I wrote this as part of novel. I didn't include it in the final work. Perhaps someone here will enjoy reading it. It's a bittersweet remembrance of being a gay boy in a tiny WVA town.
I recall one day standing on the front porch of our small apartment with my mother and a fat woman. I was perhaps ten years old at the time. I always remember my mother as being tall and thin. Of course when you’re a child people are usually tall and thin or tall and fat.
Mrs. Lovejoy, the fat lady, was a jovial woman who to my knowledge never owned nor wore a pair of shoes. The only dress I remember her wearing was of faded blue and yellow flowers on a brilliant white background. She always had her soft brown hair pulled back and tied into a bun the size of a walnut. I remember too her flabby pink arms bore big white splotches made by the homemade lye soap that she used to “do up the wash with.”
Mrs. Lovejoy lived across the street with her husband Atlee and her youngest daughter Foodie. I use the term street here loosely because in that town of one thousand souls any paved track was called a street.
This was Little Fork, West Virginia, a sliver of small stores and smaller houses squeezed between the Kanawha River and Tyler Mountain. Other remote communities with names like Hog Pen Holler and Dutch Holler hid in the deep alluvial gorges sculpted at the dawn of time by slabs of Jurassic ice.
A railroad track bisected our town. Just beyond the main crossing a long wooden depot painted grey with darker grey trim perched on an elevated piece of ground. The depot looked like a Christmas toy ready to be added to a make-believe hamlet of similar construction. No passenger trains passed through Little Fork, just lumber and coal cars followed by the ubiquitous caboose complete with a swarthy trainman waving happily from the platform.
The Kanawha River was enormously wide when I lived and played on its banks. I hear it got narrower since I left. Old paddlewheel boats with names like The Hatfield and The Susan B pushed wide, flatbed barges back and forth the entire length of the tree lined river; their great wheels churning up the silt laden water in a creamy froth the color of cappuccino. Our paperboy, Jackie, drowned in the Kanawha one summer. He was a member of our church, The Tabernacle of the Unknown Tongues. My father took me to the funeral parlor so I could see what death was. I remember saying to my mother, “Momma, Jackie was asleep with all his clothes on!”
It took me years to comprehend death. Life still eludes me.
Our side of the street boasted two red brick duplex apartments complete with matching concrete slabs that served as play area, sundeck, front porch and neighborhood lookout post. You could never be too careful about who might wander into town unnoticed. Rent was thirty dollars per month for a two-bedroom unit. Our family lived in one of the downstairs units.
The other side of the tar-patched pavement was lined with tiny single houses covered with Insulbrick, a tar and asbestos concoction that was pressed and molded to mimic a brick look.
The big talk in town that sunny day was that young Preacher Lucas had mysteriously died the previous week. Bad news travels fast. It’s also talked about a good bit longer than good news.
“He’s gone to perdition more as like,” said Mrs. Lovejoy. “Preach’n like he did and didn’t he go to that meetin’ where them Catholics and ’piscopals was? It’s God’s wrath if ya ask me!”
My mother nodded her agreement with missus Lovejoy’s unhappy assessment of the departed preacher’s prospects for eternity.
“Well,” my mother said, “he sure did tempt the Holy Spirit with all that cavortin’ with strange people. You know I heard that Pastor Robbins got one of them invites to that meetin’.”
My mother leaned closer to the older woman and whispered, “And, I hear tell that when he saw the writin’ he pulled back a sayin’ that it was Satan at work and temptin’ him to forget hisself.”
Not to be out done in the information department, Mrs. Lovejoy said, “Well, that’s not all. This mornin’ Mr. Woodrum, down at the furniture store, told me that the day after they buried Preacher Lucas his wida showed up in the store wearin’ a bright yeller dress and she bought herself a brand new Amana refrigerator! One with the motor in the back—not like on top ya know… Like an icebox ain’t no good for her no more.”
“I wonder what she wants a thing like that fer. It’s not like she needs a lot of food or nothin’,” my mother replied with barely concealed envy.
“I’m wonderin’ why she got a bright yeller dress and who she’s a wearin’ it fer’,” said Mrs. Lovejoy, her eyebrows arched to an impossible height.
The two women smacked their lips in unison, nodded to one another and leaned back in their chairs to rock the afternoon away.
Mrs. Lovejoy had birthed six children, Ansel, Mannford, Rockford, Sis, Dorothy and Foodie. Foodie was mentally challenged so she remained home to help with the chores.
“My other five cheer’in are scattered to the four winds. They don’t come home none,” Mrs. Lovejoy would complain. “Ya know they act like they never got the proper fetchin’ up, stayin’ away like they do… I miss ’em terrible.”
In fact, all her children had settled within a five-mile radius of our town, but for a woman on foot and with no shoes they may as well have been on the backside of the moon.
When Pastor Robbins uncovered my homosexuality, my “perversion” four years later, Mrs. Lovejoy was among the congregation witnessing my shunning and excommunication from my church and family. I knew I couldn’t stay in that town and so I had stashed an old army duffle bag with everything I thought I might need in case the worse happened. I had decided my destination would be New York City. Fate, however, had a different plan for me.
Most adults know about a young boy’s secret hiding place. Mrs. Lovejoy knew mine. When I pulled the duffle bag out to check my father’s road map (the only thing I ever stole), I found a big wedge of fresh cornbread, baked without leavening. She called it her hardtack. To me it was mountain manna. Included with her parting gift was some homemade farmer’s cheese and a small knife. Her gift was a true act of Christian charity. Convictions are perhaps more easily expressed in private.
I never heard anymore about those folks. I suppose they’re all dead now.
I still have the knife.
Mrs. Lovejoy
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I recall one day standing on the front porch of our small apartment with my mother and a fat woman. I was perhaps ten years old at the time. I always remember my mother as being tall and thin. Of course when you’re a child people are usually tall and thin or tall and fat.
Mrs. Lovejoy, the fat lady, was a jovial woman who to my knowledge never owned nor wore a pair of shoes. The only dress I remember her wearing was of faded blue and yellow flowers on a brilliant white background. She always had her soft brown hair pulled back and tied into a bun the size of a walnut. I remember too her flabby pink arms bore big white splotches made by the homemade lye soap that she used to “do up the wash with.”
Mrs. Lovejoy lived across the street with her husband Atlee and her youngest daughter Foodie. I use the term street here loosely because in that town of one thousand souls any paved track was called a street.
This was Little Fork, West Virginia, a sliver of small stores and smaller houses squeezed between the Kanawha River and Tyler Mountain. Other remote communities with names like Hog Pen Holler and Dutch Holler hid in the deep alluvial gorges sculpted at the dawn of time by slabs of Jurassic ice.
A railroad track bisected our town. Just beyond the main crossing a long wooden depot painted grey with darker grey trim perched on an elevated piece of ground. The depot looked like a Christmas toy ready to be added to a make-believe hamlet of similar construction. No passenger trains passed through Little Fork, just lumber and coal cars followed by the ubiquitous caboose complete with a swarthy trainman waving happily from the platform.
The Kanawha River was enormously wide when I lived and played on its banks. I hear it got narrower since I left. Old paddlewheel boats with names like The Hatfield and The Susan B pushed wide, flatbed barges back and forth the entire length of the tree lined river; their great wheels churning up the silt laden water in a creamy froth the color of cappuccino. Our paperboy, Jackie, drowned in the Kanawha one summer. He was a member of our church, The Tabernacle of the Unknown Tongues. My father took me to the funeral parlor so I could see what death was. I remember saying to my mother, “Momma, Jackie was asleep with all his clothes on!”
It took me years to comprehend death. Life still eludes me.
Our side of the street boasted two red brick duplex apartments complete with matching concrete slabs that served as play area, sundeck, front porch and neighborhood lookout post. You could never be too careful about who might wander into town unnoticed. Rent was thirty dollars per month for a two-bedroom unit. Our family lived in one of the downstairs units.
The other side of the tar-patched pavement was lined with tiny single houses covered with Insulbrick, a tar and asbestos concoction that was pressed and molded to mimic a brick look.
The big talk in town that sunny day was that young Preacher Lucas had mysteriously died the previous week. Bad news travels fast. It’s also talked about a good bit longer than good news.
“He’s gone to perdition more as like,” said Mrs. Lovejoy. “Preach’n like he did and didn’t he go to that meetin’ where them Catholics and ’piscopals was? It’s God’s wrath if ya ask me!”
My mother nodded her agreement with missus Lovejoy’s unhappy assessment of the departed preacher’s prospects for eternity.
“Well,” my mother said, “he sure did tempt the Holy Spirit with all that cavortin’ with strange people. You know I heard that Pastor Robbins got one of them invites to that meetin’.”
My mother leaned closer to the older woman and whispered, “And, I hear tell that when he saw the writin’ he pulled back a sayin’ that it was Satan at work and temptin’ him to forget hisself.”
Not to be out done in the information department, Mrs. Lovejoy said, “Well, that’s not all. This mornin’ Mr. Woodrum, down at the furniture store, told me that the day after they buried Preacher Lucas his wida showed up in the store wearin’ a bright yeller dress and she bought herself a brand new Amana refrigerator! One with the motor in the back—not like on top ya know… Like an icebox ain’t no good for her no more.”
“I wonder what she wants a thing like that fer. It’s not like she needs a lot of food or nothin’,” my mother replied with barely concealed envy.
“I’m wonderin’ why she got a bright yeller dress and who she’s a wearin’ it fer’,” said Mrs. Lovejoy, her eyebrows arched to an impossible height.
The two women smacked their lips in unison, nodded to one another and leaned back in their chairs to rock the afternoon away.
Mrs. Lovejoy had birthed six children, Ansel, Mannford, Rockford, Sis, Dorothy and Foodie. Foodie was mentally challenged so she remained home to help with the chores.
“My other five cheer’in are scattered to the four winds. They don’t come home none,” Mrs. Lovejoy would complain. “Ya know they act like they never got the proper fetchin’ up, stayin’ away like they do… I miss ’em terrible.”
In fact, all her children had settled within a five-mile radius of our town, but for a woman on foot and with no shoes they may as well have been on the backside of the moon.
When Pastor Robbins uncovered my homosexuality, my “perversion” four years later, Mrs. Lovejoy was among the congregation witnessing my shunning and excommunication from my church and family. I knew I couldn’t stay in that town and so I had stashed an old army duffle bag with everything I thought I might need in case the worse happened. I had decided my destination would be New York City. Fate, however, had a different plan for me.
Most adults know about a young boy’s secret hiding place. Mrs. Lovejoy knew mine. When I pulled the duffle bag out to check my father’s road map (the only thing I ever stole), I found a big wedge of fresh cornbread, baked without leavening. She called it her hardtack. To me it was mountain manna. Included with her parting gift was some homemade farmer’s cheese and a small knife. Her gift was a true act of Christian charity. Convictions are perhaps more easily expressed in private.
I never heard anymore about those folks. I suppose they’re all dead now.
I still have the knife.
