Emmy though got all mournful, lying on her back with tears running down sideways, which pretty much killed me. She asked would I wait for her and not get another girlfriend in the meantime before May. I told her no worries on that. I used an old-lady voice and said “I’m too forlorn to be fit company, unless I can find me some almost dead cats.” And she laughed, so that was good. We cheered ourselves up then by making fun of Mrs. Gummidge, and got tickled. Which is terrible, but you know. We’re kids. I asked how long ago Mr. Gummidge died.
“No idea,” she said. “We’ve known her forever, and there’s never been any Mr. Gummidge in the picture. I don’t even know what he died of.”
“He probably hung himself,” I said. “With her compressure hose.”
That cracked all of us up. Maggot included. He’d been awake all along.
We were back at the Peggots’ a few days before I got up my nerve, but the time came. The house was quiet. Mr. Peg took Maggot and some cousins to go bowling with their church youth league. They invited me, but I said I didn’t feel like it. After they left, I went downstairs to the kitchen where Mrs. Peggot was cooking her big pot of blackeye peas they always had for New Year’s, for a year of good luck. A Peggot thing. Mom always said she’d never heard of that. But then, look at her luck.
I hung around the kitchen watching Mrs. Peggot put things in her soup. Onions, carrots, a lot more than blackeye peas, plus it had to cook all day and then some. She always put in the big bone from the country ham they ate at Christmas. This year they’d taken the ham to Knoxville for Christmas dinner, then wrapped the bone in foil and brought it back. So that bone had more miles on it than most people I knew. All that, for the luck. Steam rolled out of the pot, fogging up the window and making the kitchen smell amazing. I told her she was the best cook and this was the best house I was ever in. She looked over her shoulder at me, then went back to stirring. I thanked her for the presents she and Mr. Peg gave me for Christmas, that I wasn’t expecting. I’d said thank you at the time, but I wanted to use all my manners before I got to the main question.
“We had us a good Christmas, didn’t we?” she asked, and I told her yes, I’d had the biggest time in Knoxville and was glad she let me come. She went on stirring. I told her the soup smelled so good, I wished I wouldn’t ever have to leave.
She set down her big spoon and stood still, looking out the foggy window. Then untied her apron and came and sat down at the table. Her glasses were so foggy I couldn’t see her eyes, and for a second I got terrified. Thinking of Stoner in his reflectors and all other adults that seemed like they went blind if they really had to look at me. Then the steam cleared and I could see her blue eyes, still kind of cloudy. Maggot had told me she had the cataracts and needed an operation on her eyes. But she was looking at me straight.
“Damon, are you asking if we can keep you permanent?”
I was afraid to tell her yes. Because then I knew the answer would be no.
It turned out she and Mr. Peg had already discussed it. The week after the funeral Miss Barks came over to meet with them about a possible foster placement, since I was more comfortable with them than anyplace else. The DSS evidently had cleared up the Stoner lies, and they’d decided the Peggots were my best shot. So she and Mr. Peg had talked it over. Talked and talked, she said. But decided they couldn’t. Not as guardians or fosters or anything official.
I hated Miss Barks for not telling me this. I wanted to die of embarrassment. Mrs. Peggot looked sad, and kept rubbing her head. Her gray hair stuck out this way and that, like she’d forgotten to comb it that morning, which maybe it didn’t matter. Nobody really looked that much at a lady her age, including me usually. But I did now. She was my only chance.
She said I would always be welcome to visit. But she and Mr. Peg were getting old, with him having the arthritis so bad his leg hurt him day and night. Plus he had the sugar, that he took shots for in his stomach. She didn’t mention her eye thing, but I got the picture. She said it was only two more years until Maggot’s mom was getting released, maybe sooner for good behavior. Not likely, considering it’s Mariah. But at some point, she would come take Maggot and finish up raising him. I asked where, and Mrs. Peggot said they would have their own place.
I couldn’t even imagine Maggot not living in that house. “Does he know about it? That he’s going to have to move out?”
“Yes, honey. He does. We’ll be a little sad, but a boy ought to be raised by his mother, and that’s what she wants. Mr. Peg and I can’t always do for him now that he’s getting so big.”
Maggot wasn’t that big, to be honest. For his age. I was, though. I kept quiet.
“You and Matty will be teenagers here before you know it. Learning to drive, courting girls. Lord have mercy.” She smiled and looked sad at the same time, waving one hand like shooing away mosquitoes. That hand looked a hundred years old. Knuckles and gristle.
I’d given no thought to what lay up the road for us. Maggot learning to drive, courting whatever he had in mind, disaster possibly. He was already in a war with Mr. Peg over his long hair, the music he liked, some of his weirder magazines. Attitude in general. Nothing like the attitude wars of Stoner and me. But you could see how low-level fighting went step by step, with more hazards at the higher levels like in Super Mario.
I wondered if Miss Barks had told the Peggots I was a hard kid to handle.
“I won’t do any of those teenager things,” I told her. “I would mind you. You and Mr. Peg both, I promise. I could probably get Maggot to do better.”
Mrs. Peggot looked at the window instead of me. Snow was starting to fall, the whole world so damn quiet. I could hear their big clock ticking from the other room where it sat on the mantel with the picture of Holy Aunt June. She wasn’t going to save me, either.
“But what if,” I started, and backed up, started again. “I can be a lot of help, like carrying in groceries and heavy things. What if I just stayed until Maggot’s mom gets out, and whenever he moves, I’d find another home too?”
Mrs. Peggot said they had discussed this too with Miss Barks. But she gave them the advice that it wasn’t a great idea. She said teenage boys are the hardest of all to find homes for, and it was better to get them in some kind of permanent situation while younger if at all possible. She’d promised the Peggots she would keep working on it.
And that was it. Mr. and Mrs. Peggot wanted to try out being regular grandparents for a change, and not be parents anymore. I needed to let Miss Barks find me some nice people that were younger and could take me in for good.
I shouldn’t have been shocked. Emmy had warned me, and honestly I knew better, but something in me was holding out. Now it fell to pieces. I cried in front of Mrs. Peggot. That was horrible. She had to go hunt up a box of tissues and then rub me on the back like a baby.
“Honey, I’m sorry,” she said, over and over. Words I hated so much I wanted to smash them with my fists.
Crying was the sickest part, in how shamefaced I felt. Even at Mom’s funeral I never shed a tear, because of hating everybody.
Hard as a rock. But with Aunt June being so nice and Emmy in love with me, I’d let myself get soft. Thinking the Peggots were
not like everybody else, but special, as regards the Jesus thing of loving your neighbor as much as you love yourself. For
fuck’s sake, hadn’t I learned that lesson? Sunday school stories are just another type of superhero comic. Counting on Jesus
to save the day is no more real than sending up the Batman signal.
20
Starting from that day, in that kitchen, I was on my own. New year, new life, not yet in my own house making the payments, but that’s how I felt: my own man. Not liking it a bit.
Miss Barks found me a new foster home, which was the McCobb family: Mr. and Mrs., first and second grade boy and girl named Brayley and Haillie, plus two babies with names I never did get straight due to everybody calling them the Twins. Screamer One and Two would cover it. One would fall asleep, the other would start up a fit, they’d get each other going and not a lot of sleeping happened in that house. Nor cheerfulness either.
This family’s main problem was being flat broke. You never saw people so stressed out over money. Mr. McCobb oftentimes did have work, but between one thing and another, Brayley needing the better kind of tennis shoes, Haillie wanting five dollars to try out for junior tumbling squad, the babies needing Pampers and so on, plus whatever was going on with the credit cards as far as robbing Peter to pay Paul, they ran out of cash every single month without one end meeting the other. Mrs. McCobb worried herself sick over Brayley and Haillie getting tormented at school for not having what the other kids had. Which is a legit concern, take that from me, a person that lined up every Friday of all times for the Backpacks of Love aka food sacks the church ladies sent home on weekends for free-lunch kids so we wouldn’t starve. I never knew any different, I was always that kid, so I grew up being as tall and tough about it as I was able. But you don’t want to go down that road if you can help it. Brayley being one of those small but chubby, grubworm type of kids, and Haillie in her own little world of troll dolls and rainbow ponies, they both had targets on their backs. If those two went over to the Backpacks of Love side of things, you’d fear for their lives.
Mrs. McCobb told me she’d never in a million years thought they would stoop to taking in a foster child. But hopefully having that little bit extra every month from the DSS would turn things around. Plus they were being good Christians, and if it came up at school I was to say that.
Mr. McCobb was big on ideas for making that little bit extra to turn things around, and had tried most of them: selling Amway, breeding AKC pups with fake papers, human advertisement, sperm donor, etc. Plus buying lotto tickets, obviously. His newest idea was taking in a foster. If I went okay, they might take in two, for twice the cash. It didn’t hurt my feelings. Creaky made no bones about wanting that five hundred a month per head. I knew the score.
The trouble that Mr. McCobb didn’t count on, though, was needing to spend money on me. For example, buying more groceries so I could eat. The first week I was there, he asked if I was going to chip in for my meals and so forth.
“Chip in, like what?” I asked. Not having the slightest idea what he was talking about.
“Just a little cash, buddy. For the extra food.”
The two of us were sitting at the kitchen table doing an enterprise where I licked the stamps and sealed envelopes after Mr. McCobb put brochures in them. Every time he leaned over to reach himself more brochures, I saw pink scalp shining through his buzz cut on top.
“I am all about the fair and the square,” he said. “As far as your bunking quarters, that’s going to be grateese.” He explained grateese meant he wasn’t going to charge me anything for my bedroom.
“Thanks,” I said, even though it wasn’t a bedroom, it was a dog room. The day Miss Barks brought me there, she inspected the DSS-approved cute bedroom that supposedly was for me, with cowboy wallpaper, bedspread of Woody from Toy Story, etc. But after she left, it turned out that was their son Brayley’s room. Mrs. McCobb said not to tell Miss Barks or I would get sent back, so I didn’t. Sleeping in the McCobbs’ dog room was preferable to whatever DSS might cook up next. This room was attached on the back of the house with the washer and dryer and a seriously rotted-out floor where their old washer had leaked. You had to be careful where you stepped, or the linoleum would give way. It’s where they’d had their AKC puppy enterprise some while back, and smelled like it. Plus noisy, due to the washer and dryer going all hours, what with all those kids and babies.
