Page 75 of Demon Copperhead
Generally speaking, I kept it together, dosing myself to the sweet spot that gets you out of bed without knocking you ass-flat stupid. Making my fortune down at Sonic, one Red Bull slush at a time. Then going over to help Tommy. Some people must have noticed my comic in theCourier, because one wrote in to say it was the first they’d ever run that wasn’t toilet paper. Tommy said why not do some more. Which I did, now and then. It took a lot of time to get one perfect though, and Dori wanted me home of an evening. Mornings also. Ideally all times of day. I tried mentioning how handy it was to have money, and that the hours might fly by if she tried doing something around the house. Huge fight. Why did I move in with her if I was going to be gone all the time? She threw a pout, shot half a morphine patch, and that’s Dori over and out.
I’d made this bed of thorns, and needed to talk to the type of friend that doesn’t tell you to shut up and lie in it. Angus had started community college, headed for the big leagues, so our friend days werenumbered. I decided to cash in my credits before they expired. She said sure, let’s meet at Hoboland, which was our name for the little park in Jonesville. It had the usual things of vet memorial, picnic shelter, steps up a hill leading to nowhere. A pine grove. One time we surprised a guy sleeping up there with all his worldly shit tied up in a Walmart bag, so. Hoboland. Our small imaginations ran wild in those days. We’d roused him from a safe distance.
I found her up there under the pines, wearing a leather hat like Abe Lincoln only not as tall, sitting on a blanket with a pile of Saran-wrapped triangles. I sat down on the other side like it was our campfire, and we stuffed sandwiches into our faces. Mattie Kate’s BLT’s are the sober man’s smack. We asked questions with our mouths full, how was my knee, how was college. She said it was nice to swim in a bigger pond, she was meeting people with a lot in common. I looked at this girl in bike shorts and a top hat, and wondered how that worked exactly.
She said Coach was worried about me. I brushed it off, but she pressed the point. He was still my legal guardian for another year. Things were not great at the house. U-Haul was pushing ugly rumors at school. I recalled our standoff where he’d hinted about dark things he was holding over Coach, not to mention the heinous air-fuck. But Angus said these rumors pertained to Ms. Annie screwing somebody behind her husband’s back. Mr. Maldo.
Christ’s sakes, poor shy Mr. Maldo. You could sooner see him making a hit country single. But certain parents were jumping all over this, wanting people fired for their ethics. I said it was just the usual round of farts and the stink would pass. Angus said sorry, but there’s worse. U-Haul was saying I was a party to the scandal and had witnessed the lovers together at June Peggot’s house on the Fourth of July. If people didn’t believe U-Haul, they were to ask me.
U-Haul’s front teeth needed to make a date with the back of his skull. I asked Angus if he had ever made any moves on her, and she got a little wide-eyed. But didn’t say yes or no.
In time I got around to telling her about my life with Dori turning into a shit show, as far as her keeping house or putting in any effort. Imade the suggestion of Angus talking to her woman-to-woman, to get Dori to shape up. Angus laughed so hard she spit tomato, and said right there I just wrote the dictionary definition of what “woman-to-woman” is not.
I tried to make my case. Dori had looked after her daddy hand and foot, but now had no interest in the bigger picture. What picture, Angus asked. I said cleaning up the house, making decent food. Which admittedly Dori never did before. Also, as far as never wanting to be left alone at the house, not new. So, I had pantsed myself here. Angus leaned back on her elbows and watched with that smirky grin she had, where her mouth pulled completely over to one side.
“You chose her, Demon. This was the real deal. Remember? What was that about?”
I remembered. Watching Dori’s face and body, feeling her hit my veins like a drug. Such a killing beauty. She still was. And sex was still great. Not the string of firecrackers it once was, due to us running on a half cylinder apiece. But sometimes we hit it right, and those were the Aerial Dragon Egg Salutes in the vast wasteland of our otherwise fruitless and constipated days. I spared Angus the details. She sat up and started packing up our picnic mess.
“Whatever you love about her, you get to live with. And the other stuff, you live with that too.” Angus was this Yoda individual. It was probably good you talked to her, even if it wasn’t.
I passed the high school on my way home, and without overthinking it, pulled in the lot. It was almost three. I found Ms. Annie’s car. Stalky, but how else would I talk to her? A dropout, going in the building? Probably some part of your brain gets repo’d, like theDead Zonemovies.
Terrible idea. Here came the bell, and the lost life of Demon playing out in front of me. All my former brothers running onto the field for practice, punching each other in the head in the carefree fashion of youth. I rifled the glove box for a Xanax to buy myself another hour on the wanting-to-stay-alive clock. Pulled the Impala to the far end whereI could see her car but not the football field. She was practically the last one out, moving fast in her long skirt, carrying her big flat folder. I eased my car around and tapped the horn, causing her to jump. Then she recognized me, and I was her cake full of candles. She opened the passenger door and slid in, all smiles.
“Please tell me you’re coming back to class. I’ve got a folder of life drawings in here to grade, and they all look like they came out of bathroom stalls.”
“I can see you worked really hard on this, Aidan.”
She laughed. I could tell she wanted to lean over and give me a hug. My boyhood fantasies rearing to life, now that I was spoken for. “Damon. Just two more years. Is that impossible?”
“I’m not a kid. I have stuff to take care of now.”
She stared at me. Some motion behind her caught my eye, Clay Colwell in a red scrimmage vest running after a missed pass. My eyes started watering like they’d been poked. I told her she was a great teacher, and I was sorry I wasted her time. She said plenty of kids wasted her time, but I was a shooting star. Her words. “You know I don’t do this for the money, right?” She frowned a little. “Doyou know that? That I’m not even paid full-time here?”
I’d thought a teacher was a teacher, period, but no. She said art and choir director were her only two classes, and you don’t get full salary for that. Science teacher was the same, only the two classes. “I’m not complaining, I get by on my art commissions and our band gigs.”
“And the ice cream truck in summer.” She and Mr. Armstrong traded off with that.
“And ice cream, right. What I’m saying is... What am I saying?” She tilted her head, the loopy earrings danced. “Okay, I like helping kids learn to see what they’re looking at. But really and truly? I always hoped one day a spark would come along, that I could fan into a flame. Some whole new vision that the world actually needs.” Supposedly, I was that spark. She said teachers spend years of their lives hiding out in the coffee room, trying not to give up hope on the likes of me being out there somewhere. It seemed like she might cry. Or if not her, me.
I told her I was sorry I let her down. But I’d come looking for her because I heard the sick pack of lies about her and Mr. Maldo, and wanted her to know I was no part of it.
She looked down at her lap, nodding her head slowly. “Normally I wouldn’t give it a thought. That kind of thing goes around like a stomach flu. You want to talk about superheroes, my husband is a man of steel. This stuff just bounces off of him.”
We both looked out the windshield at the last stragglers finding their cars, thinking our thoughts. Mr. Armstrong, rebel flags, all kinds of little uglinesses probably, that most of us never knew about. I’d lived long enough to know, that shit doesn’t really bounce off. She glanced back at me. “I’ll tell you something, the one I’m worried about is Jack. Mr. Maldo.”
“Oh,” I said. I’d forgotten his first name, if I ever knew it.
“It’s like walking through fire for him right now, just to do his job. Kids making gestures. I’m scared he’ll quit and lose his medical insurance. He’s not well. Maybe you didn’t know.”
“I noticed the hand,” I said, not sure there was anything you could take for such.
“You’re sweet to worry about Lewis and me, but we’ve been through this so many times. There will always be some people around here that think our marriage is their business.”
She said there used to be laws against the Black and white type of marriage, up till the 1960s. So, before any of us were born including her and Mr. Armstrong, but attitudes hang on. “Certain pitiful souls around here see whiteness as their last asset that hasn’t been totaled or repossessed.”
I wondered if the laws pertained to my people making their Melungeon babies way back when, or if we were too far backwoods for the higher-ups to give a shit. Age-old story, who gets to look down on who, for what reason.
