The next Saturday I got visitors at Creaky’s. It was a normal day of Tommy and me pulling out an old fence, yanking crusty barb wire off of crusty palings and rolling it up to save for a rainy day because that was Creaky. Nothing but rainy days ahead, boys! Save everything, because life sucks and then you die! Fence work meant walking all the steep hills he couldn’t climb, so on the good side it was a vacation from his shit. We were at the edge of the woods, taking turns pissing on an anthill, which Tommy felt bad about. He found these blue flowers coming up through the hay. Then we sat in the shade listening to what all was going on up in the trees. Birds having their discussions, a woodpecker making his little tack-tack-tacks, this whole other life of little beings out here minding their business and not actually giving a damn about yours. It could set you back on your haunches, in a good way. Why I liked the woods.
We heard a rain crow, which is not your everyday crow. It sounds like a two-cycle engine revving up, finally getting to this spooky gulp, gulp. A rain crow calling means you’ll have a storm within the day. Tommy was surprised a bird would know that, but this came out of the bible of Mr. Peg, so he believed it. I’d already amazed him of countless things, like how chewing on sassafras stems tastes exactly like root beer. Or how squashing touch-me-not weeds like a washrag and rubbing it on your poison ivy will take the itch away. Amazing the hell out of Tommy with Mr. Peg lore was one of my pastimes.
He was sprawled on his stomach, holding a piece of grass up close to his face. His other fist was squashed against his cheek, propping him up. He had grass seeds in his hair and stick-tights all over his sausage-case jeans and shirt. I leaned over to see what he had, which was the smallest, smallest green grasshopper you can imagine with your brain. Like it came from the planet of smaller things. He said, “The storm thing, I get that. Birds would need to know, right? So they won’t get rained on.”
I agreed with him on that, caught in the rain would suck for a bird, hard for flying. Tommy and I could go into mental-type things like that, where with other guys, you just don’t go there. Mainly we were stalling because we’d finished winding the fence, and ended up with giant wire rolls that were way too big for us to drag to the barn. Then what? At Creaky’s we basically lived in terror of doing the wrong thing, and in terror of asking him what was the right thing, so we spent a lot of time debating on which would be worse. Finally, I said I would go ask if he meant to haul the wire out with his tractor, or what.
So. Halfway down the hill I saw what looked like Mr. Peggot’s truck parked in front of the house. No way. Then I spotted all three Peggots up on the porch talking to Creaky. I whooped and tore down the hill, thinking for sure they had come to take me home.
Long story short, no. Just to visit. I wondered how they’d convinced the DSS they were not molesters. And Miss Barks had said no visits allowed here, so it blew out all circuits, seeing my old life and new one chatting on the porch. Mr. Peg and Creaky were figuring out they had some of the same cousins, which is what you do in Lee County whenever you meet somebody. First, how are your people related. Then you move on, in this case to silage, Angus cattle, beef prices. Creaky sounded like a different person talking to Mr. Peg in his raspy voice. You’d look at Creaky and ask yourself, How was this old cuss ever married and young and a human being at all? And there it was. Once upon a time, a nice piece of land and good prospects and a boy that loved his farming. Mr. Peg knew about that because back whenever he was a boy, his family did well with the corn and tobacco before they had to sell off their land a piece at a time for people to build houses on. Same with Mrs. Peggot, she started out as a little girl on a farm before their daddy sold his land for a certain number of hogs, one for each child. After that, their farm was a coal mine where her brothers worked, and Mr. Peg also. Mining is how he got his crushed foot.
Anyway I brought Maggot and Mrs. Peggot into the kitchen, where she had a near heart attack. She’d brought ham biscuits but said the tin was not to be opened until she cleaned up, and where did the man keep his Lysol. Good question. This was just skimming the surface, mind you. She had yet to see a bathroom. I introduced them to the two dogs Pete and Mike that were still lying where last seen. Maggot wanted to see some of the rank shit I’d told him about at school, sewage bathtub of doom, the mummified raccoon we found in the basement, but I skipped those. We got out clean towels to put on the couch so we could sit and eat Mrs. Peggot’s amazing ham biscuits. I felt like, saved. They asked if I was coming home soon. They’d not even talked to Miss Barks. They found out where I was from our bus driver that was some kin to Mr. Peg, and just came over. Mrs. Peggot seemed pretty torn up. She leaned over and patted my knees and said I should go on saying my prayers. I thought of them going to the prison to see Maggot’s mom. He never talked about it, but now I could picture them at Goochland in the visiting room eating ham biscuits, Mrs. Peggot telling Mariah, You hang in there, honey. Say your prayers, and we’ll spring you.
Then Fast Forward pulled up outside, and I got excited for the Peggots to meet my friend that was a Lee High Generals MVP. Out we all went. I could see Mrs. Peggot sizing up this good-looking young man, and Maggot just, gaah. Maggot that didn’t give two shits about football. That was Fast Forward’s powers at work. Creaky and Mr. Peg came back from the barn where they’d gone to look at the heifers, and Mr. Peg shook hands with him. I hate to say it, but I looked at the Peggots from a Fast Forward viewpoint, wondering if he might think they were a couple of old bumpkins, and that boy of theirs just a little bit odd, or what.
By the time they took off, the other guys had started on supper. Swap-Out for all his derpness could chop onions like a ninja.
You just had to not watch. I came in, and Creaky asked where the hell was Tommy, and I said, Oh shit, oh Jesus. I’d left him
up in the field with the rolls of barbwire. It had been hours, and Tommy would still yet be up there in the tall grass. He’d
wait there till the sun went down, because I’d said I would be right back, and he believed me.
12
Mom graduated from rehab and got to go home. Now instead of McDonald’s I could go sit in our kitchen, or in my room that was the exact mess I’d left it the night it all happened, visiting Mom with my chest hurting for how much I missed being a normal kid. Any minute Miss Barks was going to tap on the door and say, “Sorry, time’s up.” Then bam, back to foster life. Some years down the road it would be like this with the girls saying, Pull out now, quick! Honestly, give me all or nothing at all. Give me the damn visits at McDonald’s.
But Mom said she lived for these times. Regardless the unfairness of her being allowed home while I wasn’t. Me being not the one of us that screwed up. She still had drug tests to pass and a hard row to hoe, so Miss Barks said it was a realistic goal for us to get me home for Christmas. She didn’t babysit us at the house, even though if Mom had wanted to do me damage there were a lot more options there than at McDonald’s. Miss Barks said Mom was earning trust. She’d drop me off and sit outside in her car for the hour, doing her homework or her case files. Homework, yes. Miss Barks was seriously young. She was taking night classes to get certified for a teacher, which she said was her dream, because she loved kids. And I thought, What am I?
My first visit back home, I went after school while Stoner was at work. Mom said Stoner was still anti me moving back in, due to the stress of the three of us as a family making Mom relapse. You’re going to say, What kind of shit is that for a mother to be telling her kid? Even I thought that, at the time. But Mom had milk and cookies out on the table for me, so probably she was trying to learn the drill from TV. She was nervous. I cut her some slack. She showed me the presents Stoner got her for coming home, including a new microwave that told the time in lit-up numbers. She asked if my foster was still being an asshole, and I told her a person could get used to anything except hanging by the neck. Something I’d heard from Mr. Peg.
After our time was up, Miss Barks came in and said I should get together anything I wanted to take with me. My first thought was to load up on stuff I missed like Snickers bars and my best comics. But anything valuable I would have to turn over to Fast Forward, so I ended up not taking much. Just two of my small-size action heroes that I could sneak in. I would hide them in Swap-Out and Tommy’s beds, and they’d never know who put them there. God, maybe. The surprise toy in the shitburger happy meal of their lives.
On the drive back we rolled down the windows. “Just smell that,” she said. “Fall time.” Plowed-under silage fields, smoke from people’s leaf burning, and something a little bit sweet, maybe apples that had rotted on the ground. She was a country girl. She showed me where her parents’ farm was because we went past that road. The happiest I remember being that fall was in the car with Miss Barks. She was chatty and would ask questions like who were my caseworkers before, which I couldn’t remember, honestly. I’d see one a couple of times, she’d be all like, Hey, I’ve got your back. Next visit, here’s a new one reading my name off the files.
Given her looks, I figured Miss Barks would have a boyfriend wanting to get her knocked up and married, but she made no mention of that. She’d moved out last year and got her apartment with the roommate in Norton, which her parents thought was a waste of money, but she wanted that bad to be on her own. I asked why did she want to be a teacher, and she said you have to follow your dreams, plus it pays better than DSS. She wanted an apartment by herself because her roommate left dirty dishes and her crap all over. She said her two best high school friends had gotten their scholarships and gone away to college, but she didn’t get one and it about killed her. Everybody knows there aren’t that many to go around, but she was still ashamed. She’d thought she was as smart as her two friends were. But here’s the thing, she told me, you don’t give up, sometimes you just have to take second choice. In her case the job at DSS, slob-roommate apartment, and night classes at Mountain Empire Community College.
She asked me what I wanted to be whenever I grew up. I had to think about that. We went past some barns and tobacco fields with their big yellow-green leaves waving in the sad evening light. She looked over at me and said, Hey, why so glum, chum?
I told her nobody ever asked me that question before, about growing up and what I wanted to be, so I didn’t know. Mainly, still alive.
Eventually I got to spend a whole Saturday with Mom, which was the day she told me her surprise: Mom was pregnant. Holy Jesus. I was as ignorant as the next kid, but knew enough to ask, How did you get pregnant in rehab?
She laughed, and said it was going on longer than that but she didn’t know until they ran blood tests on her for other reasons. Now she knew. Next April I was going to have a brother or sister. Which blew my mind actually, to put it that way. Me, Demon, that never had even a cousin to my name, soon to be a big brother. Maggot would be jealous. He’d never had any brothers or sisters so far, with future hopes slim to none. Goochland being women only.
We had an amazing day, me and Mom. We went outside and raked up leaves and Maggot came over and we jumped in them. I wanted to run over and see Mrs. Peggot but Mom needed me all to herself, so I stayed. At one point she looked at me and said, Oh my god, Demon, I think you went and got taller than me! Which was impossible, so we measured ourselves with marks on the wall, the official way with a cereal box on your head. Of our two pencil lines, mine came out on top, by a hair. Mom always said she was five-feet-sweet in her two bare feet, but it turns out all this time she was only fifty-nine inches. Which rhymes with nothing, but now that was me too, plus a hair. Unbelievable. I was used to being taller than most kids, except the ones that had been held back a lot of grades. But taller than your own parent is a trip. We put on music and danced crazy, which was a thing we did, and sat on the floor and played dumb board games, which we hadn’t done forever. I kept thinking about the baby. I asked her what we should name it, because I had ideas. Tommy was a good one. Also Sterling, which Mom didn’t know was even a name.
I asked where its room would be, and she was vague on that. Actually it kind of killed the mood. It turns out she and Stoner had been having arguments on moving to a bigger house. They hadn’t been married that long yet and he still liked the good times, so he was not keen on her having this baby. Which was ridiculous. If he wanted to run around with the no-kids version of Mom, he already missed that boat by ten years. Plus, the baby was on the way. You can’t take it to customer service and get your money back, I told her, but she didn’t laugh. Without really going into it, she told me that was more or less what Stoner had in mind.
I changed the subject by turning over the whole checkerboard and getting in a tickle fight, just basically acting like an idiot. We about peed ourselves laughing.
Stoner was supposed to get home around four, and it was required for me to wait and at least say hello. Our so-called work to do on learning to be a family. Miss Barks said she’d come in and get me at four thirty. I’d not seen Stoner since the night of Mom’s OD, so I kind of froze up. He looked the same: denim vest, leather bracelet, gauges. I’d spent a lot of time making him die in my drawing notebook. Even if he never saw those drawings, I’d made them, and looking at him now, I felt like he knew. Not sensible, just an in-my-mind thing.
He gave Mom a kiss and asked what we two had been up to. She said nothing much. She got a beer out of the fridge and cracked it open for him, and asked why didn’t he sit down and talk to me a little, to start things off on a new foot. Fine, he said. He turned one of the kitchen chairs around and sat in it backward, straddling it with his arms folded on the back, looking at me. Mom pushed her hair out of her eyes, edgy. She’d been happy and fun all day and now without even looking at her straight on, I could feel her change.
Stoner asked what I was learning in foster care. I said so far mostly putting up hay, working cattle, stretching fences, and riding the bus two hours each way to school. I told him basically everything else was the same as home, in terms of always having to watch my back. His eyes changed. He said he meant, how was I doing with the attitude.
I told him fine, thanks.
“Guess what!” Mom said. “I told him about the baby, and he’s as excited as he can be.” She was looking at me, mouth-smiling but not the eyes. Those please-save-me eyes. “Just think if this one’s a boy, and Demon gets a little brother. They’ll be two peas in a pod.”
Stoner stared at her. “It wouldn’t be a fucking mulatto.”
“My dad was Melungeon,” I told him. “Not a, whatever you said.”
Mom tried to change the subject, asking where all Stoner made deliveries today, and why didn’t we go in the living room because the chairs were more comfortable and her back hurt.
Stoner was still staring her down. “You wanted us to talk. We are fucking talking.”
He had much to say. How I would have to be more considerate now, due to Mom’s fragile situation. Stoner had learned a lot, he said, from him and Mom going to their counseling. New words to help us all get along. Opposition disorder being one of them. Supposedly that was a disease, and I had it. If I wanted to move in here, I’d need to go on the medication to knock some of the wind out of my sails. Evidently I had too much of that in my sails. Wind.
Mom acted somewhat like she didn’t hear any of this and brought up the different subject of Christmas. How I would be coming home then, and that we would do something special. I remembered to tell her the Peggots were going to Knoxville again over vacation. Probably they would invite me to go too.
Not so fast, buddy, was Stoner’s advice. He said I was still not to hang out with Maggot, which I could tell was a surprise to me and Mom both. I told him Miss Barks had checked out the Peggots and given the thumbs-up. It turned out Miss Barks had dated one of Maggot’s cousins in high school. And Mom was like, Ha-ha, Lee County, wouldn’t you know it.
Stoner slowly turned his head and fixed on her, like a big guard dog. “Since when does this Barks bitch make the rules about what we do as a family?”
I’d been thinking it was ever since the night Mom almost offed herself and Stoner gave me a black eye, but maybe that’s just me. According to Stoner, the Peggots and me were a no-go. He said he was getting an injunction, so if I went over there the cops would arrest me.
I looked over at Mom like, Is this true? And she made just the tiniest, tiniest shake of her head. He didn’t see it.
