Page 12 of Demon Copperhead
So, digging and scritching was heard in the walls at night. Water moving around for no good reason in the pipes. Snoring. Long, sorrowful farts. Swap-Out oftentimes sounded like he was itching bad over there in his bed. I mean. Scratching himself half to death. It dawned on me that if this kid had done more than one year in every grade, he could have considerable age on him by now. He smoked like a fiend, among other signs of being older than Tommy and me, the tiny size deceiving on all counts. I’d have to be older myself before I got the full picture on what a boy does in his bed at night, to sound like he’s itching himself to death.
We were our own messed-up little tribe. A squadron. We looked forward to inspections, filling up our hungers on Fast Forward attention. If he played favorites with me, which he did, that was the bread and butter in my otherwise butterless day-to-day. He found out I had every superhero that ever existed on tap in my brain, and would get me to reel out their full life histories. He looked at my drawings like they were true comic books, studying them over, asking why I put in this or that. He wanted me to draw him as a superhero. I said I needed to think about it, because a person’s superpower wasn’t always that obvious.
His was. I was playing for time. I practiced and threw away quite a few before I nailed it: Force Fastward, aka Fast Man, all hard-muscled in his tights and cape and football helmet. His superpower was the force of his will, that could make anybody do anything and feel glad of it because they all wanted to be on Fast Man’s team.
The first one I showed him, he picked up and looked over for a long time. Terrifying. My drawing was stupid. But no, finally he said I had the gift. “You all see this here?” he said to the others, flipping the page with the back of his hand. “This shit cannotbe taught. It’s a talent.” Which made my entire dogshit life up to that point worth living. Afterthat I just went to town. I drew Creaky as the supervillain Creak Evil. He had a light-bulb head, with a comb-over, that lit up whenever he thought of how to torture a boy. I did cartoons with three panels.Bing!goes the light-bulb head, and he’s pulling a file out of his pocket, saying “C’mere and I’ll file down your teeth.” Or, “I’m here to fatten up steers, not boys,” handing a plate to Tommy with just bones on it. Then Fast Man swoops in to trounce the dastardly Creak Evil and save the boys. I put my all into Fast Man. His Fastmobile was a Lariat pickup with gun turrets that could fly.
He started wanting me to draw a cartoon every night. Some of my best ones, he would take to keep. Some got tacked up in his room. The other guys lived for my cartoons also, it was an event of our day. I drew WildMan that could climb the highest anything, and SuperBones with the power of fixing people instantly if their bones got broken. I just made that up. Tommy’s actual power was niceness, but it’s hard to make that pay off in the superhero universe.
We’d sit around the table in our room where no homework was ever done. I drew, they watched. Sometimes I was tired and wished I could get a pass. But I did it anyway. Drawing was something Fast Forward couldn’t do and I could. I’d have done anything to be on his team.
A supervised visit is some weird shit. Usually in McDonald’s, me and Mom eating our burger and fries. Four or five tables away, Miss Barks, drinking her Diet Coke and acting like she’s reading, but keeping an eye on us. What do they think is going to happen here, Mom will haul off and shank me with a plastic knife? Put meth in my Dr Pepper? How screwed-up is it that the DSS can’t be bothered about Creaky being hateful as a snake, but they’re all high-beams and every step you take, as regards the druggie mother?
Recovering druggie mother, excuse me. Mom was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, telling me how great she was doing at rehab, how everything was going to be different this time. I know this was not nice of me, but I asked her, How is it going to be different? Just saying. Oh, she had answers. She’d only ever before done the freebie rehabs, a longweekend in the tank, courtesy of DSS. This was a whole different level, with therapy sessions and so on. It cost money, and Stoner was paying. She said she never even realized before that the moral inventory meant taking stock of your entire life. Wishes for the future included. She said her future was me. That I was one hundred percent of her reason for getting sober.
I could see how this was supposed to make me feel great, but honestly it hit me as one more thing to worry about. What if she turns around in a month and gets shitfaced again or starts using? What does that tell you? That I wasn’t a strong enough reason. Stoner would be pissed off about the wasted cash and take it out on me. Mom was assigning me the superpower of getting and keeping her clean, and our family on track. It’s a lot of pressure.
On the good side, she looked nice, for somebody living in a home for junkies. She had her makeup on, not so tired, and something different with her hair. She was wearing a new dress that Stoner had bought her. She said he’d come to see her three times already, the most visits allowed. He’d brought her the dress, flowers, and a card that he forgot to sign but it’s the thought that counts. He knew her size for the dress by looking in the tags of her other dresses. This is all supposedly proof of Stoner being Mr. Wonderful. She said he loved me too, and we were going to be a better family now. We would do fun stuff together like maybe Dollywood. I told her I wanted to go see the ocean, and she laughed. Don’t get carried away, she said.
Eventually she got around to asking about where I was living. They’d told her it was a farm, so she wanted to know how fun was that, were there animals to pet and such. Mind you, she never had one good thing to say about being raised in foster care herself, and now she thinks it’s all rainbows? I told her, Yeah, Mom, it’s exactly like a petting zoo where the main animals are roaches and mice. I told her for fun times we shoveled cow shit, and my foster was a creepy old man that threatened to file down my teeth. I didn’t mention I’d started doing drugs. As far as I was concerned, drugs were not the problem in that home. Just the opposite.
She ended up getting weepy on me. I said, Look, I just want to getthis over with and come home. You do your part and I’ll do mine. She said okay. Probably she thought I was growing up to be one more prick in her life, a junior-varsity Stoner. It’s not that I wanted to be mean. But any time I started feeling sorry for her, something in my brain said Don’t go there, it’s a trap. I’d tried all the options with Mom and had only one place left to go on her. Cold.
The next Saturday I got visitors at Creaky’s. It was a normal day of Tommy and me pulling out an old fence, yanking crusty barb wire off of crusty palings and rolling it up to save for a rainy day because that was Creaky. Nothing but rainy days ahead, boys! Save everything, because life sucks and then you die! Fence work meant walking all the steep hills he couldn’t climb, so on the good side it was a vacation from his shit. We were at the edge of the woods, taking turns pissing on an anthill, which Tommy felt bad about. He found these blue flowers coming up through the hay. Then we sat in the shade listening to what all was going on up in the trees. Birds having their discussions, a woodpecker making his littletack-tack-tacks, this whole other life of little beings out here minding their business and not actually giving a damn about yours. It could set you back on your haunches, in a good way. Why I liked the woods.
We heard a rain crow, which is not your everyday crow. It sounds like a two-cycle engine revving up, finally getting to this spookygulp, gulp. A rain crow calling means you’ll have a storm within the day. Tommy was surprised a bird would know that, but this came out of the bible of Mr. Peg, so he believed it. I’d already amazed him of countless things, like how chewing on sassafras stems tastes exactly like root beer. Or how squashing touch-me-not weeds like a washrag and rubbing it on your poison ivy will take the itch away. Amazing the hell out of Tommy with Mr. Peg lore was one of my pastimes.
He was sprawled on his stomach, holding a piece of grass up close to his face. His other fist was squashed against his cheek, propping him up. He had grass seeds in his hair and stick-tights all over his sausage-case jeans and shirt. I leaned over to see what he had, which was the smallest,smallest green grasshopper you can imagine with your brain. Like it came from the planet of smaller things. He said, “The storm thing, I get that. Birds would need to know, right? So they won’t get rained on.”
I agreed with him on that, caught in the rain would suck for a bird, hard for flying. Tommy and I could go into mental-type things like that, where with other guys, you just don’t go there. Mainly we were stalling because we’d finished winding the fence, and ended up with giant wire rolls that were way too big for us to drag to the barn. Then what? At Creaky’s we basically lived in terror of doing the wrong thing, and in terror of asking him what was the right thing, so we spent a lot of time debating on which would be worse. Finally, I said I would go ask if he meant to haul the wire out with his tractor, or what.
So. Halfway down the hill I saw what looked like Mr. Peggot’s truck parked in front of the house. No way. Then I spotted all three Peggots up on the porch talking to Creaky. I whooped and tore down the hill, thinking for sure they had come to take me home.
Long story short, no. Just to visit. I wondered how they’d convinced the DSS they were not molesters. And Miss Barks had said no visits allowed here, so it blew out all circuits, seeing my old life and new one chatting on the porch. Mr. Peg and Creaky were figuring out they had some of the same cousins, which is what you do in Lee County whenever you meet somebody. First, how are your people related. Then you move on, in this case to silage, Angus cattle, beef prices. Creaky sounded like a different person talking to Mr. Peg in his raspy voice. You’d look at Creaky and ask yourself, How was this old cuss ever married and young and a human being at all? And there it was. Once upon a time, a nice piece of land and good prospects and a boy that loved his farming. Mr. Peg knew about that because back whenever he was a boy, his family did well with the corn and tobacco before they had to sell off their land a piece at a time for people to build houses on. Same with Mrs. Peggot, she started out as a little girl on a farm before their daddy sold his land for a certain number of hogs, one for each child. After that, their farm was a coal mine where her brothers worked, and Mr. Peg also. Mining is how he got his crushed foot.
Anyway I brought Maggot and Mrs. Peggot into the kitchen, where she had a near heart attack. She’d brought ham biscuits but said the tin was not to be opened until she cleaned up, and where did the man keep his Lysol. Good question. This was just skimming the surface, mind you. She had yet to see a bathroom. I introduced them to the two dogs Pete and Mike that were still lying where last seen. Maggot wanted to see some of the rank shit I’d told him about at school, sewage bathtub of doom, the mummified raccoon we found in the basement, but I skipped those. We got out clean towels to put on the couch so we could sit and eat Mrs. Peggot’s amazing ham biscuits. I felt like, saved. They asked if I was coming home soon. They’d not even talked to Miss Barks. They found out where I was from our bus driver that was some kin to Mr. Peg, and just came over. Mrs. Peggot seemed pretty torn up. She leaned over and patted my knees and said I should go on saying my prayers. I thought of them going to the prison to see Maggot’s mom. He never talked about it, but now I could picture them at Goochland in the visiting room eating ham biscuits, Mrs. Peggot telling Mariah, You hang in there, honey. Say your prayers, and we’ll spring you.
Then Fast Forward pulled up outside, and I got excited for the Peggots to meet my friend that was a Lee High Generals MVP. Out we all went. I could see Mrs. Peggot sizing up this good-looking young man, and Maggot just, gaah. Maggot that didn’t give two shits about football. That was Fast Forward’s powers at work. Creaky and Mr. Peg came back from the barn where they’d gone to look at the heifers, and Mr. Peg shook hands with him. I hate to say it, but I looked at the Peggots from a Fast Forward viewpoint, wondering if he might think they were a couple of old bumpkins, and that boy of theirs just a little bit odd, or what.
By the time they took off, the other guys had started on supper. Swap-Out for all his derpness could chop onions like a ninja. You just had to not watch. I came in, and Creaky asked where the hell was Tommy, and I said, Oh shit, oh Jesus. I’d left him up in the field with the rolls of barbwire. It had been hours, and Tommy would still yet be up there in the tall grass. He’d wait there till the sun went down, because I’d said I would be right back, and he believed me.
Chapter12
Mom graduated from rehab and got to go home. Now instead of McDonald’s I could go sit in our kitchen, or in my room that was the exact mess I’d left it the night it all happened, visiting Mom with my chest hurting for how much I missed being a normal kid. Any minute Miss Barks was going to tap on the door and say, “Sorry, time’s up.” Thenbam, back to foster life. Some years down the road it would be like this with the girls saying,Pull out now, quick!Honestly, give me all or nothing at all. Give me the damn visits at McDonald’s.
But Mom said she lived for these times. Regardless the unfairness of her being allowed home while I wasn’t. Me beingnotthe one of us that screwed up. She still had drug tests to pass and a hard row to hoe, so Miss Barks said it was a realistic goal for us to get me home for Christmas. She didn’t babysit us at the house, even though if Mom had wanted to do me damage there were a lot more options there than at McDonald’s. Miss Barks said Mom was earning trust. She’d drop me off and sit outside in her car for the hour, doing her homework or her case files. Homework, yes. Miss Barks was seriously young. She was taking night classes to get certified for a teacher, which she said was her dream, because she loved kids. And I thought, What am I?
My first visit back home, I went after school while Stoner was at work. Mom said Stoner was still anti me moving back in, due to the stress of the three of us as a family making Mom relapse. You’re going to say, What kind of shit is that for a mother to be telling her kid? Even I thought that, at the time. But Mom had milk and cookies out on the table for me, so probably she was trying to learn the drill from TV. She was nervous. I cut her some slack. She showed me the presents Stonergot her for coming home, including a new microwave that told the time in lit-up numbers. She asked if my foster was still being an asshole, and I told her a person could get used to anything except hanging by the neck. Something I’d heard from Mr. Peg.
After our time was up, Miss Barks came in and said I should get together anything I wanted to take with me. My first thought was to load up on stuff I missed like Snickers bars and my best comics. But anything valuable I would have to turn over to Fast Forward, so I ended up not taking much. Just two of my small-size action heroes that I could sneak in. I would hide them in Swap-Out and Tommy’s beds, and they’d never know who put them there. God, maybe. The surprise toy in the shitburger happy meal of their lives.
On the drive back we rolled down the windows. “Just smell that,” she said. “Fall time.” Plowed-under silage fields, smoke from people’s leaf burning, and something a little bit sweet, maybe apples that had rotted on the ground. She was a country girl. She showed me where her parents’ farm was because we went past that road. The happiest I remember being that fall was in the car with Miss Barks. She was chatty and would ask questions like who were my caseworkers before, which I couldn’t remember, honestly. I’d see one a couple of times, she’d be all like,Hey, I’ve got your back. Next visit, here’s a new one reading my name off the files.
Given her looks, I figured Miss Barks would have a boyfriend wanting to get her knocked up and married, but she made no mention of that. She’d moved out last year and got her apartment with the roommate in Norton, which her parents thought was a waste of money, but she wanted that bad to be on her own. I asked why did she want to be a teacher, and she said you have to follow your dreams, plus it pays better than DSS. She wanted an apartment by herself because her roommate left dirty dishes and her crap all over. She said her two best high school friends had gotten their scholarships and gone away to college, but she didn’t get one and it about killed her. Everybody knows there aren’t that many to go around, but she was still ashamed. She’d thought she was as smart as her two friends were. But here’s the thing, she told me,you don’t give up, sometimes you just have to take second choice. In her case the job at DSS, slob-roommate apartment, and night classes at Mountain Empire Community College.
She asked me what I wanted to be whenever I grew up. I had to think about that. We went past some barns and tobacco fields with their big yellow-green leaves waving in the sad evening light. She looked over at me and said, Hey, why so glum, chum?
I told her nobody ever asked me that question before, about growing up and what I wanted to be, so I didn’t know. Mainly, still alive.
