Page 166 of Tis the Season to be Bullied

Ma winds the clean rag over my cut with the efficiency of a World War II field medic and then gives me a somewhat condescending pat on the arm. “That’ll do just fine.”

“So the money I sent you for the doctor...?” I ask while she’s still within whisper distance.

Ma breaks eye contact with me, fusses with her apron strings, looks about to take the rest of the sandwich out of her pocket and instead tucks a stray strand of gray hair back into her bun. “You know how it is, pumpkin pie. Your daddy said he was feeling better. He said to fill up the pantry instead of wasting it on that cult.”

I lay a hand on her shoulder. “Ma, he needs to see a proper doctor. You know the idiot at the mine just gives them painkillers and sends them home for a week.”

Ma opens her mouth to argue, flinty irritation in her flinty blue eyes, but I cut her off. “If he won’t go to the clinic, then I’ll pay for him to see someone out of state.”

“No, no, pumpkin pie.” She smiles grimly at me, patting my chest. “That money is for school.”

I clap a hand over my eyes, groaning loudly as she leaves the kitchen. Why can’t she wrap her head around the fact that I’m riding on a full fucking scholarship? Sure, there were fees and shit that weren’t covered, but what we couldn’t get waived, Knoxfound ways to pay for without his family getting wind of it. He’s got a bright future in money laundering ahead of him.

Richie waddles into the kitchen. I’m not even a little surprised that he’s dragging his storybook behind him. I lift him onto my hip, heading into the living room. Pa is awake, the plastic cup of whiskey empty beside him.

“You two conspiring behind m’ back again?” he says, eyes narrowing. He points a soot-encrusted fingernail at me. “Ain’t going to that fuckin’ cult, y’ hear me? They’ll never get a cent from me.”

I don’t bother arguing. I’ve met mules more amenable than him.

Would I still have come home if I’d known he’d be here? Probably not. It’s not as if he’s ever pleased to see me. And Ma could have gone another week between visits. All I’ve done is stir up a hornet’s nest.

I bob Richie on my hip, tickling his side until he’s giggling. Happiest kid in the house, this one. But only because he doesn’t know what a shitty life he has. Wait until he’s a few years older and he realizes what a crap hand he was dealt. Then he won’t be giggling anymore.

“Tell Ma I say bye,” I say to Thomas as I let Richard slide down my leg to the floor. “And read to your brother.”

“Now?” Thomas whines.

“Yes, now.”

Pa says nothing about me bossing around my brothers. He’s probably just glad he doesn’t have to do it. He grabs a grubby handkerchief from his pocket and starts coughing into it.

I leave before I can get into it with him again. This is the sixth time this year he’s gone on sick leave. The working conditions in Cinderhart’s coal mines are horrible. Workers spend twelve or more hours a day in moist, cold tunnels filled with coal dust. And all the mine does to protect them is to issue a new face maskonce a month when they have the funds. Which, judging from the barely minimum wage they pay, is hardly ever. Most workers just wrap bandannas over their faces, and a lot are so used to the air down there that they don’t even bother.

Pa has caught pneumonia so many times in his life, I’ve lost count. If he wasn’t such a dickhead about going to the Divine Radiance Clinic, then he’d get the antibiotics he needs.

“I gotta go,” I say to no one in particular. I climb into Knox’s BMW X7 but I don’t start it immediately. I have to be at the clinic in fifteen minutes but it’s not as if there’s ever any traffic in this place.

So I take a minute to soak up the desolate wasteland this neighborhood has become. Rubbish lines the street. Broken appliances and wrecked cars pile up in yards. There’s even a dead cat a few yards away, flies buzzing around its stiff corpse. When the stink of cigarette comes through the AC, I look through the rear window and see Ma leaning against the outside of our house, one foot kicked up behind her as she pulls at a smoke.

That’s where the money went that I sent them. Lucky Strike cigarettes and cheap whiskey.

It’s sad, really. The only time she looks happy is when she’s sucking on the filter end of a cigarette.

Fuck this. I put the X7 into drive and get the hell out of Jackleg Valley as fast as the eight-cylinder engine can take me. I’m five minutes away from the clinic when a call from Knox comes through on the Bluetooth.

“Yeah?”

“Are you done with your visit?” he asks dryly.

“Fuck yes.”

“Good. I need you to run an errand for me.”

“Now? Why?”

“I’ll explain later.”

“But I have to be at the clinic in?—”

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