I’d watched Hammer Kelly die, and now I had to see it all over again with every Peggot that came through the door saying, Lord, it can’t be true, having to hear that it was. I dreaded coming back from the hospital to face the family. But I understood. They needed somebody alive to tell the tale. They were grateful, and didn’t blame me, and we all agreed there would be no getting over this. Hammer was the Peggots’ MVP.
June came to stay with us at Mrs. Peggot’s, padding around all week in her gray sweatpants, making coffee, making soup beans, running a hand over her mother’s rumpled head. Mrs. Peggot sat dazed at the kitchen table. The rest of the family rolled back and forth in waves between the Peggot house, which was home base, and Ruby’s, where he’d lived. They couldn’t plan a funeral, still waiting for final say from Hammer’s Texas relatives as to where the body was to end up. Hammer’s dad hadn’t visited in an age, and we’d pretty much forgotten about him having blood kin. But that’s who holds the cards in the end. The Peggots were stuck, not able to move forward with the normal death matters of cooking and drinking. It was all just loose ends and talk. Like if they hashed through it enough times, they might get to a different ending.
Maggot went upstairs and got cooked for the duration, so it was entirely on me to get this story on the family’s books. It’s a lot of responsibility. I did my best, save for a few details held back. We were not avengers on the trail of Fast Forward. There was no handle of gin, no meth. The Marlin he must have left in his truck, possibly stolen. It was by pure chance we happened on Hammer with his flat tire. Lost lug nuts, those made it into the story. Plenty here is true. We stopped by the house of an acquaintance to dry off, and heard that some friends had gone over to Devil’s Bathtub. Why not join them, ridiculous weather and all, boys will be boys, etc.
What matters in a story is the heart of its hero. With no thought for his own safety, Hammer dived in to save the young man that fell from the cliff. True. Always and forever true. I couldn’t change that if I wanted to, and oh I did. We all did. My story left us wishing Hammer had been born with a selfish heart to keep him alive. Which made us remorseful and in awe of his goodness. That was the comfort I could give the Peggots.
Rose had no place in this story. I left her out. As far as her plan of ratting out Maggot for getting Hammer high before he died, I listened but heard nothing about police involvement or drug-testing any bodies. So I didn’t even tell Maggot. Maybe her threats had no teeth.
For over a month now I’d been sleeping in Maggot’s top bunk, and it had been pretty much like the sleepovers of our numbskull boyhood days, with better drugs. Mrs. Peggot had the habit of leaving the TV on all the time, ever since Mr. Peg died, for the company she said, and I got used to that. But after Devil’s Bathtub, everything changed. The house was full of people, and the TV drone made my skin crawl, for the random weirdness of a perky voice in the living room plugging Tokyopop and cucumber-scented shaving cream. Ronald Reagan’s funeral, Jesus. They showed bird’s-eye views of the crowded streets, a million people boohooing over this famous old prune that lived a whole lot of years past firing on any or all of his pistons. More years than he needed, is what I’m saying. Salt in our wounds. Just a weird mix, TV and real life. Two or more women are sobbing their guts out at the kitchen table, while Everett sprawls on the couch watching the US Open. Like golf is even a watchable sport, that anybody we know has ever played.
A major topic among the women was Emmy. With half of them saying she needed to be told. Meaning: That girl needs to feel good and sick over leaving Hammer such a mess. The ringleaders here being the Jay Ann and Ruby branch that spent years telling Hammer to give up his hopeless quest, Emmy was never going to have him. And then, after the shortest romance of all times, were never forgiving her for walking away and busting the guy’s heart. They wanted payback. I thought about what Rose said, wanting to see the rest of us hurt, because she was hurting. You have to wonder how much of the whole world’s turning is fueled by that very fire.
The other side of this argument: No real rush on telling Emmy that Hammer is dead, because he’ll still be dead next year. Emmy was on lockdown and would not be let out for any funeral, if there even was to be a real one, i.e. not in Texas. The whole business could wait until Emmy was sturdier with her sobriety. This was June’s opinion. June being the only person on the planet that Emmy was allowed to have contact with, so. There was no argument.
It was hard for me to believe in a cure for what happened to Emmy. Never had I seen a person fall so far. This place she’d been sent sounded like prison, and it’s well known that prison cures nothing. Other than for the people that got hurt and are wanting to see others hurt, as mentioned. No getting out, even for a funeral? No phone calling anybody other than your mom? Even Mariah got more than that, in Goochland. But June seemed pretty cheerful about it. She showed me pictures, and it looked amazing, mountains and trees, castle type buildings, a lake. Horses. Great wide mowed yards with girls sitting around on the grass, being sweet to each other no doubt. Pictures didn’t make me believe. There are no roads from here to there.
A snake with venom is going to bite. That’s just one of the rules God wrote down for us. Rose didn’t go away. Mrs. Peggot got a letter from the courts. I was there. I watched June read it, set it down on the table, and leave the house. The deaths were being investigated. The police had information about Matthew Peggot supplying illegal substances to one of the deceased, approximately three hours prior to the fatal accident. Nobody was saying murder, it was an accident. But Maggot was possibly looking at criminal charges, accessory to the death.
“Two boys dead already,” June said, before walking out the door, “and they think sending one more to prison is going to help a damn thing? God how I hate this world.”
Hate it or not, June always came back. That particular day, after a three-hour drive to God knows where. She’d kept going into her clinic all this time, because sickness goes on, the need over there was dire. Soon she’d move back to her own house. But she was the head of the family now. She would lead the charge this time on getting lawyered up for Maggot.
The story of Romeo and Mariah was just legend to me: his terrible abuse, her X-Acto knife revenge, the alligator-boots lawyer that had tricked the jury and got Maggot’s mom locked up. Now we watched it play out again, the Peggots back in that swamp, June determined to get them out alive. I knew Mrs. Peggot had her cross to bear over Mariah, but hadn’t thought how it must have been for June all these years. After letting her sister down. Ruby at first was upset about Maggot giving Hammer drugs, but June was not going to let this tear the family apart. And Maggot’s contribution was being barely too young or damaged or all the above to stand trial as an adult. Never did a household thank their God so joyfully for having a juvenile in their midst. His court date was set for the same month Mariah was due to get out.
I wouldn’t be around for it. The day before June went back home, she called me upstairs and laid down the cards. She could get me into a Suboxone clinic. No probing questions as to what I was on, she wasn’t beating around the bush. Not her clinic, this wouldn’t happen here. Nor Asheville, there was no money for such. But she could reenroll me in Medicaid, a simple thing that none of my guardians had thought to do since Miss Barks dumped me. It would cover me in a rehab clinic for a couple of weeks. Nothing fancy, just to get me over the worst, and after that I could go into a halfway-house situation. All I could picture was half of a house with the front ripped off, exposing the chairs and bathroom fixtures inside.
June and I were in the little dormer room that had a twin bed and a low, peaked roof over the window. It had girl wallpaper from back in the day, and a window bench they called the catbird seat. Mrs. Peggot had made a cushion for it with all the kinds of birds. One of my oldest memories was sitting there watching Mom outside smoking on our deck. This week it was June’s room again. Her things were all around, shoes, hairbrush, the fruit shampoo smell I’d loved since I fell for Emmy in fourth grade. I was in the catbird seat, and June was sitting on the bed, explaining my life to me. She brought up the social security money I could use after I turned eighteen. She could help me out until then, if need be, and the halfway house would involve a job. Nothing interesting, probably loading boxes in a warehouse, the idea being just to keep busy.
“It’s all work and no play, for a while,” she said, tucking her foot up under her on the bed. She was in her doctor clothes, ready to go in to work, but still barefoot. “The deal in these halfway houses is you can go to your job, and then you come straight back. No running around. Your friends are all other people in recovery. It’s the best way to make it stick.”
I sat letting her words happen, smelling her fruit, and it hit me between the eyes: It was always June. This thing I’d had for the Knoxville women, aka dome house women. All along June, never Emmy, not past the puppy love. This was the full-throttle type love that I never got figured out properly, due to being raised in shotgun fashion. What my twisted little raggedy heart had always, always wanted. A mother, simple as that.
I asked her why me, why not Maggot. She had her reasons. Meth addiction is tough, no medical remedy. She said with opioids you can swap out the bad one for a different one that won’t get you high, but you won’t be dopesick either. Just take a pill and get on with your life.
“Right,” I said. Not mentioning the part about wanting sum-total obliteration of your life.
“I would do anything for Matthew, you know that. But rehab is something a person has to do on their own two feet, and he’s not ready.”
I sat on my two hands to keep from fidgeting. Wanting a little bump of something, so very very much. Maggot wasn’t ready, and I was? She said she and Mrs. Peggot had their doubts on Maggot ever taking responsibility, he just wasn’t cut out that way. So it would have to be somebody else making him stick to the program. Not voluntary. Meaning the law. They’d been waiting for that, assuming an arrest or a good scare was what it would take. “We thought a shoplifting charge,” she said, shaking her head. “Not that somebody would have to die.” She got kind of emotional then, but told me not to blame myself. She said there were a hundred people she could blame for what happened that day, and Maggot and I were not even on the list.
“I had my part in it,” I said. “We all kind of lost our minds.”
She looked at me like there was something written on my face that she was trying to read. “For God’s sake, Damon. It’s the same place your father died. You didn’t start this fire.”
I felt rage boiling up. My ears were ringing and I wanted to scream: Yes. It’s the place I hate the most, and that’s why I got lured out there. That’s the motherfucking deal I get. I turned away from her and looked outside at the deck where my blondie teenager mom used to light every cigarette off the last one. She saved all the Pall Mall coupons to get us free stuff. Once, a radio that looked like a jukebox. It was mostly plastic and quit working after a couple of months and I thought it was made by God’s own hands.
Some minutes passed. June was not letting this go. “It’s not natural for boys to lose their minds,” she said. “It happens because they’ve had too many things taken away from them.”
I asked her like what. She got up and walked around the room, upset. No decent schooling, she said. No chance to get good at anything that uses our talents. No future. They took all that away and supplied us with the tools for cooking our brains, hoping we’d kill each other before we figured out the real assholes are a thousand miles from here.
I told her I didn’t hold with that line of reason. I knew plenty of assholes at close range.
She smiled in the sad way I knew well. The hard kid to handle. But instead of leaving, she sat down on the bed again. “The question you have to answer now is, What are you willing to do for yourself? And I won’t lie, it’s going to be harder than anything you’ve done before.”
I doubted it. Getting smacked around daily for my betterment came to mind. Going hungry for the entirety of fifth grade. Did she think I was looking for a new personal best in the hardships department? I told her it was a lot to take in. I didn’t say, You think I’m strong, but I’m not. I will always want that next hit.
She said she’d come back over tomorrow, and we’d talk some more.
I asked where all this would be happening and she said Knoxville, which freaked me out. Not my idea of happytown. She said it wasn’t like I was thinking, not a big apartment building downtown. They have regular houses there, with yards and such. The kind of living situation I’d need would be more on the outskirts, she said. I could get used to it. “You’d have to. Because if you do this, I don’t want you coming back here for at least a year.”
“A year.”
“I know. You can’t see it. I couldn’t either, I had to leave here, and then come back as kind of a different person.” June looked so beautiful and kind. She was killing me.
“What if I like the person I am now?” Said with a straight face, no small trick.
“I’m not saying the problem is you. It’s not the drugs either. It’s a whole lot of other things that are wrong, and they won’t get better as long as you stay here.”
A year was not thinkable. Where I would go, who I would be. Damn her. If we were all such a mess, did she think the whole of Lee County should empty itself out? I pictured the long line of cars and pickups backed up on 58. Next in line behind us, our neighbors: Scott County, Russell, Tazewell. Half of Kentucky. Leaving behind empty houses, unharvested fields, half-full beer cans, the squeaky front porch rockers going quiet. Unmilked cows lowing in the pastures, dogs standing forlorn in yards under the maples, watching the masters flee from the spoiled paradise where the world’s evils all got sent to roost.
I told her I would think about it. She had to know I was lying.
60
I packed up that same afternoon. The earthly goods were down to a couple of boxes now, I’ve known homeless guys that had less. Shirts, a spare pair of shoes. Football trophies won by a shiny kid with two excellent knees. I threw those out. I kept the notebooks and art supplies that filled up one whole box, and it weighed on my conscience. I’d been hiding from Tommy. My only real valuables were in bottles, stashed in an old leather shaving case that used to be Mr. Peg’s. Maggot had taken it for his stash, then at some point it became mine. I rarely thought twice about using Mr. Peg’s nice case for pharmaceutical purposes, but from time to time I felt his eyes on me, seeing the waste of flesh I’d become. Now being one of those times. Maggot was asleep or dipped off. I punched him in the shoulder to tell him I was checking out.
