I didn’t understand, even after I was up on the deck getting attacked by Mom’s hugs and kisses. Then Stoner came out of the
house. For a split second I wondered what he would think of me having a new dad, and then I got it.
5
In the two weeks I was gone, Mom did these things:
Got married to Stoner.
Took off work for a weekend honeymoon to Luray Caverns.
Moved the furniture around.
My bedroom was the bigger one, and now according to Mom we had to swap, because it was her and Stoner versus one of me. She said we’d get a better house pretty soon because Stoner made a good living. I walked around my house that wasn’t my house while Stoner with his boots up on the coffee table paged through his American Iron, not even in a shirt, just his wifebeater. Like it’s his kingdom now and he’s got nobody to impress.
In my room that wasn’t my room, the bed was under the window where I hated it, and my action heroes were put on their shelf in the stupidest way imaginable, the reds together, greens with greens, nothing to do with their actual alliances or powers. It looked like some brainless ghost kid had been locked in here while I was gone, lining up his stuff in meaningless ways.
Also, Maggot’s and my fort had a dog in it now. Like Vandal Savage’s beard, huge and black, with hate in its eyes. It barked and flung itself at the chain link any time you got close.
School was starting in a few weeks, and for the first time ever I wanted summer over with. Who knew that was possible? Meantime, I spent all hours over at Maggot’s, telling him how lucky he was not to have parents he had to live with, Maggot being in total agreement. From his room upstairs we’d watch Stoner at the dog pen having his “sessions” with Satan. In case you thought I was being a crybaby, asshole names his dog Satan. Trains it to the path of murder using raw steak: shaking it, yanking it away, dog is going full apeshit. Stoner getting off on that.
“Mother H. Fuck, you better stay over here till that dog rips out the master’s lungs,” was Maggot’s advice, not at all needed. That was my plan for the rest of the summer. After that, my time there would be limited to the after-school hours. I assumed the Peggots would be on board.
Who was not on board was Mom. She started asking questions. Were the Peggots trying to turn me against Stoner? No trying needed, job well done by the man himself, I told Mom. She smacked me for having a smart mouth. But that was by no means the end of it. She acted like the neighbors’ opinions of her new husband mattered more than mine. Or hers either.
Finally I got mad and told her what Mrs. Peggot had said one time, about Stoner not caring if I fell off the back of his Harley and busted my brains. Mom got this wide-eyed look, and said I was not to go back over there the rest of the week. Mom was a small person, tiny really, which according to Mrs. Peggot was from Mom having me before she was done growing herself. The upshot of this being, by age ten I was catching up to her, heightwise, and had started on certain occasions to tell her, “Try and stop me.” This was one of those occasions.
This time her answer was maybe she couldn’t, but Stoner sure as hell could. And maybe that’s what she needed a husband for, if I was wondering.
We were in other words turning into a domestic shit show. I was too mad to care, but I think Mom was having her doubts. With Stoner always grilling her on why she dressed like a whore, who was she flirting with at work, where did she go afterwards, which was nowhere. He didn’t even like her going to her AA and NA meetings because it was mostly men. He passed up no occasion to remind her she was married now, so there’d be no more playing the field.
So maybe Mom’s pep talks were as much for her benefit as for mine. How lucky we were, because Stoner had a good job. Not a point to be argued in Lee County, I’ll grant you. The business he worked for was picking up, he’d be making good money, we would be safe.
This job that made Stoner the second coming of Jesus? A CDL driver. Meaning he drove a semi, with a special license so he could drive not just ordinary everyday shit around in his truck but beer. Or as Stoner called it, Product. Distribution truck driver for Anheuser-Busch. He had to pass an annual test proving he could lift and move Product weighing up to 165 pounds. All this and much more I never wanted to know, he told me while lying on the floor pressing his XMark free weights that had moved in along with certain bad smells and Satan. The weights took up most of the living room, all the more so if he was lying among them in his sweaty undershirt and leather bracelet, neck veins ready to pop, grunting on each press like he’s taking a shit. “Rotating and merchandising beverages at more than fifty customer accounts,” he says, like he’s a professor of whatever the hell. “Driving the routes to completion regardless of road conditions.”
“Medical and dental” was the part that got Mom excited. I would have coverage now in case I needed my tonsils out or got hit by a car. Or the ADHD drugs that some teachers had been wanting Mom to put me on from day one. Stoner said oh, yes, the riddling or whatever would take me down a notch. Mom was on the fence. But she said definitely I was going to the dentist now, whether needed or not. Which I wasn’t thrilled about. I’d heard kids say it was like a torture chamber, and I’d heard others say it wasn’t that bad, the dentist. I’d never been.
Soon I found out that teeth drilling was the best of what I could expect now. A whole new life for young Demon was Stoner’s plan, described to me one morning at breakfast after Mom left for work. I was going to learn self-discipline, like they teach you in the army. Not that Stoner had done military service, mind you. I reckon he saw the movie.
My mom has been too lenient with me, says Stoner, leaning over to take another slurp of his Cheerios and milk, and I’m thinking how much he eats like a dog. Even the red plastic bowl he’s eating from, how that could be a dog bowl. My mother has been letting me get away with ’tude. Now I’m going to learn how righteous people live, with discipline and respect for others.
I have nothing to say to this.
Stoner reaches forward lightning fast and decks me in the jaw. My spoon flies out of my hand onto the floor. One ear is ringing, my cheek burns. I stare at him. “What did I do?”
“Arrogant little piece of shit. It’s not what you did, it’s what you were thinking.”
What was I thinking? That Stoner ate his breakfast like a dog. A dog with gauges in its ears. That I’d like to clip a leash in one of those holes and take him for a hell of a walk.
“Here’s the thing,” Stoner explains calmly, like nothing just happened. Wiping milk out of his beard with the back of his wrist, scratching his tattooed head. He says it’s no surprise, me being so screwed up. How would Mom know how to raise a kid? She grew up in foster care. It’s inevitable she’s going to raise up another total loser. And I’m thinking, if he just called Mom a total loser, then he married her why, exactly? Losing track of where he’s going with this chat about how lucky we are, Mom and me. That Stoner came along to get us both straightened out.
I sit with my fists on the table, cereal bowl between them, my red-haired head still on my neck. Stoner finishes dog-slurping his cereal, I don’t blink, I don’t move. I’ve seen the army movie too. The milk in my bowl can go sour, day can turn to night, it’s nothing to me. I stay. Stoner shoves back his chair, throws his bowl in the sink, and goes out. The screen bangs shut.
Then I pick up my spoon off the floor and eat my cereal. That’s the win I get, if there is one. Filling up like a bowl under a dripping faucet. Filling with hate while I wait the man out.
I told Mrs. Peggot about Stoner, and she said she’d have to talk to Mom, either that or call DSS. I picked Mom. So they had their talk. I could tell Mom was hurt at Stoner. Maybe she didn’t realize how bad it was getting as regards the man-to-man shit. She tried pushing back on him some. One night she brought home a pizza, and while we were eating in the living room with the TV on, she used this bright, birdy little voice to say she still had opinions about things, and ought to be able to say them in her own house. It was during a commercial.
About what, was Stoner’s question, and her answer was: Me. That I was still her son. Stoner said nothing. The show came back on, which was Law and Order, and I didn’t want to eat any more. The pizza was a Hawaiian from Pro’s with the ham and pineapple, my favorite, which Mom of course knew and Stoner didn’t. This pizza was like a message in code from Mom to me, meaning: Don’t give up the ship, I’m still on it with you. But now with Stoner going quiet and all brutal in his eyes, I felt like I’d be lucky to keep down what I’d eaten so far.
The show ended. Stoner got up and turned off the TV and sat back down facing Mom. “I see,” he said. “Because drunks and pill heads are so good at taking care of their kids.”
Mom’s eyes went to mine. The house is on fire, is what they said, and I’m so sorry about it that I could die.
I knew she was sorry. We’d been over it a hundred times. That’s Step 9, apologizing to all the people you’ve hurt. That and the higher power, the moral inventory, the practicing of the principles, we’d been through it all. She’d tried, and to be fair I guess she was trying still.
“Mom is sober,” I said. “She got sober so she could keep me.”
“And who the hell asked you?” He leaned over the coffee table and closed the pizza box and slid it away from where I was sitting on the floor. Like I was an animal he was training that had just lost my privileges. He turned back to Mom.
“You love your kid so much, you let the neighbors fucking raise him. Even though we’ve discussed this. I have talked. And you have not listened. He’s still over at the damn Peggots’ more than he’s in his own house. Am I wrong?”
“No,” Mom said.
“No I am not. You sit here turning a blind eye while he runs around with that little queer next door, with the jailbird mother. Am I wrong?”
Mom said nothing.
“The little queer’s whore mother that is in the pen for shanking her goddamn boyfriend.” Stoner leaned over close to Mom and yelled, “Am. I. Fucking. Wrong?”
