Page 81 of Demon Copperhead
“Damn, mothafuckers,” Everett said now and again, until June blew up.
“Everett. You’re one of about twelve men I know that aren’t in any kind of trouble. Definitely not a thug. Could we just agree on that being a good thing?”
The address turned out to be a rough-looking place. We pulled up in front, killed the engine, and sat looking at this house. Low and wide,flat roof, moldy white paint, a lot of the windowpanes covered with cardboard. It looked like a brutal smile with missing teeth. Everett picked up his Kel-Tec and checked the safety. “You two stay in the car, I’ll bake the cake.”
June made this explosion, like a crying laugh. “I really am going to kill you with that.”
Everett put the piece on his lap.
“I’m just going to knock on the door,” June said. “If it turns out she’s here, I’ll ask if we can all come in and talk to her. For God’s sake, Everett, behave yourself.”
To get to the door she had to step over a pile of what looked like Pampers and blue plastic. In her jeans and red winter coat, she looked like a kid waiting outside for somebody to let her in. Normally she’d have her doctor outfit, with the whole authority aspect. She waited a long time. We had the car windows down, listening, ready to leap into action. I could hear Everett breathing. If I had to guess, I’d say he was terrified. More knocking, more waiting.
Anybody else would have given up. After about ten minutes she went around and started knocking on windows, calling Emmy’s name. I never fully believed we were going to find her, but watching June duck under hanging gutters, banging her knuckles on broken casement windows, I saw it was the opposite for her. No other option would fit in her brain. I got a full-body memory of the Undersea Wonders Aquarium, Emmy and June’s standoff over the shark tank, nobody backing down. I’d helped Emmy into the tunnel that day, but I also lied to her.If something scares you, get your ass out of there, I should have said.Everything will not be okay.
The house next door was one of the nicer ones. Painted shutters, one of those whirligig garden things in the dead flowers. A guy was standing on the porch watching June. We hadn’t noticed him until he yelled something like “Hey, lady,” and both Everett and I jumped, and then we saw him. Old guy in a coat and cloth slippers. White ring of hair around his mostly bald brown head. June walked over to his porch and shook his hand. We watched them talk, June nodding,looking back at the grimace house. Touching her eye, asking questions, nodding.
She came back to the car, belted up, didn’t start the engine.
“He said there were some people living there, and they were evicted. Including some young women. One was white. Evicted is not exactly what he said.” She shook her head fast, like trying to clear it. “There was a shooting. And they left.”
“June. We should just go home,” Everett said.
“He thinks they went to a house not too far from here. He doesn’t know the address, but he said it’s a brand-new place. Like maybe just built, with nobody technically living there yet.”
“He’s making shit up to get rid of you,” Everett suggested. “Who’d build a house here?”
“I told him I was looking for my daughter, and he said he understood. He said this new house is a place they’re using right now, I don’t know for what. But she could be there.”
“This is crazy, June. It’s too dangerous.”
“Damnyou, Everett. Where’s the gangland tough shit now?”
No answer to that.
She banged her open hands on the steering wheel. “There’s not a damn thing messing people up around here that I’m not seeing in my office ten times a day.” She threw the car into drive, and we drove. Up and down the blocks. The same old man still in his wheelchair, the other one still lying in the road. The leg-pumping had ceased. We didn’t know what we were looking for. Nothing looked remotely new. I was hungry and itchy, moving towards the sweats. Everett kept picking up his piece and putting it down, until June smacked his hand.
Then we saw the house. Like it had dropped out of the freaking sky of newness.
We all three got out of the car. A front yard of fresh bulldozed dirt, factory stickers on the windows. The front door was the modern type with an oval-shaped fake church window in it. June knocked, no answer. A little metal box type thing hung on the doorknob, sprung open,with a key sitting there in plain view. June tried the key in the lock, and then we were in.
It was all new everything: nice wood floors, strong smell of paint, no real furniture. Just a card table with bags and a scale, a white dust of coke. In the corner a guy was slumped on the floor with his back against the wall, head flopped forward. We held our breath, watching. The bill of his oversize black ball cap covered his face, so it was pure guess as to sleeping, dead, or dipped out. I thought number three, based on the splayed legs and open hands.
June touched Everett’s shoulder, then his pistol, and pointed to the guy. Held up her flat hand:Keep him there. She and I moved through the house. A hallway, bedrooms. We made almost no sound, but the place was so empty it echoed anyway. I pushed open a half-closed door and almost pissed myself. Little kids, two of them, on a pile of opened-out cardboard pizza boxes. One was asleep and the other one sitting up, playing with the plastic rings of a six-pack. The awake one looked up at us wide-eyed, like June and I might be just the ticket. June stood with her hand over her mouth. I had to pull her back out the door.
We didn’t check all the rooms, because the next one was where we found Emmy. She and another girl were passed out on a mattress, both half naked. I mean exactly half. Emmy had on a short skirt and snagged black tights and nothing at all on top, while the other girl had a blouse and jewelry, a shiny yellow jacket, and from there down just legs and pussy. Like they’d had to split one outfit, underwear and all. June still had her hand on her mouth and was looking at me, likeIknew what the hell to do. Run, I thought. The room smelled ripe, like sex, and the sight of Emmy’s bruised face and pasty skin made me sick. I walked over and scooped her up, more heft to her than Dori but not by much, she was maybe ninety pounds. I’d once been a man to deadlift three times that, easy. The man I was now got us out of there before any eyes opened.
June waved the two of us up front, got in the back seat with Emmy, and rolled her up in all the blankets. Everett drove too fast, yelling “Fuck, fuck, fuck, I don’t know where I’m going.”
“My God. Those babies,” June said. “What if one of them is hers?” And then in another minute, “What am I thinking? She’s only been gone six months.”
“We can call Georgia DSS,” I said. All of us pretty far out of our minds.
Everett found his way onto a city freeway and pulled over. June gave him her map to figure out how to get back to I-75, then got out, opened the back, and fetched her medical bag. We sat on the shoulder with cars whizzing past, rattling us, while June crouched over Emmy in the back seat, listening to her heart, feeling her bones and organs. Emmy’s hair was cut weirdly short in a scary way, with parts of it missing. Her eyes were open now, jumping around at all of us, but she didn’t talk. Maybe in her opinion we were a dream. I took off my zipper hoodie and gave it to June to put on her. Then she wrapped Emmy up again and said, “Let’s go home.”
Too much adrenaline will age you before your time. I’ve heard that said. What I know for sure is, it will push you too fast through your day. I was into the sweats and beyond before we got out of Georgia. I had to ask Everett to pull over to save June’s white leather seats. She made me get in the back, gave me a 7 Up and a pill to chew to settle my stomach, that she said would make me sleepy. Nothing for the shakes and sweats. She put a blanket around me and laid me on the dogpile so Emmy and I were dominoed onto June, our little back-seat rehab ward. June sat up straight with this look on her face like she wants to kill us both, but she’s not going to let us die.
Everett was free at last to control the radio, and for a long time nobody said a word. I drifted in and out. Then somewhere around the Tennessee line, June started talking. Low, quiet. I was going to have my own child to think about, soon. She said she’d had this same talk with my mom before I was born. They were friends. I never knew that. June was the reason the Peggots took her into their trailer. They actually lived there together for a short while, before June moved away with Emmy and I got born. June had known my dad, too. She said you couldn’t know one without the other, those two were joined at the hip. I askedwhat he was like. She said exactly like me. In looks, word, and deed. A beautiful man with too much heart for the raw deal he got.
