Fall 2002 Issue of Appalachian Heritage

 

Big Boss Is Back
By Meredith Sue Willis

 

            “Get rid of those things.  They bother me.  That’s what Big Boss said,” she told Dr. Siefert. “So I said, But you used to like them, Big Boss, and he said, Well I don’t anymore.”

            Dr. Siefert was writing notes.  He always took extensive histories, and it was a few seconds before he realized he didn’t understand.   “ I don't follow.”

            The woman had insisted that he call her Frankie.  She wore a man’s pants and shirt, and her front teeth were missing.  She had thin limbs, but a big mid-section.  He had first thought Liver, but found nothing on palpation.  He hadn’t done a pelvic because he was going to send her to the gynecologist. White female, widow, 57 years old.  Limited recall of medical history.

            “He wants me to get rid of them,” she said.

            “I don't understand.”  He had to be careful not to be sharp: clipped words made them shy away. In his thirties, with two pre-school children, he and his wife had chosen West Virginia after a great deal of research.  He was a New Jersey born, board-certified family practitioner who believed in small town life and family values.  So far, he and his wife had no regrets.  But– every so often–  something in his practice startled him, as if he were out of his depth.   “Really,” he said, “I’m sorry. I don't understand.”

            Her eyes rolled from side to side, as if checking for spies. She leaned forward and mouthed a word.  When he still didn't get it, she jabbed both pointer fingers at her chest.  “Them,” she hissed.

            “You have a concern about your breasts?   I was going to recommend a visit to the gynecologist, and monthly self-examinations–”

            “Naw,” she said.  “There's nothing wrong with them, Doc.  It's Big Boss.  He wants me to get rid of them. I was listening to the tv and they had a program about people who wanted little ones, so I thought maybe if I got them smaller, they wouldn't bother him so much.”

            He said, “I don't do breast reductions.”

            She said, “It's strange, Doc, since he came back, it's like he knows what I’m thinking.  Like he was inside my head.  He said, I don’t mean reduce ‘em, Old Girl, I mean get rid of them!  So I came to find out about cutting them off.”  She seemed perfectly cheerful, crossed her arms and rested them between the offending breasts and her belly.

            He made his voice firm.  “I don’t think I can do that, Frankie.”

            She unfolded her arms, smacked her knees and leaped to her feet as if the consultation were over.  “I didn't think you would.  To tell you the truth, I think they bother him because they remind him of what he can’t do anymore. If you know what I mean.”

            He wanted to call his nurse, Merlee Savage, who was a native and an excellent amateur psychologist, and he thought he remembered that she was related by marriage to Frankie or Frankie’s husband.  But Merlee was in the treatment room giving allergy shots to a boy who couldn’t stand the sight of needles.

            “Frankie,” said Dr. Siefert, “I want to say, if this man is— abusing  you in some way, we can help.”

            She looked alarmed and her left shoulder angled toward the door.  “Naw, Doc, he always did the best he could by me.  You know, he bought me anything I needed and like that.  He never ran around.”

            At that point, Merlee came in with her big shoulders and strong jaw, her long hair parted in the middle and hanging straight like a young woman from long ago. She had a brilliant smile she didn’t use very often, and Dr. Siefert had come to feel disappointed if the day passed and he didn’t find a way to bring it out.

            “Well, Frankie,” said Merlee, “I didn’t know you were here. How are you today?”

            “I'm fine,” said Frankie.  “I'm going home.”

            Merlee said, “I gave Buddy his shots, Doctor, but you need to talk to his mother, when you and Frankie are finished.”

            “I was just giving her a referral to the gynecologist.”

            Frankie flared her nostrils, and Merlee said, “That’s the special doctor for woman problems, Frankie.”

            “I don't have any woman problems,” said Frankie.  “I found out what I needed to know.  I'm going to tell Big Boss exactly what the doc said.”

            “Big Boss?”  said Merlee.

            “Big Boss is back,” said Frankie, starting out the door and pointing at her breasts again.  “He don't like them.”

            They watched her thin and narrow back in its plaid flannel shirt hurry down the corridor.  Dr. Siefert decided to let her go. He said to Merlee, “She asked me to amputate her breasts.  She said this person called Big Boss wants her to get rid of them.”

            Merlee grunted.  “Well, Dr. Siefert, Frankie is a dear heart, but crazy as a bedbug.  My ex-husband and her husband were both Savages.  Like me.  I kept the name.”

            “Do you think there might be some kind of abuse involved?”

            “Oh, I wouldn't worry too much about Big Boss,” said Merlee.  “I'll go over to her house and check on her in a day or two.  I'd call, but she doesn't have a phone.  That's something else Big Boss didn’t like. He was always worried she would waste time gabbing on the phone.  I'll drop by and check on her.”  At the door of the other examining room where Buddy and his mother were waiting, Merlee said, “You know, don’t you, that Frankie's husband is dead?”

            “Yes, I got that in the history, although she wasn’t forthcoming about much else.”

            Merlee seemed to be waiting for something.  When he didn’t speak, she said, “Well, here's the thing, Doctor.  I personally never did get along with Big Boss.  He was one of these blowhard men who expect you to pretend they’re a clown when they’re really mean as a rattlesnake.  He had all kinds of rules about what Frankie could do and couldn't do: she wasn't supposed to go out, she could only watch television at certain hours.  He wouldn’t let her crochet until late in the evening.  But the thing is, Doctor, Big Boss was Frankie's husband.  He's the one who's dead, and she says Big Boss is back.”

                                                                                                                                   

            Merlee went to see Frankie on a rainy Thursday after work.  She had stayed late to help Dr. Siefert’s wife hang new curtains in the waiting room.  The Sieferts had this idea that West Virginia  was a sanctuary from the modern world.  Mrs. Sieferts told Merlee in her perky little voice that they were already putting down deep roots.  They were going to select either the Kingfield Presbyterian Church or the First Methodist.  Did Merlee belong to one of those?

            Merlee said, “Why I don’t go to church, honey,” and when she saw Mrs. Siefert’s look of terror at the anomaly of an unchurched West Virginian, she added, “My Daddy always said you could worship God just as well by picking horn worms off the tomatoes as by praying in church.”

            Mrs. Sieferts said she had always wanted a garden.

            It occurred to Merlee later that what Dr. and Mrs. Sieferts were putting down was less like roots and more like the little feet English ivy uses to hang onto bricks.  Still, they were trying to do right, and you couldn’t help being flattered that they had chosen Kingfield in Cooper County out of all the places in the world.

            She stopped by the grocery store to get milk and at the check-out discovered a box of cinnamon sugar doughnuts in her shopping cart.  Alarmed, she realized that if she wasn’t careful, she would eat them all, one by one, instead of supper.  She thought of going to Wendy’s for a chili baked potato, but she decided on the leftover lasagna in her refrigerator.  She could tell that food was going to be about the only thing to cheer her up tonight.  They had changed the clocks a week ago, and every evening she wanted to cry out: Nightfall, stand back!  Leave me the light!

            Driving up the hill, she came to the wide place in the road and saw the streetlight across the creek by Frankie's house and pulled over.  Frankie lived in Wilbur, a row of houses along the creek that belonged to the coal company in the old days.  Houses and creek both.  If she had thought of it earlier, she would have crossed at the car bridge and driven up.  But this would do: she could park here and take the footbridge practically to Frankie’s front door.  She liked the footbridge; the boards creaked and swayed just enough that you felt you were having a little adventure.

            There were no lights at Frankie’s, but Merlee knocked briskly, holding the sack of doughnuts in her free hand, pocketbook firmly on her shoulder.  After a while, the door cracked, and Frankie’s face appeared.

            “Hi Merlee,” she said.

            “You ought to have a light on when you’re home, Frankie.  How are your friends supposed to know you’re here?”

            Frankie whispered. “I can't talk now, Merlee.  Big Boss is back.”

            “I brought you a present.”

            Frankie's face broke up in a smile.  Frankie would do anything for anybody, and nobody ever did anything for her.  It used to make Merlee furious: why didn't Big Boss just take her out for ice cream or let her stroll up and down Wilbur and talk to the neighbors?

            “It's doughnuts.  I thought we'd have a cup of coffee and a doughnut.”

            Frankie glanced back into the house again.  “I don't have any coffee.”

            “Tea is fine.”  She pressed a little closer.  “I’ll tell you what, we'll give him a doughnut too, how does that sound?”

            “He don't eat much nowadays,” said Frankie, but she let Merlee in.  It was totally dark inside, and Merlee stopped for fear of busting her shin on the furniture.

            There was a rustling as Frankie went towards the kitchen, then the kitchen light came on.  Merlee had been right to wait, because two carefully aligned coffee tables with no space between them sat dead ahead.  Boss used to say he was investing in the antiques of the future, so he bought doubles of everything.  Merlee skirted coffee tables, sofas, and two upright pianos and went in the kitchen.  She took out the doughnuts and set them on the table.  “I’m not afraid of Big Boss, you know, Frankie.  I wasn't afraid of him when he was alive, and I'm certainly not afraid of him now he's dead.”

            The table had a plate of margarine and open bags of peanuts and butterscotch candies.  Frankie said, “He won’t come out.  He stays in the bedroom.”

            “Good, then we can have a cup of tea.”

            Frankie wore bulky clothes: flannel shirt, sweat pants, men's socks and men’s slippers.  She put on the kettle and stood staring at it.

            Merlee said, “It’s cold in here.”

            “I didn’t start up the wood stove yet.  Big Boss never would let me fire it up till Thanksgiving.”

            “Oh, Frankie,” said Merlee.  “You don’t have to wait.  It’s been a year, hasn’t it? Didn’t he die about a year ago?”

            “He died the day after Thanksgiving,” said Frankie.  “Two days before, he was just telling me the right way to defrost the turkey, but he never finished because he couldn’t catch his breath.  I went over to Esther’s, and Esther called Emergency, and the ambulance came, and that was it, he was stuck in the hospital till he passed away.  Oh, he got mad too!  He knew that turkey was never going to get defrosted right, and he couldn’t talk, and he didn’t get his turkey, and he never liked to sleep anywhere but at home.  It was terrible, Merlee.  I still have the turkey.”

            Merlee wasn’t surprised.  The big chest model deep freeze was in the spare room where Boss warehoused boxes of canned goods and toilet paper.  He was always expecting something.  Atomic war, race riots.  Merlee once got into it with him by saying no enemy was dumb enough to cross the Allegheny front just to get to Cooper County.

            She said, “Do you suppose he came back to get his Thanksgiving dinner?”

            That made Frankie smile. “Naw, he couldn’t eat a Thanksgiving dinner, not the way he is now.  I’m going over to my sister’s anyhow.  She’s a grandma.  Her daughter had a baby.”

            “I heard.  That’s real good, Frankie.  I’m glad you’re going over there.”

            It was a strange little house.  The other people in Wilbur over the years had fixed up after they bought from the coal company: pastel blue or cream siding, a couple of evergreens for landscaping, jungle gyms for the kids.  But Boss had his own ideas.  He improvised a tall metal chimney for the woodstove and reinforced the original framing with concrete blocks. Boss retired at top pay as a mechanic in the mines, but he liked to do things himself.  So there were the blocks and the tin pipe sticking up the air like a fat flagpole, and oh yes the biggest satellite dish in Wilbur on the roof, only he didn’t allow Frankie to watch tv.

            Merlee said, “You ought to bake that turkey and get rid of some furniture.”

            Frankie said, “Naw, I like things they way he did.  I don't cook much with just me to eat it.”  They drank tea from glass mugs and ate doughnuts.   Frankie said, “I was thinking about getting me a little dog.”

            “Do it.  Me, I do enough taking care of people.  I like living alone.  I’m not saying I never get lonely.  Maybe you got lonely, Frankie, and that's why Big Boss came back.  Maybe if you get the dog, he won’t come back anymore.”

            “Big Boss came back because he likes it better here.”

            “I bet he does,” said Merlee.  “I bet the service is a lot better here than the place he went.  Can I see him?”

            “You want to visit Big Boss?”

            Actually, Merlee wasn't so sure.  She had this mental image of the taxidermy mother in Psycho, but she said, “Sure I do.”

            Frankie brought the kettle back to a boil and got another mug and teabag.  She put the mug of tea and a doughnut on a dinner plate.  “He don't eat much,” she said, “but he likes sweet things.”

            After all, thought Merlee, the adrenalin flow lifts you out of the doldrums.  She kept her coat on and carried her pocketbook, just in case she had to make a quick getaway.

            The bedroom had red taffeta drapes on two walls and a low-hanging gold and crystal chandelier.  Propped on the red satin bed pillow was a framed color photograph of a young man in uniform and a tray with candy and empty candy wrappers.  “Well look at that,” said Merlee.  “I forgot he was in Vietnam.”  She wondered if something bad happened to Boss in Vietnam.

            Frankie put the new plate on the tray.  “He never went to Vietnam.  He stayed in Germany.  Didn’t you, Boss?” 

            Merlee moved close to look at the picture.  His face was the size of a large doll's, a young man in uniform, greenish tinted, smooth cheeks.  The big clown grin had a certain mischievous attractiveness if you didn’t know him.

             Frankie said, “Look here, Big Boss.  Look who came to see you.  Here’s Merlee.”  She reached over and tapped her fingernails on the glass over his face.  She said,  “First time I saw him, he was in uniform.  He come up the road to see somebody, and I was standing in front of my house, and I saw him and he saw me.”  She leaned closer to the photo.  “Hey Big Boss, don't you want your candy?   How about a doughnut? Merlee brought you a doughnut. Well, if you aren’t going to come out of there, I can’t make you.  See how he is?  He's just a shadow of his former self.”

            Merlee felt her old urge to cause a little trouble when she was around Boss.  “Hey Boss,” she said.  “I’m trying to get Frankie to fire up the woodstove.  I want her to do some crocheting, too.”

            Frankie glanced from Merlee to the portrait.  “Oh, I never crochet anymore, Merlee.  Big Boss don’t like it.”

             “Boss,” said Merlee, “It was mean of you to forbid Frankie to do things she liked.  See that, Frankie?  I'm saying it to his face.”

            “Ho!” Frankie's eyes got big.  “Hey, Big Boss, try this doughnut Merlee brought you.”  She broke off a piece and stuck it up to the glass. 

            “Yep,” said Merlee, “That's right, Boss.  Frankie is eating doughnuts and she’s going to heat this place up, and crochet– she’s going to do whatever she wants to.  Get herself a puppy!”

            Frankie mashed the piece of doughnut into the glass, over his face, his uniform hat, his uniform tie.  Smashed a piece and another piece.  “There's tea, too!” she shouted.  “Wake up, Boss!  Drink your tea!”

            “Let's go out and give him a chance to eat it,” said Merlee.

            “You eat that!” Frankie shouted at him over her shoulder as they went out.  When they were in the living room, she said, “He wouldn't never let me get away with that in the old days, but I get tired of him turning down everything I offer him!”

            Merlee was ready to go home. She thought of her own warm, gas-heated house and the lasagna.  “I doubt he needs much nourishment these days,  Frankie,” she said.  “He’s dead, you know.”

            “I know,” she said.  “He don't act like his old self at all.”     

            “Listen here, Frankie.  You just keep that in mind.  There’s no way he can do anything but stay right there in the bedroom.  If he tries to cause you any trouble, you get somebody to drive you over to my house, okay?”

            Frankie winked.  “I was telling a story in there,” she said.  “I’ve been crocheting all the time, even when he came back.  I don't mind having Big Boss back, as long as he just stays in there.  I just sleep on the couch in the living room, and it’s real comfortable.”

            Merlee moved toward the door.  “Well, I know I sure wouldn’t want C.T. back.  I mean, C.T. isn’t dead that I know of, but once I finish with something, I like it to stay finished.”

            “Oh Merlee,” said Frankie, “you’d  take C.T. back.”

            “I would not!” To Merlee’s surprise, her face heated up.  “Everything he put me through!  C.T. and me, we have been over for fifteen years.  I’d never take him back!  And to tell you the truth, I don’t think you should be taking Boss back either.”  Merlee got hold of herself, remembered that she was here to help Frankie.  “But if he starts that stuff about your breasts again, you tell him to mind his own business, okay?”

            Frankie said, “Aw, Merlee, I  knew you’d never let the doctor do it.”

            Merlee was at once touched and annoyed.  “You were depending on me?”

            “You always treated me nice, Merlee,” said Frankie.

            “Oh Frankie, honey,” said Merlee.  “You get along okay in this world, don't you?”

           

            Frankie remembered the time Merlee gave her a sandwich.  It had been late fall of the only year Frankie went to high school.  She dropped out that spring to take care of her father, and then she married Boss.  There hadn’t been anything at the house to fix for lunch that day, so while the other kids ate, Frankie went for a walk, enjoying the sun and the view from the hill.  You could see all the wires strung across, connecting the brick buildings downtown.  In the distance the hills bumped up toward Goshen where Frankie lived. 

            As she circled the building, she came across Merlee and her friends under the big pine tree the town always decorated for Christmas.  They were laughing and eating their lunches out of paper sacks, boys and girls, a big crowd of them.  C.T. Savage was there.  He was the best looking of the boys and he already owned a motorcycle, but he hadn’t got it running yet.  A puff of wind carried a nice smell of meat and mustard to Frankie.  Merlee yelled, “Hey Frankie, do you want my sandwich, Frankie?”

            Now with most people, Frankie would have figured they were making fun of her, but Merlee came over and said, “I'm only going to eat the apple.  That dumb C.T. told me I’m getting fat, so I’m going on a diet.”

            “C.T. isn’t dumb,” said Frankie, “and you’re not fat!”

            Merlee insisted, so Frankie took the sandwich.

            That sandwich had hand-cut white bread, buttered, and slices of homemade meatloaf that exactly fit the bread, ketchup baked in a crust on top of the meatloaf, and mustard spread over everything. It was one of the best things Frankie ever ate, and that was saying something because later on, Boss taught her to cook some tasty dishes including cheese biscuits and sausage and pepper sandwiches.

            Big Boss always said he taught her to cook and everything else she knew.

            “Frankie,” Boss said one day not long before he went to the hospital, “Frankie, you never had sense to move the shit house.”

            Boss had been in his reclining chair in the living room aimed so he could oversee her in the kitchen.  He was too tired and too far away to reach her, so she said, “I may not have know’d about plumbing when I was a girl, but I know about it now.”

            “Thanks to me goddam it!” yelled Boss, but he stayed in his chair.  “You show me some gratitude, Old Girl!  You were sunk in a shit hole, and I pulled you out!  You show me some gratitude!”

            It was true that getting married had been the best thing— the only thing— that ever happened to Frankie.  But she didn’t like having her family called a shit hole.

            She ate another doughnut and drank a glass of milk. Then she double-locked the door and set the chair against it, to be sure nobody was going to break in on her.  Big Boss used to make her do that when he worked the night shift.  He also made her practice what to do if a rapist broke in.  She had to practice it wearing her baby doll nightie, and Boss played the rapist.  One time, after she got raped, he tied her up in a chair with her clothes off, and she had to figure out a way to hop the chair over to the door.  Another time, for a punishment, he made her go outside with her clothes off.

            “That was your idea of fun, wasn't it, Boss?” said Frankie.  “Well I never liked it, running around bare ass, pretending.  I never liked it one bit!”

            She got the night tray together.  She put out a pint of Bacardi rum, then some candles on a sheet of foil so the candles wouldn't start a fire.  She got out the last pair of sexy bikini pants with a slit in the crotch.  She carried these things into the bedroom and closed the door.

            She switched trays and rearranged Big Boss against the pillow, lit the candles, and turned off the lights.  The flames flickered off the chandelier.  She got a tissue out of her pocket and wiped the smashed doughnut off his face.

            “I'm going to tell you something, Boss,” she said.  “I got rid of the baby doll nighties.  I never liked ‛em.  I threw out the sexy underpants too, but this pair got stuck in the bottom of the sock drawer, so you can have them.  And another thing, Boss, I went to the doctor.  I went to the doctor, and I asked him about cutting them off.  He said he wouldn't do it.   And even if he would, Merlee Savage wouldn’t let him.  And I'm glad.  So here's the way things are going to be, Boss.  I'm going to do the best I can for you.  I'm going to set up the bedroom just the way you want it.  Here's all your stuff, including the damn underpants, but I’m not putting them on!”

            She waited for his reaction.

            “Cat got your tongue, Boss?”

            She poured some rum in a little glass with a gold rim, and held it up to the portrait.

            “See how I'm taking care of you, Boss?  In this room, you can have everything just like you like it.  But in the rest of the house, I'm going to do what I damn well please.  I'm saying that to your face, so you either like it or lump it.”

            He held his peace.

            She blew out the candles, but left him a little night light plugged into the outlet.  In the other room, she took the portraits of her family off the pianos and carried them into the kitchen.  She wondered if anybody else dead would come back, and if they did, she hoped it would be her little sister.  She set the photos on the kitchen table, her dead sister next to her dead parents next to her live sister next to her live sister's kids and new grand-baby.  Then she got out her crocheting and started work on a peach-colored hat for the new baby.   She twisted yarn around the needle and her fingers took off happily on their own.
   After a while, she got up and turned on all the lamps in the living room.  If Big Boss didn't like it, she wouldn't give him his rum and candy.  If he got real troublesome, she'd take away the sexy underpants.              

 

✻