I went nuts, and spent too much money. Got her flowers not from Walmart but the true flower place in Bristol where they had one the exact color of her hair. Orchid. A new suit jacket, not from Goodwill. The homecoming rigamarole at halftime would be in uniform, but after that was the dance plus all other postgame action. It killed me that I couldn’t drive over and pick her up, but my option was U-Haul’s Mustang, himself supervising. I’d sooner take the riding mower. I tried to talk Angus into letting me use her Jeep, flying solo on my learner’s permit just this once, because what cop in Lee County is going to ticket a General on game night? No dice. Angus was still teasing me about flavor of the week. All I could say was you wait and see. Dori’s the one.
Angus called the baby chicken Dori’s and my “love child.” Like many a bastard, he ended up in a back room in a cardboard box. Dori brought him a waterer and scratch feed from the store. She came over every day that week, being pretty lonely, all on her own with her dad that turned out to be a lot sicker than just his heart. She said it’s a losing battle trying to get in to see doctors. Only after the heart attack did they find the cancer in him that by that point was eating him up, lungs and bones. One day she closed my door and asked if she could lie down and cry a little bit, while I held her. Everything in me, my whole insides, turned over for this girl.
She was the one that took me shopping for our homecoming date and talked me into the new jacket, never even worn before. I told her I was not a wealthy man, but she laughed and said I had three hundred at least in my bedroom. Lortabs sold for ten bucks a pill, oxys for eighty. I wasn’t about to part with those pills, but we bought the jacket. She lined up a neighbor to sit with her dad overnight on Friday. I was counting down minutes.
The ride problem turned out not an issue. Coach made us come out two hours ahead of kickoff for last-minute drills. I was wound so tight over so many things, getting the thunderous trots in public for one, I took every pill I was supposed to. Stood on the sidelines watching the hole in our game that should have been me. I was there and not there, the crowd noise and stadium lights melting into a long grasshopper whine in my ears. Feeling my heart thumping in the backs of my knees and my teeth. One sorry son of a bitch. Only one thing could save me.
She’d turned up looking like a wet dream. The purple-hair waterfall down one side of her face, the shiny blue dress also like water running down her perfect body. I wanted to drink it off of her. Before kickoff we’d met up in the parking lot so I could give her the flower thing. But really just to see her. I didn’t fully believe she’d come. I fetched the clear box out of U-Haul’s car and slipped it on her wrist and she was like a kid on Christmas morning. Holding it up to her hair. Perfect match. She’d not seen an orchid before, let alone anybody giving her one. It killed me to leave her. I told her to find the pep squad and they’d tell her where to line up for the halftime court. I’d already caused no small amount of drama, signing up a date that was not enrolled as a student. Seriously ticking off the cheerleaders and locker-cookies chicks. But Dori would never know about that, I’d make sure. I felt fifty years older than these kids in high school.
“See you on the field,” she said. That open-lip smile. “My liege.” She reached up and kissed me, surprise attack, and I got hard. What that feels like inside a jock and cup, oh man. Like a V8 under a Yugo hood. I couldn’t help wondering what I had to look forward to later.
I got some idea at halftime. We did the whole pony show, homecoming court, marching band, walking out, our names over the loudspeakers. The runner-up guys with their cheerleader dates in red hair bows and mickeymouse skirts. Me, the king, with my mermaid queen, as proud as it’s possible to feel in shoulder pads and a plastic crown from Halloween Express. They honored the graduating seniors while the rest of us stood out there smiling like our shoes were too tight. All but Dori, that was sexy hot and lemonade chill. In the middle of all that, she whispers she’s got a surprise for me later. Something she’s been saving up, because you only get one first time. Jesus.
Second half, not a story worth telling. You hate to lose homecoming, hate worse to be the reason. Not that I was blamed, the locker room afterward was all just, Fuck it, next time we’ll own those bastards. But I knew the main event of the dance would be a consolation party behind the gym. Dori of course was all about the dancing and dress-up party, dying to see people she’d not talked to in forever, whereas I was more in need of the frontal assault of Mountain Dew and vodka. I wanted to be outside with the team, standing where I could hold her close in front of me, one arm across her shoulder and chest like a seat belt. All the guys looking at me like, Man, no yards, no possessions, and still you get one of God’s angels? Yes, I did.
So we were in and out. The usual gym smell of armpit and Lysol had a frosting of girl perfume that seemed flimsy, like the trellis thing loaned by Tractor Supply with Kleenex flowers on it for taking your photo. Sourpuss teachers doing their time around the refreshments table. Speakers rattling an ear-killing mix of Thong Song, Destiny’s Child, Mariah Carey. Every so often, the shock of the whole gym falling into step for the Electric Slide. Dori tried to introduce me to her besties, but there was no talking over the din. It was plain to see she’d been popular, one of those that would have loved staying in high school if she could have. I begged off from dancing due to my knee, but really from not knowing how, my main dance partner so far being Mom that only knew the ridiculous ones: Robot, Worm, Macarena. Dori though. The first notes of every tune and she was a little bouncy ball, Yay, this one! Hopping all around in her shiny dress and smile, dancing with no one person, just all the moving bodies. Just once, a fast song trick-faded into “Beautiful Mess,” and this asshole Keg Barnes oozed her into a slow dance. Then before I could go put his lights out, it finished, and everybody’s flailing to “It’s Gonna Be Me.”
We stayed as long as I could stand, then took off in her dad’s Impala SS. Seats like couches in that thing, front and back both. She said she had a place in mind for us to go parking, but first we had to stop by her house to check on Daddy. She had a neighbor staying over, so I didn’t see the point, but didn’t argue. The house was way out towards Blackwell. Deep country. She was talking a mile a minute, saying if her daddy was awake she would introduce us again because the time we’d met at the store didn’t count, he hadn’t paid any attention, not knowing I’d be taking out his daughter at some future time. I wondered if she was nervous like me but it didn’t seem so, just glittery, the way she was. Talkative. I listened.
I ended up getting nowhere near Daddy. I opened the car door and this thing comes barreling off the porch straight at me like a heat-seeking dirty mop full of teeth. Dori just laughed, saying, “Jip you scamp, you are rotten,” scooping him up, kissing his nasty toothy face, telling me how Jip was a little old sweetie. Unbelievable. I waited in the car.
The rest gets foggy. I hate this. Due to pills, booze, me being an idiot, all the above, that amazing night is a locked-up house I have to look into from outside, through the windows. I recall my arms around her, steering while she did the gas and brakes, Siamese drivers. Us laughing about that. And where we parked, some random place, a ridgetop gravel road that ended at a chain-link gate. Down below, a wrecked valley and stairstep tailings of an old mine with the reclamation trees planted the way they do, in rows, like the hair dots of a doll that’s been scalped. The moon was out bright and hard, hitting these bean-shaped acid ponds down there, making them pretty. I was keyed up, nerves being my home turf. But less so after Dori said it was first time for her too. That she’d saved up for me. I could live on that forever, even if she dumped me tomorrow. Or so I thought. Until her surprise. It’s the shocks that end up sticking with you, while all the rest melts away. I can still see her saying it, with her face lit by the moon.
“Daddy gave us a present.”
I said I’d thought he was asleep, and she said yes. That’s how come he gave it to us. He didn’t know. Twinkly eyes, holding up a flat foil package, teasing me with it before tearing it open. Me trying not to wonder about Dori’s dad having condoms. But it wasn’t a condom. It was something like a Band-Aid. Evidently made out of money, given how careful she was with it.
“Shine,” she said.
The shine I knew of was clear, in mason jars. Drinkable.
No, not that. Painkiller patch, she said, the extra-special kind. Fentanyl.
The next surprise won’t ever leave my brain. The kit she took out of her purse. The spoon she used first, to scrape the patch. The lighter she held underneath. The cotton ball, the syringe, pulling the cap off the needle and holding it in her mouth like a nurse giving booster shots. I don’t know what I said but she could tell I was scared, and she was sweet with me, the same voice she used with Jip. She’d been saving this, because the first time you do it with somebody, they say it’s the best you’ll ever feel in your life. Like having Jesus all up in your blood.
Jesus or not, I admitted to despising needles. She took the syringe cap out of her mouth and kissed me a long time. Then pushed the tip of the needle into the patch with such tender care. The way her tongue pressed the middle of her top lip, she looked like somebody concentrating on the best present a person could ever give. She drew something out of the patch, squeezed the clear drop of gel onto her finger, then put her fingertip in my mouth, under my tongue.
I stopped watching after she pulled her little foot up onto the seat and took off her shoe, to shoot herself up. We probably slept awhile afterward. I know enough now to say for sure, we would have. Curled together like two babies in a womb equipped with a steering wheel. Maybe her teeth chattered and she begged me to hold her tight, as would happen later, time and again. But I don’t remember.
The back seat of that Impala was as good as any couch you’d want to have sex on. And we did, I’m guessing. I mean yes we did, but damn. You want to remember the pilot drill, but I only have this or that small view of it, like a peeping tom to my own event. I was pantsless at some point, I recall her being shocked by my poor busted knee, fussing over it. And for my part, the shock of seeing that dress come over her head in one sweep, balled up in her hand and dropped, no bigger than a pair of gym socks. The surprise of seeing her body all at once, the pale bikini of untanned skin like invisible clothes over the peaches of breasts and her cooch.
The rest is picture postcards. Her riding me, God yes, that laugh bubbling up out of her. Skin on skin, the electric shock of that. Touching her. My face up between her legs, her hands in my hair pulling hard. Finding her clit with my tongue, the surprise of something really being in there, a slick little peanut. The phone-sex voice of Linda Larkins in my head being the reason I knew how to do any of this. Linda was a capable coach.
Maybe that’s too much said. Wanting to protect Dori, that fire in me for saving her, will never go out, however late the day. But even if I were the bragging type, there’s little to tell. Just that it was my first time for the whole thing, start to finish, if we did finish. I felt pretty sorry the next day, that I couldn’t say for sure. But Dori was my girl, so. Nothing could hurt me now.
43
I got one week. To be the happiest man alive, my only care being how to get myself with that beautiful body again. We had it planned. Not Friday. That was the last game of the season, and I didn’t want to be doing Dori on game-level dosage this time. Plus we’d be three hours on the bus getting back from Richlands, and I wasn’t starting at midnight. I respected this girl. I’d take her out Saturday, starting at the drive-in. Early, because she actually liked the kid movies. We’d get in and out before all the socializing and booze. I’d buy her popcorn, we’d cuddle up to watch some Disney princess or other, then go park. Dori had a sitter again for Daddy, the same neighbor lady that was none too willing, hinting about getting paid if this turned regular.
The shit fell on Saturday afternoon, delivered by Maggot. I knew something serious had to be up, for him to call. We barely talked anymore. He said Mr. Peg was poorly, no news I thought, but Maggot said June was going over there and would swing by to pick me up.
“Not tonight,” I said. “I’ll go tomorrow, after they’re home from church.”
“Listen, Demon. He’s not getting out of bed.” Maggot’s voice cracked. A late bloomer, finally coming hard into manhood, he’d gotten a wrathful stubble and that long-neck look with the big Adam’s apple. All the more freakish for the eye makeup. Anyway, Maggot let me know I wasn’t getting a choice, June had the bull by the horns as usual. So I called Dori to say I’d meet her at the drive-in. I’d make June drop me there afterward. How long could this take?
I was not in the best of moods on the way over. June was still in her doctor gear, stethoscope, no-fun shoes, the better to buckle me into her front seat and grill me: was I scheduled for the knee surgery, was I off those painkillers yet. I said Coach would be looking into it, now that the season was over. I didn’t tell her to check with the devil about his establishment freezing over, because that’s the day I’d let that bone doctor cut into me. She asked how long since I’d seen the Peggots, another sore subject. I’d passed on dinner invitations until Mrs. Peggot quit asking. You know, busy. Tomorrow is always another day.
I was surprised Emmy was not in the car with us. And that Maggot was, in the back seat, shrunk into his black hoodie like a mad turtle. I asked if Emmy was meeting us over there, and it was June’s turn to go moody, saying Miss Emmy was now under the impression certain rules did not apply to her. And that Maggot had been staying at her house for a few weeks. She glanced over her shoulder like he might have something to add, which he did not. Fun outing.
The Peggot place was crowded with parked cars and an occupying Peggot invasion. Some I’d not seen since back in the day, cousins I’d crushed on Warcraft, now turned into their dads, same face hair and Buckmark tattoos. Hammer Kelly caught me off guard with a bear hug halfway between tackle and drowning man. I’d not seen him since the day of Emmy’s not-engagement ring and all that. He looked wrecked. I told him cheer up, the world’s not ended yet.
Which it hadn’t, as far as I knew. But this was no normal Peggot hootenanny. Men out in the yard with their volume turned down, shuffling their work boots, blowing smoke at the trees. Aunts with faces like old pocketbooks, rolling the foil off covered dishes that nobody was eating. Maggot wouldn’t come inside. His aunt Ruby nabbed me and said if I’d not been upstairs to see Mr. Peg yet, I could take my turn whenever somebody else came down. Which made no sense. I said we’d already spoken, and she eyed me with her tongue bulging out the side of her cheek, the exact thing her mom Mrs. Peggot did if she caught you lying. There we stood, Ruby with her dyed-to-death black hair coming in white at the roots, me wondering if some law says we all turn into our parents. If so, here’s me signed up for death at an early age. And Maggot, damn. With a fucked-up snake like Romeo Blevins for a dad, you actually hoped the mom’s jailbird genes would win out. I promised Ruby I’d hunt up Maggot and we’d both go upstairs to see Mr. Peg.
I found him down by the creek, playground of our mighty boyhoods. Squatting in the dark, side-arming rocks towards the water. “Yo, Storm,” I called out. “What’s the forecast?”
He craned his long neck around. “Wolverine. Get a fucking manicure.”
I sat down, gave him a fake punch in the shoulder, and even that small violence made him shrink deeper into his hoodie. He tossed another rock at the invisible creek. “We were some pitiful Avengers,” he said. “You know that, right? Vengeance was never ours.”
“Speak for yourself. You’re the one that always picked the lame-ass superpower.”
“Okay. So even back then, me being Stormlady insulted your manhood.”
“I’m just saying. You can pick anything, and you go for the power to make bad shit happen in terms of weather? It’s like you’re purposefully limiting your range.”
