Big Cherry Holler Read Online Free PDF

her father and me.
    “I’m glad Mr. DeBoard didn’t ask me if I had any brothers and sisters. He does that sometimes, you know.”
    “Yeah, he does.” I sit down on the bed. “Joe would’ve been very proud of you tonight.”
    “No, he wouldn’t. We lost.”
    “Okay. Right. He probably would have teased you and called you a big loser all the way home.”
    Etta smiles as she turns over and looks at me. “He would have loved it when the desks flipped over.” She lies back on her pillow. “Joe’s been gone so long, sometimes I forget about him.”
    In Etta’s life, three years is a long time. For me, it’s a heartbeat. Joe was only four years old when he died. He and Etta were so close in age, folks often thought they were twins, even though they could not have been more different. I got pregnant with him three months after I had Etta. You should’ve heard the jokes in town. “Honey, must’ve been nice to get wet after that drought o’ yorn!” one of Jack’s coal mining buddies said to me at a football game. Oh yeah. They had a good old time talking about the Former Spinster turned Baby-Making Machine. I guess they thought I got myself a little taste of the honey and had to have the whole hive.
    When Joe was born, Jack took one look at him and said, “The Eye-talian genes have landed!” And it was true. Joe had curly black hair and chocolate-chip eyes. He had my father’s regal nose and slight overbite. His chin was square and prominent, but it curved at the bottom as though a cleft should form there. He had a deep dimple near his eye when he smiled (we don’t know where that came from). He was so different from Etta. Joe was loud, funny, and exasperating. Once he even pulled down the Christmas tree. He drove me crazy. And I would give everything I own to have him back, driving me crazy.
    “Don’t worry. You’ll never forget your brother.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “I promise. I know.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Because you loved your brother. And love never dies.” I say this to my daughter as plainly as I might tell her to carry her umbrella when it’s raining. Now if only I believed it. I turn off her bedside lamp and switch on the nightlight.
    “Ma, stay till I’m asleep.”
    I lie down with my daughter and wrap my arms around her. She is warm and safe. I hope that, wherever my son is, someone is holding him. I have prayed to my mother to find him and take care of him. I have to trust that my prayers have been answered, but every night, even as I say them, I am not so sure.

CHAPTER TWO
    T he headline on the front page of the Big Stone Gap
Post
says WESTMORELAND PULLS OUT , which causes a round of jokes in town that do not bear repeating. In the week since the announcement,
The Post
has been printing helpful articles for the miners about their benefits, insurance, and black-lung programs.
    On the Almost Fame and No Fortune front: AREA KIDS TAKE SECOND PLACE ON
KIDDIE KOLLEGE
is the delicately worded headline. Perhaps the editor, Bill Hendrick, placed it under PRAYERS REQUESTED FOR MAXIE BELCHER AND PEBBLE FIG so that folks could get a little perspective. We hate to lose, even at the elementary school level. The picture of our team is sweet; thank God they took it before the show, in happier times. It’s taken a full week to shake defeat. Etta had almost forgotten about the loss, until she heard an old man point at her in a Buckles Supermarket, “Right ’ere’s one of ’em kids that lost for us on the
Kiddie Kollege
show!” I fold the newspaper neatly into a basket filled with canned goods, fresh eggs, and milk.
    It’s my turn to leave staples for the Tuckett twins. Edna and Ledna are somewhere in their eighties and don’t get out much. I leave thebasket inside their screen door. When I get back to my Jeep, I hear the creak of their front door, letting me know that they got the basket. All these years, the sisters made pies and cakes for all the families in town: from birth to death