Holly and I planned to catch the Powhatan Arrow for our train trip down to Matewan at a little whistle-stop south of Huntington called Fort Gay, and I flew there from Billville, whipping around those mountain roads like a maniac, until Holly reached over and jerked on my ear, with the admonition to slow the fuck down, dearest. We arrived way too early of course, and while we waited for the train we sat in the Red Ride sipping coffee we had bought back up the road at a truck stop. We watched as other vehicles began to arrive, pickups and old cars packed with train-excursion pilgrims like ourselves, extended families of the most amazingly friendly, down-home but often, frankly, enormously fat and homely folks you could ever expect to meet. Because it might become her own home state someday soon, Holly told me she had been reading up on old West Virginia. We got into a little tiff about the state flower of West Virginia, Holly claiming it was the Mountain Laurel, and me informing her smugly that it was the Rhododendron. We made a bet. If she was right, I would finally tell her exactly how old I was. If I was right, she would tease and torture me with sexy stories from her past, packed with dirty details, while tickling old mister monkey into a titillated tizzy.
When we heard the one long whistle blast that announced the train was arriving, we pressed forward toward the tracks with the crowd to watch it come around the bend. Hot dog! I reflected when I laid eyes on that wondrous machine. I was as excited as a kid to be riding the finest steam locomotive ever built, the Class J Number 611. It had first rolled out of the Norfolk & Western’s Roanoke Shops and into service May 29, 1950, at a cost of $251,544. The old Number 611 was one of fourteen gracefully streamlined “Northern” (4-8-4 wheel arrangement) locomotives built by the railway between 1941 and 1950. All the Js wore the distinctive black, Tuscan red, and gold livery that characterized nw equipment of the time. The Js were so well built that a handful of men could pull one along level track with a rope. After pulling the last steam passenger train from Bluefield to Roanoke in October 1959, old Number 611 had been retired from service and eventually donated to the Virginia Museum of Transportation in Roanoke for display, the only J to escape the cutting torch and scrap heap. Old Number 611 was removed from the museum in October 1981, and restored to working condition for use in excursion service. It was a beautiful old machine and, buddy, I was going to get to ride on it.
We found a seat all to ourselves in the very back of one of the cars, and Holly pressed her little nose against the window like a kid, making breath angels on the glass as we pulled out. Holly looked lovely that day. She wore a short black skirt over a sort of paisley-print thong bodysuit, and she had a black cloth choker around her neck. I ran a finger along one of her smooth, bare thighs and told her she looked like a postcard picture of a French hooker, and I would pay her anything. —Your life, Holly said, and looked at me with the limpid eyes of a silent movie star, and I put the check in the mail.
An older couple with a big-eared kid sat across the aisle from us, and, eavesdropping on them, it became clear the kid was the older woman’s grandson, and the old coot was granny’s new boyfriend. The oldest boyfriend on the train (thank God!) passed the kid a few bucks, and the little fellow scampered up the aisle in the direction of the club car, and then in a flash the old coot was all over granny. The old rooster ruled, as the kids say, and Holly was mightily impressed. She jabbed me in the side and said —See there, baby, you old hillbilly boys never get enough.
When the big-eared boy came screaming insanely back down the aisle, he was wearing a new baseball cap that was balanced on the tops of those dumbo ears, and he was carrying a half-eaten hot dog in each hand. The old Romeo and granny disentangled themselves in a heartbeat, and sat up panting. Granny looked over and gave us a gap-tooth grin and rolled her eyes and winked. She must have weighed three hundred pounds. Her boyfriend was skinny as a rail. What I speculated was that she was this mountainous West Virginia widow-woman waiting to be mined again. He was this old, skinny, disabled, coal-mining coot who could use some deep- seam work. He had been a deep miner in his youth, before his back bent and his lungs turned black, and he had to make his way on the surface now, is what I figured. —Ma’am, I said to her, after she swiped the mustard off the boy’s mouth and forced him to sit down before the window with the admonition to watch it like it was goddamned television, —Ma’am, I said, —could I ask you a little question, please? —Why, shore, honey, what is it?
—Well, I said, —it’s kinda dumb, but we were wondering what the state flower of West Virginia is. —Why, sugar, the old woman said, —the state flower of West Virginia is the goddamned rhododendron. I thanked her from the bottom of my heart and wiggled my eyebrows suggestively at Holly. Holly jabbed me in the side and whispered —Oh, what does she know? Somebody with no teeth. How old are you really? Why don’t you just tell me? I said: —It is you who is going to be revealing succulent secrets. —You might just get more succulent secrets than you can swallow, Holly said and gave me that sort of holding-back- a-smile, out-of-the-corner-of-her-eye, sassy, enigmatic look that always won. When she looked at me like that, what did it mean? Did she truly love me? How could she, for God’s sake? Was she nuts? I was old enough to be her daddy, for God’s sake. I tried to conquer her back with my steely-eyed, frowny gunfighter stare, but to no avail.
As we passed through the little towns along the Tug Fork, Glenhayes, Kermit, Naugatuck, Nolon, Crum, folks came out onto their sagging porches or to the ends of their steep, fenced yards to wave at the train from the past passing through their lives, and we waved back. I told Holly that a fellow West Virginia rednecky writer named Lee Maynard had written a real good, sad, funny, albeit outrageous, hillbilly book, a novel, about a boy’s life in the town of Crum. The novel’s title was, well, Crum, and one of my favorite lines in it was a description of Kentucky as being that “mysterious land across the Tug Fork full of pigfuckers.”
I tried to impress Holly with my knowledge of the Tug Fork Valley and its turbulent history. I related its legends and lore and tall tales, some of which, of course, I made up on the spot. Holly couldn’t get over how lovely the river was whenever we could glimpse it through the trees, and how lushly wild and intensely green the rugged hillsides were. I tried to impress her with my knowledge of West Virginia’s unique flora and fauna, and told her of winged cats, of giant hairy humanoids, of spectral hogs roaming deep in the woods, and of snakes that bit the ends of their own tails when they rolled down hillsides like hoops, but Holly didn’t bite.
Whenever the train rolled into a long, dark tunnel, Holly and I, following the example of the old Casanova coot and granny (whenever the big-eared boy was out running up and down screaming like a banshee in the aisles), necked like teenagers. —Are you really and truly having a good time? Holly had asked me once when we came up for air at the end of a long tunnel. —I’m having about the best goddamned time I’ve had in my life, I told Holly and I meant it.
—Goddamned rhododendron, I leaned over and whispered into Holly’s cute litde pearly shell of an ear. —Goddamned rhododendron is any of a genus of the heath family of widely cultivated carnivorous shrubs and trees with alternate leaves and showy flowers that suck and swallow, I whispered.