Big Stone Gap Read Online Free PDF

the jewel of this town, built with monies from the War on Poverty of the late 1960s. Spec ignores all traffic laws and careens up the circular driveway in the wrong direction.
    “Problem’s in the West Wing,” he explains.
    The principal, Dale Herron, meets us in front of the school. The kids call him Lurch. I sort of see why—he’s slope-shouldered and his head juts forward. Lurch leads us inside to a rest room marked BOYS . The building is dead quiet.
    “Where are the students?” I ask.
    “In the auditorium,” the principal says. “Miss Mulligan, I think you ought to wait out here.”
    “I’ll handle it,” Spec says, patting me like a Pekingese.
    The men disappear into the rest room. A few moments pass. I hear mumbling from the lavatory. Finally, the two men emerge.
    “Let’s go,” Lurch says, pointing toward the assembly down the hall.
    We follow the angry principal into the auditorium. Every seat is filled. The teachers line the side aisles like guards. There are some whispers but not many. Onstage is a lectern and two students squirming in chairs: the student-body president, a young man with a long Renaissance curl, and the chaplain, a pudgy girl with thick glasses. Lurch takes the stage.
    “Good afternoon, students. That greeting right there is for the ninety-eight percent of you who are law-abiding kids. I’ll get to the remaining two percent here in a minute. I have called this emergency assembly to alert y’all that there is a sicko among us. There is a sign outside this door which reads, UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL . The hijinks and shenanigans of a small percentage of us will cause the whole to suffer. To fall. Mike. Brownie. Bring up the evidence.”
    Two young men rise from their front-row seats and disappear backstage. They enter sheepishly from the wings. Mike is a small platinum blond. I recognize him as the point guard on our championship basketball team. The other kid is mousy; his diminutive name suits him. They carry a large tarp between them.
    “Dump it,” the principal barks.
    The boys dump the contents of the tarp. White ceramic chunks hit the stage with a clatter, making a cloud of dust. An intact toilet seat tumbles out, confirming my suspicions.
    “This is what someone setting right here in this auditorium has done. Destroyed school property. Committed a crime with evil intent. How? By rigging a sophisticated round of cherry bombs to a ter-let in the boys’ rest room in the West Wing.”
    A few nervous giggles escape the student body.
    “This is no joke, people.” Lurch searches the audience for the gigglers. Then he pauses. He pounds the podium. “Some unfortunate young man might have been sitting on that ter-let when it blew to high heaven. I ask you, what would have happened then?”
    “Jesus,” Spec says under his breath.
    “Anybody actually injured?” I whisper.
    Spec ignores me.
    “I’m scared,” a familiar deep voice says behind me.
    “You should be,” I whisper back. “The teacher’s lounge is next.”
    “Dinner tonight? After the show?”
    “I’d love to.”
    The deep voice, and now my date for the evening, is my best friend, the band and choral director of Powell Valley High School, Theodore Tipton, formerly of Scranton, Pennsylvania. Every once in a while the mines or the school will hire someone from the outside world. Inevitably, they move in and shake things up. Theodore brought our band back to life and simultaneously goosed the libidos of all the women in town. (“He’s a humdinger,” Iva Lou says with relish every time she sees him. “The man makes a pair of Levi’s sing.”) Theodore also stars as Preacher Red Fox in the Outdoor Drama. We became friends when he auditioned nine years ago and I cast him on the first round. I had to. His face reading told me that he was loyal and true and fiercely protective. I knew if I cast him we would spend lots of time together, and we have. His face is square-shaped, with a defined jaw. He has a