Afterwards I lay looking up at the tobacco hanging above us like somebody’s laundry left on the line. Well cured now, for sure. I thought of taking some to roll in Zig-Zag papers and pass around to my friends for a change, instead of being the broke-ass that bums. Random, peaceful thoughts. I only ever felt like this after Dori and I banged our brains out. She liked to stay on me, balanced on my slippery chest and stomach and sloppy wet dick. Sometimes she’d take a nap. At first I’d worried every time about doing things right, but she said I did. How she knew, what other guys had or hadn’t touched her the right way, I had no wish to know. We were perfect together. She said before we were us, we weren’t anything. That’s why she could fall asleep on me, the perfectness of our fit. Or if not to sleep, she’d go all drifty, asking random things.
That day in the stripping house she asked if I ever noticed how those thousand-legger bugs, if you squash them, smell like cherry soda. Moving nothing but her mouth, this was her question. It shrank me up some. I mean, we’re naked. I asked why, did she see one? And she said no, just wondering. She also asked if animals knew they were going to die someday. She had to be thinking of Jip, she was senseless over that creature, so I said no. “Maybe sometimes, right beforehand, if it’s a situation,” I said. “But for the most part I’d say your normal animal day is a happy little bubble, like being always stoned.”
I felt her smile against my chest. She took my word on anything. She asked what did I think our baby chicken would be whenever he grew up. I said a rooster, if I had to guess. He was making sounds in that direction. Angus had started calling it Lovechild to aggravate me, and I took up the name to spite her. Even though he was living in the tool shed now and getting no love to speak of, unless Mattie Kate remembered to go out there and throw grain at him.
Finally Dori slid off me. Her teeth were chattering, so I gave her my flannel shirt. She scooted against the wall, drew her legs up to her chest, and buttoned my shirt around her whole body, knees and all. She looked like a plaid pillow with her head on top and the little pink peas of her toes poking out the bottom. I wanted to take her in my arms and hide her someplace. Her shiny black eyes watched while I lit Mr. Peg’s funeral candles and opened the bottle and poured the Thunderbird into paper cups. It felt like church, the part where they say, Remember who died for your sins. For Dori and me, all our best people died on us early, before we had any good shot at sin. So we had catching up to do. Maybe that’s why nothing we ever did felt wrong.
We needed no more than the wine to get ourselves rosy. She’d already given me the smallest hit of something before we went out, so I’d be happy and not fiending. My stomach was always my downfall, running ragged these days on the daily ride of oxy-not-oxy, and I’m just going to tell you, nothing kills the buzz like bringing up Chick Fil-A all over the girlfriend’s bralette. That only happened once, and she was so sweet about mopping me up, using her shirt to wipe scum off my chin. But all I could think of was her feeding Vester his babyfied meals, his gnarly hands gripping the bedrails as he strained towards the spoon, and I got in a mood. Walking like an old man with a bum knee already, I refused to be another mess for Dori to clean up. So after that, she always had something to tide me over. This or that, Xanax, Klonopin, a dab from one of her Dad’s morphine patches if nothing else was on hand. But usually something was.
I thought I knew it all in those days. I’d seen people at school, in the locker room, even at Mr. Peg’s funeral, with stains on their shirttails. Greenish grass stains, or pinkish brown like dirt. How could those people be so prideless, I thought, showing up in dirty shirts. I didn’t know that was the coating of a pill that keeps this safer-than-safe drug from dissolving in your stomach all at one time. Coppery pink on the 80 milligrams, green on the 40s. Melts in your mouth like an M&M. Hold it there a minute, then take it out and rub it on your shirttail, and you’re looking at a shiny white pearl of pure oxy. More opioid than any pill ever before invented. One buck gets you a whole bottle of these on Medicaid, to be crushed and snorted one by one, or dissolved and injected with sheep-vax syringes from Farm Supply, in the crook of an arm or the webbing of your toes. People find more ways to shut up their monsters than a Bible has verses.
You have to understand the rhyme and reasons of Dori. Why she was radical and fun like a little girl, even after all her friends left her flat. How she stayed patient with a wheezing, crying man gone old before his time. Why her foot kept bouncing. Her sparkly eyes were not really black, but blue. Bending down to kiss her, I’d see the thinnest crescent of sky blue around the huge black center. Living a life like hers, most people would have lost it a thousand times over.
Coach probably thought I was off the pills by now, headed for the gym to dead-lift my ass back onto the gravy train. Angus was getting pesky over Christmas, let’s go steal a tree. I tried to steer clear of them both. I would make a hit-and-run for one of Mattie Kate’s meals or a night’s sleep, both badly needed, but mostly made excuses. Angus rolled her eyes at me. Which pissed me off. A guy does not need a reason to go screw his girlfriend, it’s just a given. Dori was sweet to them, bringing over presents to the house from her dad’s farm store like socks, chicken mash for Lovechild of course, Carhartt overalls, which Angus really liked, XL-size thermal shirts for Coach. Once, this little stool with a tractor seat. Somewhat random, but more sensible anyway than a chicken in a Tampax box. And none of it earned me a pass on blowing off family life and Christmas, even though I’d invented the whole concept for all Angus knew.
Too bad. My sole concern over Christmas was what to give Dori. I kept thinking of that first amazing Christmas with Angus, how I’d scoured the pawns high and low for exactly her kind of thing, and felt like a million bucks for finding it. I wanted that feeling again of really seeing a person and being seen. And wouldn’t get it with Dori, she was too easy. If I wrapped a box of Trojans in Christmas paper, she’d say it was the best present anybody ever gave her. Which is kind of a letdown. You don’t get points for hitting the side of the barn. But thinking of old times and the fun I’d had with Angus wasn’t fair. I loved Dori with all my heart.
The femmy direction seemed like a safe bet, nail polish or makeup, which I knew zero about except that you won’t find them at the flea market. Angus would be no help. I did know what CDs Dori liked, Christina, Avril Lavigne. Pink, that was Dori’s hair idol. These were the things rattling around my skullbox the week before Christmas while I ran errands in town for Dori. Christmas shopping on the sly. She was particular about being the one to get Vester’s meds, but I needed the car for my mission, so talked her into letting me pick up their mail and checks at the PO, then Walgreens to get the prescriptions. Last stop, groceries. They only ever ate frozen things: Vester lived on Bob Evans mashed potatoes and Dori on Mrs. Smith meringue pies. I argued for chicken nuggets and such, to level out the food groups. But either way, you don’t let this shit sit in your car on a sunny day, even if it’s December.
So that’s where I was, waiting in a long line at the pharmacy pickup while gum-chewing counter girl with troll-doll hair had a discussion with a customer about her husband’s anus surgery aftercare. The old lady had on those clear rubber rain boots that button over your shoes. Mr. Peg called them galoshes, a word Maggot and I used as a stand-in cussword. You galosher, I will so galosh you. I owed Mrs. Peggot a visit. The pharmacy consult dragged on. The girl tore a coupon off a booklet on her counter and started drawing a rendition of an anus on the back with a ballpoint pen. Behind her was an entire wall of cubbies exactly like the PO I’d just come from. Those PO boxes were all stuffed with disability checks, and these with the white paper bags of drugs that the checks paid for. What if you combined the two and cut out the hassle, I thought. One-stop shopping. Across the top of the Walgreens wall of cubbies, they’d stashed the boxes of every cold medicine ever known to man that has Sudafed in it: Maxiflu CD, Drixoral, Sinutab, Flu Maximum Strength, etc. There must have been five hundred boxes up there. Not on the shelves anymore. Thanks to Maggot and his smurfer pals.
While I was staring at the Sudafed motherlode, somebody tapped me on the shoulder. Heavyset guy, small goat-type beard, glasses, too much hair for his head.
“Tommy,” I said. “What are you in for, man?”
Not drugs, he said, just a Dew and Doritos for his lunch. He caught me up on the months since we met at the drive-in. Still in his newspaper job, promoted from trash cans to doing stuff on the actual newspaper. Layout is what he said, setting out ads on the page to catch the reader’s eye. Making enough to move out from the disaster roommates into his own place. I had to hand it to Tommy, coming out of the foster factory as a decent human. I said the new beard suited him, even though actually it added to the whole effect of what was standing up on his head, but you know. Old friends. I brought him up to speed on Dori, and asked if he still had the girlfriend. Surprise answer: yes. Sophie was her name, sweet girl, still in Pennsylvania so they hadn’t met yet. Maybe next year.
The line started moving and Tommy had his ads to get back to, but told me to come visit. He wrote down his address and apologized that it wasn’t the house per se, it was the garage. No bath or kitchen yet, but they were planning to put those in. He rented from a really nice couple that let him use their bathroom. With four kids, that he kept an eye on sometimes. I could see this meant the world to Tommy, being part of a family. He said he read them Magic Treehouse. The little girl liked books, not so much the little boy that was into Grand Theft Auto, and the other two just small. Twins. The girl was named Haillie. Not believable. It was the McCobbs.
The first thing I asked him was: Is your room really a garage, or is it a dog room with a washer-dryer combo? I had quite a few more questions after that. Yes, a garage. Yes, they worried all the time about money but Mr. McCobb had started a business selling weight-loss products called Wate-O-Way, mainly signing up other people for a three-hundred-dollar fee so they could also be part of the Wate-O-Way sales team. Tommy believed with his whole heart that Mr. McCobb would soon be a rich man. He hadn’t seen any products yet, but they were supposed to be a whole new game in weight loss. Oh, Tommy.
He couldn’t get over me knowing these people. My long-lost fosters. I wanted to say, Tommy, go pack your shit, walk out of that garage and never look back. But he was all over this family. I couldn’t burst his bubble. I said I would come over sometime with Dori and we’d take him and the McCobbs out to Applebee’s or something, my treat. Which is insane. No idea why I said that. I wouldn’t have minded to see those kids, Haillie especially, to see how she was holding up in that FUBAR family. But the main reason probably was me wanting to eat as much as I could in front of them. I’d stuff my face, two burgers. Some form of weird revenge.
I had to warn him, though, before he went on his way. About Mr. McCobb’s enterprises. All fine and good on the Wate-O-Way,
I said, but don’t even think about putting your own money into that. Oh, Tommy. It turned out he already had.
45
The rest of that winter is hazy, like there’s a cloud lying over me and tenth grade. All I can say for sure is that my home was with Dori, more and more. I kept my clothes over there and my meds. Having my night sweats in sheets that would not be Mattie Kate’s secret to keep. I was trying to dial down the oxy but not too regular about it, with Dori’s little add-ons throwing me off schedule. She couldn’t help herself, just a caring person. She sang to Vester while she fed him, little kid songs like Twinkle Star. The care nurses came three mornings a week on rotation, and Dori passed me off as a cousin instead of a live-in boyfriend. Still worried about DSS. But it wasn’t the nurses’ job to keep tabs on us. They warned her to keep his pills and patches locked up in a safe place, probably thinking she was older, not a seventeen-year-old in charge of the man’s narcotics. Just another case of everybody trying to do the jobs they’re given.
Christmas came and went, with Dori of course loving the presents I gave her, and Angus making a good show of not sulking over the ones I didn’t. After all, Angus was the one that swore to Christmas being no big deal. So I kept telling myself. That house was returning to its natural state. I was nothing more over there than a brief disturbance of the peace.
I missed her though, Angus. The easiness of her. I mean, sex is great and everything, as anybody will tell you. But there’s much to be said also for lying around with a person on beanbags, firing popcorn penalties at each other for offside fart violations.
I had my driver’s license, but no place to go. If I went to school from Dori’s, she’d go with me to bring back the car, and pick me up later. Marooned on our island. My guy friends of recent years were my teammates, and after the knee injury I fell off their map. That’s high school for you, a bevy of people unfit for adult life encounters in any form. And my old standbys the Peggots were in disarray. So my whole life was Dori now, idling while she microwaved stuff to feed Vester or patted him down with a washrag. Other than that, she napped. I slid into my old lonely ways, drawing again in my notebooks, not superhero kid nonsense but things I saw while out and about. I did a three-panel cartoon of Walgreens Spy Girl passing secrets encoded in anus diagrams to undercover agent Galoshes, so. Whole different category of nonsense.
I was in Ms. Annie’s art class again, if I bothered to go to school, but my former success had been largely crush-motivated. The repeat of last year was a letdown. Seeing her explain these amazing things of contrast and proportion the first time around was like watching a magical genius. Second time, she was just a teacher. She still thought I had talent but probably was all the more disappointed in me for zoning out. Fine. Special for Dori was all I needed to be.
Other than the useful parts like driver’s ed leading automatically to the license, school faded from importance as is natural for a boy becoming a man. Civics, I actually cannot tell you what those are. Math I got to take from Mr. Cleveland that had his deal with Coach, football players got a grade that kept us eligible. I had to do the harder English, which was a time suck, reading books. Some of them though, I finished without meaning to. That Holden guy held my interest. Hating school, going to the city to chase whores and watch rich people’s nonsense, and then you come to find out, all he wants in his heart is to stand at the edge of a field catching little boys before they go over the cliff like he did. I could see that. I mean, see it, I drew it, with those white cliffs on the Kentucky border where Miss Barks took me that time. I’ve not ever seen rye growing, so I made him the catcher in the tobacco. Likewise the Charles Dickens one, seriously old guy, dead and a foreigner, but Christ Jesus did he get the picture on kids and orphans getting screwed over and nobody giving a rat’s ass. You’d think he was from around here.
The main event of that winter was Demon’s big stupid adventure. The plan itself, what little there was of it, came from Angus putting it to me as a dare. Of the put-up or shut-up kind. I was spending enough evenings at Coach’s to convince all parties that I still lived there. He was watching my limp, making noises about surgery, and I was doing my best impressions of a drug-free once-and-future tight end. Angus and I one evening were up in our den watching some nature planet show on the amazing leopard seal. I was in one of my moods. This being really the only major thing I’d wanted out of life, and I was never going to get any closer to the damn ocean than a damn Japanese-made TV. I said words to that effect. And I still remember her big gray ocean eyes, looking at me like, What is wrong with you? If Angus wanted to do something, she fucking did it. So maybe it was spite or pride. I told her: Fine, you know what? I’m going.
I started talking it up to Dori, which was just cruel. Of course she’d want to go, the beach would amaze her because everything amazed her. It wasn’t so long ago she’d been this whole fun, popular girl at school, before her dad and his five-hour doctor drives ate her life. Now she was hard pressed to talk her neighbor into watching Vester so the two of us could go out parking. But she saw how bad I wanted it, and begged me to go without her. Take pictures, she said. This was before camera phones were in everybody’s pockets. I borrowed a Polaroid from Angus.
Without Dori I would need transportation. Fast Forward wouldn’t have been first choice, but he had wheels, and was generally up for adventure if the booze was adequate. On the phone he said he was covered up at the farm, tied up with his horses, which I’d been told were not his horses, but kept that to myself. I asked him to think about it. He said maybe. Next I brought it up to Maggot, knowing he’d be game for anything that got him out of the house. June was two inches from kicking him out, setting certain conditions he was not able to live with. She was pretty tolerant of his grooming, so it had to be more than that, and I didn’t ask. Even a minor weed incident could really blow up over there, she was on some drug warpath ever since World War Kent, to the extent of Maggot coming over to Dori’s just to roll a reefer.
In less than a minute, Emmy found out from Maggot and announced she was coming too. Which then got Fast Forward on board. I was never sure about the chicken or the egg on that one, but understood we were getting into some kind of love-hate triangle with June Peggot involved, which is not a geometry problem you want to be in. But damn. All that mattered to me was the ocean. I was going to Virginia Beach, Virginia. A town we chose solely for its name, having no idea where we would rest our heads after planting our asses on its grass. Or hopefully, sand. We had no money, no game plan, not enough supplies to get us five miles down the road, let alone the five hundred it was. Fast Forward had connections in a city he said was on the way, somebody that could hook him up with easy cash, and that was enough for four people high on youth and extreme inexperience.
I have to admit, another thing factored in. Some kids at school were peacocking around with their plan to hit the beach over spring break. This is the Bettina Cook crowd with their Abercrombies and Daddy Express cards and sixteenth-birthday cars with the big yellow bows from CarMax. Kids that only need to say the words, “Hey! Let’s all get shitfaced at Myrtle Beach,” and presto it happens. Half of them probably didn’t care about the ocean, and the other half wouldn’t notice it if they passed out tits-up on the fucking dunes. Not bitter or anything, me.
But to lose my mind that way, thinking I was in the league of those kids, wanting and getting? Dori had never been over a state line except to take her dad to heart-lung specialists, and lately was lucky to see the back side of Walmart. I was an asshole to dangle this trip in front of her, and then go, knowing she couldn’t. I have no good excuse. Maybe all kids are like this, wanting too much. Like Maggot, working every angle too far, to blow the gaskets of his poor grandparents that married at fifteen with no bigger hope in the world than to have kids and not watch them die. Us though, give us the fucking world. We pretended we were as good as the Bettina Cook kids, while Bettina pretended to be a Kardashian. We’d all cut our teeth on TV shows where parents had jobs, and kids lived out big-city dreams in their wardrobe choices and rivers of cash. Even doing drugs, these forgivable schoolboys, and it’s a comedy because they’re not poor. In their universe, nobody shuts you down for being different and wanting the moon.
In ours, you live on a tether: to family, parents if you’re lucky, older people raising you if less so, that you yourself will end up looking after by and by. Odds are about a hundred to one, you are not destined for greatness. Your people will appreciate you all the same. On the other hand, if you poundcake someone or push them too far in the shame or shock direction, you will run into their people at Hardee’s or the Dollar General parking lot, in all probability within the day. There will be aftermaths. Same goes for raising your head too high on your neck, the tall weed gets cut. So. You wind up meeting in the middle on this follow-your-heart thing, at a place everybody can live with. Show me that universe on TV or the movies. Mountain people, country and farm people, we are nowhere the hell. It’s a situation, being invisible. You can get to a point of needing to make the loudest possible noise just to see if you are still alive.
The first night we made it as far as a place called Hungry Mother. Not kidding. We’d got off to a woefully messy start with everybody excited, needing their calm-down of choice. Then needing to sleep that off. And leaving Dori called for I’m-sorry-baby sex, which takes more time than the regular. So now we were only a few counties down the road, it was getting dark, and here was this highway sign. Hungry Mother turned out to be not a restaurant or sad female human but a park, with picnic tables and such. A lake. It was February, we didn’t wait for spring break, being way out ahead of those rich kids plus more willing to ditch school. The park was empty, its picnic area and lake all ours. At the water’s edge, a big patch of sand.
“Gol dang, children. It’s the motherfucking beach,” Maggot said, getting out of the truck, unfolding himself like a jackknife. He stretched his long arms wide and bounced on his toes.
“Let’s not rush to judgment,” I said. The sand was dark brown, like a worn-out welcome mat to the drab pavement of lake. But Emmy was singing “Beach, Beach, Baby!” and skipping sideways across the parking lot, a leggy colt in her skinny jeans and tall leather boots. The three of us climbed over a small fence onto the sand. The entrance was a locked gate beside a little block of rest rooms and vending machines, all deserted. Fast Forward lit a cigarette and leaned on his truck, watching us in his usual way, head tilted back, eyes narrowed.
This sand patch was no more than fifty or sixty yards wide, with log pilings holding a rope fence on both sides. Beyond that, the normal dirt and woods resumed. Somebody had just scooped up truckloads of sand and dumped it here, thinking no one would be the wiser. This fake beach moreover was pretty gross due to what all people had left there: flattened drink cups with red straws poking out of the lids, the black remains of a campfire. A torn white bra, half buried in sand. Maggot lit a joint and started singing about Margaritaville. Emmy formed big balls of wet sand one after another that fell apart as she threw them at us. Both those two were laughing like kids. I got a bad feeling as regards their interest in reaching the real ocean.
“You all, this is not the beach. You know that, right?”
