Page 39 of Demon Copperhead
“Are you lucky, if a drunk comes at you through a stop sign and totals your vehicle?”
“No.”
“No, you are not. You got the wreck you didn’t ask for. And you walked out of it.”
I kind of shrugged him off.
“Well, that’s how it looks to me. I see you here in my office. Showing up. Not out there someplace else trying to smash something or put a bullet in it or set it on fire.”
I smiled, recalling Swap-Out and myself doing those exact three things to a deer head trophy in the garbage pile one time. Ten-point buck, in perfect condition before we had our way with it. Because Jesus, those glass eyes. But Mr. Armstrong was not smiling. He said he’d been advised of my classroom performance. But that people often know more than the teachers are able to measure with their tests. His job was to figure out what those things are, using other methods.
I said if he was aiming to torture me, I’d just confess right off the top: I hated school.
He nodded. “Understandably. Can you tell me what you like?”
Helping with football practice, but I wasn’t giving that up to this guy. He’d probably take it away. I said I couldn’t think of anything I liked doing that was legal for twelve-year-olds.
“So you’re thinking life will get better in the years ahead.”
“Wellyeah.”
He nodded. “I hear that.”
Did he mean he heardme, or just that all kids say this, I couldn’t guess. He was soft and hard at the same time, eyes like melted chocolate. No meanness to him. But he’s not giving you a damn thing here if you won’t go first. Heavy glasses, button shirt, more spiffed out than the usual for teachers. Or else a white collar looks that way on black skin. Not something you see much in Lee County. We were used to NBA or rappers on TV, rich guys with gold in their teeth.
Just by waiting me out, he got a few things off me. That I liked to draw. He asked if he could see some of my so-called work, and I said not at this time. Lately I’d been studying on the human form, aka this girl in all my classes they called Hot Sauce that sat in a chair the way ice cream melts. Soft porn basically. He gave me a pass, but said he would need to see some drawings by the end of the week, no excuses. Like it was an assignment.
That freaked me out. I went through all the notebooks I still had, going back as far as Creaky Farm and the every-night comics of Fast Man saving the kids. Nothing for a teacher to see. I got nervous, then pissed off, and then thought fine, the man wants to get in my skullbox, hereyou go. I brought him superhero shit. Kids getting saved. He studied over my drawings like he’s reading the damn paper, then said he had some assessments for me to do. I thought, Good, we’re almost done here: more tests, more Titanic of Demon going down in a shit ocean.
Wrong. The ones he gave me were all picture tests. Example: here’s some connected squares that are an unfolded box, pick which box it would be after you put it back together. Pages and pages of this crap, so easy it’s like a game. It was the only test I’d finished in forever. I thought it was a warmup for the real tests. Wrong again. Mr. Armstrong tricked me. These were the special ones they use for Gifted and Talented, which he said I was. Which is ridiculous. All the sudden he’s talking about what catching up I’ll have to do, and if I move into this track in middle school, I can take art class in high school instead of making birdhouses in shop.
I was pretty upset about it. Getting used to all new everything was screwing with my head. Clothes, people, house. The one thing I could still count on was being an idiot. Now I was supposed to trash what little there was left of Demon and be smart. Would I still be me? And the main question: Can a Gifted and Talented play football? Doubtful. But Mr. Armstrong moved me into the better English class and signed me up for math tutoring, which turned out to be just me and six righteously hot girls, so I decided what the hell. Next year I’d be on down the road in some other placement and school, where nobody would know how smart I ever was or wasn’t.
My gifts and talents were discovered by others. The first was this guy Fish Head, that had perfected the exact combination of BO and Axe spray to fend off attackers. It was a normal day in math, with me covering notebook pages with drawings because we did smoke-all in that class. Mrs. Jackson would pass out her worksheets and then read a paperback or paint her nails for the rest of the period. To this day, adding up numbers puts that sharp polish smell in my head. This is still the dummy class obviously. I was doing the math tutoring, but it had yet to take.
“Hey Demon, drawl me some different kind of pussies right quick!” Fish Head whispered, and by “whisper,” I mean the entire back of the class laughed.
I was not that acquainted with pussies to know there were different kinds. I asked did he mean like shaved or not shaved, but no. He had names for different types. “Like tits,” he said. “You know how they’s as many kinds of tits as they is kinds of cars?”
I’d never really thought about it. Not that I was admitting to that.
“Like your long low ones.” Fish Head, not being great with words, was trying to explain with his hands. Other guys jumped in to help. “Slab sides, pontoons,” they said. “Vans.”
Somebody had aPlayboy, worth a thousand words like they say. I only got to keep it till the end of class, but I can study a thing and keep it in my mind’s eye. I started charging guys for these drawings, fifty cents for parts, a dollar a whole body. Minus the face. For faces and hands I would have to charge extra because they take the most time, and there was no interest. Then I told these guys I needed to keep their magazines overnight, to get better familiar on the different makes and models. My chassis fixation took a new turn.
The one thing I could count on, surprisingly, turned out to be Angus. I’d not had any friend since Maggot, and that had been awhile. You don’t just hang out with a girl normally, but in no way shape or form did Angus seem like one. It wasn’t even the kick-ass boots or knowing cars. It was the zero bullshit. If you ever met a middle school girl, you know what they are: volcano eruptions of bullshit. Every minute a new emergency, the best friend turned enemy. Some guy that was flirting yesterday, now talking to some other girl. Every body part too big or too small and oh I hate this dress and Lord what if I’m pregnant. My own girl experience didn’t run that deep, I mainly knew this from Angus. She had no tolerance, and needed to gripe. A lot.
“So I told Michaela, look, your ass is your ass. Simple fact. It’s going to look that way whether you’re wearing those particular jeans or not, so why keep asking me?”
“ ‘Or not,’ ” I said, “is something to picture.”
“Don’t go there, young friend.”
Too late, I already had. Artist’s rendition. Angus wouldn’t know this, being no part of the Fish Head crowd, but the Ass of Michaela was a legend in its time.
Angus paused her gripe to hand me a leaf bag, Mattie Kate being on a tear that fall about raking up the yard. Maybe just wanting us out of her hair while she vacuumed, or not in Angus’s room on PlayStation all hours. Raking leaves though. There’s always more going to fall. I shoved leaves in those bags till they were dead packed, like bags of bricks. My disposal experience was vast. “Okay,” I said. “You preached. Check Michaela off your ass-pain list.”
“Oh, no. This is not Mario where you blast the Goomba and it’s gone. Michaela is the undead of Monkey Island. She keeps coming back.”
