Listen Here (68 page)

And there stood Daddy, black against the sun. His white shirt and his white hair appeared to be shooting off rays of light behind his dark form. I did not wave or holler at him. I started playing with Joe Allen and Evelyn and Billie Jean. We built a dam, and made a little lake, and sailed leaf-boats in it. The whole time we played, I knew that Daddy was watching over us….

(August 20, 1942–)

Poet, short story writer, and novelist Jane Stuart was born in Ashland, Kentucky, the daughter of well-known author Jesse Stuart. She describes her childhood home in Greenup, Kentucky, as a log cabin which had “ten rooms…with books in eight of them.” Stuart says, “My writing was always influenced by Appalachia. I never tried to ‘get away' or write about anything that did not relate in some way to home.”

Stuart earned an A.B., magna cum laude, from Case Western University in 1964, then went on to complete two master's degrees in classical languages, as well as a Ph.D. in medieval and modern Italian literature from Indiana University in 1971. She taught English and creative writing on several faculties, including the University of Florida.

Her multifaceted career has combined writing with teaching, translating, book reviewing, and extensive travel. She's been a contributor not only to numerous scholarly publications, but also to general interest magazines ranging from
Ladies Home Journal
to
National Wildlife.

In 1992, Stuart won first place in the National Federation Poetry Contest, as well as receiving the Kentucky State Poetry Society's highest honor, the Grand Prix Award for “From Winter Meditations.”
Moon Over Miami
received the 1995
Poetry Forum's
chapbook contest prize.

Now retired from teaching, Stuart has returned to her childhood home in Kentucky where she plans to “keep an interest in writing and improve my work that has lain untouched and fallow for so many years.”

The prose excerpt is taken from
Transparencies
, a book of remembrances about her father.

Novels:
Land of the Fox
(1975),
Passerman's Hollow
(1974),
Yellowhawk
(1973).
Poetry:
Journeys; Outward/Inward/Home
(1998),
Moon Over Miami
(1995),
Cherokee Lullaby
(1995),
Passages into Time
(1995),
White Tock
(1994),
The Wren and Other Poems
(1993),
White Barn
(1973),
Eyes of the Mole
(1967),
A Year's Harvest
(1957).
Short stories:
“
Karnak
” (1993),
Gideon's Children
(1976).
Autobiographical nonfiction:
“The House and This World,” in
Bloodroot
(1998), ed. Joyce Dyer, 283–88.
Transparencies
(1985).

Contemporary Authors
, First Revision, Vols. 41–44 (1974), 604. Joyce Dyer, “Jane Stuart,” in
Bloodroot
, 282.

from
Transparencies
(1985)

It seems strange, looking back, that at the time of death the respectful funeral home silence is punctuated by quiet conversation (relatives) and spurts of nervous laughter (children). I suppose that I was both a child and a relative. When I tired of standing in a long reception-like line, meeting people I had heard of but never seen, seeing people from my own past, seeing people I had just met—I wanted to run away, into the rainy February night. But there was no place to go.

It was an ungentle nightmare, to be lived through again and again in my thoughts and in my dreams. The long line of old and young filing past my father's casket, looking in at the wax figure wearing glasses; the reception line we formed so uncertainly—do you laugh or cry or do both at the same time? Or escape into the room where there are chairs, cold drinking water, and ashtrays?

On the day of the funeral—but I don't want to think about that day—my uncle saw to it that our rental car was parked in my mother's garage. The door was closed and a line of cars blocked its exit. But who would have left? And where was there to go?

It was my duty as a daughter to be present at my father's funeral and to be part of his burial. I was able to perform that duty—not with any pleasure, but glad, so glad, that I could do what must be done.

He had truly gone to earth, after a long, slow, and painful dying.

A part of me went with him.

Perhaps I better understand now the cycle of being. You can be born, and you can die, many times within one lifetime. You can see your father's face in your son's mischievous eyes. You can hear your mother's voice in your sleep. You can determine, by instinct, the day and time of death.

No wonder I am old and being old has made me younger once again. I have passed through several cycles and I have become at last myself again.

I only hope that I will not make the mistakes that I made before. I am on my own. No one of this world can tell me what to do or how to do it. And there is no voice from the grave to guide me.

I am very much alone.

And at times I am still afraid.

from
Eyes of the Mole
(1967)

If ever fields were flecked with sun-gold green
and hollows high, between tall tree-clumped hills
that, circled with mauve mists, shoulder sky,
it is here, in Shelbyanna, where Stuarts lie.

If pine-cone chimes can sound the evensong,
white wind-fingers pluck the willow harp,
as night-things purr a silver slumber song,
it is here where sleeping earthlings dream of dawn:

of violets and melons wet with dew—
cornfields ripening in lush river beds—
a hummingbird sucking pink hollyhocks—
on hills where they shall no more walk.

Here they are buried with their mighty dreams,
weary giants sleeping in the soil—
in mottled fields of green and sun-flecked gold
and misty hills that echo tales yet told

about the Stuarts.

from
Eyes of the Mole
(1967)

Roots dug in this hungry craw of land
are badly tangled. No resolute hand
can jerk them up from the mesh of grass
that entwines them to languishing eons that pass
in a cloud of grey mildew, clogged with the sperm
of man's endless renewal, from dust unto worm.

from
White Barn
(1973)

Wild strawberries,
green apples,
and twilight

taste of the past,
still-life upon the wall.

Last night I heard the wind,

cold, gray, and wet,

whip fragile stars
that had let heaven fall.

Adriana Trigiani, the third of seven children in an Italian-American family, moved from Pennsylvania to Big Stone Gap, Virginia, at the age of six, when her parents, Ida and Anthony Trigiani, settled there and opened a garment factory. “She didn't like to weave,” notes her mother, “but Adri was creative in different ways.” Trigiani had a way with words, and by the age of sixteen, she was a roving reporter for WNVA radio in Norton, Virginia.

Trigiani graduated from Notre Dame/Saint Mary's Theatre Program in South Bend, Indiana, having written and directed her own play,
Notes from the Nile
, as well as being the founder of an all-girl comedy troupe, The Outcasts.

After graduation, Trigiani moved to New York City where she made her off-Broadway debut as a playwright in 1985 with
Secrets of the Lava Lamp.
She then segued into writing screenplays as well and, in 1988, was hired as a writer for
The Cosby Show.
“All my TV experiences were wonderful,” Trigiani says. “I learned a lot.”

Trigiani is married to Tim Stephenson, an Emmy Award–winning lighting director for
The Late Show with David Letterman.
The couple lives in New York City.

In the opening scene of her novel
Big Stone Gap
, readers are introduced to Ave Marie Mulligan, a thirty-five-year-old, self-proclaimed spinster and owner of a pharmacy in Big Stone Gap, Virginia.

Novels:
Lucia, Lucia
(2003),
Milk Glass Moon
(2002),
Big Cherry Holler
(2001),
Big Stone Gap
(2000).

Rebecca Sturm Kelm, review of
Big Cherry Holler, Library Journal
126:9 (15 May 2001), 165. Brad Lifford, “Town inspires novel,”
Kingsport
[TN]
Times-News
(7 April 2000), Dl, D2. Bella Stander, “A Conversation with Adriana Trigiani,”
www.bellastander.com/writer/adriana.htm
.

from Chapter One

This will be a good weekend for reading. I picked up a dozen of Vernie Crabtree's killer chocolate chip cookies at the French Club bake sale yesterday. (I don't know what she puts in them, but they're chewy and crispy at the same time.) Those, a pot of coffee, and a good book are all I will need for the rainy weekend rolling in. It's early September in our mountains, so it's warm during the day, but tonight will bring a cool mist to remind us that fall is right around the corner.

The Wise County Bookmobile is one of the most beautiful sights in the world to me. When I see it lumbering down the mountain road like a tank, then turning wide and easing onto Shawnee Avenue, I flag it down like an old friend. I've waited on this corner every Friday since I can remember. The Bookmobile is just a government truck, but to me it's a glittering royal coach delivering stories and knowledge and life itself. I even love the smell of books. People have often told me that one of their strongest childhood memories is the scent of their grandmother's house. I never knew my grandmothers, but I could always count on the Bookmobile.

The most important thing I ever learned, I learned from books. Books have taught me how to size people up. The most useful book I ever read taught me how to read faces, an ancient Chinese art called
siang mien
, in which the size of the eyes, curve of the lip, and height of the forehead are important clues to a person's character. The placement of ears indicates intelligence. Chins that stick out reflect stubbornness. Deep-set eyes suggest a secretive nature. Eyebrows that grow together may answer the question
Could that man kill me with his bare hands?
(He could.) Even dimples have meaning. I have them, and according to face-reading, something wonderful is supposed to happen to me when I turn thirty-five. (It's been four months since my birthday, and I'm still waiting.)

If you were to read my face, you would find me a comfortable person with brown eyes, good teeth, nice lips, and a nose that folks, when they are being kind, refer to as noble. It's a large nose, but at least it's straight. My eyebrows are thick, which indicates a practical nature. (I'm a pharmacist—how much more practical can you get?) I have a womanly shape, known around here as a mountain girl's body, strong legs, and a flat behind. Jackets cover it quite nicely.

This morning the idea of living in Big Stone Gap for the rest of my life gives me a nervous feeling. I stop breathing, as I do whenever I think too hard. Not breathing is very bad for you, so I inhale slowly and deeply. I taste coal dust. I don't mind; it assures me that we still have an economy. Our town was supposed to become the “Pittsburgh of the South” and the “Coal Mining Capital of Virginia.” That never happened, so we are forever at the whims of the big coal companies. When they tell us the coal is running out in these mountains, who are we to doubt them?

It's pretty here. Around six o'clock at night everything turns a rich Crayola midnight blue. You will never smell greenery so pungent. The Gap definitely has its romantic qualities. Even the train whistles are musical, sweet oboes in the dark. The place can fill you with longing.

The Bookmobile is at the stoplight. The librarian and driver is a goodtime gal named Iva Lou Wade. She's in her forties, but she's yet to place the flag on her sexual peak. She's got being a woman down. If you painted her, she'd be sitting on a pink cloud with gold-leaf edges, showing a lot of leg. Her perfume is so loud that when I visit the Bookmobile, I wind up smelling like her for the bulk of the day. (It's a good thing I like Coty's Emeraude.) My father used to say that that's how a woman ought to be. “A man should know when there's a woman in the room. When Iva Lou comes in, there ain't no doubt.” I'd just say nothing and roll my eyes.

Iva Lou's having a tough time parking. A mail truck has parked funny in front of the post office, taking up her usual spot, so she motions to me that she's pulling into the gas station. That's fine with the owner, Kent Vanhook. He likes Iva Lou a lot. What man doesn't? She pays real nice attention to each and every one. She examines men like eggs, perfect specimens created by God to nourish. And she hasn't met a man yet who doesn't appreciate it. Luring a man is a true talent, like playing the piano by ear. Not all of us are born prodigies, but women like Iva Lou have made it an art form.

The Bookmobile doors open with a whoosh. I can't believe what Iva Lou's wearing: Her ice-blue turtleneck is so tight it looks like she's wearing her bra on the outside. Her Mondrian-patterned pants, with squares of pale blue, yellow, and green, cling to her thighs like criss-cross ribbons. Even sitting, Iva Lou has an unbelieveable shape. But I wonder how much of it has to do with all the cinching. Could it be that her parts are so well-hoisted and suspended, she has transformed her real figure into a soft hourglass? Her face is childlike, with a small chin, big blue eyes, and a rosebud mouth. Her eyeteeth snaggle out over her front teeth, but on her they're demure. Her blond hair is like yellow Easter straw, arranged in an upsweep you can see through the set curls. She wears lots of Sarah Coventry jewelry, because she sells it on the side.

“I'll trade you. Shampoo for a best-seller.” I give Iva Lou a sack of shampoo samples from my pharmacy, Mulligan's Mutual.

“You got a deal.” Iva Lou grabs the sack and starts sorting through the samples. She indicates the shelf of new arrivals. “Ave Maria, honey, you have got to read
The Captains and the Kings
that just came out. I know you don't like historicals, but this one's got sex.”

“How much more romance can you handle, Iva Lou? You've got half the men in Big Stone Gap tied up in knots.”

She snickers. “Half? Oh well, I'm-a gonna take that as a compliment-o anyway.” I'm half Italian, so Iva Lou insists on ending her words with vowels. I taught her some key phrases in Italian in case international romance was to present itself. It wasn't very funny when Iva Lou tried them out on my mother one day. I sure got in some Big Trouble over that.

Iva Lou has a goal. She wants to make love to an Italian man, so she can decide if they are indeed the world's greatest lovers. “Eye-talian men are my Matta-horn, honey,” she declares. Too bad there aren't any in these parts. The people around here are mainly Scotch-Irish, or Melungeon (folks who are a mix of Turkish, French, African, Indian, and who knows what; they live up in the mountain hollers and stick to themselves). Zackie Wakin, owner of the town department store, is Lebanese. My mother and I were the only Italians; and then about five years ago we acquired one Jew, Lewis Eisenberg, a lawyer from Woodbury, New York.

“You always sit in the third snap stool. How come?” Iva Lou asks, not looking up as she flips through a new coffee-table book about travel photography.

“I like threes.”

“Sweetie-o, let me tell you something.” Iva Lou gets a faraway, mystical twinkle in her eye. Then her voice lowers to a throaty, sexy register. “When I get to blow this coal yard, and have my big adventure, I sure as hell won't waste my time taking pictures of the Circus Maximus. I am not interesed in rocks ‘n' ruins. I want to experience me some flesh and blood. Some magnificent, broad-shouldered hunk of a European man. Forget the points of interest, point me toward the men. Marble don't hug back, baby.” Then she breathes deeply, “Whoo.”

Iva Lou fixes herself a cup of Sanka and laughs. She's one of those people who are forever cracking themselves up. She always offers me a cup, and I always decline. I know that her one spare clean Styrofoam cup could be her entrée to a romantic rendezvous. Why waste it on me?

“I found you that book on wills you wanted. And here's the only one I could find on grief.” Iva Lou holds up
As Grief Exits
as though she's modeling it. The pretty cover has rococo cherubs and clouds on it. The angels' smiles are instantly comforting. “How you been getting along?” I look at Iva Lou's face. Her innocent expression is just like the cherubs'. She really wants to know how I am.

My mother died on August 2, 1978, exactly one month ago today. It was the worst day of my life. She had breast cancer. I never thought cancer would get both of my parents, but it did. Mama was fifty-two years old, which suddenly seems awfully young to me. She was only seventeen when she came to America. My father taught her English, but she always spoke with a thick accent. One of the things I miss most about her is the sound of her voice. Sometimes when I close my eyes I can hear her….