22
Miss Barks had some big news. She was pumped. Picked me up from school to go for a long drive out in the country, which we both liked. Then dinner at a restaurant of Mexican food called Rancho something that didn’t even have a drive-through.
Great all that, but you don’t just run off with your caseworker and not show up for work. Ghost was not a guy you wanted mad at you. That tattoo eye staring at you from his throat, Jesus. I never forgot how I’d drawn him in my mind that first time at Pro’s Pizza, as supervillain Extra Eye that could see your thoughts. Now I was like, What if that’s real? What if he can even see this thought? I didn’t discuss any of this with Miss Barks due to her not knowing about my job at Golly’s Market. After I first started working there, I’d asked enough questions to figure out this was a what-DSS-doesn’t-know-won’t-hurt-me type situation.
But now it was just me and Miss Barks in the car having ourselves the biggest time, and I quit caring about Ghost. I was ready for a good day. We took the little winding roads through coal camps where the big blue coal chutes come down the mountainside over the treetops, like waterslides for giants. All the way out to those high white cliffs that run along the Kentucky line. It was one of your April days where you can smell the plowed fields and see the mountains greening up, like it’s the world saying, Hey everybody, I’m not dead yet! We put on the radio and sang all the ones we knew. And I mean loud, windows rolled down, the two of us singing “You’re Still the One” like we’re wanting Shania to hear us over in Nashville.
Miss Barks said she never felt so free as she did behind the wheel of a car. I wondered how many years I’d have to work at Golly’s before I could score some wheels. Probably a hundred, given how things were going. Two months had got me some T-shirts, the cheapest brand tennis shoes they carried at Walmart, and if anything more, I wouldn’t know. The McCobbs were keeping my money for so-called safety reasons. Like Fast Forward did at Creaky’s.
Miss Barks said I was looking handsome in my new haircut, so technically that’s two nice things said to me that year. But then she erased it by trying to take credit. Didn’t she say I just needed to speak up? Ask the McCobbs for anything I needed, ask and ye shall receive, the usual nonsense. Smash your fist into somebody’s dashboard and ye shall get noticed, is more like it. But I didn’t want to kill the mood, so I let her think what she thought.
Out by the Cumberland bluffs we got out of the car to walk around that park they have, and stood looking up at the cliffs that go on and on, for the last hundred miles of Virginia. I wondered how it would feel to be way up there on top, looking down. My brain kept going back to that, over and over, wondering how it would feel to jump off. Not to die necessarily, just to see how it felt to be a boy flying through the air. Not that I would. Jump. Or fly either. You can’t help what goes through your head.
That’s where Miss Barks told me her news. Big shock. I had money I never knew about. After Mom died, the DSS filed the paperwork for me to get social security checks, which is the bright side of being an orphan: they pay you for it. Who knew? It wasn’t a ton, some percentage of what Mom was making at Walmart, which is an insult according to Mr. McCobb. But it was still a check, and I would get it every month till I turned eighteen. Miss Barks said they’d set up for it to go into an account that I could use after I graduated from foster care. She said this tended to work out better than putting the foster parents in charge of the account. And I said something to the effect of, Lady, you got that one fucking right.
She wanted me to promise I would use the money to go to college. Like, away someplace, not auto mechanics at Mountain Empire. Which meant promising to do better with my grades. You don’t get to college without passing elementary school, she said, like this was new information. I told her at Elk Knob you get promoted to middle school just for showing up, especially a kid of my size. They need us in the higher grades for the sports teams. She said that was not the attitude she was looking for. I tried changing the subject, but she was real stuck on that point: Just showing up doesn’t get you anywhere in life. It was not too late to turn myself around, etc. I asked if it was required for me to use this money account for college, and she said technically no. But I would be a fool not to, because that would give me the same chances in life as other kids had.
She was just bitter about not getting to go herself. She’d been taking her night classes, but it wasn’t the same as the away-type colleges where evidently you get to live on your own as a grown-up without even going to work, just reading and studying on whatever you feel like finding out about. I didn’t know anybody that had done that. It didn’t seem real, honestly. I was just trying to get my head around the orphan bonus. I wondered about Tommy Waddles. Was he getting paid double for having both parents dead? She said probably. Then I wondered about something else, which was my dad, that died before I was born. Had I been racking up the dough all these years, only to find out on my eighteenth birthday I’d won the freaking lottery?
Sadly, no. She said they’d looked into that, hoping to track down some line on child support, but there was no father on my birth certificate. I told her I did have one, though, and knew his name. I even knew where he was buried, due to Mrs. Peggot and Mom having their arguments over taking me to see his grave. The cemetery was in Murder Valley, Tennessee. I only heard them say it a few times, an age ago. But a name like that is not too forgettable.
Miss Barks said none of this was any use. It was my mom’s mistake for not putting him on my birth certificate. And with him being dead especially, an expensive mistake. I said “Damn,” even though I wasn’t supposed to use language with Miss Barks, and for just that once she made a face and said, “Yeah, double damn.” That was Mom and mistakes. She was a pro.
We got back to town before dark, to eat at the restaurant, but I started worrying about Mrs. McCobb driving out to pick me up at Golly’s, me not being there, her being mad over the wasted gas, Mr. McCobb being mad I’d skipped out. And so on. I told Miss Barks I needed to be back before eight o’clock to have plenty of time for homework. There’s always some lie that will make everybody happy, if you work at it. She was all smiles about the homework, and pretty like always. Pink sweater, tight slacks, that angel hair. I wasn’t cheating on Emmy in thinking Miss Barks was hot, because (1) Emmy was popular, so if she ever saw me again would break up with me instantly, and (2) Miss Barks was a different category from girlfriend, i.e. legal guardian.
The restaurant was a trip. They had it decorated up like a different country and even had a couple of Mexican people in there bringing your food. Plus cooking it, you would have to think. I couldn’t tell you the name of one single thing I ate, except rice and some lettuce, but it was all great and there was a ton of it and I stuffed my face like a pig.
Towards the end of dinner she told me she had more news. Not good, this time. Terrible in fact, but it took me a minute to work that out. She was so excited she was bouncing in her chair. She’d saved up enough to take summer classes full time and finish out her teacher degree. In the fall she would start her student teaching. After that, pretty much guaranteed of getting a job as an elementary or kindergarten teacher, and finally would start making some decent money.
Miss Barks was quitting her job at DSS so she could go have her wonderful new career. Quitting me. And all her other precious orphans, screw us. For the money.
She dropped me back at the McCobbs’ before eight, like I’d asked, so they wouldn’t drive out to get me from Golly’s. I came in the kitchen and told Mr. McCobb some lie about how I’d had an appointment with my caseworker and she’d cleared it with Mr. Golly so I’d get paid anyway. Then I went to my stinking dog room and punched the washing machine. Wiped off the smear of blood with somebody’s black T-shirt that was in the pile, shut off the lights, and planted myself face down on my motherfucking child-size air-mattress bed.
On second thought, I got back up and rummaged around the shelf over the washer, got the baby monitor, and put it in the mop bucket. I didn’t need anybody watching me cry.
Maybe some kids are told from an early age what’s what, as regards money. But most are ignorant I would think, and that was me too, till I was eleven and started pulling down a paycheck. Before that, my thinking was vague. If you had a job, you had money. If you didn’t have a job, you had your food stamps or EBT card and basically, not money. I didn’t really get that there were gray areas. Okay, I did know about rich people, that some few made the big bucks from being movie stars, pro football, the president, etc. These types of people living one hundred percent not in Lee County. Except for this one NASCAR driver that supposedly bought a farm near Ewing in the seventies. Also, the coal miners back in union times. Thirty or forty bucks an hour, old men still talked like those were the days Jesus walked among us throwing around hundred-dollar bills. But for the most part I thought a paycheck was a paycheck, whether from Walmart or Food Country or Lee Bank and Trust or Hair Affair or the Eastman plant over in Kingsport.
Obviously, you live and learn. Now I know, if you finish high school that’s supposed to be a step up, moneywise. College is another step up, but with a major downside: for the type of job college gets you, most likely you’ll end up having to live far away from home, and in a city. My point though is the totem pole of paychecks, with school as one thing that gets you up there, and another one being where you live, country or city. But the main thing is, whatever you’re doing, who is it making happy? Are you selling the cheapest-ass shoes imaginable to Walmart shoppers, or high-class suits to business guys? Even the same exact work, like sanding floors, could be at the Dollar General or a movie star mansion. Show me your paycheck, I’ll make a guess which floor. If you are making a rich person happy, or a regular person feel rich, aka better than other people, the money rolls. If it’s lowlifes you’re looking after, not so much. And if it’s kids, good luck, because anything to do with improving the life of a child is on the bottom. Schoolteacher pay is for the most part in the toilet. I gather this is common knowledge, but I had no idea, the day Miss Barks said, So long sucker, I’m chasing the big bucks now. Schoolteacher!
I’ve had friends in places high and low since then, and some of the best were people that taught school. The ones that showed up for me. Outside of school hours they were delivery drivers or moonlighting at a gas station or, this is a true example, playing in a band and driving the ice cream truck in summer. They need the extra job. Honestly need it, just to get by.
So here is Miss Barks in her first real job, twenty-two years old, working her little heart out for the DSS. And hitting the books at all hours because she pretty desperately wants to live in her own tiny apartment instead of sharing with a slob, and for that she needs to climb up the paycheck pole to first-grade teacher. That’s how they pay you at DSS. Old Baggy has been at it so long she’s got no more reason to live, working two shifts a day, going home to her crap duplex in Duffield owned by her cousin that gives her a break on the rent. If you are the kid sitting across from her in your caseworker meeting, wearing your two black eyes and the hoodie reeking of cat piss, sorry dude but she’s thinking about what TV show she’ll watch that night. Any human person with gumption would have moved on to something else by now, the military or selling insurance or being a cop or even a teacher. Because DSS pay is basically the fuck-you peanut butter sandwich type of paycheck. That’s what the big world thinks it’s worth, to save the white-trash orphans.
And if these kids grow up to throw punches at washing machines or each other or even let’s say smash a drugstore drive-through
window. Crawl in and take what’s there. Tell me how you’re going to be surprised. There’s your peanut butter sandwich back.
Every dog gets his day.
23
Summer was coming, and I was counting the days down. Not that moving to full-time hours on the garbage mountain enterprise was any great shakes, vacationwise. But still, for a kid it’s just ironed into you that summer is freedom. For three whole months, no more sitting in a too small desk trying to be not the biggest shit-eater in the room.
For the record, I didn’t always hate school. I was once known to put in a decent effort. One of the better readers, as far as the boys at least. Maybe I thought Mom would be proud, or maybe I wanted to show her I wasn’t going to be a dropout like her. Either way, it no longer pertained. Now I watched other kids raise their hands, get their answers right, and good for them. Topic sentences, Appomattox Courthouse, life cycle of a plant, what is all that? If all your brain wants to know is, where’s the door out of here and wherever it goes, will you still be starving.
The teachers, principal, and Miss Barks all gave me the same lecture on how I was not working hard or living up to my potential. I had no fight with them. You get to a point of not giving a damn over people thinking you’re worthless. Mainly by getting there first yourself. I wanted to tell them: This right here that you’re looking at is my potential. What the fuck would you call it? Do you seriously think this is the person I wanted to end up living inside of?
But hard work? Let me tell you what that is: trying to get through every day without the gangling ugly menace of you being stared at, shamed by a teacher, laughed at by girls, or sucker punched. Again, if you’ve been there, you know. If you have to guess, you might not even be close. All these people had to keep on asking and asking: Why was I flunking out? What could I do but look at the wall and say nothing, just sorry. I was learning to love the brutal burnt screw-you taste of that word I’d been given to eat forever. Sorry.
But I still yet had a small fire in my belly for the first day of summer. Picture me with my big smile, turning up at Golly’s at nine a.m. on a weekday, dropped off by Mr. McCobb on his way to wherever he hadn’t quit from lately. I can see Mr. Golly inside the store putting his two-for-one Corn Dogs sign in the window. Over at the far side of the dump lot, I see Swap-Out lighting a cigarette one-handed while pissing against a tree in full view of the passing cars. And I think, Jesus. This is all there is. Walk around back to bang on Ghost’s door and clock in.
The thing about school you don’t realize is, everybody’s moving towards something. Even if you’re one of the screwups, you still participate. Okay kids, let’s get through this lesson, this unit, this grade. In May we’ll take our Standards of Learning tests, maybe our sorry-ass school will do better on the scores this year, the teachers will keep their jobs, and everybody moves on to the next grade. Every kid wants to be older anyway, so there you go, automatic improvement. It’s like the escalator thing at the Knoxville mall. Step on, take your ride. There’s always the chance you might run across something shiny and new on your way up.
Now I’d fallen off. At Golly’s we didn’t have any units or even weeks, we measured time in roll-offs. Which is a giant metal bin, like a railroad car, that you fill up with trash. Then a semi comes and hauls it off to the landfill. After we’d sorted people’s dropped-off trash into what could be sold for scrap, recycled, pawned, smashed, drained, whatever, the leftovers were the trash of the trash. Also pretty toxic, but not the point. That’s what we threw in the thirty-yard roll-off. It was nothing so easy as just tossing it in, either. The company charged four hundred dollars to haul it off and bring in an empty, so we had to be economical about it and get over a hundred ten-buck loads of people’s trash leftovers crammed in that dumpster. This meant using all our superpowers of stomping, flattening, breaking, rebreaking, then piling it higher than the canopy over the gas pumps. Towards the end of a load, it took a serious pitching arm to get anything up there on top. Plenty would fall off too, as they hauled it away, leaving a trail of crap from Golly’s to the landfill. Not our problem.
Here was our summer: filling that roll-off to the max, be it a month, six weeks, doesn’t matter. Because it goes away, the empty comes back, and you’re back where you started. Here was the real world where nobody and nothing gets better. Biding my time till I turned sixteen and could drop out of school, with a whole life ahead for applying myself to full-time shit work. Maybe I was Ghost’s trainee, someday to graduate from battery-acid drainage assistant to the show he had going inside.
Meanwhile the McCobbs were in some serious shit. Their car got repossessed. It was a late-model Dodge Spirit, leased, sky blue, none of that I guess being the point. Mr. McCobb couldn’t get to work anymore, so he lost his job, was the point. You tell me why it makes sense for guys wanting money from you to come and take your car, so you can’t earn another dime. That’s the grown-up version I guess of teachers yelling at you for hating school.
First the McCobbs didn’t know what the hell they were going to do, other than possibly be homeless, because of already being behind on their rent. Next they fired up a full-time marital spat between (1) starting a couple of new in-home businesses with Mr. McCobb doing telephone surveys and Mrs. McCobb doing dog grooming, or (2) taking the kids and going to Ohio to live with Mrs. McCobb’s parents, dog grooming my ass. I myself was banking on Mr. McCobb winning, because he definitely wore the pants. It mattered to me which way this went, obviously. Since I would not be moving my personal ass to any Ohio.
Or grooming any dogs, either. I was working full time at Golly’s. It turned out Ghost lived over towards Fleenortown and drove right past, so he could pick me up on his way in. I wasn’t crazy about the hours he kept, or being alone in a Chevy pickup with Ghost and the thoughts in my head. Christ. But I got to work most days, other than the weeks he’d disappear on some kind of bender. I had to stay longer in the evenings, due to Ghost doing a lot of his business in the after-dark hours. But I got used to it. Swap-Out had a reliable source of weed and a generous heart. Definitely it helped the time go faster. Or maybe slower actually, but you didn’t care. Once in a great while he’d show up with a Glock 19 that belonged to one of the guys he lived with, and we’d set up a row of bottles on the edge of the roll-off for target practice. It was years since Mr. Peg had showed me how to shoot, so I wasn’t that great, but my aim got better over time. Swap-Out’s aim was scary as hell, permanently, improvement being not a Swap-Out thing. We kept an eye out for the aerosols, which over and above the huffing potentials made excellent targets. Big bang, for real. But we could get ourselves just as thoroughly entertained over some childish shit like stomping the bubbles of bubble wrap. Also you wouldn’t believe the number of hot dogs two deeply baked boys could put away. Mr. Golly had to be making extras on purpose.
After Swap-Out went home of an evening, I’d be on my own to hang out in the store and help Mr. Golly. He liked talking about his childhood in India, where evidently a lot of people lived in the dump itself. In houses they built out of actual trash. If that sounds like some wack fairy tale, I’m just going to say he was not a guy to lie to you. He acted like this was no big deal really, getting born and raised in a dump. He had all these great stories about what boys did to mess with each other, like traps, stink bombs, etc. For their holidays (and we’re talking some whole other Christianity) they built giant statues of their goddesses and elephants and such, out of—wait for it—stuff they found in the dump! God made out of garbage, you can’t make that up. It seemed like the old man had been saving up these stories his whole life, waiting for somebody to listen. He’d had a wife in there somewhere, but at this point in time I’m pretty sure I was it for Mr. Golly. Technically it turned out that he was Mr. Ghali this whole time. I saw him write that on the thing you sign for deliveries. I was surprised, but he said I was not the lone ranger, everybody in the county thought it was Golly’s Market. According to him, “Golly” meant “Gee, that is really great,” so the name was okay by him. Part of his advertising scheme.
Hearing these tales of his dump boyhood, sometimes I’d think of telling Miss Barks, how she’d be interested in the whole situation of foreign orphans. Then I’d remember: nope. I was back to Baggy Eyes as my caseworker, a sadder sack of person than ever, plus seriously pissed off at Miss Barks for abandoning ship to go chase her dreams. That made two of us, and I guess we both decided out of bitterness to say as little as possible to each other. She would call the house once a month while I was at work, and Mrs. McCobb would tell some lie about me being outside playing. Baggy would be glad to hear it, no need to talk to me. Just to be clear: I’m eleven. She’s my legal guardian. And her idea of a perfect ward of the state is one that’s AWOL.
