Wednesday. Not technically terrible, but as far as throwing me off my keel, yes, bad. Tommy tells me people are writing to the paper about Red Neck. He calls it an upswell of public opinion. Nobody ever writes the paper unless over something major, like after they took the soft serve machine out of Dana’s Quickmart. Pinkie orders Tommy to keep running that strip every week, by all means and no matter what, forcing Tommy to confess it’s not out of the regular package. “Contributed by a local talent,” he says. Pinkie takes this to mean Tommy himself, and offers him a ten-dollar-a-week bonus. Tommy says he’ll have a discussion with Anonymous as to where ten bucks per strip might get them. Every week would be a lot of pressure. Half of me says I’m already living on the knife edge between functional and dead meat blackhole junked, and this is the thing that’s going to shunt me in. And half of me says, Ask her for twenty.
People in need of a hero, there’s no shortage in the local supply. Ideas came at me from everywhere. It was fall now, topping and cutting time, so I did a series on tobacco. I drew little kids working to top the tall plants, girls in hair bows and short socks, boys in ball caps. All of them start seeing stars, reeling around dizzy with the green tobacco sickness. Red Neck swoops in and tears through the field, holding out a blade in each hand to top all the flowers at once. Then he piles the kids in the back of his pickup and takes them out for corn dogs. In the last panel you can see they’ve made a stop on the way: with the truck bouncing off into the distance, it’s a close-up on tobacco flowers they’ve left on two graves. One is Pappaw, one is Little Brother.
I gave him a DeSoto truck, 1950s model with the fins. Just so you know. Not a Lariat.
That strip started a whole thing of people leaving tobacco flowers at their cemetery plots. Pinkie sent her photographer Guy Greeley out there to take pictures, so that was crazy. The newspaper making the newspaper. Tobacco flowers also got left on the front stoop of the paper office. Pinkie got calls from the Russell County weekly and the daily over in Bristol, asking how they could run this strip, so she marched in to talk to Tommy. Pinkie coming in after-hours was such a rare event, it scared the living piss out of him, hearing that locked front door open. Half the storefronts in Pennington had been broken into lately, including ones you’d not expect to be all that rewarding. Extension office, H&R Block. This happened on an evening I wasn’t there, due to a small bender after getting fired from Sonic. I’d never met Pinkie. Tommy said picture a pit bull with Dutch boy hair, lighting one cigarette off the last, staring you down like she’s CIA special ops. Good with words, Tommy. She said it was time to formalize the Red Neck arrangement. There was money involved, so they needed a contract signed, a real person with a name. Still thinking it was him.
So he outed me. He blamed it on Pinkie being on the verge of getting physical, but I knew better. I’d seen Tommy take many a hard leathering back at Creaky’s without squealing. Finally he admitted it was his decision to name me, and I ought to be glad of it, not mad. He said if the shoe had been on my foot, I’d have done the same.
Ms. Annie had given me her home number. The door is always open, etc. I wouldn’t expect people really to mean that, they just feel guilty walking away from your mess, back to their lucky lives. But I called, and she said come over now, why not. For dinner.
There was no missing the house. The front was painted like a quilt. A dog barked inside but hushed after Mr. Armstrong told it to, not like Jip. He let me in and said they were getting supper on, so feel free to have a look around, which I did because there was a lot. Quilts on the walls. And these cloth pictures of mountain scenery, fall-colored trees and such, that Ms. Annie made on her loom, this contraption that took up half the living room. Paint I understood, but realistic pictures made of nothing but colored string, this was another level. I wanted to touch them, feel the grass and the bumpy rocks. One had a waterfall. She said it was Devil’s Bathtub, had I been there? I went ice-cold in my belly and said no ma’am and didn’t look at that one again. Their dog was named Hazel Dickens. Black, small, long hair, short legs. She followed me all around quietly, like she meant to pick up after me. The place was clean but not overly tidy, with music items all over, amps and such. I’d never heard their band. Not a young people kind of thing.
All over everywhere on the bookshelves and windowsills they had painted statues carved out of wood, almost like done by kids, but much better: smiling bear, Adam and Eve, IRS guy getting swallowed by a whale. Mr. Armstrong said he was a collector of those. People called it folk art, hillbilly art, self-taught, he called it just art. One was a hillbilly-art Superman that was Black, with his regular cape and insignia and everything. Big work shoes, fist in the air. And I thought, Huh, I am not the first to think of this.
It was trippy, seeing these teachers in their sock feet, being married. She had on the exercise type pants and her hair in a ponytail, this whole sporty Jane Fonda side to Ms. Annie you’d never guess. I saw him give her a sneaky pat on the ass while he was reaching behind her for the stirring spoon. Dinner was soup beans, salad, cornbread. I ate seconds of everything.
She was excited to give me advice on Red Neck, which was why I’d called. She said she would look over any contract before I signed, and I should think hard about the money. I could lose opportunities later on if I didn’t drive a hard bargain from the start. She said syndication and words like that. I told her Pinkie had offered ten dollars per strip, and Ms. Annie said, Oh, honey, that’s not even in the ball park. I told her it would feel weird pushing on the lady for more, not very Christian or whatever, and she said I needed to adjust my mindset. On second thought, she said, she’d call Pinkie herself to discuss my compensation. She would say she was my agents.
Mr. Armstrong said, “Tell her you’re calling from Amato and Armstrong.”
She gave him this look of mischief. “I’m going to do that.” I always forgot that was her last name, Amato, different from his. They were crazy about each other though. You could see it plain as day in how they helped each other out, like mind reading. Mr. Peg would say, Like a mule team in harness.
I asked Mr. Armstrong how things were going over at Jonesville Middle, and he said same as usual, pissing onto the burning wreck. Not the type of language arts he’d allowed us in class. I was mildly stoned but trying not to let it throw me, being with them as people instead of teachers. Them treating me not as a kid. We got on the subject of why the school board was wanting to fire him. I asked if it was the coal company guys mad at him for blowing their cover, as far as them running all the other businesses out of town, and keeping the schools terrible so we’d be too dumb to fight back. He turned his head to the side, making this comedy face like, Oh shit, and Ms. Annie raised her hands and shook them in the air. They were having a big time, these two. With a complete poker face, he said he didn’t recall saying anything like that in class.
“He can make more money playing his banjo,” she said. “They keep him on at that school just to spite him.”
I thought to ask her about Mr. Maldo. She said he’d moved away and was at some plant over in Kingsport now, free to clean bathrooms without the menace of adolescent spite. So that was good. I said I was sorry he got run off, and asked how she and Mr. Armstrong could stand living around gossips like U-Haul and his skank mom. Mr. Armstrong said Lee County had no corner on the market, because haters were everywhere. Being a mixed couple, they’d heard it all. “One time we got yogurt thrown at us from a car in downtown Chicago.”
“Yoplait yogurt!” Miss Annie said, excited, like she’s telling a joke. “That comes in those cute little containers, you know? What kind of a racist eats name-brand strawberry yogurt?”
I said I give up. The Chicago kind? And Mr. Armstrong said technically we don’t know that he was eating it. Maybe he’d only purchased it as a projectile.
Even if it seemed like they were horsing around, something serious was going on here, like also dropping hints. Miss Annie said they loved what was good about this place, and had each other’s backs for the rest, and that was enough. “One other person can go a long way towards making your world right,” she said, “but the support has to run both ways.” They ganged up on me then, as regards quitting school and shacking up with Dori. Ms. Annie said getting this contract was a break that doesn’t come along every day, and if it were her, she’d want to meet the challenge with a clear head. Aka, I should quit the dope. Easier to do without the dopehead friends. They were polite, but still. Saying love has to come from a strong place, not just grabbing whatever’s in reach. You can’t choose your family, but a partner is your shot at a decent do-over. I sat there fingering a Xanax in my pocket, thinking, What the fuck. Have you people been looking in my windows. Maybe I was paranoid, which did happen if my tanks got low. But then again, they were teachers. As far as kids and families around here, they could write the book.
I left their house feeling so mixed up, I had to pop that Xanax before I started the car. Getting a good deal from Pinkie Mayhew, great. But I was also mad as hell. Dori depended on me for everything. If I abandoned her, she would in all honesty probably cry herself to death and starve. With Jip lying on her body thinking with me gone, he’d won the war. This teacher couple with their sly jokes and butt slaps and house full of beautiful things made by steady hands, who wouldn’t want that. But how do you even get there from the normal place of business? I’d not known that many happy married people, especially to each other. Mr. Armstrong and Ms. Annie just gave me more to worry about, putting it in my head that I should break up with Dori. Because I never could. Good people don’t give up on the ones they love.
I told Tommy all right, let’s do this as a team. Ms. Annie hardballed Pinkie and got us fifty dollars per strip, with a bonus for every paper that picks it up. We’d deliver weekly, on a one-year contract. Tommy and I would split the money down the middle. These thousand books he’d read had to pay off at some point, he could help with story ideas. And the art itself. Going over it all in pen is the last step, and takes a steady hand. I told him we’d be mules in harness.
The truth is, I was scared blind to make a promise like that on my own. I’d been playing head games on how heavy I was using. Look at me, getting my ass up and out. Nothing out of control here. Tiptoeing around the morphine. I’d still never injected anything, for the sole reason of needles making my skin crawl, but I told myself that was a line between pastime and hard-core that I was refusing to cross. Pretending I could still show up on time as a human, even if I’d been fired from Sonic and more places after that. Not for slacking, I mashed orders double time. But you’d not have wanted to share space with me and a deep fryer, let’s leave it at that.
Now, though, with Tommy backing me up, I would quit screwing around. The day we signed those contract things in Pinkie Mayhew’s rat’s-nest office, that’s what I believed. What I wanted more than anything was to grow up. Hard to explain, given how I got short-sheeted on the childhood. Carefree, what is that? If I’d ever known at all, I couldn’t remember. But I was still stuck outside of full adulthood, blowing smoke under its door, eyeing the windows with a cement block. It’s all we want, we ragged boys of the world. To live as men.
By the time that contract expired, I’d be close to turning eighteen. I would get the money that was put away for me from Mom’s social security, and start my life of freedom. As a man of work and talents, getting paid for my labors. I would marry Dori. I would get clean.
I went to bed thinking, Okay, Angus. I’ll trust the wild ride, it is looking up. A few hours later my phone woke me up and it was the last person I wanted to hear from, Rose Dartell. I had no feelings for this strange girl, and assumed that was mutual. Wrong, she had feelings. She despised me. Because of Emmy and Fast Forward. Everybody put this on me, those two hooking up. Rose said to meet her at the little park above Ewing because she had something to give me, from Emmy. I told her I could probably get over there tomorrow afternoon. She said nope. Now.
The things you do to be decent. I put on my pants at three fucking a.m. and drove out to a no-name highway pullout to get what was sure to be bad news. It wasn’t far from the park where Miss Barks took me years ago, the day she dumped me. Looking up at those white rock cliffs, weird thoughts took over my mind. Jumping off, flying or falling. Now the moon was hitting the jagged ridge up there. I sat on a cold cement piling waiting for headlights to come up the road.
Rose got out and stayed by her car, talking low. I couldn’t really see her. She said Fast Forward had been living in Georgia. He’d decided to cut out Mouse and deal directly with Mexican traffickers in Atlanta. She mentioned various technical things, making it sound like Fast Forward was a businessman to be admired, making his smart moves to get promoted. Part of his business sense involved using Emmy for his lure. I was tired and shaky, and not hearing every word. I asked what did she mean, lure. All I could think of was Mr. Peg’s tackle box.
That is what she meant. Bait. Having sex with guys, to attract them into dealing with Fast Forward. I told Rose that was impossible. If you knew Emmy, you could never picture that.
“I’m sure you can’t,” she said. Rose had lit a cigarette, and I watched the orange glow rise and fall. “She could walk up to you tomorrow and you’d not know her.”
“I would know her.”
“Not the mess she is at the moment, no sir you wouldn’t. I did, and I can tell you, she’s what they call ruint. Fast Forward got disgusted and left her down there.” I saw the cigarette drop to the ground. “So that’s two lives you wrecked, hers and mine. I would have stuck with him. I’ve got a good head on me.”
I told Rose she could go to hell. I didn’t believe a word she was telling me.
I heard steps on the gravel and then she was close enough to smell. Pushing a fist at me. Something dropped into my hand that felt slight and wet, like spit.
I watched her truck until it was gone in the dark, then got in my car. I was blinded for one second by the dome light. Opened
my hand and looked. Snake bracelet.
52
I dreaded calling June, but I’d promised. I held back certain details. What killed me was how glad she sounded just to hear that Emmy was alive. Atlanta, not so much. June swore a blue streak, saying Atlanta was too much goddamn metropolis to go start knocking on doors, she was hoping Emmy had gone back to Knoxville. Which if you asked me was about on par, in the goddamn metropolis department.
What we had to do now, she said, was find Martha. June knew about the abortion and a good deal more, it turned out, and had taken Martha in her wings, getting her signed into a methadone clinic. But the nearest one was Knoxville, and Martha didn’t know anybody there, and it was a mess. Martha would start getting on her feet, come back here to be with people she knew, then she’d relapse and disappear again. Maybe she was going to Atlanta. June had the idea that connecting with Martha’s orbit would lead to Emmy. She was just thinking out loud at that point, not wanting to get off the phone, even though she was at work, with people waiting. I said call if she needed me.
