Page 22 of Demon Copperhead
I’d given no thought to what lay up the road for us. Maggot learning to drive, courting whatever he had in mind, disaster possibly. He was already in a war with Mr. Peg over his long hair, the music he liked, some of his weirder magazines. Attitude in general. Nothing like the attitude wars of Stoner and me. But you could see how low-level fighting went step by step, with more hazards at the higher levels like in Super Mario.
I wondered if Miss Barks had told the Peggots I was a hard kid to handle.
“I won’t do any of those teenager things,” I told her. “I would mind you. You and Mr. Peg both, I promise. I could probably get Maggot to do better.”
Mrs. Peggot looked at the window instead of me. Snow was starting to fall, the whole world so damn quiet. I could hear their big clock ticking from the other room where it sat on the mantel with the picture of Holy Aunt June. She wasn’t going to save me, either.
“But what if,” I started, and backed up, started again. “I can be a lot of help, like carrying in groceries and heavy things. What if I just stayed until Maggot’s mom gets out, and whenever he moves, I’d find another home too?”
Mrs. Peggot said they had discussed this too with Miss Barks. But shegave them the advice that it wasn’t a great idea. She said teenage boys are the hardest of all to find homes for, and it was better to get them in some kind of permanent situation while younger if at all possible. She’d promised the Peggots she would keep working on it.
And that was it. Mr. and Mrs. Peggot wanted to try out being regular grandparents for a change, and not be parents anymore. I needed to let Miss Barks find me some nice people that were younger and could take me in for good.
I shouldn’t have been shocked. Emmy had warned me, and honestly I knew better, but something in me was holding out. Now it fell to pieces. I cried in front of Mrs. Peggot. That was horrible. She had to go hunt up a box of tissues and then rub me on the back like a baby.
“Honey, I’m sorry,” she said, over and over. Words I hated so much I wanted to smash them with my fists.
Crying was the sickest part, in how shamefaced I felt. Even at Mom’s funeral I never shed a tear, because of hating everybody. Hard as a rock. But with Aunt June being so nice and Emmy in love with me, I’d let myself get soft. Thinking the Peggots were not like everybody else, but special, as regards the Jesus thing of loving your neighbor as much as you love yourself. For fuck’s sake, hadn’t I learned that lesson? Sunday school stories are just another type of superhero comic. Counting on Jesus to save the day is no more real than sending up the Batman signal.
Chapter20
Starting from that day, in that kitchen, I was on my own. New year, new life, not yet in my own house making the payments, but that’s how I felt: my own man. Not liking it a bit.
Miss Barks found me a new foster home, which was the McCobb family: Mr. and Mrs., first and second grade boy and girl named Brayley and Haillie, plus two babies with names I never did get straight due to everybody calling them the Twins. Screamer One and Two would cover it. One would fall asleep, the other would start up a fit, they’d get each other going and not a lot of sleeping happened in that house. Nor cheerfulness either.
This family’s main problem was being flat broke. You never saw people so stressed out over money. Mr. McCobb oftentimes did have work, but between one thing and another, Brayley needing the better kind of tennis shoes, Haillie wanting five dollars to try out for junior tumbling squad, the babies needing Pampers and so on, plus whatever was going on with the credit cards as far as robbing Peter to pay Paul, they ran out of cash every single month without one end meeting the other. Mrs. McCobb worried herself sick over Brayley and Haillie getting tormented at school for not having what the other kids had. Which is a legit concern, take that from me, a person that lined up every Friday of all times for the Backpacks of Love aka food sacks the church ladies sent home on weekends for free-lunch kids so we wouldn’t starve. I never knew any different, I was always that kid, so I grew up being as tall and tough about it as I was able. But you don’t want to go down that road if you can help it. Brayley being one of those small but chubby, grubworm type of kids, and Haillie in her own little world of troll dolls andrainbow ponies, they both had targets on their backs. If those two went over to the Backpacks of Love side of things, you’d fear for their lives.
Mrs. McCobb told me she’d never in a million years thought they would stoop to taking in a foster child. But hopefully having that little bit extra every month from the DSS would turn things around. Plus they were being good Christians, and if it came up at school I was to say that.
Mr. McCobb was big on ideas for making that little bit extra to turn things around, and had tried most of them: selling Amway, breeding AKC pups with fake papers, human advertisement, sperm donor, etc. Plus buying lotto tickets, obviously. His newest idea was taking in a foster. If I went okay, they might take in two, for twice the cash. It didn’t hurt my feelings. Creaky made no bones about wanting that five hundred a month per head. I knew the score.
The trouble that Mr. McCobb didn’t count on, though, was needing to spend money on me. For example, buying more groceries so I could eat. The first week I was there, he asked if I was going to chip in for my meals and so forth.
“Chip in, like what?” I asked. Not having the slightest idea what he was talking about.
“Just a little cash, buddy. For the extra food.”
The two of us were sitting at the kitchen table doing an enterprise where I licked the stamps and sealed envelopes after Mr. McCobb put brochures in them. Every time he leaned over to reach himself more brochures, I saw pink scalp shining through his buzz cut on top.
“I am all about the fair and the square,” he said. “As far as your bunking quarters, that’s going to be grateese.” He explained grateese meant he wasn’t going to charge me anything for my bedroom.
“Thanks,” I said, even though it wasn’t a bedroom, it was a dog room. The day Miss Barks brought me there, she inspected the DSS-approved cute bedroom that supposedly was for me, with cowboy wallpaper, bedspread of Woody from Toy Story, etc. But after she left, it turned out that was their son Brayley’s room. Mrs. McCobb said not to tell Miss Barks or I would get sent back, so I didn’t. Sleeping in the McCobbs’dog room was preferable to whatever DSS might cook up next. This room was attached on the back of the house with the washer and dryer and a seriously rotted-out floor where their old washer had leaked. You had to be careful where you stepped, or the linoleum would give way. It’s where they’d had their AKC puppy enterprise some while back, and smelled like it. Plus noisy, due to the washer and dryer going all hours, what with all those kids and babies.
Mr. McCobb asked me how I was liking it in the so-called annex. His wife had bought me one of those air-mattress beds and a little cardboard dresser for my stuff, so I told him it was fine. But that I couldn’t pay for my meals because I didn’t have any money. Sorry.
Mr. McCobb stopped stuffing envelopes and squinted his eyes, like he was working out the whole situation of me. He had those extra-dark brown eyes that were like looking down two holes. Intense. “That’s a deficit, buddy. You’ve got a problem. But it can be addressed.”
“Okay,” I said.
I licked some more stamps for his enterprise. This one had to do with blue-green algae pills that supposedly could cure anything but a broken heart. (Which is what Mr. Peg always said about duct tape.) Brayley and Haillie were upstairs in their rooms having a loudness war betweenLion Kingand Spice Girls on their CD player, and Mrs. McCobb was in her bedroom trying to feed the twins. All told, a good deal of commotion coming from up there.
I didn’t feel that welcome upstairs, so I hadn’t been, other than the once where Mrs. McCobb gave us a tour and showed Miss Barks my so-called bedroom. Downstairs, the kitchen was the only place to hang out, the rest being dark, with the living-room blinds closed at all times due to there being no furniture. The McCobbs lived on a busy road, and I reckon they didn’t want everybody in the county knowing they didn’t have any living-room furniture. Miss Barks was pretty surprised over it. Mrs. McCobb said they did have some, until a few months before. The nicest imaginable, from Goodman’s Furniture, not Walmart, plus a bedroom suite in some certain style where all the pieces matched. At this point in time, though, Mr. and Mrs. McCobb’s bedroom only hadthe mattress that luckily they got to keep, because the repo guys don’t take mattresses back after they’ve been slept on.
The kitchen was an okay place, other than making me hungry. I was pretending the taste of stamps on Mr. McCobb’s envelopes was something better, like strawberry Gushers, but my stomach was growling, to the point of embarrassing. Their bulldog Missy was flopped on the floor, not even bothering herself over the half-full bowl of dog food by the door. Red, chunky dog chow that looked like meat. Probably this sounds sick, but eventhatwas making me hungry.
Mr. McCobb said I should think about getting a job after school. I told him my problem was, I was eleven. I’d always heard they don’t hire you till sixteen. He said those rules only applied in certain cases, and that younger kids were allowed to work in family enterprises.
“Like I’m doing right now?” I perked up, thinking he might pay me. But no. He said this didn’t count because of something called nefrotism. He couldn’t pay me and be my foster father both, so I needed to look farther afield. He said he would put out his antennas.
