“I’d have taken you for a stranger,” he said. “You’re twice the man you used to be.”
Weightwise, possibly true, and at least a foot taller since fifth grade. “Doing my best,” I said. “You taking all this to Creaky’s cattle?”
“Hell no. That shithole ran itself into the ground some while ago. Tempting as it was to stay and watch the old man cry, I did not.”
“So is he dead now?” The last time Angus and I were out there to steal another Christmas tree, we’d seen bank auction signs stapled on the gate.
Fast Forward took a drag on his cigarette, eyes sliding sideways. “Maybe. For all the shit I give.” I just stood there burning it all to my brain. Dragging like that, not giving a shit like that.
“So, where you living at now, man?”
“Got my own place. Close to fifty acres up by Cedar Hill.”
“Sweet, your own farm. Is it over by where they have the bison?”
“A few miles shy of that. North side of 58.”
“Sweet,” I said. Again. Just struck dumb, because holy crap. A foster kid going that far in life, not even all that old yet. “You got a tobacco bottom?”
“Two-and-a-half-acre allotment, so it’s just about right. Manageable.”
“Well, if you ever need help cutting or anything. You know I’m there.”
“I appreciate it. But what I need to know is, can the boy keep the damn gloves on.”
He smiled, I laughed. The times we’d had. I mean, yes, this was getting poisoned that we were laughing about. Every minute of those days had sucked. But with another person knowing it was hell, you had something. I wanted to ask if he ever saw Tommy or Swap-Out, but really I wanted to be the only one that mattered to him. I saluted him, as in times of old. I needed to get back to work, but my feet were glued to the ramp. Fast Forward, human magnet. And his F-100.
He threw the butt of his cigarette onto the cement pad. “Like I said, I almost didn’t know you up close. But I have seen you on the field.”
“You’ve seen me play?”
“What do you think, Eighty-Eight? I’m a General. It’s not something you get over.”
The engine engaged, the Lariat pulled out, and I waited to see if my heart would settle down. He’d seen me play.
He made a point after that of speaking to me any time he came in. Often he was just picking up Ivermec or syringes, small things, not needing me to load his truck, but he’d find me and ask how was it hanging. I’d look up from tagging cultivator handles with the price gun, and here would be that movie-star smile coming my way. Almost like a friend thing. Even still, it surprised the heck out of me the day he asked if I wanted to hang out that evening. On a Saturday, which meant cruising. This being the Saturday-night enterprise of every human person in Lee County between age sixteen and married. Dragging Main. Right away I’m thinking, does he know I’m only fifteen, no vehicle, how will I meet up with him and all such as that. But he was chill, saying he’d pick me up here at five and we’d go see what kind of action we could scare up. He said some guys that were Generals from his day wanted to talk to me about the new direction we were taking on the field. I said sure. I was nervous to call Coach’s house and tell them not to come pick me up because I was going out on my own. The hard part I mentioned of feeling like a child. But it was U-Haul that answered, so I just told him. I owed nothing to U-Haul. The rest of the day dragged, due to not having my head in the feed store game. Bored with filling chick waterers, ready for action.
Pennington Gap is where we went, naturally. Because let’s face it, cruising Jonesville is small-time, the whole of Main being a mile and a half, tops. Federal Street in Norton has its pros and cons. But in Pennington you cruise all the way through town on Morgan, then swing around and come the whole way back on Joslyn, a giant circle with the vehicles moving so slow it might take a full hour for a circuit. You could walk it faster. Car windows are down, bodies are hanging out, conversations are had. People flirting between vehicles, or between the cars and bystanders. A lot of girls hung out in front of Lee Theater or at the turnaround by the dry cleaners, staked out in one locale to see the show go by. Some brought lawn chairs. Wanting to get the bigger picture, plus your outfit will not be seen all that much if you’re inside a vehicle, if that’s your main selling point. Not just the clothes but, you know. How they fit.
It was my first cruise from the vantage point of a vehicle, and we were the star attraction. Like the convertible in the parade with the homecoming queen in her fluffy dress, waving. In our case there was no waving, and really no “we,” it was all about Fast Forward. Hands resting loose on the wheel, head tilted back, eyes half closed, that smile. Ladies, come and get it if you dare. The girls came alive in a wave whenever that Lariat came into view. Up and down like fishing bobbers. Skintight jeans and halter tops and bare midrifts that hurt your crotch to look at.
We were four of us: Fast and me, a girl by name of Rose Dartell, and Big Bear Howe that played all four years with him as left tackle, so you know what that means. No tighter pair than a QB and the defender of his blind side. The girl, another story. Not to be mean, but this Rose person was not in Fast Forward’s league. Sharp elbows and eyes, sharp snaggled teeth, dirt-color hair teased out to the breaking point. She had this whole look about her like: Go ahead and try, pal. Can of whoop-ass at the ready. She sat in the middle and Big Bear shotgun, so after they picked me up, it was me and the door handle trying not to get too acquainted and fall out. We talked football, Big Bear wanting to know my thinking on our defensive lineup this year. Then we got to Joslyn and pulled into the string of cars, and Big Bear stamped shoe prints on the knees of my jeans on his way to squeezing out the window and swinging his big self onto the hood of the Lariat. He’s our damn hood ornament. With ants in his pants, whooping at girls, pounding the metal really fast on both sides of him. Monkey drummer. It’s a credit to Ford engineering and the support struts in that hood, because Big Bear is 250, easy. It was a time-tested arrangement evidently, and Big Bear a spectacle in his own right, about like the Hulk would look in Carhartt overalls and no shirt and a buzz cut with an epic rattail. They say Big Bear used to coil up that rattail in his helmet during games, for safety reasons. In this fashion we made our way around the town, clockwise I guess you would say if looking down at us from the standpoint of God. And let’s hope God wasn’t, this being open season on shady transactions, PDA, and language. “Where the fuck you been at lately asshole” being the usual hello.
It was all eyes on Fast Forward, but second to that, who was with him. I saw girls elbowing each other and pointing. The second time we rounded the corner by Lee Theater, Fast Forward surprised me by getting out of the truck. Middle of the street, engine running, door standing open. He’s saying, Get the hell out here, Demon, so I do. He’s got people for me to meet. Guys he played with and their girlfriends or wives or whatever, some with babies, Fast Forward being a few years out of high school now and some of these guys even older. The names went around too fast and loud to remember, this one guy Duck or Buck had a praying hands tattoo on his shoulder, his girlfriend wearing a Miss Thing T-shirt, another guy missing his pointer finger, I noticed. All retired Generals, here a tight end, there a cornerback. Fast Forward told them I was his prodigy that he’d discovered as a diamond in the raw. It happened more than once, him throwing the door open with the truck still rolling in some cases, me trying to keep up. Sometimes the younger people knew of me already, more really than they knew Fast Forward. He said you have to keep the legacy connected, old with the new, and I could see that. People come and go through school, there’s a danger of them forgetting the greatness of Generals of old. It was awesome plus terrifying. Would all these people expect me now to be that cool, or make touchdowns on every pass, or loan them money? Jesus. Fame is a lot to handle.
This girl Rose meanwhile was mystery cargo. I recognized the name, recalling the dope cookies some girl had made for our long-ago Squad parties. If this was the same one, we were looking at the longest girlfriend audition of history. What I’m saying is, she still didn’t have the job. They were more like brother and sister, having this fight the entire evening where she says, “I’m stupid obviously, but Jaylene Glass says it’s not how you said,” and he’s like “What isn’t,” and she’s like “You know what, the mouse deal,” and he’s like “Cry me a river,” and she’s like “You talk to her then,” and he’s like “I don’t think so.”
At a certain point he finished his Marlboros, crumpled the pack in his fist, and dropped it in her hand. Rose told me to let her out, and off she marches up the sidewalk, stick-thin girl with big farm-girl strides in her tight jeans and high-heel sandals. One block and two minutes later, she’s back in the Lariat with a fresh pack and he’s lighting up without word one of thanks. And I’m wishing I’d been quick enough to jump out and get them myself. That’s how it was with Fast Forward, you wanted to be his foot soldier. I was proud to be a General of the present day, but would have given anything to be as old as Big Bear, and the one to have been his left tackle.
It wasn’t till Rose got back in the cab, giving me a full front view, that I saw the scar running up the left side of her mouth. It dragged through both lips, leaving them out of whack in a kind of snarl. She was one of those heavy-makeup girls, majorly covered up, with the color boundary where the face meets the neck. Due to the scar, you have to think, but really it was not hideable. I wondered what that was like. For guys, it’s just war wounds. We had this defensive tackle Davy with a serious scar on his forehead from where he was playing in the driveway as a tiny tot, and his dad ran over him partway with the car. And Davy was A-okay girlwise, a babe magnet to be honest. But for a girl like Rose, did this scar put her out of the running? Or middle-tier girlfriend level, so she could try all her life with Fast Forward but still remain doomed? I didn’t know the rules. Something was going on between these two, but love was not it.
Not my problem. I was living the life I’d been waiting for. From time to time Big Bear would step from the Lariat hood onto another vehicle and lie on the roof, leaning over the window to talk to the driver. From time to time somebody would give him a joint, he’d take a couple of drags, then walk back over onto our hood and pass it inside to Fast Forward. We’d pass it across, and I’d hand it back out the window to Big Bear. The sun hung low over the mountains like a big red tit, the lights blazed green and red off the glass store windows, the girls bent their beautiful faces together keeping their secrets, their bodies of sweetness, Fords and Chevies, the river flowed. This is how it’s done, I thought, and I am doing it. Dragging Main.
39
I don’t know why, and God help me. But whatever it was Maggot needed, I thought Fast Forward could put him together with it. If I was a friend to both, I was duty-bound. So I invited Fast Forward to come with us to Fourth of July at June and Emmy’s.
Word was out on this being the party of parties. Regardless June Peggot being no friend to fireworks, happy to sit you down and tell you all she’d seen professionally in the way of blown out body parts. No matter. Emmy crossed all normal lines of popular, hanging out with certain of the geeks, plus drama kids. Put those together and stand back. They’d been going to Tennessee for the banned-in-Virginia items, your aerials and laterals. Collections were taken up. Angus was like, Idiots with gunpowder, no thanks. But I was jacked for the day to come.
Fast Forward picked me up with two passengers already, surly Rose and this chick called Mouse, due to her tiny size I’m guessing. Not shyness. She had on a silver bodysuit thing like MTV-wear, already in the middle of a story as I climbed in. Full Yankee accent: “So he’s on air in two minutes, I am losing my shit and ohmygod I get it, this is a comb-over on top of a toupee! I am supposed to do what with this? So I pick it up and lob him with the powder so he won’t shine through and then pop it back down, you guys, I could be a very rich woman if I decide to extort.”
Fast Forward said he thought she already was a rich woman. She laughed and hugged her giant purse. Turned to me, blinked her huge eyelashes. “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure.”
Mouse told me she did hair and makeup for celebrities, in case I’d missed that. Fast Forward told her I was the rising star of our football team. To anybody else he’d say “of the Generals,” so this Mouse individual had to be from a galaxy far far away. Filly she said, which is a girl horse and made no sense until she clarified it was a town, Philadelphia. I gave the directions to Maggot’s house, and then we were five in the cab. Cozy. Mouse hops in my lap with her feet dangling. She’s pretty, I guess, her head too big for her small body, snub-nosed, but makeup obviously at the pro level. Her hair was this exploded whale spout situation that got in my face. She was like a doll on my lap. Still running at the mouth, she’s got a gig coming up for a Britney show or whatever, constantly interrupting herself to remark on some ramshack place like she’s never seen poor. Her big purse was on the floor at this point, rolling and clanking. I saw the end of a Pringle can sticking out. In case you were wondering what does a mouse eat.
Maggot was twitchy as hell. I saw Fast Forward checking him out sidewise. I was used to Maggot, to the extent you can get used to the black-dyed hair curtains, the neon mesh sleeves and giant black pants that he and his Batcave pals got at their Goth outfitters place over to Christiansburg. Chains all up and down the legs, so if you needed to put the boy on a leash you’d find many convenient attachment points. Maggot would always be my blood brother, but at that moment I was embarrassed. Mouse was staring at his makeup and dye job like she might not live through the experience. It could have been worse, Maggot was known to turn up at school with his scalp dyed black on accident. I gave directions to June’s. Fast Forward drove with one hand on top of the wheel, cigarette out the window, eyeshades at Slim Shady half-mast, while Chatty Cathy ran her travelogue, ohmygod that dog is chained up, how can people be so cruel, what is that green shit growing on the side of that house (it was normal moss) ohmygod. Half a mile out from June’s the line of vehicles started, parked all sigoggling on both sides of the road. We pulled over and walked down the gravel road, already hearing music through the woods.
“Nice sidewalks you have here in East Jesus Nowhere,” Mouse said, grabbing Fast Forward’s arm, teetering in her giant platform sandals. She was barely waist-high to him, toting that gunny-sack purse. Rose fell back into walking alongside Maggot and me, but looked like she’d snatch us baldheaded if we tried striking up a chat. Maggot checked out her dog-snarl scar, which maybe he thought was wicked, who knows. At the bottom of June’s driveway he stopped to light a joint. Rose said “Bogart much?” so Maggot passed it to her in a futile gesture of friendship. He probably needed to balance out whatever he’d taken for pregame. The lad was wound tight. NoDoz crushed and snorted was a Maggot go-to, a grade school discovery I’d needed to try no more than once. I mean. Is life not menacing enough without feeling like ants have moved into your skin? Not if you’re Maggot. He moved on from there to Adderall, which is doctor-legal, anybody can get it from anybody. And lately, smurfing Sudafed from drugstores to sell to the cookers. Probably getting paid in merchandise.
Rose took her time with the joint, waving bugs away from her face and her big cloud of hair. I took a couple of hits and headed in. Two guys ran through the woods wearing shoes and nothing else, yelling about swimming. There was no pond around. Guys were shooting bottle rockets at each other. Leggy girls slumped among the trees like wilted daisies, probably running replays of failed attempts, like we did with football games we should not have lost, but did.
I wanted to find June so she could meet Fast Forward, but he and Mouse were already gone. Maggot spotted his friend Martha aka Hot Topic in a little fist of kids in their chain pants and fingerless gloves, and made a beeline. If this was a Maggot rescue mission, I was failing. I spied June on the upstairs deck of the dome house, looking as usual hotter than a truck stop shower. Little red shorts, tall drink, fluffing the hair off her neck. She had a gang of ladies with her, some in nurse scrubs, and Ms. Annie in her hippie attire acting like she’s one of their crowd. She was Emmy’s choir director, but invited to parties now? That seemed like showing off.
June’s house had no real yard, just a clearing in the woods, now crowded with people yelling at each other over top of Eminem. Extension cords ran from the house to some big speakers borrowed from school, because drama kids got away with shit like that, so the cattle in the neighbors’ farms were now trying to chew or moo over top of Eminem. The trees were shaking, and the dirt under our feet. I shouldered in to find the keg that Emmy’s parties were starting to get famous for, regardless June keeping Emmy in the egg carton. June would not have us driving the winding roads to get our drinking on. Do it here and sleep it off, was her policy, and she meant it. Start slurring or tripping and she’d take your keys, ordering you to sleep on whatever floor you could find, and please not on your back. Live to see another day. She was convinced the population of Lee County was headed for zero, because in any given year she saw more people dead of DWI-wrecks and vomit-choke than babies born.
Near the keg were folding tables strewed with paper plates and leftovers of a feast I was sorry to have missed. And Emmy, bent over a giant sheet pan cake decorated like the flag, flipping her long hair back over her bare shoulders, trying with a too-big knife to cut out little blue squares with one star each. She was a shiny star herself in her little white top, white hip-hugger jeans, some prime real estate in between. I got a rush to recall touching that belly under the blankets. You don’t forget your first, even if we’re only talking the minor bases. She was in the big leagues now, laughing, padding around in Chinese-looking flip-flops, giving out cake squares on napkins. I wondered how it would feel to like who you are, changing it up as needed to stay on top with ease. While other girls went on trying too hard, wearing the hair big, the makeup bright, the baby-blue sweatsuits with the whale-tail of thong showing in back above the pants rise. I felt safer in those waters, honestly. Technically Emmy was like me: dead dad, messed-up mom. But damned if you’d ever guess. She seemed like a person born to have sidewalks under her feet.
