This Tommy individual I’d also seen at Elk Knob Elementary, but he was some older than me, at middle school now. Last name of Waddell, so people called him Tommy Waddles, which he did. He was a chubby teddy-bear type of kid with big round eyes and brown hair that looked like it was too much for his head. It stood straight up. Some guys in those days were trying for the Luke Perry hair thing from 90210, but in the case of Tommy you could tell that wasn’t gel or trying, that was just all Tommy. Also too much Tommy for his clothes: sausage arms in his jacket sleeves, jeans straining at the belt. Now I knew why. Foster care. I don’t reckon they look at you all that often and say Hey kid, you’re busting out a little bit, let’s go shopping.
But after all my fears over getting judged as a biter, Tommy was so nice. He showed me where to stack the buckets, how to go in the corn crib and get the corn for graining the heifers and calves, and various things we had to do before going in. The corn crib was a small barn type of thing, so full of rats you had to look where you stepped. Seriously, they ran over your feet. If something was hard to lift, like a grain bag, Tommy tried to do it. He explained things without acting like I was an idiot. He said the cattle were Angus, boy or girl either one, all called Angus. The cows got bred to have calves, and the boy ones would get castrated into steers and raised up in the pastures to about half grown. Before winter came on hard, they’d be sold to the stockyards and go out west someplace to get fattened up the rest of the way. From there, hamburgers.
Tommy talked sweet to the cattle whenever we were graining them and putting them up for the night, even though they were just dumb giant monsters. He was the same with me. Like he was trying to make up for all the bad things in our lives. At least I wasn’t looking to get castrated and turned into hamburger, that I knew of. Tommy said you got used to it here. He called it the Creaky Farm, a name made up by Fast Forward because he was a genius at thinking up names. Fast Forward was the other foster kid here, not home yet because in high school and at football practice, a major star on the Lee High team, which are the Generals as everybody knows. To hear Tommy tell it, Fast Forward was the best-liked person of everybody alive, even by Mr. and especially the dead Mrs. Crickson. I would like him too, just wait and see. He’d been at this farm forever and was kind of like their real son, even though he hated Mr. Crickson. Or Creaky rather, which we were all supposed to call the old man, except to his face.
Tommy showed me where to wash up before we went in. By the porch with the screens hanging off, they had a spigot for hosing off your hands, shoes, whatever you could without getting too wet. I was already wet from getting rained on all day. But excited about getting to eat something. I wanted it to be true what Tommy said, that I could get used to this or at least lie low and get through it. Maybe at school not too much trash-talk about me would be going around, if it was only up to Swap-Out, a kid that was respected by nobody. I’d last out Mom’s three weeks in rehab and go back home with nobody the wiser. Stoner, I had no plan for. Maybe the DSS did. Maybe there was a God in his heaven after all, and we would all fart perfume.
Tommy Waddles let me hang on him while I stood on one foot trying to hose the shit off my shoes. My shoelaces were all knotted up. I realized I hadn’t had my shoes off since I put them on last night in the ambulance. No socks, same reason. Everything I was wearing was wet and smelled like cow shit. All the clothes I had. Tomorrow at school, I’d smell like cow shit.
Fast Forward got home as we were sitting down to dinner, and everybody acted like it was Captain America out there in a Ford pickup. “He’s here!” and all like that. This kid has done no chores whatsoever, plus he’s driving a Lariat F-150, two-tone red and silver with the square headlights. Sweet. I wondered if the vehicle was his, or borrowed from the farm, or what. I wondered if fosters were allowed to have anything belonging to them. I had much to know.
He came in the kitchen and even the damn dogs looked up. First they’d moved all day. He’s long and lean with a look to him like somebody famous, all clean teeth and dark eyebrows and a head of hair not to be believed, like an explosion. Mad curly, like Mariah Carey in her mop-hair days, only not that long obviously. They’d not let you on a football team with long hair back then. “Hey Fast,” all the other boys said, and “This here’s Demon.”
Fast Forward stops dead in his tracks like he’s a comedy act, looking from the other kids to me, me to them, working out what to make of me. I’m ready for the biter remarks, bared teeth and snarl. But he smiles his rock star smile and says, “New blood! About time we upgraded the stock around here.” And Mr. Crickson smiles and nods like he thinks so too, and I’d been all his idea. Nutso. A grubby little bunch of boys looking up to an older kid, that’s the normal. But he’s even got the old bastard under his powers. Demon, I’m thinking, watch and learn.
Dinner was hamburger meat with cans of Manwich poured on it plus macaroni and melted cheese, awesome. I would tell Mom about this. She never could think of a thing to make for dinner. Mr. Crickson asked Fast Forward how was practice and who was on defense and did he still think the Generals would go undefeated this year. So many words out of the old man’s janked throat. He’d been saving it up all day for Fast Forward. After supper Mr. Crickson went in the other room and watched TV, aka fell asleep in his recliner chair, and Fast Forward scooted out. Leaving the rest of us to clean up in the half-assed way you would expect from three boys, one of them being quite a few bricks shy of his full load. Why that kitchen looked like it did.
Tommy showed me the rest of the house, our room upstairs, the bathroom we’d use, with Fast Forward getting first dibs obviously. He had more to do, like shaving. Our bedroom had two bunk beds, not much else. A closet for your stuff, if you were lucky enough to have any. A table for doing your homework if you felt like it. Tommy and Swap-Out shared one of the bunk beds and had a discussion of whether I should take top or bottom on the other one. Swap-Out didn’t vote, with him being let’s just say not a talker. But he liked climbing. I remembered from second grade, Swap-Out always getting up on the radiators like a freaking monkey, our teacher always yelling at him to get down, because one of these days the heat would come on and he’d get burned. And one of those days, yes he did. Such howling, you never heard. Whereas Tommy liked the bottom bunk so he could stash his library books underneath. He had piles down there: Boxcar Children, Goosebumps, who even knew they’d let you check out that many? He said the library at Pennington Middle was bigger, which was the only good thing about middle school.
I assumed all four of us boys would bunk together, but wrong, Fast Forward had his own room down the hall. He’d lived here a long time. Mrs. Crickson while alive had started the procedures for adopting him, but she never got it finished up. So Crickson was still drawing the five-hundred-dollar check every month for keeping him as a foster. I didn’t learn all of this right away. It’s a complicated business to figure out, especially with the way Crickson and Fast Forward did it, having some kind of secret agreement to split the check between them.
We were not allowed in Fast Forward’s room without permission, so I looked from the doorway. He had free weights of a different kind from Stoner’s. Football trophies, newspaper photos of famous Generals moments taped on the wall over the desk (he had furniture). Pinned along one wall, a slew of ribbons he’d won for his 4-H calf projects, Tommy said, but that was history. Now Fast Forward had quarterbacking and a pickup truck and hot girls, everybody and her sister wanting a piece of this guy. I’d known him two hours and could already see how it was.
His real name was Sterling Ford. Who could want better? Something to do with silver, the best engines ever built. But he said the name Fast Forward came to him early, and it did fit.
He had the run of the house and keys to the gun cabinet where the old man kept his rifles and the medicines Swap-Out was supposed to take every night if anybody remembered. DSS made him lock up the medicines evidently after some past event where his other foster kids were selling them. Uppers or downers, God only knows what Swap-Out was on, possibly both, the usual, half the kids at school had to line up for their pills from the nurse every day before recess. Fast Forward anyway had full privileges, whereas we three lower-life boys kept to our room of an evening. Nobody cared what time we went to bed, if we got ourselves up in the morning. That first night I was dead tired but worried about going to bed in my cow-shit clothes, and out of the blue Tommy asked did they bring me here without anything. Knowing the foster drill. He let me borrow one of his T-shirts to sleep in. This Tommy was not your usual type of kid.
He said Fast Forward would come in before lights out for drill. Sure enough, he came in saying: “Atten-tion!” Tommy and Swap-Out saluted and stuck out their chests and Fast Forward did inspection. I guess we’ve all seen that movie. It seemed dumb but I couldn’t see not doing it, so I did. He gave me a good looking-over, saying, “Me oh my. Check out this green-eyed boy.” He asked was I a Melungeon or a red-haired beaner or what. I told him my dad was Melungeon.
Next, Fast Forward asked what we had. Tommy dug in his pockets and came out with a pack of Chiclets, which Fast Forward took. Then he stood waiting in front of Swap-Out. Bent down and got in the little guy’s face. Swap-Out says he’s got nothing. Fast Forward pulls a fist and Swap-Out shrinks back in his skin. No punching was done, but you could see this kid knows what punched is. I’m looking over at Tommy like, Is this normal? And he’s like, Yeah it is.
“Creaky gave you lunch money this morning,” Fast Forward says in a slow way because of Swap-Out lacking on his mental side. “You had lunch money, and you took the nutbutter.”
“I never,” Swap-Out says.
“You did. I’ve got eyes in your school, not just in my head. If you lie to Fast Forward, you’re letting down your brothers. You’ve got the cash Creaky gave you. Hand it over.”
Taking the peanut butter sandwich for a normal kid meant they’d let their lunch money run out, or for a free lunch kid their mom forgot to sign the forms. Either way, the lunch ladies would lay that nutbutter on you like, Here’s your fuck-up badge. Swap-Out had taken the sandwich of shame to pocket the money. His close-set eyes jumped around like a trapped rabbit’s. Fast Forward snapped his fingers in the scrambled little face, held out his hand. Swap-Out shelled out the bills.
I was next. Fast Forward stared. I said, “Dude, I don’t even have any fucking socks!”
I wasn’t sure if this was an f-bomb household, nor if Fast Forward to me was a Dude or a Sir, but I risked it and the guys laughed. I told him I’d gotten dumped off with nothing.
Fast Forward got this look. “Nothing. You’re sure.”
“Positive.”
“Holding out on Fast Forward is not how we do things here, Demon. I’m giving you another chance. Come clean, and all will be forgiven. Check your pockets.”
I did, and pulled out some squashed nabs, which shocked me. Last night at the hospital seemed like a movie about somebody’s sad mess of a life. But that was me, in possession of nabs, ten bucks, and phone change. If I’d remembered, I’d have eaten the nabs for sure. I felt my ears burning. One, because I hadn’t had that much money in quite a while if ever, and two, I’d just lost it. Three, it looked like I got caught lying. Plus, how did he even know?
Fast Forward said he was proud of me for contributing to our goals and objectives. So that was good, him liking me. He said he held on to the valuables here to keep them safe. We’d celebrate by having a party as soon as he could get supplies. A farm party, he said. The others said, Yay, farm party! He explained we were the Hillbilly Squadron, which was like the Boy Scouts except not ass-kissers. He was our Squad Master and made the rules for our own good. He said don’t let Creaky get us down. Then he said, “At ease!” and we were at ease. He left, and Tommy and Swap-Out climbed into their bunks. I put on Tommy’s big T-shirt and climbed into mine. I chose the top. I was still thinking of the rats all over the corn barn and Creaky lurking around in the dark, maybe wanting to file off my teeth. The top bunk seemed advisable.
Hillbilly is a word everybody knows. Except they don’t. Mr. Peg at one time had a sticker on his truck bumper, “Hillbilly Cadillac,” but I was a small kid with no comprehension of anything. I mainly knew it from this one rerun that came on Nick at Nite, Beverly Hillbillies, which was this family running around a city wearing ropes for a belt, packing antique rifles, and driving a junkass truck. Dead hilarious. More so than most of the old black-and-whites they ran, Gunsmoke, Munsters. Then one time Maggot’s high school cousin Bonnie saw us watching it and said we were clueless little turds. Bonnie was in Drama, Gifted and Talented, your basic all-around ass pain. She said be careful who we laughed at, that family was supposedly us.
Meaning what? There’s not a person here that carries on like that or drives such crap, I assure you. Not even the Antique Tractor Club guys that tuck their shirts in their underpants and drive their ancient machines in the Christmas parade. Those guys are just old. But shooting the lights out, yodeling, keeping pigs in the house? Maggot told Bonnie to go screw her stuck-up boyfriend she met in Governor’s School and leave us be. Which she did. But I did wonder.
For, like, years. Until one time Mr. Peg was smoking by his truck and I was out there messing around, and thought to ask him why he had that on there, Hillbilly Cadillac. I asked did it mean something bad, and his answer shocked me: hillbilly is like the n-word. And of course I said what everybody knows, n- is not a word to be used unless by assholes. He said all right, but some do, that aren’t white guys being assholes. Which is true, Ice Cube, Jay-Z, Tupac. Mr. Peg was not a fan of those guys, in fact the opposite, but they still got heard in the house thanks to Maggot and me, so he would know. The n-word is preferred by those guys. Mr. Peg said other people made up the n-word, not Ice Cube. And other people made up hillbilly to use on us, for the purpose of being assholes. But they gave us a superpower on accident. Not Mr. Peg’s words, but that’s how I understood it. Saying that word back at people proves they can’t ever be us, or get us, and we are untouchable by their shit.
The world is not at all short on this type of thing, it turns out. All down the years, words have been flung like pieces of
shit, only to get stuck on a truck bumper with up-yours pride. Rednecks, moonshiners, ridge runners, hicks. Deplorables.
10
Tommy Waddles was a talker, and who wouldn’t be, with a story like his to tell. He was not a case of screw-up parents, just the hardest luck imaginable. His dad was some kind of land surveyor that got killed in a small plane that crashed, and his mom had something go wrong with her heart even though not an old person. Tommy didn’t remember either one, he was that young whenever they passed. He had a grandmother that lost her mind somewhat, in a nursing home way the heck out in Norfolk. Other relatives dead or just not there to begin with, his dad being an only child. So Tommy had been in some kind of care in the state of Virginia basically for life.
He said foster care gets worse the older you get, with the better homes preferring babies and kids still on the smaller side. Tommy I’m guessing was never that small. But the type to make the best of things, mostly by reading library books and ignoring the fact of people hating him. He was doomed at Creaky Farm because he was soft. The old man had no use for soft. Tommy wound up there time and again though, due to Creaky needing the money, and Tommy still with no permanent situation. He should have been adopted by some nice lady that would make cookies and let him explain the entire story of every Magic Treehouse ever written. But adoption is even worse than foster homes as far as people only wanting the littles. Life is brutal like that. And it’s their loss, I’m going to say, because he was a kid you’d want around. Solid.
A thing about Tommy that we had in common is liking to draw. His doodling he called it. For him, though, it was like blood, this thing that came out of him whenever he got hurt. It took me a while to work out what was the deal of Tommy and doodling, but I got a clue the first night after Creaky called him out for eating too much of the hamburger and Manwich supper, saying this farm was for fattening up steers, not boys. He said worse actually, to the effect of Tommy being where he was because nobody wanted fat boys, and Creaky not running a foster home to take in rejects. I couldn’t believe the shit that got said, but the other guys just went on eating like, There you go. Tommy got up and put his plate in the sink and went in the living room. I could see him in there curled up on the couch with a newspaper against his knees, leaning over and writing on it with a pencil. Hair standing up on his head like he’s giving his all. I figured a crossword or scramble like Mrs. Peggot always did. Later on, though, I went to have a look and what I saw was: Skeletons. Tiny skeletons covering all the edges where there wasn’t print. You never saw so many. To look at Tommy you’d not think a Goth kid. Skeletons are the last thing you’d expect.
He also did his doodling on the bus using what blank spots he could find in his schoolbooks, if he was having a day that sucked especially, and again: skeletons. But usually he told me the story of his life. We sat together on the bus, with plenty of time for the telling. Because here was our day: rise and shine at five a.m., make breakfast if you’re going to, walk the dirt lane to the highway and stand out there in goddamn moonlight to catch the bus. I thought the ride from Peggot Holler was long. The little did I know. From Creaky Farm we’d take a first bus to Lee High, wait in the cafeteria with the other farthest-out country kids having spitball wars and free breakfast if we had our forms signed, then second bus to Elk Knob Elementary for Swap-Out and me, or Pennington Middle for Tommy. Hours and hours, stops and stops. Moms yelling at the drivers for one thing and another as regards leaving a kid off in the wrong place, drivers yelling back. Falling asleep, waking up because somebody’s telling you to shove over.
Riding the bus with high-schoolers was where you learned everything: how girls get pregnant, how to watch your back. Given the time we put in, the way-out country kids got the most education. I saw more than one guy fingering his girlfriend on a school bus, or her going down on him. More than one face slapped by a girl that wanted none of it. A lip or two busted. Once this fierce tiny towheaded girl got so fed up of a big guy calling her Q-tip, she stood on the seat behind him and cracked her Etch A Sketch over his head. Screen side down, the silver shit running down to cover his whole face. Picture Tin Man out of the Oz movie. That girl was going places. Probably she’s the president of something by now. At the least, not pregnant.
And while we’re all wasting our young lives on a yellow stinking bus, Fast Forward gets the extra hours in his rack every morning before getting up and cruising over to Lee High in his Lariat. Why every red-blooded boy dreams of turning sixteen with his own wheels: for the sleep.
At school I got to see Maggot again. He was like, My man! We thought you were abducted by aliens! Which is one way of looking at it. Maggot was my reason for living at that point in time. He saved my ass by getting clothes and stuff I needed from home. Mr. Peg had the keys, so they snuck over there like robbers while Stoner was out and stuffed my valuables in pillowcases, drawing notebooks included. Maggot brought it to school, a pillowcase at a time. They said Stoner was hardly showing his face around there anymore. So school was what I had left in the way of normal now, with Creaky Farm waiting at both ends.
