Our Lady of Variety

By Pat Tiffin

Everyone believes in miracles...until one happens. Then all hell breaks loose.
Carlene Stiles is a wannabe wild child living in a trailer park, wondering what happened to her life and selling a little weed to get by. Then one night behind her doublewide, down from the sky in a column of light comes a woman looking for all the world like the momma of baby Jesus.
The Virgin Mary has a message and Carlene is the one to deliver it. She isn’t convinced and neither is the town of Variety, North Carolina. Carlene’s isn’t exactly what you’d call virgin material. But when inexplicable phenomena rock the state, no one quite knows what to believe.
The media is swarming the town and the faithful keep coming. There’s bus of nuns, an old drunk claiming to carry the soul of Elvis Presley and a woman desperate to find her son. Tensions flair as the town is torn in two. Is this the work of God or the Devil?
Through all the story's twists and turns, it all comes back to Carlene. With life and death at stake, she's forced to decide what she believes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pat Tiffin
• Release date: Sep 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005994747

Pat Tiffin

Pat is a former yankee who’s made her home in North Carolina. Her first novel was “Watching Vanessa”, a story of women who stalk their friend’s stalker (eBook coming soon.) Her second novel, “No New Messages”, is the story of a 9/11 widow coming apart at the seams. She ends up in a small NC town near Wendell. With help from friends, a lost puppy, and a broken-down house, she finally comes to grips with her past. Our Lady of Variety is the first of a series of books on the Virgin Mary. Pat continues to be fascinated by Virgin Mary sightings around the world.

Book preview

Preface

In 1994, a Florida woman named Diane Duyser made herself a grilled cheese sandwich for breakfast. As she took her first bite, she saw an image of the Virgin Mary burned into the toasted bread. Duyser immediately stopped eating and put the sandwich in a plastic box with a couple of cotton balls and kept it on her nightstand for the next decade. The sandwich did not deteriorate or get moldy, despite the container being less than airtight.

In November 2004, for reasons unknown, Ms. Duyser put the sandwich up for bid on the auction site eBay. eBay initially shut down the auction based on policy that a joke could not be auctioned. But Duyser was able to convince them she could deliver the real item, so the auction resumed.

She claims to have made the sandwich without butter or oil, an unusual approach to a traditional grilled sandwich. But it does provide the lone possibility of divine participation. Oil or fat could have possibly explained the lack of mold on a 10-year-old sandwich. There have been numerous theories presented on why the sandwich has stayed preserved, but no actual scientific inquiry was conducted.

The Catholic Church had no comment, nor does it appear that Ms. Duyser attempted to contact them. The sandwich sale garnered over a million views and eventually sold to an online casino for $28,000.

Chapter 1

Carlene Stiles chewed a piece of skin from around her thumbnail. The pain was surprisingly sharp, almost welcome in its distraction. This couldn’t be real. There was no question about that. None. You know that, she reminded herself. The problem was that she’d seen it with her own eyes. And heard it with her own ears.

There were only two choices.

She was either nuts or someone who looked a shitload like the Virgin Mary was showing up behind her doublewide.

****

Variety, North Carolina wasn’t much more than a couple of main roads crossing at a stoplight, a gas station or two, and a Rite Aid Drugs kitty-corner to the church. There was a bank, a bait shop and a few stores scattered around Zebulon Road. The town had fallen by the wayside.

There were just over two thousand people left now, give or take a baby or a wake. Half the town had left to find work, while the rest stayed to fight the inevitable. A good portion of the inventory at Big Frank’s Used Auto Paradise was repo’d pickup trucks, once a neighbor’s pride and joy.

Americans love the idea of small towns, like to imagine themselves rocking on porch swings, sipping Dr. Pepper while the kids ride bikes with streamers on the handles. They envision wide shady streets, little shops with homemade pepper jelly and boiled peanuts, field-fresh watermelon and sweet corn sold out of the back of pickup trucks in an empty lot just off Main Street. Truth be told, the only place Main Street was thriving was Disney World, where overpriced Mouseketeer ears and $5.00 soda pop somehow convinced folks they were living in a simpler time.

Small towns all across the country were dying and no one gave a damn much, less a dollar. Mills shuttering, no jobs, bad schools, old folks who had seen better days. The paint was peeling off those imaginary porches, eviction notices papering the doors, buildings and people beaten down and left to their own devices.

Broken bootstraps were everywhere.

****

That first Saturday when it happened, Carlene was sitting on the back deck smoking a cigarette and fanning herself with a Kohl’s circular, the summer heat as sticky as a convenience store honey bun. She had no real air conditioning, just ceiling fans to push the humidity in circles and a window unit that huffed and puffed trying to cool the bedroom.

Her lot was large, a big back yard nudging up to a natural sprawl of thick pines, cut through by an impromptu trail leading down to the Neuse River. It felt country, even with the faint sounds of trucks racing down the nearby highway.

The shed was over to the left, weather-beaten boards slowly curling and cracking in the Carolina sun. Poison ivy vines as thick as a man’s wrist straddled the door frame, wrapping around the rain gutter like a cobra snake. The walls tended to slant toward the right, moss growing on the shingles of the roof. Carlene planned to put her lawnmower in there someday if she could shore the walls up some.

Most nights she sat out here, looking around, taking pleasure in thinking of what the yard could be if she ever got off her ass and did the stuff she thought about. Carlene wasn’t much bothered that her ass always seemed to stay put. That’s what the deck was for, to talk with herself about how the future never quite turned out the way she always thought it would.

Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye. What was that?

Sparkles. At first, she thought it was a trick of the twilight, glimmers of a rising moon. The reflection of a neighbor’s headlights bouncing off the trailer park’s metal roofs. But no lights passed, no change as a cloud skittered over the moon. She sat up straighter, trying to make sense of the tiny bits of starlight tumbling downward, like a handful of glitter tossed into the air.

What the…?

Lower and lower it came, a twinkling column that slowly descended to the roof of the shed. Carlene stood up now, scanning the sky for something that would make sense of what she was seeing. But there was nothing. How could there be nothing?

The sparkles were slowly coming together, gaining mass and form. A person? It looked like a person, a woman! Even as that registered, she knew she couldn’t be seeing what she saw. Because a woman was standing on the roof of the shed, her long white dress puddling on the mossy shingles. Light transformed to flesh and bone.

There was a woman standing on the roof. Glowing.

What the hell?

Hardly, a female voice replied.

Who…how, Carlene stammered, staring. This isn’t funny, assholes, she called out, looking around. Expecting a reply, the hooting of drunken good ole boys having a laugh at her expense.

This is not a joke, Carlene. The woman said.

Carlene gasped. Who are you!

You know who I am.

Get out of here! I’m calling the cops! Carlene ran to the house, the woman’s soft laughter in her wake. She slammed the door, hands trembling and fought to slide the chain lock into place.

Her heart was doing a drum solo, what the fuck was going on! She was seeing things, that’s what! She peeked out the window, but the woman was gone. See, she told herself, it wasn’t real. A hallucination, that was it, a drug flashback, all that LSD in high school. That had to be it.

But it wasn’t, somehow she knew it wasn’t.

This was nuts! And it looked a lot like…but that was crazy. It couldn’t be her. How could it be her?

What if it was her?

It wasn’t.

But what if it was?

No. No freakin’ way. The Virgin Mary in Variety? That was insane.

And yet….

Chapter 2

Carlene Augusta Stiles had always been a wannabe wild child without passion or purpose. She was that girl on the fringe, never quite committing to more than a tattoo or a few extra holes in her ear. She’d made it through high school without incident or excellence, mostly skating by on pretty. It was the one thing she’d always been.

There were one or two close calls where expulsion could have been imminent, arrest likely. That time smoking weed with the mechanics at the school bus garage where they had to roll her under a van. She’d been known to borrow a car here and there, racing down back roads, radio blaring, tossing Budweiser cans toward the ditches.

Carlene was nothing like her momma wanted her to be.

Louise Merlene Augusta Stiles, nee Cobbs, was shabbily gentile, with the swooning skills inherent in Southern women of a certain generation. She’d made a single mistake in her life, she’d murmur, telling and re-telling the sad tale of her shotgun wedding. Louise was forever sullied by a late-night tussle with a zipper, thrusting and humping behind steamy windows. The unexpected consequence was an unwelcome baby daughter, forever held responsible for her parents’ lust in the night.

Carlene’s daddy had come and gone so quick – no pun intended – she barely remembered his name. Every picture of him burned, every relative down to the last cousin on her father’s side denounced as contemptuous inbreeders. Carlene was the only living reminder of him, her momma’s cross to bear, the reason gentlemen callers were so few and far between, to hear her mother tell it.

As if she was a character in a Tennessee William’s play.

But the guilt was not lost on her daughter. At an early age, Carlene took to asking men if they wanted to marry her mother. Louise was old-school in a world that was moving on. She was inclined to flutter about, gently fanning herself in the heat, whether it was hot or not. She was always looking to find some strong chivalrous man willing to catch her at the first sign of a faint, gracefully collapsing on the nearest piece of furniture, preferably a chaise or settee.

Her daughter was a disappointment and her momma was prone to tell anyone who’d listen.

More of a tomboy than a skirt-twirler, Carlene wasn’t much for tradition, never aspired to be a cheerleader or a homecoming queen. She flat out refused to participate in the Little Miss Azalea pageant, causing her momma great distress, particularly when Eulie Wicker’s daughter took home the crown, bowed legs and all. She didn’t care about manners or manicures, though she once did color her fingernails bright green with a permanent magic marker, shaming her momma beyond mention.

When Carlene hit high school, her mother went on a full-time manhunt, visiting country music bars and brushing up against recent widowers at pretty much every church in the county. Carlene was mostly on her own, with her one best friend Emma and a history teacher, Mr. Walsh, who took more than paternal interest in her. She floated through her days, no real direction much less a plan, no goals or any clue how to set them. She had never been the type to commit, which hadn’t always mattered much but these days she was doing some looking at her life.

Going nowhere fast wasn’t quite as easy as it used to be.

After graduation, Carlene took a factory job like everyone else. Her momma finally found happiness on the Internet with a man down in Texas. Louise ran off to Plano to live with her darling Harlan, air kissing her daughter’s cheeks and driving away without a backward glance. Carlene ended up with the trailer and most of the junk in it.

Then she got hurt on the job, waiting forever for workman’s comp to come through. Twice divorced at 26, living in a trailer park, she was the poster child for poor white trash. She rode a beat-up old Harley, rescued from an ex-husband, the engine growling like a pissed off pit bull. The Harley wasn’t registered or insured, spitting oil and leaving a trail of black smoke in its wake.

Carlene had baby pink hair that tumbled down over her shoulders, the natural blond randomly peeking through, looking a bit like a dried rosebud trapped between the pages of a book. She had a tramp stamp above her ass and a tattoo on her boob that said, Need Directions? There was a fake diamond in the fold of her nostril and a series of pussy hounds in her bed.

Workman’s comp finally came, just after the plant shut down. Now she sold a little weed for extra cash and did hair for some ladies since Gina’s Beauty Emporium went out of business. The town was already on its last legs when the latest recession hit.

She spent most nights on the deck, thinking about what to do. She decided to swear off men, if for no other reason than her one-nights-stands were drinking all her beer and smoking all her dope.

Pretty wasn’t gonna last forever, Carlene knew that. It was the one truth her momma had taught her. All those folks who expected so little from her, she’d been happy to live down to their perception of her potential. It had been so easy just to let life happen or at least it used to be.

Until SHE showed up.

****

The Reverend Elvis hailed from Las Vegas, an honest and true native son of Sin City he’d say, his eyes gleaming in his black leather face. The Reverend loved his hell and brimstone and had a tendency to speak in tongues, especially when he ran out of his meds. He spent most days wandering the Strip, delivering sermons and wishing blessings on passersby. He handed out scraps of newspaper and old candy bar wrappers as scriptures, fables of bread and fishes, water and wine. Reverend Elvis was partial to wine, probably more so than anything else, except Jesus and maybe Graceland.

When Elvis died, his soul, it come home to Vegas. Ain’t no place folks loved Elvis more, the Reverend would say to anyone who’d listen or to no one at all. One day, there I was, just walking down the street, walking down the street praising the Lord and bam! The Reverend slapped his chest and chortled. I feel like something hits me hard. Right here. He hit himself again. Knocks me right back, and I go down on my knees, ready to meet my Maker. Then suddenly, and you’ll be thinking this is crazy, he added, pausing for effect. I found myself singing.

His battered face broke into a grin of decaying teeth and swollen gums. Yep, yessir, I know, it sounds crazy, but there I was, belting out every word of the Jailhouse Rock, though I would swear on any Bible you bring me that I ain’t never known that song before. Whether anyone was there or not, he paused for a response.

Oh no, I don’t think, no sirree, I know, he replied, as if answering a question. As sure as the Lord Jesus is our Savior, the spirit of Elvis Presley come into me that day. And I do the best I can to take care of the man until he is called back up to the Lord. The Reverend nodded his gray head. Every man’s got his burden, and Elvis is mine, yes sirree, Elvis is mine.

****

Emma prayed every day to be grateful for the job at Walmart, but it was hard to mean it. She had been blessed to get hired on anywhere, she reminded herself.

More than a half a million people in the state were out of work, fighting for the same low wage jobs. The libraries were scheduling half hour slots to use the computers because a person couldn’t apply for a job in person anymore. No chance of convincing the boss man how hard you’d work and how reliable you’d be. Just type stuff into boxes on the screen and wait for a phone call that almost never came.

Before the economy went south, she had been living in a dream world – though she didn’t know it at the time. Back when going hungry was just a stomach rumble between lunch and dinner, when you could grab a yogurt or a pickup a Bojangles chicken biscuit. Different now.

Now hungry meant being up at night, mind crawling the empty shelves, trying to make a meal out of what wasn’t there. Hungry was knowing that if you ate, come end of the month, there might not be anything left to feed your son. Hunger was being on edge, irritable, always tired, the brain foggy, the patience thin. She had to fight the urge to snap at her son, at her friends, at her pastor.

Her eighteen-hour Wal-Mart work week at $7.25 an hour was the only reason they had any groceries at all. The dented cans of soup, off-brand cereal and almost expired meat. Even a prayerful person couldn’t help wondering if Jesus had forgotten them. It was a sin, Emma knew, to have such doubts, to harbor such fear and anger while she rationed the cereal and hid the bananas. All so her son couldn’t ask for a piece of fruit and she wouldn’t have to say no. See the confusion in his eyes.

They killed her. His eyes.

She prayed to God every day for guidance and refuge. The congregation at her church were all doing the same – everyone trying to keep their heads above water. The folks with chickens were sharing or selling eggs. Zucchini, which folks always had way too much of, was snatched up like barbecued ribs. Bruised tomatoes were prized, cut up, canned, roasted, dried. Betty Forsyth let people use her vacuum-seal machine as long as they bought their own bags.

Emma’s job paid minimum wage – that’s all there seemed to be anymore, though there was no way anyone could support themselves on it, much less take care of a family. The work was part-time, forty hours was a fantasy she’d always taken for granted. No set schedule, no way to plan, no benefits to speak of as long as they kept her on part-time.

Everyone was part-time.

She was shocked to learn that most of her coworkers qualified for food stamps, many on waiting lists for Section 8 housing. Emma had never been on food stamps and tended to think poorly of folks who were. The news she and Danny listened to talked about how poor people were popping out babies for a few more free dollars, BMWs in their driveways, HBO on the cable. Laughing all the way to the bank with their government money.

Emma remembered how they used to shake their heads, disgusted, poor people living the high life on everyone else’s dime. It had never occurred to her it might not be that simple. That most people who were poor couldn’t afford regular cable, much less HBO. Her last paycheck was $141.73, and her babysitter took twenty off the top, apologizing the whole time. $121.73 to pay the mortgage, the electric, buy food and get her son sneakers and school supplies.

She’d had no idea what poverty really was. Not the lack of morals – the lack of money. No credit to tide you over, not enough coming in to cover what was going out. How impossible it was to save money, how unsafe she felt – anxiety always at the ready. All her life she’d worked, paid her bills, lived within her means. Followed the rules.

Opinion is what you think you know. Experience is a kick in the teeth.

Chapter 3

The Sunshine Diner was the closest Variety came to a coffee house. Formerly known as Deke & Donna’s, it was still called DeDe’s by most of the locals even though Deke had died fifteen years ago, and Donna left town to live with her daughter in California. The food was good and portions plentiful, eggs and grits and bacon. Biscuits made every morning, pancakes the size of a ceiling fan.

Sandy Conklin ran the place now, with one of her no-account cousins cooking and her two sullen daughters running food to the tables. Sandy took all the orders, at the booths and the counter. She had a big smile, bigger hips and was partial to holiday clothing, Christmas sweaters and Valentine sweatshirts, t-shirts with iron-on decals of Easter eggs.

A large picture of Jesus on the cross hung just to the right of the front door over the metal rack of free papers that no one ever read. With folks going in and out, the picture usually hung crooked and it was habit for Sandy to straighten it multiple times a day.

The diner was always decorated for something and if there was no holiday pending, Sandy would just leave up holidays past. Over the years, the décor had taken on a life of its own, a flyspecked and fringed Happy New Year banner, a dusty cornucopia with plastic fruit, tiny toothpick flags taped to the cash register. A fading WWJD bumper sticker was plastered on the inside of the Ladies Room door.

Sandy was the ultimate hoarder of the cheap holiday junk that’s irresistible no matter how much cheap holiday junk you already have.

DeDe’s was the place where anyone with too little money and too much time could get a cup of coffee for ninety-nine cents and stretch it into a coupla hours of staying busy. The place was full up with men in their forties and fifties, hard workers with no place to work. Uselessness sat on their shoulders like the John Deere caps on their heads. They were good men for the most part. Flew the flag, pledged allegiance, hands across hearts when the National Anthem played. Many had fought for their country, yet here they sat – nothing to do but pass the time.

The willingness to work didn’t mean much anymore. Experience either, especially if you were past a certain age. They weren’t people, they were pennies, sitting in a grimy dish on some convenience store counter. Take one or leave one, didn’t matter much either way.

Myron Teator, Floyd Tyler and Weldon Jarvis gathered there pretty much every morning, the three musketeers or the three stooges, depending on the day. Myron had retired from the plant before it closed, but Weldon and Floyd had been fired, each with more than twenty years on the job, rarely missing a day.

Floyd had run the shop floor right up to the end. Weldon was let go a few months prior to the shutdown, still a point of contention, since his friend had delivered the bad news. Floyd had a few years on Weldon and a high school diploma to boot. Both were good ole boys, but Floyd was less inclined to some of the Confederate values that Weldon fully embraced.

Floyd was full of moral outrage at what he perceived as his country’s betrayal by those damn politicians in Washington. Weldon didn’t mind agreeing as long as it was understood the Jews were behind it all - from the ape in the White House to the store signs in Spanish. It was never quite clear how all that tied together but when pressed, Weldon just rolled his eyes at the stupidity of the question.

Myron was more of a quiet man. In his mid-sixties, he and his wife still lived in the house he’d bought years ago for just under $40,000. Not much for talking, he tended toward keeping the peace, trying to divert the other two from getting into it so far they couldn’t get themselves out. Hard to find two more opinionated jackasses then his best friends.

This morning, Floyd was up in arms over rumors that developers were trying to buy up land in the area. Folks can’t get a mortgage to save their lives and now the vultures are circling, he griped. Like the damn carpetbaggers all over again.

Not like anyone’s forcing you to sell. And it’s good to see land prices going up a bit, Weldon said.

Ain’t you never heard of eminent domain? The government can let them take your damn property right out from under ya! Floyd snapped back. Figures you’d think it’s fine, your brother’s leaking acres faster than a rusty gutter. His voice rising.

What do you expect him to do, Weldon demanded, just as loud. Sit by and watch his wife cut her heart pills in half and half again cuz they got no insurance?

No one had an answer to that. They sat for a second, contemplating their empty cups. Empty pockets. Floyd lifted his mug, trying to catch Sandy’s eye.

Heard the new Food Lion’s going in for sure, Myron ventured. Frank was saying so at the Elks last night.

Frank, snorted Floyd. Frank was the owner of Big Frank’s Auto Parts and Used Car Emporium. If Variety had a mayor, he’d be running for it – though it was hard to imagine anyone voting for him other than his wife, Ladybug. Always talking everything up, then sneaking into folks’ driveways and taking their cars.

I seen his sister’s husband’s boy driving round town in Jimmy Horton’s truck, Myron said. Must break Jimmy’s heart every time he sees that little shit driving it.

Suppose he’s gotta provide for his family too, Weldon muttered, still sore.

When they come for your truck, see what ya think then.

Like anybody’d want his truck, Myron quipped.

Hey now, Weldon warned.

That old rattletrap? Even Frank couldn’t make no money from that repo, Floyd hooted.

Lord, Floyd, Sandy interrupted, popping up with the coffee pot. You’re getting meaner every day. She refilled his mug. If you weren’t so damn pretty, I’d toss your ass to the curb.

****

Myron came into the house quietly. He spent his days anywhere but here. He could hear the television set, see just the tippy top of Caroline’s head in the armchair. The nurse, well not a nurse really, the woman who came every day from Home Health Aide, Teresa was her name, she’d already left for the day. He timed his return that way. He hated having her here in the first place, felt guilty as sin about not taking care of Caroline himself.

It’s too much, his daughter had said, on the phone from Colorado where she and her husband and his grandbabies lived. Not able to care for his own wife, she was saying. She meant well. Everyone did. Like that mattered.

Hey shug, he called, just like he’d done for thirty-six years

Hum baab, she answered. Hey baby, that’s what she’d always said. ‘Cept she’d be standing in the kitchen, stirring stew or chopping vegetables or pulling yeast rolls out of the oven. Caroline’s yeast rolls were the best in the county, probably the whole damn state. Golden strands pulling away from themselves, light, but not so much they were nothing but air, good for sopping up gravy or spooning up butter beans fresh out of the garden. That was when he was working. Before she had the first stroke.

They’d got through that, the first one, so used to pulling together that they barely broke stride. He kept his job and she worked hard to get her words back and making her left-hand work again. When it was over, and she was fine, she went back to that hospital twice a week, visiting and smiling, saying prayers for folks and holding their family’s hands.

She had always been an angel. Should be one now.

The second stroke caught them by surprise, the third was the shocker. She was wasted. Left hand nothing more than a claw, her leg useless, her body withered like a crab apple tree in a forgotten orchard. The left side of her face hung like a bloodhound’s. She couldn’t smile any more –that almost killed him. No one seemed to understand why a smile was so important, but Caroline would have understood