Kinfolk, page 25
Tonight was the annual barbecue and pool players tournament. The tournament had become a big deal in Park. When the tournament first started, nobody really participated in the festivities except other pool players. Certainly no locals from Park cared much about it. But over the last few years, word had gotten around the Southeast. Players from other towns started entering the contest. Then a few vendors got involved. The vendors started erecting tents and selling their wares. And each year more vendors signed up. There were leathercraft vendors. Guys selling heirloom tomatoes and squash. Boiled peanuts. Funnel cakes.
The event became the annual highlight of Park’s official inauguration of summer. Bands came to town and provided music. Good bands too. One year there was a Cajun band from Slidell. One year they had a rock-and-roll band from Huntsville that sounded like the Allman Brothers Band. One year they had been able to get the Statler Brothers.
The Legion parking lot was overrun with people performing various tasks. Caterers. Cooks. Servers. Volunteers. John Danson was outside, manning a smoker, preparing 286 pork shoulders and 104 pork butts for the event. “That’s a lot of butts,” the Advocate remarked.
Eighty-some amateur pool players were filing into the hamlet of Park, Alabama. The Scotty’s Motor Inn was booked. The overflow stayed at the new motor inn recently built in Ambassador. Others came in custom RVs, so you knew they were serious players. You had pool players from Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, and Ohio, all coming down to Ash County with their artisan-made pool cues, ready to strut their stuff and win the kitty.
Leigh Ann watched Nub and Benny use an electric drill to mount two large speakers over the main stage that Roy Acuff would soon be playing on. She was sitting at one of the tables up front, under a tent, doing paperwork, thinking about Nub and the great change that had overtaken him. She was signing checks, sipping from a bottle of Mountain Dew. Stealing glances at him. Now and then she would stop writing because she had a feeling. She had always believed that you could feel it when a man looked at you that way. It was an energy thing, a tingly feeling in your stomach.
Occasionally she looked up from her checkbook to find Nub glancing at her. When she made eye contact with him, he would tuck his head and pretend to be doing something else. It was cute.
“Hey!” shouted Benny to Nub.
“What?” Nub said.
“You almost dropped the speaker on me, you big idiot. Would you keep your eyes on what you’re doing?”
When the two men finished installing the speakers, they ran twisted masses of electrical wire through the parking lot, all the way to the soundman, who was operating a soundboard that was roughly the size of the starship Enterprise. Nub walked past her and she could feel him watching her.
“Would you like something to drink, Nub?” she said. “Pretty hot out here.”
“Sure.”
“How about a Dr Pepper?”
He wiped his face with a handkerchief. “I wouldn’t use Dr Pepper to get oil stains off my driveway. Coke, please.”
“The Real Thing?”
“So they say.”
She reached into the cooler by the sound booth. The bottles of Coke were stacked atop each other like artillery cartridges. She placed one before him on a tall table. With a flick of her wrist, she had the cap off. She slid the green hourglass bottle to him.
“Take a break,” she said. “You’re sweating.”
He took a pull on his bottle and thanked her.
She had always found Nub to be a vulnerable personality. Even when he’d been blind drunk. He was a big talker, yes. He was animated, sure. But she always got the feeling that these things were part of an act of sorts.
She knew it must still feel odd for him to be drinking Coca-Cola at the Legion. She could tell by his mannerisms. They were rigid and awkward. He wasn’t used to this. He would never be used to this.
Being here at the Legion made him think too much about an old way of life. She could tell sometimes that it embarrassed him to be the only guy without a drink in his hand. And if he was anything like her, and most alcoholics were, the old way of life never stopped calling. It never would. The danger was in thinking that maybe, just maybe, you could tolerate one or two drinks. That was the delicious lie you had to resist. Constantly. Forty-eight hours a day. Because once you went down that path, you lost decades from your life.
Nub placed the Coke on the table. She watched him and noticed that he was looking more fit than normal. His skin color looked golden now that summer was in full swing. He was loose built, like a man who was comfortable in the company of hard work. He was the kind of man who, you could tell, was at home out of doors.
“How’ve you been doing?” she said. “I mean, as of late?”
“I’m okay.”
“You’d tell me if you weren’t?”
“I would.”
“You’d tell me if you felt like drinking?”
He nodded.
“What about Phillip Deener?”
“He has a tiny brain and he pees sitting down.”
“No, I meant, have you heard any word from him or his family? Have you had any more strange visitors in the middle of the night?”
“No.” Nub used a knuckle to rap on his own temple. “Knock on wood.”
He looked off at the tour bus pulling into the parking lot.
Leigh Ann’s eyes followed the bus. “Nub, meet Roy Acuff. Roy Acuff, Nub.”
He laughed. “I wonder what he’s like.”
“I heard he can be a little bit of a jerk.”
“Yeah, well, not everyone can be as warm and charming as me.”
She went back to filling out checks. She felt him looking at her again, but she didn’t mind it. She liked having him watch her. And she liked watching him in return. He was nothing like the other guys in her life. He was approachable. Real. Nub knew what he wanted. He knew what he didn’t want. It was that simple.
“I appreciate your help with all this,” she said. “I wish you’d let me pay you.”
“I won’t hear of it. You practically delivered my granddaughter.”
“It’s not hard to deliver a baby. You just catch it when it falls out.”
“Little more to it than that.”
Nub Taylor had been sitting at her bar for a long time, but she had not seen him the way she had been seeing him lately. He had changed. He was less of the shabby older man somehow. Or maybe—and she couldn’t rule this out—maybe she had changed. Maybe helping someone through the process of finding their own way had altered her. Helping others was the foundation stone of recovery. It was what kept you rooted in real life. That’s what AA believed.
“You seen those stupid Coke commercials on TV?” she said.
“Commercials? I didn’t think you watched TV.”
“I got two teenagers at my house. The TV never goes off. There’s this commercial where everyone is standing on a hillside and singing about how they want to buy the world a Coke.”
“I’ve seen it. I have a teenager too.”
“Well, sometimes I feel that way about my new way of life. About your new life.”
“How do you mean?”
“I wish everyone knew how it feels to get a second shot at being alive.”
Nub nodded thoughtfully and drained his Coke. “Are we having a moment here, Leigh Ann?”
She could feel herself blushing.
“That’s what I thought,” he said.
Leigh Ann had spent her previous life in a blur. She got married at age seventeen. She started having babies with a man who treated her like garbage. And then he left her for a woman ten years her junior. Since then she had struggled to keep going. Struggled to feed her kids. Today they were doing well in school. It was no thanks to her ex. No thanks to her either. It was all a testament to divine providence. God looks out for children and fools.
“You know,” she said, “you’re different.”
“Yeah, they’ve been saying that to me all my life.”
“No, I mean, you’ve really changed.”
“Are we having another moment?”
They were interrupted when a few of the guys from the American Pool Players Association entered the Legion. They looked like military men with high-and-tight haircuts. They carried toolboxes, levels, and hand trucks. They were here to adjust the pool tables and make sure things were up to snuff.
Leigh Ann paused her conversation and said, “I’ll be right back, Nub.”
“I hope so.”
She smiled, then started to leave to talk to the pool player guys. They wanted her to show them where to set up their gear. As she walked away, she had that tingly feeling again.
* * *
Roy Acuff was a slight man. Lean and polished. He was pushing seventy. Or maybe he was pulling it. But he looked good for his age. When he took the stage, Minnie watched with an outsider’s admiration. Not because she knew much about him; she didn’t. She knew only what she’d heard about him. She admired him because this man was very important to Nub, although she couldn’t see why. He wasn’t playing the fiddle much, and he spent more time balancing a bow on his nose to whip the crowd up. Even so, Nub had all his records and knew the lyrics to all the man’s tunes.
The whole town had showed up to the concert. Minnie scanned the crowd and found Phillip Deener in the audience, drinking from a large foam cup. He kept looking at her. His expression was one of repulsion. She had the feeling he’d come just to ruin her day.
She knew she wasn’t very attractive with the post-baby weight still clinging to her already large body, and this made her self-conscious. Earlier Phillip had roughly brushed past her. Bun was fast asleep at the time, and she had nearly dropped her. She almost coldcocked Phillip, but he was already gone when she turned around.
Roy Acuff continued to sing. His silver hair was lacquered to his head, styled with the perfect finger wave. His suit was bright red, with western scrollwork on the sleeves, scrollwork down the stripe of his trousers, and a bolo tie. He wore boots the color of chili peppers. He was playing a fiddle that looked like it had some mileage on it.
Minnie rocked her two-month-old in her arms and surveyed the impressive audience. Leigh Ann said there were 881 adults here today, which was a prime number. It had taken her nearly five minutes to factor 881 to discover it was prime. It took so long because she was distracted by all the confusion going on. Roughly a third of the adults in the audience had brought their kids, totaling 293 children, including Bun, which was also a prime number, if you could believe it. Two prime numbers. This brought the total up to 1,174 people altogether, which was not a prime number. Its square root, not that anyone cared, was 34.263 and some change.
Minnie bounced Bun and asked Nub, “Have you ever seen him in concert before?”
He nodded. “First saw him when I was in my twenties. At a show in Opelika. Long time before you were born. He was a great showman. Still is.”
It was getting late and the sun was getting low when Roy Acuff took a break. He turned the stage over to another band who kept the crowd engaged. People were sweating through their clothing. Minnie’s shirt felt like onion skin on her back. Nub’s white shirt had gone to be with the Lord hours ago. He was dripping like a faucet. The bandleader announced that Roy was returning for another set, and the crowd went nuts when Roy came to the stage. The applause finally died down and a silence fell over Park, Alabama. Roy Acuff was about to speak to the crowd when someone interrupted him. Someone on the side of the stage was bending his ear.
It was Benny.
Minnie turned to Nub. “What’s Benny doing on the stage?”
He shrugged and wore a sheepish grin.
The conversation between Benny and the King of Country Music went on for a few minutes. Roy listened to everything Benny had to say, nodding now and then. Then Roy scanned the crowd and found Minnie. Roy Acuff smiled.
“Uh-oh,” said Nub. “Someone’s looking at you.”
Minnie felt her chest get heavy.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Roy to his 1,174 admirers. His voice was loud and clear enough to be heard all the way in Canada. “It has come to my attention that we have a young woman in this audience today who can sing a magnificent rendition of our national anthem.”
Minnie looked at Nub with wide eyes. “You didn’t.”
He was grinning. He reached over and took Bun from her arms and gave her a shove toward the stage. “Don’t embarrass me,” he said.
People began cheering.
Something had shifted in Park since the Easter Sunday disaster. People in town had chosen sides when it came to the subject of Minnie Bass. People admired her talent and her resilience. Once, someone even purchased Minnie a month’s worth of groceries in the IGA anonymously. If you lived in Park, you were either a Minnie admirer or you suffered from a severe case of fundamentalist hemorrhoids.
The people here today loved her. And there is nothing small towns love more than cheering their own. The deafening fanfare of Park’s people rose to inexhaustible heights as Minnie made her way to the stage. She wandered through the masses, moving toward the platform, and people patted her on the back as she passed. She felt so embarrassed with this many people cheering her that she had started to shake.
Minnie took the stage, and Roy Acuff gave her a sideways hug. The band asked her what key she wanted to do “The Star-Spangled Banner” in, and she hummed a few bars. When the guitarist began to play, she approached the microphone and stared at the massive audience.
And then she started singing.
She finished the first verse, and the crowd was so stunned they could barely respond. She rounded into the second verse, a verse nobody ever sings, a verse so rare Francis Scott Key had probably forgotten he wrote it. But when she got out the first few words, a foam cup sailed through the air toward the stage. The cup struck her on the face. It splattered all over her. She could smell the stale, yeasty liquid as it ran down her face and all over her dress. Before she fully realized what had happened, another cup struck her.
In a few minutes, a small riot was taking place in the audience, with Phillip Deener and his henchmen at the center. The demonstrative young men were subdued by a flock of Minnie’s admirers. They came from all corners and gave the boys what for. And as the rowdies were taken away, Minnie was suddenly aware that she was standing before a massive crowd of people who, for some inexplicable reason, believed in her.
She was wearing beer-stained clothing that clung to her chubby body. And everyone was looking at her. Someone started applauding. Then everyone followed suit.
“Oh, sweetie,” said Roy Acuff. “Keep singing.”
So that’s what she did.
* * *
Emily was not at the concert.
Currently she was naked from the waist up, sitting in an exam room at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The room was cold, sterilized, and white. The lights above were so obscenely bright, they were giving her a headache. The doctors looked young. Like belonged-at-a-frat-party young. Or a skating rink. The lead doctor had shaggy hair and acne scars on his face. His colleague beside him looked even younger and wore an open collar beneath his lab coat. They were in their late twenties, maximum.
“I don’t mean to be blunt,” Shaggy said, “but I’m just going to cut the crap and speak frankly with you, Mrs. Ives.” He tossed his clipboard aside. Then he leveled his gaze on her. “We can cut them off.”
She heard the hum of an air conditioner kick in.
“But I thought my cancer had . . .”
“Metastasized? It hasn’t. Not yet. You have a relatively slow-moving cancer, although I can see why your doctors thought there were no treatments available for you. They’re probably using an outdated playbook.”
The younger doctor added, “They’re making predictions based on old methods; they’re doing it the way they did in the forties. This is a different world, medically. You’re still in the early stages, technically. You could still beat this.”
“But I’ve been losing weight.”
“Stress,” said Shaggy.
“Stress?”
“Sure. You think you’re dying.”
She was afraid to even utter the words. “And . . . I’m not? Dying?”
Shaggy smiled. “Not according to me. Your previous doctors, no offense, don’t know what they’re talking about, ma’am.”
The other doctor added, “They probably still think castor oil cures the hemorrhoids.”
“It’s localized,” the doctor said as he examined her breast. “The scans aren’t unhopeful. This can be dealt with. But it should be done quickly.”
“You’re kidding,” she said. It was as though someone had removed a great stone from her shoulders. ”This can’t be . . . You mean I’m going to . . .”
Shaggy replaced her paper gown and covered her. “I can’t see the future, Mrs. Ives. But I think you’ve got a real shot here.”
She stared at the plain walls. Why are all the walls in medical places always white?
“Listen,” said the doctor, “I realize this is a big decision to make. But it’s a no-brainer. A radical mastectomy will give you your life back. We do them every day with cases much worse than yours.”
Her head was in her hands. She was sobbing.
“It’s a simple surgery,” the younger doctor said. “There’s not much to it.”
Then the doctors outlined exactly what they would be doing and how they would do it. Step by step.
“There are prosthetic brassieres,” the doctor added. “You could get breast implants. The point is, you have a lot of options once the procedure is done. We’re not in the dark ages anymore. We’re making huge strides in the field of breast cancer. Twenty years ago, a mastectomy wouldn’t have even been an option for you. They would have written you off as a casualty. They weren’t even thinking this way back then. It’s an exciting time to be alive. We’re saving a lot of people.”
“Cut off my breasts?” she said vacantly.
Both doctors looked at her.
“Mrs. Ives. My job is to keep you alive. For your family. For your kids. And I’m really good at my job.”
