He told me I was the spitting image of Lana Turner. He bet one day a Hollywood man would see me eating an ice cream cone in the drugstore downtown and make me into a big movie star like her. Uncle Ed said he’d come to see me, but I’d have to let him in for free. I cut a picture of Lana Turner out of the newspaper, holding it up to my sun-speckled face in the mirror.
It was usually fun when Uncle Ed came, but this time I was scared. Grandma was doing what she could until the doctor got there. She hollered for me to bring the cream pitcher and a jar of milk from the refrigerator. After she emptied the milk into the half full pitcher of cream, she made Uncle Ed turn it up until he glugged the last of it down. He said he thought Grandma was right—he probably had killed himself, and as bad as his belly hurt he didn’t much care. Grandma said no need to make matters worse by adding foolish talking to foolish acting.
“Trouble is, I’m not so sure Ed’s acting,” Grandpa said, coming in the door with the doctor behind him. “That foolish part sounds about right though.”
Relief washed over Grandma’s face when she saw them. Doc Cunningham had been our family doctor forever. His one-room office near the post office in East Beckley was furnished with cracked leather, faded linoleum, and generations of secrets. Shelves around the walls held olive and cobalt and amber bottles of pills and potions he doled out or mixed up, depending on what ailed you.
In the office Doc Cunningham carried a Persian cat draped around his neck like a boa, and white fur floated in the shaft of sunlight filtered through the dingy window. One day when Grandma took me there to pick up something or other, he told me the cat was called Pitty Sing after a cat in a play he’d once seen. It was called The Mikado if I ever wanted to look it up. I never forgot the name.
The ancient smell of the office soaked into everything it touched, and as he moved around our bedroom, poking Uncle Ed, whiffs of leather and liniment mingled with the smell of tobacco from a yellowed Meerschaum pipe he kept in his jacket pocket.
Doc Cunningham peered out of eyes skimmed over with age as he wiped wire-framed spectacles with a peach-colored hanky he’d borrowed from Grandma. He told Uncle Ed it looked as though his life had been spared for another day.
“Thank God for that,” Uncle Ed said.
“Wouldn’t hurt none,” Doc Cunningham replied, “but to my mind you should thank your sister for that hearty dinner she fed you.”
Grandma had made pork chops with cabbage, scalloped potatoes, fried apples, and cornbread muffins, with blackberry cobbler to finish off the meal. Uncle Ed could never get enough of his sister’s cooking, so he ate extra helpings.
“You’re mighty lucky,” Doc Cunningham continued, “mighty lucky indeed. But touch your lips to that poison again and you’ll not only be a damned fool, Ed Adkins, you’ll be a dead one, and I’ll come sign the papers over you to prove it.” His drawn-down eyebrows squirmed like aggravated woolly worms.
Uncle Ed nodded that yes he was lucky and yes he was a damned fool. He announced he was giving up alcohol in all its evil forms. He had in mind to start preaching on the street corners downtown where some wayward soul might hear the Word and find eternal salvation. He’d give out those leaflets on the bus too, the ones that said, “ARE YOU SAVED?” or, “JESUS IS THE WAY.” Maybe he’d knock on doors and witness to people right there in their own front rooms.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Grandma said. “I always am, but I hope you really mean it this time.”
Uncle Ed always repented and got saved after he got drunk, but it never took. Soon he’d be backslid again.
Grandpa said Uncle Ed had slid back and forth so many times he was bound to have wore the seat of his britches out. But God worked in mysterious ways, and you never knew when a man’s heart would be changed. He’d keep praying for him long as it took. Like the Scripture said in Matthew, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
Uncle Ed liked that verse and had Grandpa repeat it several times.
“I’ve got a feeling that one’s gonna come back to bite me,” Grandpa said, a grin tugging at his mouth.
Doc Cunningham had said “damned fool” right out loud in our house. Grandma didn’t hear him because she was in the kitchen getting money out of her butter-and-eggs jar, so he didn’t know about her no-blaspheming rule. While she was gone, Grandpa made Uncle Ed pay the two dollars for the doctor’s house call. Although Grandma didn’t look too happy about it, she took her two dollars back and put it in her apron pocket just the same.
She walked the doctor out on the porch to ask would Uncle Ed be able to drive the car the next day. Doc Cunningham said no reason not to as long as he stayed out of the rubbing alcohol. Grandma was so relieved she sent the doctor home with a quart jar of the pickled eggs he was so fond of.
“Well, that settles it then,” Grandma said. “We’ll leave before light in the morning.” Her eyes gave Uncle Ed a quick once-over. “You look just fine to me, a little green around the gills maybe, but fine. I don’t expect you’ll feel any worse driving than not. Might keep your mind off your misery.”
Uncle Ed looked stricken, but he didn’t say a thing.
Grandma had put the quietus on him.
8
Only the Essence Remained
A little setback like Uncle Ed almost killing himself wasn’t about to stop Grandma. She gathered a stack of clean quilts and feed sacks in
