of the street, drab and rundown as everything
else, but their windows were full of lights, and within them,
hunched figures could be seen.

“
Sewing shops,” Charity
recognized immediately. “Unless you want to run moonshine, this is
about the only steady work a person can get around
here.”

“
Sewing
shops?” Jerrica queried, a bend to her voice. “I
don’t get it.”

Charity explained, “It’s been going on
since the mines closed. Out of state clothing manufacturers wait
till a shop goes under, then rent it for peanuts. Then they hire
local women to do the sewing.”

“
Why don’t they just open a
plant in their own state, hire their own people?”

“
Because they’d have to pay
them a lot more. Why hire state residents to sew for seven or eight
dollars an hour, when you can truck your fabric here and get women
to do it for minimum wage? When people haven’t worked for five
years, they’ll take any wage. I guess anyone would.”

“
They’re sweat shops, you
mean?”

“
Yep. Round the clock
shifts. And no one is allowed to work more than thirty-one hours a
week.”

Jerrica looked at her.
“Why?”

“
Because anything more than
thirty-one is considered full time. Then the home company would
have to pay unemployment insurance and a higher state accident
fund.”

“
Jesus. Corporate America.
What a bunch of cheap shits.”

“
They’ll look for any
loophole to save money and exploit workers.”

Dusk now bled more darkly into the
famished recess that was Luntville. Jerrica turned on her
headlights, took a pair of lefts, and cruised up the next block,
where several more sewing shops stood, interspersed by ruined
buildings. But then a lit sign appeared through the murk: DONNA’S
ANTIQUES, and even this late, it was obviously open for business,
for a lone man went into the front door just that moment. Down the
street, several more shadows approached.

“
That’s about the silliest
thing I’ve ever seen,” Jerrica said. “It’s going on nine o’clock.
Who’s going to buy antiques at this hour? And who’d want to open an
antique store here in the first place.”

Charity raised her brows. “Well,
because it’s not really an antique store; that’s just a
front.”

“
A front? For
what?”

“
Donna’s Antiques is
actually the local bordello.”

“
You’re kidding me? An
old-fashioned brothel? A whorehouse?”

“
That’s right, I’m afraid.
There’s no police department in Luntville, and since Russell County
is uncharted, there’s no county police force either. The only real
law enforcement we have comes from the State and a small sheriff’s
department, and they’re spread way too thin to begin with. So they
look the other way, so to speak, as long as things don’t get out of
hand.”

“
Unbelievable.” Jerrica
sounded astonished.

“
There’s a bar around here
too, or at least there used to be,” Charity remembered. “The
Crossroads I think it was called, right around the
corner.”

“
Oh, good,” Jerrica
commented, making the turn. “I hope it’s still there, ’cos I could
definitely use a drink.”

“
You’re not serious!”
Charity startled. “We can’t go to the Crossroads!”

“
Why not?”

“
Well…it’s, you know, for
men.”

Jerrica smirked. “What, bars are only
for men?”

“
No, but—well, it’s not
what I’d call…sophisticated at all. It’s pretty rowdy, I
suspect.”

“
A redneck watering hole,
in other words?”

“
Yes! They have dartboards
and pool tables.”

“
Oooo, sounds like bad news
to me.”

“
If we go there, they’ll,
you know, they’ll leer at us. They’ll try to pick us up! Really,
Jerrica, we shouldn’t go in.”

Jerrica wasn’t listening. “All right!”
she celebrated.

Ahead, the high postsign blazed in
blue neon: CROSSROADS. A long, squat tavern with tawdry blinking
lights. “It’s still here,” Jerrica rejoiced. The red Miata prowled
for a parking space. Music rumbled in the air, rising and falling
as the front door opened and closed. Hoots and hollers abounded
from within. The gravel lot looked about half full, with pickup
trucks and dented hotrods, plus a few poorly-kempt
motorcycles.

Jerrica parked the car. Charity
struggled not to complain.

“
Come on,” Jerrica
insisted. “We’re going in.”

««—»»

Dust eddied up from the wood floor’s
seams as they marched through an entrance spotted with more garish,
blinking lights. Charity followed reluctantly along, but Jerrica
felt electrified. Yes, this was a real “slice of life” bar: a dump.
Jerrica, of course, was no stranger to bars, but this place? Its
frowziness seemed so genuine—its cheap tables and tacky padded
booths, its dartboards and pinball machines—and this delighted her.
She wanted reality for her article. Well, here it was. A working
man’s bar in the depths of Appalachia.

She needed her article to be more than
just frilly trimmings; she wanted to relate the society beneath the
environment, and what better place could that be found than here?
From here, The Crossroads, Jerrica could make the most superlative
observations as to the beating heart of this rural
neverland.

“
Oh, God,” Charity
whispered in a fret, grabbing Jerrica’s bare arm. “They’re…looking
at us!”

“
Calm down,” Jerrica
consoled. But it was true. The second they’d entered, every eye in
the place turned to them. Big men in overalls, workboots. Beer mugs
paused midsip, talk paused midsentence. Old men, bent and racked by
age, young men, broad-shouldered and virile—they were all different
yet all crafted from the same arduous mold. The jukebox twanged on
in some insipid hybrid of hard rock and C&W. Charity urged them
toward the back booths, but Jerrica insisted on pulling up two
seats at the bar.

A lean barkeep in suspenders and
shortsleeved shirt traipsed toward them.

“
Really, Jerrica!” Charity
whispered fiercely as ever. “We shouldn’t be—”

“
What’s kin I get ya,
ladies?” the keep interrupted with a high, tweaky voice.

“
Two Heinekens, please,”
Jerrica requested.

The keeps eyes shot up.
“Heineken?
Hein
eken!” he exclaimed, pronouncing the word as
hahn-a-kern.
“This here’s
a
American
bar,
ladies. We don’t carries none’a that foreigner beer.”

“
Oh, well in that case,
two…Buds?”

The keep grinned through cracked
teeth. “Comin’ right up.”

Charity remained sitting nervously on
her stool, her hands worrying in her lap. “I feel
ridiculous.”

Jerrica lit a Salem. “Why?”

“
I mean, look at how I’m
dressed compared to everyone else. Everyone else is wearing
jeans.”

“
Honestly, Charity. You
worry about the silliest things. What difference does it make what
you wear to a bar?”

“
I just feel
uncomfortable.” Charity lowered her voice. “And what about all
these leering men?”

Jerrica looked around.
“What leering men? You’re being paranoid. Nobody’s looking at us.
Nobody’s
leering.
Sure, right when we walked in, everyone gave us a glance
because they’ve never seen us before. Now they’re back minding
their own business. Look.”

Charity sheepishly peered down the
bar, then behind her. All the other patrons had returned to their
conversations. Two men played pool, oblivious to them. “Thank God,”
she whispered to herself.

Christ,
Jerrica thought.
No
wonder she has problems keeping a man. No wonder they never call
her back.
Did Charity act this anxious
everywhere she went? Jerrica, on the other hand, couldn’t have felt
more engrossed. Amid the music, she could pick up bits of slanged
talk. “Blammed plow hit a rock big as a water barrel, it did…”
“So’s Jory tells me I’se a idjit fer buyin’ a D3 with a cast
eye-urn engine block in the first place, says I shoulda buyed
loominum. Shee-it…” “And when we’se opened that there silo—gawd
almighty! Found ourselves three full acres’a grain gone all ta rot
on account’a Roy never knowed he hadda leak in the blammed roof!”
Two young women, dressed similarly to Jerrica, sat at a back booth,
puffing cigarettes. “I’se tell ya, Joycie,” one related. “I’se
tried real hard ta git my G.E.D., but whens the project bus come
’round, I were so shook up over Druck Watter cheatin’ on me, I
couldn’t even pass the ’quivalency appler-kay-shun.” “Well, don’ts
feel bad, hon, ’cos those crackers at the state wouldn’t let me
’ply fer foodstamps. Says I makes too much money workin’ at the
sewin’ shop! Kin ya believes it?”