Page 34 of Demon Copperhead
The clouds had bellied up since morning and a stout wind was kicking up outside, turning the leaves upside down and silvery. Mr. Peg always said that meant rain on the way. I asked Mr. Dick if his kite was ready to fly, and he said it was. Then let’s do it, I said. I got a shiver in my spine. Maybe that’s what my brain had been telling me all day:Run. Go fly a kite.
He looked pretty shocked, but he said okay, he just had one more thing to write on it. I tried to be patient, with him being the slowestwriter. He said this one was from a different book, some words he wanted to put up there for me. He wrote them at the very top:
Never be mean in anything. Never be false. Never be cruel.
I can always be hopeful of you.
If that was from him to me, it was more man-to-man talk than I’d ever had in life so far. It beat the two-cents-equals-happiness thing, all to hell. I said, Okay, let’s do this thing.
I didn’t ask how he usually did it, who helped him or what, because I had my own plan. He wheeled outside, down the porch ramp and onto the flagstones of the front sidewalk, this being all the farther his wheelchair could go. But still in the yard. No running room. He motioned me to take the kite and go on with it, but I said, My man! We can do better. I wheeled him off the sidewalk onto the grass, which wasn’t hard with him weighing probably not much more than a bale of hay. Out over the bumpy grass we went, Mr. Dick working his mouth until what came out was “Heee, heeee!” Which I took to meanHell yes!
I unlatched the back gate and wheeled him plumb out into the stubble of the hayfield behind the house. Then the going got pretty rough, wheelchairwise, so we didn’t go far, just to where I could get the runny-go I needed to send that sucker to the moon. The clouds were scooting by, throwing shadows like a herd of wild monsters rumpusing over the field, and I was right there with them. I hefted the kite and let out the string, more and more till it was not but a speck in the sky. I could feel rain starting to spit on us, and who cared. Let it thunder.
The string was pulling hard in the wind, but I towed it back to Mr. Dick and put it in his hand. “Hang on tight,” I said, and flopped on the ground beside him, panting like a dog. He was quiet, holding that string and kite with everything he had. The way he looked. Eyes raised up, body tethered by one long thread to the big stormy sky, the whole of him up there with his words, talking to whoever was listening. I’ve not seen a sight to match it. No bones of his had ever been shoved in a feed bag. The man was a giant.
Chapter28
We sat in the parking lot waiting. Me with my gut full of rocks, Jane Ellen with her workbook opened out on the steering wheel, doing math problems. What is the deal with women, somebody tell me. A day can be going to hell in a hornet’s nest, you’re fixing to lose your breakfast, but she’s still going to get her homework done.
“What if Coach Winfield doesn’t show?” I asked.
“He will.” Her pencil never stopped moving. I guess I didn’t either. She’d already told me to stop fooling with the glove box before I busted it. An ’89 Comet is what she drove.
“What if he doesn’t?”
She erased something, then turned over her wrist to look at her watch. “He’s not that late yet. We got here early.”
I wanted to go home. Which was nowhere, but it’s a feeling you keep having, even after that’s no place anymore. Probably if they dropped a bomb and there wasn’t any food left on the planet, you’d still keep feeling hungry too.
“Je-sus,” I said. A car had pulled in, and the guy getting out of it wastheweirdest-looking human I ever saw, not counting comic books. Stick legs, long white arms, long busy fingers that twined all over him. Running through his hair, wrapping around his elbows while he stood looking around the parking lot. A redhead, but not my tribe. He was the deathly white type with the pinkish hair and no eyebrows. That skin that looks like it will burn if you stare at it.
“Great day in the morning.” Jane Ellen shut her workbook.
“Snake Man to the rescue,” I said.
She couldn’t help herself smiling, with that tongue stuck in the gapof her teeth. We both stared, rude as you please. His car was a late-model Mustang with a big trailer hitch, normal. But this guy, my Lord. He stood there hugging himself with those arms, looking around. Then looking at us. He walked around to the side of us, checking out Jane Ellen’s car.
“What’s he looking for?” I whispered.
“I don’t know,” she whispered back. “What does a snake eat?”
She had her hand on the key, ready to start the engine. But then he came straight at us and we froze. Stuck his hand in the open window on my side. We both reared back.
“I reckon you all are Betsy Woodall’s.” Creepy voice. Too quiet.
“Who wants to know?” I asked.
“Coach Winfield got tied up this morning. Saturday practice can run real long.”
“Then who are you?” Jane Ellen was getting back on her game. Not about to turn me over to some random freak outside Walmart.
He waved a long hand in front of him, like shooing flies. “I’m nobody. Assistant coach.” He leaned farther in and reached his hand across to Jane Ellen, causing her to rear back again. “Ryan Pyles,” he said. “They call me U-Haul.”
She stared at the freckle-zombie hand. “Why is that?”
He pulled back his hand, ran it through his stringy pink hair. We waited.
“I move equipment for the team. Your pads, helmets, Igloo coolers. Coach wants it hauled, I’m the one gets it there.” He moved his head backward on his neck like he had extra bones in there. The man was a reptile. “I didn’t hitch up the trailer. You got a lot of gear, son?”
