So I had more than I deserved. Ms. Annie, for another example. In high school art was a real class, for juniors and seniors, but she gave me special permission. I could take her class all four years if I wanted. Assuming I stuck around that long. Lee High is where kids like us come to our crossroads of life: walk up the steps of the big brick box and turn right, through the front door into the classrooms. Or left, down the long chain-link tunnel, past a thousand army and navy recruitment posters, into Lee Career and Tech. Nothing arty down there, trust me.
Thanks to the September 11 thing that happened that fall, the posters now were stapled on top of each other, and the recruiters likewise. Let’s go kick terrorist ass, they all said, and many answered the call. Why not. Lured by the promise of one paying job at least, between high school and death. Because the attack itself didn’t seem quite real. To us, skyscrapers are just TV, so watching two of them fall down, over and over, looked like the same movie effects of any other we’d seen. We knew people died. We had our assembly, flags down, sad and everything. I’d had nightmares of falling like that from on high. I know it was real buildings. And they still have lots more standing in those cities, so I guess that’s a worry. Here, if any terrorists came flying over, they’d look down on trashed-out mine craters and blown-up mountains and say, “Keep going. This place already got taken out.” It was hard to see how September 11 was my fight. As far as doing good for my fellow man, my better option was football.
Lee Career and Tech looked like a path to freedom, definitely. A shot at working in an auto shop, no more to be held prisoner at a desk? Yes please. But Mr. Armstrong had nailed my destiny to the classrooms. Spanish, Geometry, Personal Finance, like I would have need for any of that. I stuck it out for one reason only, my daily hour of Ms. Annie. That was the plus side of being in her art class. Downside: having to share. She was sweet to everybody, it turned out, walking around the room saying “Nice composition,” or “I like your use of color there,” or at the least, “I can see you worked really hard on that, Aidan.” I had to do the same assignments as everybody else, elements of design, linear and grid drawing, value shading. Life drawing. She had us take turns sitting as the model, but clothes stayed on, so. Not like my earlier art enterprise. This was about proportions and such, tension versus a body at rest. I won’t say I didn’t learn things. Oil paints, all these pigment colors with automotive names: titanium, cadmium, cobalt. For homework we did still lifes. Angus helped me think of excellent ones, like False Teeth in Salad Bowl. If I did cartoons now, they had to be on my own clock.
All the middle schools fed into Lee High, which meant I was back in school with my own people. A Maggot-Demon reunion. And Emmy, a junior like Angus. But all going our different ways, as you do. I was a jock. Maggot mainly hung with the Goth girl Martha that cut his hair. Emmy sang in the choir that Ms. Annie was director of, and ran with the popular end of the arty kids, Drama and them. What Angus had to say about the Drama girls, you can guess. But even still, I was sharing those halls with people that knew me. Some were my wingmen, some had put ice down my back. One of them still remembered my mom. It felt like I existed.
What I didn’t have was the thing I thought about night and day. In high school now, a General, and I’d still not been laid. Not the full thing. For various reasons, it hadn’t happened. My number-one crush being twenty-some years and a marriage outside of bounds. And a teacher. I knew they had laws, thanks to that home ec teacher scandal in Gate City that people won’t stop talking about until the sun goes cold. No way. But girls my age seemed young, more heavily into showcasing the goods than backing up the inventory. Angus had tainted my judgment.
And then I fell face-first into Linda Larkins. Long-legged homework club flirt, older sister of May Ann. She was out of high school now, nobody I would run into, but out of the blue sky one day she calls me up. I’m waiting for “Sorry, wrong number,” but she’s discussing Friday’s game, how great I looked. And then without even a warmup stretch, she’s talking about my tight end like that’s a sight she’d like more of, she’d bet my ass is all muscle and hers is pretty tight as well, had I ever had my tongue up a pussy like hers. With Mattie Kate and Angus not six feet away pouring Cokes over their ice cream. This is the kitchen phone we’re on, and me shitting bricks, saying I appreciate that, okay I’ll think about that, thank you. I kept my front to the wall and made a break for privacy.
This was to become a regular thing. I would mumble something and run to take the call upstairs. We had a phone up there on a long cord we could drag into our rooms. I was a good liar. But Jesus. This girl. I’d have her breathing in my ear, I’m about to come, and Mattie Kate is outside the door hollering, “Do y’all kids have anything to put in a dark load?” Linda would not stop until we both got ourselves off. Full-color descriptions. Sometimes I’d have to fake the big finish for safety reasons, like if I had people waiting on me and needed a hasty exit. But holy crap. For a young male, a blueball shutdown like that I’m pretty sure could be fatal.
I kept expecting her to give me the coordinates for a meetup, but no. Linda Larkins was phone-sex only. My entire freshman year. It never crossed my mind that I could just, you know, hang up on her. This older person had singled me out, and it felt like the NFL draft, you go where you’re called. I spent a lot of time trying to think of things I could say to sound more adult. That year I also did the regular things with other girls, homecoming dance etc. But it put a weird spin on normal dates and conversations and the making out, if that happened, to know that this chick that could probably suck the enamel off a phone receiver was waiting to polish off my night.
Angus as usual felt free to weigh in on the immature type of girls I was going out with. But for once, Angus had no inkling. Of this older woman that had me by the cerulean balls.
The Peggots started taking me in their wing again. Asking me over for Sunday dinners, not worried anymore about me trying to worm in and get adopted. I’d forgiven them for all that. It worked out for the best, not just because Miss Betsy was rich and sending Coach checks every month for my upkeep. She was my true kin. Paying me back on what I never got from my dad.
Angus would drive me to the Peggot house, with U-Haul supervising. She was in driver’s ed, needing her forty-five hours behind the wheel. She got curious about the trailer home where I was born and everything, so one time we walked up there but I got pretty sad. Big Wheels trike on the porch, toys left out in the rain. A naked doll half buried in dead leaves with all its hair cut off, just those hair dots all over the scalp. A whole new family in there. Mom and I were nowhere.
Mrs. Peggot always would ask if my friend wanted to stay for dinner, and a time or two Angus did, but it was awkward. That winter she was into this black leather motorcycle cap, like they wore in the old movies prior to helmets. Mrs. Peggot, poor little thing, just stared at that leather hat with no gumption to make her take it off. So over here is badass Angus, over there is Maggot with the eye makeup, black nail polish, and ever-expanding lip ring collection. Big shock, Demon is the nice-looking normal kid at the table.
They’d got so old, Mr. Peg worse than her. He always had the limp, but now it was the event of his day to get up out of his La-Z-Boy to come sit at the kitchen table. Maggot was taking his toll on them. He’d not say two words at dinner, just the black eyes bugged at me from time to time like, Rescue me. Which he was in no need of, Maggot did what he pleased. He laid out of school plenty, and I’d heard about the molly parties, the drugstore raids where he was ganking more than Max Factor. I wasn’t sure anymore how I fit into the Peggot situation.
One evening Mr. Peg got me outside, shoving his walker out the kitchen door, huffing and puffing over to his truck, supposedly for my second opinion on his battery cable. Actually, to discuss Maggot. Same truck, the Ram. Pretty sure Mr. Peg would be buried in that vehicle. He said he and Mrs. Peggot couldn’t handle Maggot anymore. They were getting almost scared of him. I didn’t ask if Mariah was getting out of prison any time soon. I tried to stick to the positive, that Maggot was a tenderhearted person underneath the cosmetics and death metal business.
Mr. Peg asked, “What is he thinking of, to go around looking thataway?”
I said I didn’t know. Not wanting to be a traitor to Maggot. But also, I really didn’t.
Mr. Peg elbowed the truck to keep his balance while he lit a Camel with his shaky hands. He smoked and looked up at the sky. His bottom eyelids drooped so their red insides showed. “Whenever I’s a boy,” he finally said, “we just done like we’s told. Is that so damn hard to do?”
I said we probably were more messed up nowadays due to TV and cable.
He asked why, though. What was so confusing? I don’t think he was wanting me to throw Maggot under the bus, just really and truly wondering what was so hard for us. Now, versus the old days. I said maybe the difference was we could see now what all we were missing. With everybody else in the world being richer than us, doing all kinds of nonsense and getting away with it. It pisses you off. It makes you restless.
Mr. Peg finished his Camel and stamped it out on the ground, shifting the heel of his old leather shoe side to side, grinding in slo-mo. Even for that small thing, he was hard pressed. “Do you reckon we spoilt him?” he asked. “Me and his mammaw? Because I’ll tell you something. She’ll go to her grave a-wishing she done better for Mariah.”
I told him Mrs. Peggot had always treated me with the exact same niceness as Maggot whenever we were small, and I was glad of it. That as far as home life went, I had run the full gamut, and theirs was the best by far. I didn’t think Maggot was mad or spoiled or anything like that. Just trying out being a different type person.
“Well, what kind of gal is ever going to have him like that? If he keeps on?”
I said maybe he was just having his wild oaks and would come around in time. Or else he’d find somebody. I reminded Mr. Peg of that thing people always say: There’s a shoe out there for every foot. Mr. Peg said he used to think that, but now he wasn’t sure if Maggot even wanted to find any shoe to fit him. And I didn’t say so, but I kind of agreed on that. Or if he did, because honestly don’t we all, probably Maggot’s kind of shoe hadn’t been invented yet. Or if so, they didn’t stock it in Lee County.
Weirdly, I kept thinking of Fast Forward, how he could look at us and name the true person inside us. Even if we were pathetic losers for the most part. Fast Forward was proof that a kid could keep his head up and survive, no matter how shitty the waters. He’d called me a diamond. I don’t know what I thought he could do for Maggot. It just seemed like this was a situation for Fast Man.
37
What never changed was U-Haul Pyles despising me. Staring me down at practices, lurking around the house making sure I knew my place. I gave as good as I got. I hated him touching our mouth guards, and being the one to tape or ice us if we got hurt. I hated him going with us to Longwood for the playoffs, which is how far we got that year. State semifinals. I got more playing time than Collins, which I felt bad about because it was his last game. He was a junior, quitting school after the season ended due to his girlfriend having a baby. The other teams had the usual things of their cheerleaders making up special Trailer Trash cheers against us and the fans throwing cow manure on the field, which we were used to, any time we played outside our region. But we kicked ass pretty decently. Semifinals would have been the highlight of my young life, if not for the Hellboy eyes burning me from the sidelines. And then later that night, U-Haul coming around to our motel rooms lecturing us about no partying, like we’re infants, putting Scotch tape on the outside of our doors so he could check in the morning to see if we’d been out. The man could leave a layer of scum on any good thing.
Sometimes he’d make me go with him on nonsense errands, like running over to the machine shop to help him load up the tackle sled they repaired. Asking in front of Coach, so I wouldn’t share my true feelings on where he could put his tackle sled. Sometimes he’d stop by his mom’s over at Heeltown, which wasn’t a single-wide but one of those built houses from the old days, small, front porch with the steps falling apart. So much crap on that porch, my Lord. Sofas and chairs stacked one on top of another, upside down and sideways. Cats crawling all over and through the piles like head lice. While U-Haul went in and did whatever he did, I would sit in the car and count the louse cats. As far as going inside, you couldn’t pay me.
Mrs. Pyles would want us to drop her off at Foodland or Walmart. She was heavier set, not a skeleton like him, but had the same red eyes and weird bad manners, old-person version: Honey, I’m just a little old nobody, now scooch ’at seat forwards and give me some room. She had a creepy way of getting intel out of me. On the McCobbs for instance, that were back from Ohio, living in Pennington Gap. Honey, is it true what I heert about her a-pawning off solit gold jewry, ain’t nobody can figure how she come honest by them kind of things. I was dumb enough to tell her about Mrs. McCobb’s rich parents spoiling the grandkids, before it dawned on me what she was actually trying to find out: were the McCobbs trading in stolen goods.
Another couple she wanted to discuss was Ms. Annie and Mr. Armstrong. What made him think he deserved that beautiful woman for his wife. They’s a world a people a-wondering on that. Why she’d stoop to lowerin’ herself thataway. “Beautiful” in this instance meaning white, I wasn’t stupid. Ms. Annie was a tattooed hippie. If she’d married any other guy in Lee County, they’d be asking why he had lowered himself. A kid of my raisings is not going to tell an older person flat-out, Lady, get the hell out of my face. But I came close.
Finally one day I told U-Haul that on errands involving his mom, he could count me out. He drilled those red eyes into me and said maybe he wasn’t a Gifted, but he knew things. Who I talked to on the phone. Where I hid my weed. How he knew, I can’t guess. But if I mentioned to Coach about us going to his mom’s house, he said, I’d be looking for a new place to live.
After the season ended, I had time on my hands. The Peggots sometimes would pick me up on a Saturday to go see June and Emmy. No more Kent. That show was over, and according to Emmy not just a breakup but World War III. Kent was a con man, June was a paranoid bitch, take it from there. I hated to think about it, but Maggot wanted details, what weapons were drawn, etc. Probably from living with grandparents he was action-deprived. This was a Saturday in February, cold as tits, and still the adults sent us outside to mess around in the woods. Probably so they could have this same conversation inside. We made a pitiful little band: Maggot freezing because he refused to wear the camo hunting coat the Peggots bought him. Emmy in her puffy coat that was black-and-white-printed like a cow, seriously. We dragged our feet through leaf slop, kicking up the smell of acorns. There was an old wrecked cabin on the property, logs and a fallen-down chimney but no roof. We would have called it a fort if we were kids, but now it was nothing. A stupid place we were forced to hang out because we couldn’t yet drive.
Emmy said Kent and June didn’t use weapons, just mouths, both parties packing serious heat in that department. Kent was a yeller, but mouthwise, June was an AR-15. Instant reload, engineered to kill. Maggot wouldn’t let it alone, wanting to know what June was so mad over.
“I don’t know. Him being a shiznet?”
Emmy’s cheeks were bright pink and her eyelashes sticking together, so pretty and sad. We were sitting on the wrecked chimney, cold rocks freezing our asses. Emmy and Maggot both picking at their nail polish, me pitching rocks through the gaps. The logs were gigantic, stacked at the corners the way you’d twine your fingers together, with big spaces between. They’d had some mother trees to cut down up here, back in the day. I could see Emmy’s weird house down below us through the trees, a giant wooden bowl upside-down with Peggots inside.
“Wait, correction,” she said. “A weapon was drawn. Mom had her Ginsu knife and kind of waved it around. Not chasing or anything. She was trying to get supper before it all blew up.”
What got the knife pulled on Kent was him telling June to leave it to the professionals because she wasn’t a doctor, just a nurse. Snap. A nurse practitioner is a trained professional and can prescribe medications, Emmy said, June was just choosing not to give out any more of Kent’s poison. She’d organized a meeting on it over at town hall with the biggest crowd they ever had showing up, to sign a petition thing against Kent’s company. Which he took to be a major backstab from his girlfriend. He said she was uncompassionate to people in pain. June said if he wasn’t such a damn coward he’d come down to her clinic and see all these decent people with hepatitis from needles, and their family farms going bankrupt in six months. Which I didn’t get honestly, about the needles. Kent’s thing was pills.
We stayed up there a long time in the cold. If we were kids on TV we’d have been sitting in a booth of some shiny diner or at a swimming pool mansion, instead of dead-looking woods. I used to like being outside with all the little beings poking after their business, but at that moment I felt ripped off. All we had was this junkbone cabin with its valuable parts, if any, long since stolen. Some squirrels to shoot at, if we’d been properly armed. The day would have been more tolerable if I’d brought a joint and we could get blazed, which Maggot would have been up for. Emmy, a question mark. June protected that girl like she was made of ice. Emmy was old enough to be driving, but June was all, No ma’am, these Lee County roads are teenage death traps, etc. You had to wonder why Emmy wouldn’t push back. I knew her and didn’t know her, regardless our onetime marriage plans. I watched clouds of frozen breath coming out of her face while she worked her way through the drama of June and Kent like it was the end of the world.
Long story short, whatever supper June was working on with that Ginsu knife did not get made. Screaming happened, hightailing was done. Kent being top salesman of his company had sold a gazillion of his pills in Lee County and actually won the giant bonus, Hawaii vacation for real, that he was going to take Emmy and June on over spring vacation, so. Bad timing on that one. The breakup rattled her so bad, June had asked Hammer Kelly to come over and spend a few nights at the house in case the bastard came slinking back around. Emmy said Hammer was so nice about it. He sat up on the couch all night, sleeping with his deer rifle in his arms.
