Big Stone Gap Read Online Free PDF Page B

firm chin with a dimple in it. He can look strong, like an Irish pirate, or intellectual, like a preoccupied poet. He is tall, with blue eyes and a red beard. Even though all the available women in town chase him (and a few married ones, too), he spends all of his spare time with me. We’re “feriners”—even though I was born here, I’m considered a feriner because my mother was one—but that’s just the start of what we have in common.
    The principal wraps up the assembly with a couple more threats for the student body. If the guilty party doesn’t fess up, he promises to suspend the smoking areas outside. This brings a groan from the students. The chaplain places a shoe box marked ANONYMOUS on the podium. Lurch tells the kids it will be placed in the gym so anyone with tips regarding the toilet incident can leave them in there. He dismisses the assembly. The student body rises. As the kids exit in an orderly fashion, most of them acknowledge Theodore. He is popular and respected, the perfect reputation for a teacher.
    Only one student stops to speak to me: Pearl Grimes, fifteen years old, a sweet mountain girl with a weight problem. She often window-shops at the Mutual. I walk down the hall with my arm around her.
    “My skin’s done broke out agin.” Pearl hangs her head sadly.
    “I got something for that. Come by the Mutual and see me.”
    “All right.” She shrugs. She doesn’t believe me.
    “Don’t you know the more pimples you got now, the less wrinkles you’ll have later?”
    Finally, Pearl smiles. Her face, heart-shaped, with a high forehead, tells me that she is emotional yet fair. Her nose is small and turns up slightly. Her cheeks are full and round—the cheeks of a monarch—which means she can handle power.
    Pearl blends off into the sea of students. Theodore takes my arm.
    “I’ll walk you to your car.”
    “Sure.”
    “What’s new?”
    “I’m a bastard.”
    Theodore laughs, which gets me laughing too. “Did you bust a shoplifter or something?”
    “No. I didn’t behave like a bastard. I mean the literal definition.”
    “What?”
    “I settled Mama’s will today. She left me a letter. Fred Mulligan wasn’t my father.” Theodore is surprised but remains cool for my benefit. He knows everything about Fred Mulligan and me. When I shared all those stories, Theodore always got a look like he’d kill anyone who hurt me. This new information surprises him.
    Theodore leads me out the front entrance to the car. Spec sits behind the wheel.
    “Get in, Ave,” Spec grumbles, lighting a cigarette. “That was a waste of my time.”
    “See you tonight,” Theodore says as he closes the door. He touches my cheek. I look up to the second-floor science lab. Pearl Grimes stands in the window, watching us. From here, in the mellow afternoon light, she has a regal countenance, like a queen looking down on her subjects. I give her a quick wave good-bye. She smiles.

 CHAPTER TWO
    On top of everything else, my roof leaks. It needs to be patched, and fast. The town handymen are a pair of brothers, Otto and Worley Olinger. They drive an open flatbed truck around town and pick up people’s discards. Some days you’ll see them with a wringer washing machine strapped to the back of the truck; another day it’ll be a couple of railroad ties and a stuffed bear head. In some parts they’re known as the Are Y’all Using That? Brothers because that’s how they greet you when they want something from your yard.
    Otto appears to be the older of the two. He is short-legged and sturdy, with gray hair and a few teeth left on the bottom. He has a distinctive nose—it has a shelf on the upper bridge, which indicates he’s good with money. Worley has thick red hair and is tall and lean. His long face matches his long body. Nobody in town is exactly sure how old they are because they did not matriculate through the school system. But they seem to have been around forever.
    I join them up on my roof. I