Big Cherry Holler - Adriana Trigiani [51]
“Amaze You.”
“What’s ‘Amaze You’?”
“That was the first movie house in Big Stone Gap. Way before Jim Roy bought the place and modernized it. My mama used to tell me about it. They saw silent movies there. Lillian Gish. Buster Keaton. Charlie Chaplin. And there was an organ and a stage. And before every show, old Possum Hodgins, who owned the theater, would get up and tell the audience, ‘Today we’re-a-gonna Amaze You!’ ”
I look up at the old marquee, and it sends a chill through me. How strange to see the past exposed under layers of the present.
“Honey, it’s cold. Go inside,” I tell my daughter.
“Fleeta opened up the Soda Fountain. She’s pushin’ pie and cake and coffee,” Jack Mac tells me. I’m not surprised. As much as Fleeta complains, if she’s not in the center of everything, she ain’t living.
Spec is over at the Trail with the firemen. Jim Roy is standing out front, talking to them. I take Jack’s hand, and we cross the street to join them.
“It’s gone. It’s all gone,” Jim Roy says sadly. “All my movies. My prints done burned. All my years of collecting. Gone.”
“We were able to save some, sir.” A fireman joins us, just a kid of maybe twenty, and he shows Jim Roy a stack of black tin canisters which he salvaged and placed in the doorway of Gilley’s Jewelers. Jim Roy sees the canisters, and his eyes light up with joy.
“Here, I got a flashlight,” Spec tells Jim Roy, who rushes over to the canisters and runs his hands over the wheels of tin as though he were patting a baby.
“Let’s see what we got, buddy,” Spec says to Jim Roy. Then he reads the tape on the sides as I hold the flashlight: “The Thin Man, Dancing Lady, My Man Godfrey, Stagecoach, The Heiress, Midnight with Don Ameche and Claudette Colbert. That would’ve been a tragedy right there if they burned up.” Spec shuffles through the reels: “There’s Bachelor Mother, yeah, Ginger Rogers was sexy in that one; The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Topaz, Pride and Prejudice, Jezebel, It Happened One Night …”
“Clark Gable!” I shriek. Spec gives me a look.
“Let’s see, there’s The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Song of Bernadette, Test Pilot, Wuthering Heights, Dinner at Eight; Goodbye, Mr. Chips, The Women, Sullivan’s Travels; there’s Claudette agin with The Palm Beach Story, the Duke in The Quiet Man, How Green Was My Valley, thank you Jesus, it looks like we saved most of Maureen O’Hara. And lookee. Henry Fonda in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine. It’s here, Jim Roy!”
“How ’bout Kay Francis? I had all of Kay Francis,” Jim Roy says nervously.
“They’re here.” Spec shows Jim Roy a neat stack of her movies, safe on the ground. He places a double reel on top of the stack. “National Velvet … that’s Etta’s favorite, isn’t it?” I nod.
Jim Roy breathes deeply. Most of his treasure has been saved, and saved by a kid who probably wouldn’t know Spencer Tracy from Joel McCrea. Seats and screens and popcorn machines can be replaced, but the prints that Jim Roy has collected all these years cannot.
“Come on, Jim Roy, let’s take you and Mrs. Ball over to the Mutual’s. Fleeta’s made coffee.” Jack puts his arm around Jim Roy. But Jim Roy doesn’t move. He stands there looking at his theater.
“I can’t believe it. And on Christmas.” He sighs sadly.
As we enter the Mutual’s, folks gather around Jim Roy and his wife. Soon we break into small groups in the booths or sit around the Fountain, reminiscing about our favorite movies or the first movie we ever saw at the Trail. Theodore, put to work as a waiter for Fleeta, serves pie off of a tray. Fleeta peels the cellophane and red Christmas ribbon off a Whitman’s sampler box and passes the chocolates around.
Quietly, through the kitchen, Leah and Pearl come in; Worley rushes to Leah’s side, and she explains all about Albert. Folks buzz around Pearl, who says that Albert will be all right. Folks around here don’t even know the man but are concerned.
“He didn’t set no farr,” Otto tells me.
“How do you know?”
“Chief tole me. Said it was wiring in the sound system. I ought to tell Pearl that, oughtn’t I?” Otto goes off to give Pearl