But I would be wasting my shot, because the kid was in no mood to hear it. I can still feel in my bones how being mad was the one thing holding me together. Mad at everybody but mostly her, for marrying Stoner and then ditching us both, running off to some heaven where she could throw her shit anywhere at all, and nobody would ever lay a hand on her again.
And I’d have to go on living with what an asshole I’d been to her, especially at the end that I didn’t know was the end. Last time I’d seen her at the house, did I even say goodbye, or let her hug me? I can’t tell you. I’ve tried and will go on trying to see those last minutes again, pounding on them sometimes like it’s the door of a damn bank vault, but if there’s anything in there at all to be remembered, it’s not coming to me. Access denied.
Instead, I get to remember every single thing about the funeral. That day sits big and hard in my brain like this monster rock in the ocean, waiting to wreck me. I wish to God it would leave my brain. It stays. All of it. The itchy black socks borrowed from Mr. Peg because I’d outgrown all but my gym socks. The smell of sweat and shoe polish. The toothpaste green of the walls, a color Mom hated. The sound of the quavery organ, old ladies stinking of perfume. The wasps, this whole slew of them, buzzing and buzzing at the colored windows way up high. It was a warm day for November and I guess they woke up. I watched them all through the service.
The people in the church looked like strangers. Some or most I’m sure I’d met before, but I wasn’t seeing faces, just the rock-hard hearts. All of them thinking Mom brought this on herself, and was getting the last ride she deserved in that cheap white casket. A mean side to people comes out at such times, where their only concern is what did the misfortunate person do to put themselves in their sorry fix. They’re building a wall to keep out the bad luck. I watched them do it. If that’s all the better they could do for Mom, they were nothing at all to me.
What I had felt at the Peggot house with the too-quiet cousins wasn’t wrong: I was a strange new being, turned overnight. Creaky liked to call us orphan boys, and I always felt proud inside for not actually being one. So that was me doing the same, building the wall with me still on the lucky side. Now I’d gone over to the side of pitiful, and you never saw a kid so wrecked. At the start of the service they did that song about Amazing God, and I felt exactly the opposite: I once could see but now I’m blind, was found but now I’m lost.
The preacher and his sermon, the sin and the flesh, all that I won’t go into. I wasn’t listening. I was thinking about my little brother being in that casket with her. That part hadn’t dawned on me until I’d gone up to view her with Mrs. Peggot. She patted Mom on her dead hand and said, “Poor little Mama, you tried your best,” and that’s where it hit me: my brother was in that casket. I was robbed. What a goddamn waste.
I’d had no intention of going to look at her with Stoner up there holding court, and anyway what kid wants to get that close to a dead body, let alone his mom’s? My plan was to hang back and let other people do the viewing. But Mrs. Peggot had her eye on me, and right before it was time to sit down, she told me I would always regret it if I didn’t go say goodbye before they closed the casket. It hadn’t really sunk in that they were about to shut her in there. Permanently. I let Mrs. Peggot take hold of my shoulders and walk me up the aisle.
And even still, I ended up not saying goodbye. Too shocked. Not just by her being dead, which was expected. And the part about my little brother, unexpected. The worst was how pissed off she looked. I’ve heard it said that the dead look peaceful after they’re laid to rest, but they’ve not seen the likes of Mom that day. If I was burned about this, she was righteous burned. It messed with my head, as far as my theory of her running off and getting away with it.
So I sat in that church hating on the world. The service took forever, and the burial more so. To get to the cemetery, I ended up riding in a limo that was supposedly for the family. The funeral director put me in there even though the Peggots brought me, and Stoner being Stoner drove his precious truck. As far as Mom and family, I was it. In a car the size of a living room, with extra seats and push-button everything. Every kid dreams of riding in a limo at some point, prom or whatever, but count me out because I had my shot and it was the saddest ride of my life.
The driver was the funeral director’s son and he had a girl riding with him up front. Her hair was all on top of her head in one of those clip things, and she kept playing with the curly blond baby hairs on the back of her neck while the two of them talked nonstop. I could hear something about a forfeited basketball game, something about somebody getting a restraining order, something about a guy caught cheating and getting slapped walleyed. High school type information. He was one of those overly tall kids you see with the too-big Adam’s apple and giant hands, the backs of his ears red, even though it was late in the year for any work that would sunburn you. He mostly nodded and laughed while she talked. She took off her shoes and put her stocking feet up on the dash. My first thought was huh, she’s not family, and my second was, she didn’t go to this funeral at all, she’s dressed pretty slutty actually, and they are flirting up there.
After a while his arm stretches out on the seat and it’s him running his thumb over the back of her neck. He’s putting moves on this chick, thinking of pussy while driving me to see my mom get put in the ground. It hit me pretty hard, how there’s no kind of sad in this world that will stop it turning. People will keep on wanting what they want, and you’re on your own.
Mom got buried over in Russell County in a plot with Stoner’s dead relatives. Probably he already owned the plot, and with him paying for everything, the shots were his to call. But she should have been buried with my dad. It looked like I’d lost all chances now for seeing that grave, wherever it was, and I’d be damned if I was ever coming back to Russell County to hang around dead Stoner kin, so that was that. I was in the same boat with Tommy. If I wanted to visit my parents, I would have to make little fake graves to leave behind me on my road to nowhere.
What’s an oxy, I’d asked. That November it was still a shiny new thing. OxyContin, God’s gift for the laid-off deep-hole man with his back and neck bones grinding like bags of gravel. For the bent-over lady pulling double shifts at Dollar General with her shot knees and ADHD grandkids to raise by herself. For every football player with some of this or that torn up, and the whole world riding on his getting back in the game. This was our deliverance. The tree was shaken and yes, we did eat of the apple.
The doctor that prescribed it to Louise Lamie, customer service manager at Walmart, told her this pill was safer than safe. Louise had his word on that. It would keep her on her feet for her whole evening shift, varicose veins and all, and if that wasn’t one of God’s miracles then you tell me what is. And if a coworker on Aisle 19 needs some of the same, whether she borrows them legit or maybe on the sly from out of your purse in the break room, what is a miracle that gets spread around, if not more miracle?
The first to fall in any war are forgotten. No love gets lost over one person’s reckless mistake. Only after it’s a mountain of bodies bagged do we think to raise a flag and call the mistake by a different name, because one downfall times a thousand has got to mean something. It needs its own brand, some point to all the sacrifice.
Mom was the unknown soldier. Walmart would have a new stock girl trained in time for the Christmas shoppers, to knock herself
out with the inflatable Rudolphs, and be bored senseless before the Valentine’s candy came in. One of those heart-shaped boxes
would be purchased by Stoner for the underage waitress at Pro’s Pizza he was squiring around on his Harley without her daddy’s
consent. Our trailer home would be thoroughly Cloroxed and every carpet torn out, so the Peggots could rent it to one of Aunt
June’s high school friends that got left flat by both her kids’ daddies. Aunt June probably leaned on them hard to help out
her friend, given how they got burned with the last hardship case. But wanting a fresh start for this girl and her little
family, I’m sure they scrubbed the place clean of old stains, including the two pencil lines on the kitchen wall that proved
I once stood taller by a hair than my mom. Her life left no marks on a thing.
17
Stoner and I ran out of steam on our supervised visit halfway through lunch. He’d take a bite, chew, stare at the foil wrapper, repeat, like he’d found religion in a combo meal. I kept picking up my extra-large beverage cup and looking down its throat like whatever I’d lost might be in there. Rattling ice. Your basic two guys that would like to be not looking at each other. I’d never at any time had much to say to the man, but we did have the Demon improvement program to keep us entertained. It used to get him worked up in a pretty good lather. Not today.
I kept looking over at Miss Barks, hoping she’d come bail us out, but she was reading a book. She’d made it clear Mom wanted this, Stoner and me patching it up. If you think a mother is a hard rock to run up against, try pushing back on a dead one. She and Stoner had gone to the counseling, and he’d agreed to starting over from the top, family of four and all that. But with two of the four now scratched from the lineup, heels were dragged. Miss Barks had badgered him into this visit. Now here we were, duty done. She was keeping her nose in her damn book.
“I guess you’re moving,” I said.
“I’ll finish up getting my stuff out of there whenever I get time. They liked to killed me these last couple weeks with the long-haul deliveries. You’d think a man could get a break.”
I wondered what else he meant to take from our trailer home, maybe doorknobs and copper wiring. According to Maggot he had already cleared out, lock, stock, barrel, and Satan.
“You thinking to leave Lee County?” I asked him.
Bite, chew. He looked up at me. “Who’s asking?”
“Nobody. I just wondered. Where you meant to live and everything.”
“I’m back over at Heeltown, same place.”
“I thought somebody else was in that apartment now. Some guy you knew.”
“Nah.”
I pictured Stoner walking backward to where he’d met Mom, which was in Walmart, on his way to sporting goods. He could rewind his life to that spot, turn down a different aisle, and start new. Find some other girlfriend to jump on the back of his Harley with her hair flying. Off they go. I had to quit this line of thinking for fear of what might happen, crying in front of people or a punch thrown at Stoner. He was getting a complete do-over, and I was stuck with the leftovers of him and Mom, like paper torn off a package. Here, now, nothing.
Stoner took off his reflector sunglasses and rubbed his eyes. The funeral shirt and tie had gone back to whoever he borrowed them from, but the sunglasses indoors he seemed to be keeping as his new look. The grieving husband thing. Given the shaved head and leather jacket, though, the shades just leaned it all in more of the criminal direction.
“She could of been real happy,” he said, out of nowhere. “Her and me. If things were different. Gal was a spitfire, all said and done.”
Why I needed to hear my own mother called any name at all, by a guy that had mostly pissed on her flame, was a question. If things were different. The existence of me having screwed up his wonderful marriage: there it sat. Same pile of crap waiting to be stepped in. I looked over at Miss Barks again and was shocked to see her looking straight at me. I rolled my eyes towards the door like, Please? But she ratcheted her eyebrows together, that thing she did, meaning, You’ve got some fish to fry here, young man. Which I did, she wasn’t wrong. The main one being, what the hell comes next for me, and will Stoner have anything to say about it.
The DSS had been on the fence at first, but now were coming in on the side of yes, Stoner could have a say, if he wanted to. He’d shown up to counseling with Mom, and acted agreeable to helping support me. What about my busted lip, what about my black eye, what about getting locked in my room for days at a time? Questions were asked. But Mom always took up for him, claiming I was a hard kid to handle. She said she was the one doing the child abuse, more so than Stoner. This fairy tale, reported to me by Miss Barks, made me so mad at Mom, I wanted her back just for the purpose of calling her a goddamn lying bitch. Which was not happening unless I meant to go dig her up out of Russell County clay. What I did instead was come close to busting out Miss Barks’s passenger-side window, the day she told me. This chat of ours taking place in her car, parked out on Millers Chapel Road. All that got busted though was my knuckles. And my cred, I guess you could say. As far as being a kid that was hard to handle.
I wasn’t forgiving Mom for it, but after Miss Barks talked me down, I could see the reasoning. No part of the Stoner deal was ever supposed to happen to me, and I’d told Mom that. Like, daily. A mother is supposed to protect a kid from being made to lick a man’s boots and take his punches. Mom screwed up, and she knew it. I’d never in the past been a hundred percent on all her moral inventory blah-blah-blah, but I was getting it now.
The upshot of her taking full responsibility was that no charges were ever filed against Stoner. Leaving the two of us free to discuss our feelings in a burger place on 58. Normally with a stepdad I guess nothing is set in stone, as far as child support for the kid of the dead wife. But legal-guardian-wise, I was short on options. Not a great time for him to lose interest entirely.
I was waiting for him to ask about school, or anything else. Was I making progress in the discipline-and-respect-for-others department. Nope, nobody home, Stoner boot camp had closed up shop. This probably sounds nuts, but I started wishing he would make some insult of my character, to show interest. I was blurting out any random thing that might make me sound like a worthy person, which to be honest there wasn’t much. Even my drawing, the one thing I was pretty good at, was over and out since Mom died. I couldn’t even open my notebooks to look at my older stuff. Too sad, I guess. I was the opposite of Tommy, as far as sadness and drawing.
And now I was embarrassing myself, trying to dig up bones for Stoner. I said I was going out for JV football. And had started weight training. Which was not a complete lie, Fast Forward was psyched about me and football and was letting me use his free weights, teaching me the body parts lingo some guys had: quads, triceps, lats. Those words did get the tiniest spark of attention from Stoner. For about ten seconds, before he went back to opening up the layers of his Quarter Pounder and separating out all the pickles.
I decided to let Stoner make the next move. A boring game, since he didn’t seem to notice I’d stopped talking. He ran out of anything fascinating to eat, and was looking around like maybe somebody better had showed up. It was mostly just parents with kids eating their value meals in what you had to assume were happier situations. Our table was by the door, so we got a fresh blast of December whenever anybody came in. Freezing rain type of thing. I didn’t have any winter coat that fall. Mom kept meaning to get me one, but never did.
I said nothing, Stoner said nothing. I turned up my Coke and drank it down. I needed more ice in me right then like a hole in the head. Now my whole chest hurt. A couple came in with a kid, one of those good-looking families you just want to believe in, like a commercial. The little guy was in a puffy jacket and boots and looked like a tiny moon man, walking on his toes. The mom had on a purple coat and tall boots, cheeks red from the cold, young looking. Like Mom whenever she first had me. The husband or boyfriend went to order and she squatted down on her boot heels to unzip the kid out of his coat, flicking her shiny hair over her shoulders, talking to this kid, smiling in his face like there was no place else she wanted to be. I wondered if Mom was ever that thrilled with me. She’d fought tooth and nail with her fosters about not giving up the baby, and ended up having to move out on her own, pregnant, broke, and boyfriendless as she was. She always said I was the first good thing that ever happened to her. And seemed that thrilled about baby number two, even if Stoner wasn’t.
