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When the Bolton-Nash family chose to leave the city and build their retirement dream house on Snavely’s Mountain, I’m not sure who suffered the most culture shock, Stan Bolton and Nathan Nash… or the townspeople of Parrott, Ohio. Personally, I thought it was time for a little diversity, and let’s face it; Snavely Parrott was a bit of a character himself. I think he would have appreciated the uproar these two quiet, educated men caused just by being themselves.
Moonie and I live the next hill over and have a good view of Snavely’s Mountain, so we were first to see the parade of back hoes and bucket trucks making their way up the mountain as soon as the weather had cleared in June. They slapped that house up in record time. Just between you and me? It might be pretty, but with all those windows, heating the darn thing has got to be a nightmare. Nobody saw much of the boys while the house was being built, but at the end of August, the paving truck couldn’t have been even half way back to Zanesville before Moonie was hollering at me.
“Sarah, come look at this. Hurry up woman, before you miss it!”
I debated diverting the contents of my watering can from the parched and drooping snapdragons to the top of Moonie’s head; I just hate it when he bosses me around like that. But, curiosity got the better of me, so I abandoned my watering to go see what the man was bellowing about. I made sure I didn’t hurry, though; he will eventually learn he doesn’t own me.
“Moonie, what in the sam hill are you doing with that telescope?” I yelled when I saw him and his red-neck friend, Jigger, at the edge of our property jostling each other as they both tried to peer through the eyepiece at the same time.
“What’s that there feather thing on the skinny one’s neck?” Jigger exclaimed.
I pushed my way between them with a good, solid cha cha of my hips and had a look myself, strictly for the purpose of answering Jigger’s question you understand, I’m not the nosy busy-body type. Sure enough, the skinny one was actually wearing a bright pink feather boa over his t-shirt and denim shorts as he supervised the moving men hauling furniture out of the truck. And what furniture that was!
I couldn’t tear myself away, a white couch with the back all swoopy like a wave, a chair that looked like Cleopatra herself could have sat in it; each piece that came out of the back of the truck was more fabulous than the one before. It was everything I had not to pull myself away from that telescope to run to the phone and call my friend Lana.
“I heard there weren’t no women in that family. They’s just a couple of fairies.”
“You’ll stop that talk right this instant Jigger McHenry!” I slapped his shoulder hard enough to send him staggering across the grass. “The proper term is homosexual, and if that’s too damn hard for you, just say gay!” I stormed off to the house right after that. I do not see what Moonie sees in that ignorant hillbilly; every time he opens his mouth I just want to sew his lips shut.
That night I called an emergency meeting of the ladies auxiliary. Mostly our job was to organize fund raising dinners for the volunteer fire department and hand out treat bags for the bank on Halloween, but we also served as the welcome wagon. A service rarely used, let me tell you, nobody ever moves in Parrot.
I’d barely got ‘em all settled on the sun porch and handed out the ice tea the next day before the arguing started.
“I’m not baking for rabble like those new people, Sarah, so if that’s what you called this meeting for, I’m going home right now.” Holy Mary, I’m too good for anybody, said after she’d chugged down her tea and was jiggling her glass in the air for more like I was some servant.
“Shame on you Mary, it’s our job to welcome all the new people to Parrott, no matter how strange they are.” Christy answered before I could knock Mary off my best lawn chair.
“They’re just people for God’s sake, what’s the matter Mary, you afraid it will rub off?” Lana always was one to cut right to the heart of the matter. That’s what I like best about her.
“Sodom and Gomorra, sin and decadence, that’s all there is on that mountain.” Mary hissed through her blubbery lips as she glared at Lana.
“Love thy neighbor as thy self. My goodness Sarah, your snapdragons look marvelous, are you feeding them something special?” Christy was never comfortable in these kinds of confrontational circumstances. Might be because she’s no bigger than a minute.
“It’s an abomination to God, their behavior.” Mary said leaning back in my chair all smug and self-important.
“You’re an abomination you old cow, ever hear of all things in moderation? That means mashed potatoes too!” I clapped my hand over my mouth; I really hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
“Nice one, Sarah, you sure do know how to make a girl feel welcome in your home.” Lana yelled after Mary’s retreating back. “How come there’s no girl word for prick? Cause she is one.”
“Actually there is…”
“NO CHRISTY!” We yelled in unison before she dropped the C bomb. We lost the rest of the afternoon talking about everything wrong with Mary, including her dog and insufferable bore of a husband.
Life took over before we could call another meeting. Mary wasn’t speaking to any of us, Christy and Lana had to get their kids ready to go back to school and I just couldn’t muster up the courage to go on over there by myself.
Despite the fact that no one had seen hide nor hair of those boys since the moving van pulled away, they were the talk of the town. The two old veterans that hung out at the barber shop reckoned they were having secret orgies up there. The girls at the beauty shop spent days debating whether they were born that way or someone made them gay. Me and Moonie didn’t talk about it much, he kept a watch on the car loads of teenage boys that had suddenly made it their habit to drag down the road at the bottom of our respective perches, whooping and hollering some really ugly things. I peeked through the telescope every once in awhile, just to make sure they were okay you understand, it’s not natural to never leave a house.
Bolton-Nash had been in residence for two weeks when the kids went back to school and they decided to venture out of paradise. I was handing Moonie his lunch bucket through the truck window when I caught sight first of the bright red Volkswagen moving down the mountain and then the huddle of kids at the bottom waiting for the school bus by the stop sign. When the little car and its occupants glided to a stop at the sign, the girls ogled and giggled and whispered behind their hands like girls do. It was those teenaged boys that made the chill run up my spine. They lined up shoulder to shoulder just like they do during the National Anthem at their football games, arms crossed, fearsome glares directed right into the drivers side window. Bolton-Nash had to pull halfway into the road just to get around them. But that was nothing compared to what was to come.
It started with pranks, their mailbox knocked off its post, rotten tomatoes pelted at their door. Everyone in town knew it was going on, and who was doing it, but nobody, and I’m shamed to admit myself included, did anything to stop those kids. As Halloween approached, there was talk that the fella’s were getting the business in town too. The barbershop was always mysteriously closing just when they went down for a haircut, the checkers at the Stop and Shop made ‘em lay their money on the counter instead of snatching it out of their hand like the rest of us. Rita, the mail girl, told me that Doc Hendricks had their names posted on a “decline service” list right on his receptionist’s desk blotter.
Every preacher in town, and that’s considerable since Parrott has a church on every block, seemed to be devoting their weekly rantings to the evil’s of homosexuality.
“I reckon somebody’s forgotten all that judge not lest you be judged stuff in the Bible.” Moonie said to me coming home from one of those sermons. The next Sunday, he said we was closer to God on our hill than we was down in town, so we’d just stay home and do our worshippin. This was one time I was glad of Moonie’s bossiness.
Things came to a head on Halloween night. Way up on the hill like we are, we don’t get trick-or-treaters, and with the wind screaming around our old house like a banshee, and rain pelting the windows, we weren’t expecting visitors of any kind. I was just finishing up the supper dishes and trying to remember which of my shows was on the TV that night when Moonie walked through with his shotgun.
“Sarah, go down to the basement, and don’t come back up until I call you.”
“What’s going on? Where ya going with that gun?”
I grabbed a dishtowel to dry my hands quick and followed him out the back door, snatching up my slicker and an umbrella on the way.
“Do what I tell you woman, get back in the house!” Moonie gave me that fearsome look he’s always trying to use to make me mind. It never worked for my Daddy; I can’t begin to wonder why he thinks it would work for him.
I lost my will to argue with Moonie when I looked past his shoulder and saw the headlights of what had to be half of Parrott coming up from town and turning onto Bolton-Nash’s road.
“Moonie, what’s going on?” I whispered into the dark.
“Call the police, Sarah, just this once please do what I’m askin you and call the police.” Moonie took off for the garage and I saw him driving the truck down back on the old abandoned logging road that also led to the boy’s house.
I thundered back into the house like an elephant and raced for the phone, prayin’ every minute that the rain hadn’t knocked the line out. Once I placed the call I was wishing the line had been dead, it might as well have been, the dispatcher didn’t have to tell me twice that “there was no such address” before I knew just what was going on.
I once got chased across a pasture by old man Hidocks raging bull, and that was not near as scared as I was feeling with the rain thundering down, the cars and trucks continuing to pull up the hill and my Moonie right in the middle of it all along with those two defenseless strangers. The suspense was causing my head to ache so I ran to the closet to search for the binoculars. Lana and Christy banged on the door just as I was pulling ‘em out from under the piles of Moonie’s magazines scaring me so bad I cracked my head on the shelf. Considering what was goin on the next hill over, my bumped noggin was a small thing.
“Whole damn town’s gone crazy!” Lana pulled me out of the closet and took the binoculars.
“I tried to call the police and do you know what they said?” Christy’s eyes were as big as china plates; she was clinging to my arm, her nails digging through my sweater adding arm pain to my aching head.
“No such address… I know, I tried to call too…”
We followed Lana out to the sun porch, the three of us huddling together against the rain blowing through the screened walls. There were so many cars on the mountain the house was lit up like a movie set. Even without the binoculars we could see groups of people milling everywhere. I heard Lana gasp as she finally got the binoculars in focus and saw exactly what was going on over there.
“Sons of bitches are throwing rocks!” She swore something worse under her breath. “Those damn Crumbson boys are taking a tire iron to the garage door… dear god they’ve broken the front window!” Lana let the binoculars drop and dangle from the strap around her neck. The three of us were too stunned and horrified to do anything. I remembered Moonie’s order for me to get to the basement, so that’s where I went, dragging my two friends with me.
We clung to each other like a six armed statue right under the bare light bulb by the washing machine. Just as our feet were getting numb from the cold concrete, I heard the tread of many feet on the ceiling above us. We all held our breath, the hair on our arms standing straight up. I’m just one hill over, you understand, and that mob was crazy. Christy had just started to whimper when the door opened and Moonie leaned his head down the stairs.
“What in the hell are you doing down here?”
There are days when I’d like to chuck that man right off the rocky side of this hill. “You told me to ‘get to the basement’ when you went stomping off into the night you thick headed buffoon.” I squared up ready to really give that man a piece of my mind, when two more heads leaned down beside Moonie’s.
“Stan, look at the room in this basement! We should have had a basement instead of an attic in our house.”
The presence of Bolton-Nash in my house stunned me silent. I’d probably still be standin there with my jaw unhinged if Lana wouldn’t have stepped in.
“Well, Nash and Bolton I presume? You boys are all lookin a little worse for wear, Sarah don’t you have some coffee going up there in the kitchen?”
By the time I’d served coffee all around and warmed up the left over meat loaf and mashed potatoes we’d had for supper, I was feeling more like myself. Turns out the skinny one was Nathan Nash. He’d retired from the public library. Stan Bolton was as tall as my Moonie, but had muscles on his muscles and dark hair peppered with silver. He’d retired from the State which explained the arrival of what looked like a platoon of country sheriff’s vehicles charging up their hill when I was passing out apple pie. They’re quite nice fellows, with the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen.
We were nodding over the dirty dishes when a deputy knocked on the door and told us they’d rounded up almost all of the culprits and would be holding them in the county jail until morning. The Deputy and Moonie wanted the boys to press charges, but they were resistant. When Moonie couldn’t get them to budge an inch he threw up his hands in submission and escorted the deputy to the door. By morning I knew what Moonie had done once he was out of sight of Bolton-Nash.
“Sarah, wake up honey, we’ve got to go to town.”
I once had a teacher that told me I had ‘an insatiable curiosity’. That’s a right nice way to define what I have, isn’t it? Moonie didn’t have to ask me again, I was up, dressed and frying eggs before he’d even finished taking his shower. I looked over at Snavely’s Mountain as we headed down the hill toward town, I couldn’t see one of those multitude of windows still complete in its frame.
Moonie pulled up in front of the KofC Hall, the only place in Parrott big enough for a crowd. I looked at him curiously, but he had that look he gets when he’s decided to act deaf and dumb, so I just followed him in and looked around at the mostly empty seats.
The Mayor was already there, sitting in a folding chair up on the platform staring at his feet. The three members of our police department stood at attention against one wall. The three antique shop owners, the girls from the beauty shop, Mr. Lemon from the hardware store, some of the school board and Mary, looking decidedly nervous and not in the company of her husband.
Moonie left me in a seat on the aisle and took a chair next to the Mayor. He sat arms crossed and head held high up there, staring a hole through the police officers. Lana, Christy and their husbands joined me shortly after and then we heard the rumble of vans, followed by a parade of county sheriffs each leading a dozen Parrott residents, all looking much less cocky than the characters wrecking the boys house the night before.
To make a long story short, which is against my better nature, Moonie let the town have it for being narrow minded hooligans. He actually said hooligans right before he told them they ought to be ashamed of themselves. The Mayor added his comments to Moonie’s harangue and then brought Bolton-Nash in for a question and answer session. Turns out most of the folks that got caught up in the craziness of Halloween night and the weeks preceding it were fueled more by ignorance and beer than real fear.
By the time the meeting broke up, the boys had more volunteers lined up to repair their house than they could use. Not everyone came around; Parrott’s just big enough to harbor their fair share of bigots and ignoramuses. But quite a lot of good came out of that exchange of information. Stan’s job with the state had something to do with computers. He donated a computer lab to the school and teaches classes there for anyone who wants to learn. Nathan called in some favors and managed to get us a branch library on Main Street, something we’d never been able to accomplish. Unfortunately, they must drive clear to the city to get their hair cut and the girl at the Stop and Shop will never come around.
Life has settled back to normal around Parrott, but this time with a little diversity.
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