Time went by, and promises were kept. First, the hay. Creaky did the mowing on his tractor while we were at school. Then came baling, with his tractor pulling this ancient baler machine that kept breaking down every fifty feet. It would make a hellacious grinding noise, and every single time in his raspy voice he’d yell: “Goddamn piece of Tazewell shit!” He must have bought it from somebody over there, while the dinosaurs still roamed in Tazewell County. He’d have to stop and shut everything down, and then he and Fast Forward, but mostly Fast Forward, would climb up on the baler and reach in and yank stuff around and then it would work again. The rest of us hauled and stacked the bales in the field, to get ready for loading them on the truck. These were the square bales a person can carry, not the giant round bales most farms went over to at that time, where tractors and forklifts do the work. No sir, Creaky had his slave boys, and we were a shit show. First of all, Tommy had his good points, but being strong, not one. He’d grab a bale with both hands on the twine, then stand there going red in the face like he’s constipated, until I could get over to help. And Swap-Out, Christ. One hay bale weighed as much or more than Swap-Out, and all this kid wants to do anyway is climb onto the piles we’re stacking, to where he ends up knocking things over and just general nonsense. We have to get all two hundred and some bales onto the flatbed, a load at a time, then unloaded and stacked in the barn, with more climbing, constipation faces, and nonsense. By then Creaky is cursing the fosters agency even worse than Tazewell County as far as trading in damaged goods.
That was my first weekend. Sunday night I never got to take a shower, due to Fast Forward taking his time in there. There was another bathroom downstairs with an old nasty tub, but the sewage backed up there on a routine basis, so I was not the only one scared of that tub. Even Creaky used the upstairs. It took all I had left in me to haul ass up into my bunk and lie there on fire, my whole body itching from getting scrubbed by two hundred Brillo pads of hay. I had three weeks to serve in this prison, and not one of them fully behind me yet. I wondered how Mom was doing. She always said drying out was the worst hell imaginable, and I felt sorry for that. Not now. Tell me about hell, I told her in my mind. All you had to do today is your moral goddamn inventory and a lot of lying around. On nice clean sheets.
Another promise kept: our Hillbilly Squadron farm party. Fast Forward had mentioned about getting supplies, and I’d thought maybe items from Aisle 19 of Walmart: Solo cups, paper plates. That’s the dumb kid I was.
First he brought out the snacks, which I was utterly thrilled about. At night in those days I’d get homesick and torn up just thinking of the Snickers Mom kept in the fridge. So now I’m all, Reese’s and cookies, yess! Thinking that’s what this party is about. Fast Forward though was patient with my education. Like a big brother, honestly. He said this was my initiation. We had the party in his room, which was amazing, getting to look around and even touch some of his stuff. Which is how I found out those gold sports trophies they give you in high school are actually plastic. But they looked amazing. We had the lights shut off and a candle burning that we got from the kitchen stash for the power outages. Creaky, gone to bed. After he’s taken his hearing aids out, they said, he’d just as well be a corpse.
Fast Forward’s room had a window where you could see trees outside. The moon was almost but not quite round. He had a rug that same shape that Mrs. Creaky had made for him by braiding up rags whenever she was dying of her cancer. As sick as she was and on drugs galore, all she’d wanted to do was make him a rug for his room. We sat in our little circle on that rug, thinking of the dead lady that wanted to be Fast Forward’s mom. We ate the candy and cookies. He passed around cigarettes and we smoked those. Creaky allowed smoking in the house, which was new to me. Mom always went outside. Mr. Peg same. Mrs. Peggot had rules about smoking, knowing of too many people that fell asleep in their recliners and burned a place down.
We didn’t burn anything down. Tommy smoked like a kid, taking little sips of smoke and coughing them out, whereas Swap-Out was a natural. I was somewhere in between, this being my first nonmenthols. Fast Forward said every member of our squadron had a secret name he alone could give them, including some kids that weren’t even here anymore. Now I was to get mine. Tommy was Bones, because of the skeleton doodles and also because underneath it all, Tommy had good bones. I could see that. And Swap-Out was Wild Man. So. What about the Demon.
He looked at me for the longest time. Head cocked back, the wild dark curly mane, his eyes squinted like he’s rummaging around in my skull closet. Finally he said, “Diamond. He’s bright and shiny and worth a lot. Harder than anything else there is.”
For a guy to talk like this or even look that hard at another guy was not at all the normal. A straight guy that liked girls, which Fast Forward definitely did. But Tommy and Swap-Out just nodded their heads, yes, excellent. Diamond. Not even awkward, it was just the magic of this guy. You took his word for the gospel, and felt like a bigger person for having him notice you.
I said okay, but I thought diamonds were for rich people, or girls getting engaged.
He said, “That too. What you’ve got, the girls are going to want.”
I was embarrassed of course and told him no way, but he said he was never wrong about such things. I would see. Just give it a few years.
We talked some then about movies we’d seen. Tommy told Fast Forward I had a talent of drawing superheroes, and he said Yeah? Let’s have a look. I went and got my notebook, and Fast Forward was impressed. I only showed him my better ones, like where I’d drawn Aunt June in the sexy Wonder Woman outfit. He wanted to know where Aunt June lived. He also asked if I had any sisters. Which reminded me of Mom’s story of old lady Copperhead coming to carry off the baby girl me. I wondered why people thought I would be better in the girl version.
Fast Forward meanwhile got on the subject of some of the hotter girls he’d screwed, which of course we were all ears to that. This one chick Melissa always gave him blow jobs in his truck after football practice. She stayed late for band practice, which was convenient, and she played the flute. Also convenient, he said. We didn’t get his meaning till he made his mouth in an O. That made Swap-Out go crazy, just screeching like an animal. I guess for all the misfortunate scramble of the little guy’s brains, somewhere deep in there dwelled the concept of the blow job. Whereas I was thinking more about her and Fast Forward being in that truck in the school parking lot, right out in broad daylight. Jesus, the guy was something. No fear.
From there we strayed onto weirder topics such as zombies. What if Mrs. Creaky was still lying in a back bedroom of that house somewhere. Which was nuts. I told them I’d had that exact same thought the first time I ever came in the house. And the other guys doubled over laughing and said, Dope, you just told us that a minute ago. Then I had to think extra hard about whether I was just thinking my thoughts or saying them. Because I was high. I’d been high before on many things such as hair spray, magic markers, and a typewriter duster borrowed from the main office at school, but this was another level. Each thing I looked at or thought about or ate was like a series of time bubbles popping, one by one. I asked Fast Forward what the heck, and he said the cookies were special. A girl named Rose that was auditioning to be his girlfriend had made the cookies, and what did we think, did Rose pass the test? We’re like, Well yeah. I looked at Swap-Out and Tommy, wondering if they were wise to all this, and the answer was yes, they were. Falling against each other, laughing like idiots, but also to me they looked like better versions of their everyday selves. More like a Bones, more like a Wild Man. You could see how even that cracked tiny kid had it in him one day to be a wild tiny man.
Fast Forward told us to close our eyes. I heard him digging around, a secret hiding place maybe, because after a minute he said, Booyah! And he was standing over us holding a hat. Just a regular green ball cap, but he’s holding it in both hands like the bowl of treasure. He sits back down—from standing, just drops into a cross-legged sit while holding that hat in both hands—and even in my messed-up state I’m impressed by the physical act of that. Exceptional motor skills. We all lean forward to look, and by the glow of the candle I can see it isn’t gold in the hat but little dots, which are pills. Not all the same. And I get what a pharm party is.
He passes around the hat, and we each take something. I have no idea what I’ve got, although now in later life I could make a good guess. I recall it wasn’t round but had pointed ends, scored in the middle, probably pink. I recall feeling it on my tongue, how I felt it going down, and then felt the rug and the floor all sweet and solid under my back as I lay there with my brothers and looked at the buttery light washing around on the ceiling.
A ten-year-old getting high on pills. Foolish children. This is what we’re meant to say: Look at their choices, leading to
a life of ruin. But lives are getting lived right now, this hour, down in the dirty cracks between the toothbrushed nighty-nights
and the full grocery carts, where those words don’t pertain. Children, choices. Ruin, that was the labor and materials we were given to work with. An older boy that never knew safety himself, trying to make us feel safe. We had the moon in the window to smile on us for a minute and tell us the world was ours. Because all the adults had gone off somewhere and left everything in our hands.
11
It’s fair to say I was halfway in love or some damn thing with Miss Barks. And the other half of me was like, Lady, you are the ass-burn of my life, and I wish me and you had been born on different planets. I know, guy life. Get used to it. I got called to the office, and there she was for our first appointment. Easier than driving around to check on us out in the sticks. We used the attendance officer’s office, with that lady’s kids’ pictures all over the desk, which made Miss Barks seem like she was playing dress-up. But she’s all, Hey! Looking good, Damon! So was she, in this white sweater that seriously put the lady parts on notice.
Her news was not great. Things were not so simple as me going back home after three weeks. I would get supervised visits with Mom, but after rehab she’d have to go back to her regular life and get drug tests. Once she was on solid ground, we could discuss me moving back home. What about Stoner? That was a challenge, said Miss Barks. We would have to learn to get along better. Wonderful, I thought. Teach Satan some cute puppy tricks while you’re at it.
She asked me about Creaky Farm, and I told her. The old man was brutal to Tommy, and Swap-Out should be in some other kind of situation. (Some other universe, honestly.) Had Crickson ever hit me, she asked. Answer: no, I myself had not been struck. And that was that. Miss Barks was sorry, but Tommy and Swap-Out weren’t on her. Usually all kids in a home are from one foster company, but Crickson was an emergency-type place, and Tommy and Swap-Out belonged to a different foster company that Miss Barks didn’t work with. So fostering was done by companies, and we, as Stoner would say, were Product. Rotating and merchandising foster boys at more than fifty customer accounts. Live and learn.
She said nobody was allowed to come visit me out there, but she could pick me up after school and take me to meet Mom someplace like McDonald’s where we could talk. Then she’d drive me back to the farm. Creaky would be pissed at me for visiting Mom instead of barn chores. He never let us use homework for an excuse either. These were not things I went into with Miss Barks. She had a big stack of papers and was getting ants in her cute pants to move on. I wondered if other kids I knew of might be fosters, boys with Hillbilly Squadron secret names among us in math and gym. Miss Barks couldn’t comment on that, except to say she had other kids to meet with, the most of them younger than me. She said she was super proud of how well I was handling everything, and that I seemed like a boy that could take care of himself. No shit. As I was about to leave, she looked up and said, Oh, wait! She’d just remembered about trying to go by my house, to get clothes and things for me. She asked if I’d made a list, like she told me to.
And I thought, Damn. This trying-hard angel with her eyebrows pinched in deep concern. What if I was depending on the Miss Barkses of this world, instead of my own bad self? I’d be a sockless little piss, still in the same reeking underwear I was wearing the night of Mom’s OD.
“Don’t worry about it,” I told her. “I don’t need anything.”
The house at Creaky Farm had its own life to live. Loose gutters banging, boards creaking, leaks dripping. At night I would lie in my bunk listening to the kind of shit that gives no comfort. Mice rustling around. Or else the WWE of cockroach wrestling, maybe both. We knew that critter fiestas were had in the kitchen after hours because we found mouse poop all over, like they’d dropped turd trails to find their way back home. Obviously, a kitchen that’s kept like a pigsty is going to attract the wrong crowd. What did we know? We’re juveniles. Every day a fresh surprise. Many were the mornings I opened a new loaf of Wonder Bread, only to find something had tunneled through it from one end to the other. A mouse-size hole in every slice. Do you think Creaky let us throw that bread away? This man that saved every rubber band off the newspapers and called you a pussy if you didn’t eat your apple whole, the core and all? Mouse sloppy seconds, no exception. He said the toaster would kill the germs. Maybe so, because here I am telling the tale.
So, digging and scritching was heard in the walls at night. Water moving around for no good reason in the pipes. Snoring. Long, sorrowful farts. Swap-Out oftentimes sounded like he was itching bad over there in his bed. I mean. Scratching himself half to death. It dawned on me that if this kid had done more than one year in every grade, he could have considerable age on him by now. He smoked like a fiend, among other signs of being older than Tommy and me, the tiny size deceiving on all counts. I’d have to be older myself before I got the full picture on what a boy does in his bed at night, to sound like he’s itching himself to death.
We were our own messed-up little tribe. A squadron. We looked forward to inspections, filling up our hungers on Fast Forward attention. If he played favorites with me, which he did, that was the bread and butter in my otherwise butterless day-to-day. He found out I had every superhero that ever existed on tap in my brain, and would get me to reel out their full life histories. He looked at my drawings like they were true comic books, studying them over, asking why I put in this or that. He wanted me to draw him as a superhero. I said I needed to think about it, because a person’s superpower wasn’t always that obvious.
His was. I was playing for time. I practiced and threw away quite a few before I nailed it: Force Fastward, aka Fast Man, all hard-muscled in his tights and cape and football helmet. His superpower was the force of his will, that could make anybody do anything and feel glad of it because they all wanted to be on Fast Man’s team.
The first one I showed him, he picked up and looked over for a long time. Terrifying. My drawing was stupid. But no, finally he said I had the gift. “You all see this here?” he said to the others, flipping the page with the back of his hand. “This shit can not be taught. It’s a talent.” Which made my entire dogshit life up to that point worth living. After that I just went to town. I drew Creaky as the supervillain Creak Evil. He had a light-bulb head, with a comb-over, that lit up whenever he thought of how to torture a boy. I did cartoons with three panels. Bing! goes the light-bulb head, and he’s pulling a file out of his pocket, saying “C’mere and I’ll file down your teeth.” Or, “I’m here to fatten up steers, not boys,” handing a plate to Tommy with just bones on it. Then Fast Man swoops in to trounce the dastardly Creak Evil and save the boys. I put my all into Fast Man. His Fastmobile was a Lariat pickup with gun turrets that could fly.
He started wanting me to draw a cartoon every night. Some of my best ones, he would take to keep. Some got tacked up in his room. The other guys lived for my cartoons also, it was an event of our day. I drew WildMan that could climb the highest anything, and SuperBones with the power of fixing people instantly if their bones got broken. I just made that up. Tommy’s actual power was niceness, but it’s hard to make that pay off in the superhero universe.
We’d sit around the table in our room where no homework was ever done. I drew, they watched. Sometimes I was tired and wished I could get a pass. But I did it anyway. Drawing was something Fast Forward couldn’t do and I could. I’d have done anything to be on his team.
A supervised visit is some weird shit. Usually in McDonald’s, me and Mom eating our burger and fries. Four or five tables away, Miss Barks, drinking her Diet Coke and acting like she’s reading, but keeping an eye on us. What do they think is going to happen here, Mom will haul off and shank me with a plastic knife? Put meth in my Dr Pepper? How screwed-up is it that the DSS can’t be bothered about Creaky being hateful as a snake, but they’re all high-beams and every step you take, as regards the druggie mother?
Recovering druggie mother, excuse me. Mom was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, telling me how great she was doing at rehab, how everything was going to be different this time. I know this was not nice of me, but I asked her, How is it going to be different? Just saying. Oh, she had answers. She’d only ever before done the freebie rehabs, a long weekend in the tank, courtesy of DSS. This was a whole different level, with therapy sessions and so on. It cost money, and Stoner was paying. She said she never even realized before that the moral inventory meant taking stock of your entire life. Wishes for the future included. She said her future was me. That I was one hundred percent of her reason for getting sober.
I could see how this was supposed to make me feel great, but honestly it hit me as one more thing to worry about. What if she turns around in a month and gets shitfaced again or starts using? What does that tell you? That I wasn’t a strong enough reason. Stoner would be pissed off about the wasted cash and take it out on me. Mom was assigning me the superpower of getting and keeping her clean, and our family on track. It’s a lot of pressure.
On the good side, she looked nice, for somebody living in a home for junkies. She had her makeup on, not so tired, and something different with her hair. She was wearing a new dress that Stoner had bought her. She said he’d come to see her three times already, the most visits allowed. He’d brought her the dress, flowers, and a card that he forgot to sign but it’s the thought that counts. He knew her size for the dress by looking in the tags of her other dresses. This is all supposedly proof of Stoner being Mr. Wonderful. She said he loved me too, and we were going to be a better family now. We would do fun stuff together like maybe Dollywood. I told her I wanted to go see the ocean, and she laughed. Don’t get carried away, she said.
Eventually she got around to asking about where I was living. They’d told her it was a farm, so she wanted to know how fun was that, were there animals to pet and such. Mind you, she never had one good thing to say about being raised in foster care herself, and now she thinks it’s all rainbows? I told her, Yeah, Mom, it’s exactly like a petting zoo where the main animals are roaches and mice. I told her for fun times we shoveled cow shit, and my foster was a creepy old man that threatened to file down my teeth. I didn’t mention I’d started doing drugs. As far as I was concerned, drugs were not the problem in that home. Just the opposite.
She ended up getting weepy on me. I said, Look, I just want to get this over with and come home. You do your part and I’ll do mine. She said okay. Probably she thought I was growing up to be one more prick in her life, a junior-varsity Stoner. It’s not that I wanted to be mean. But any time I started feeling sorry for her, something in my brain said Don’t go there, it’s a trap. I’d tried all the options with Mom and had only one place left to go on her. Cold.
