Page 2 of Demon Copperhead
To be clear, me and Mom were no kin of theirs, so this was not one of those family trailer pileups. Those shabby type of places show up on reality TV a lot more than reality in general, I think for the same reason people like to see copperheads where there aren’t any copperheads. The Peggots just had their house and the one extra single-wide. Nine or ten other families had their places up and down our road that were kept up very decent, and again, no relation.
But the Peggots were a thundering horde, no question. I was jealous of Maggot for the wealth of cousins he totally took for granted. Even the hot older girl cousins that were all “Oooh, Matty, I’d kill you for your eyelashes! No fair God wasted a face that pretty on a boy!” Then squealing because Maggot’s trying to give them arm burns, these buff cheerleader babes that honestly could kick his puny ass any day. There’sno way they were scared. It was just this routine they had, the girls saying their girl shit to Maggot, and him acting like he hates it.
And I’d be like, Really man? Yes, I get thatprettyis one of those words a guy has to treat like it’s the clap and he’s got his balls to protect. The whole manhood situation with Maggot being complicated, to put it mildly. But this would happen with nobody around to judge him, just the cousins. And me, the cousinless jerk that would have paid money for some girl making that kind of fuss over me, and lying halfway on top of me in a dogpile once they’ve all settled down on the living room floor to watchWalker, Texas Ranger. Me, the jerk sitting by himself on the couch looking at my friend down there in that pile, thinking: Dude. Who hates being adored?
I’ve been saying Mrs. Peggot this and that, so I’ll go on writing it that way because the truth is embarrassing. I called her Mammaw. Maggot called her that, so I did too. I knew his cousins were not my cousins, nor was Mr. Peggot my grandpa, I called him Peg like everybody did. But I thought all kids got a mammaw, along with a caseworker and free school lunch and the canned beanie-weenies they gave you in a bag to take home for weekends. Like, assigned. Where else was I going to get one? No prospects incoming from Mom, foster-care orphan dropout. And the mother of Ghost Dad, already discussed. So I got to share with Maggot. This seemed fine with Mrs. Peggot. Other than my official sleeping place being at Mom’s, and Maggot having his own room upstairs in the Peggot house, she played no favorites: same Hostess cakes, same cowboy shirts she made for us both with the fringe on the sleeves. Same little smack on the shoulder with her knuckles if you cussed or wore your ball cap to her table. Not to say she ever hit hard. But Christ Jesus, the tongue-thrashings. To look at her, this small granny-type individual with her short gray hair and mom jeans and flat yellow sandals, you’re going to think: Nothing at all here to stand in my way. The little do you know. If you’re going to steal or trash-talk your betters or break her tomato plants or getcaught huffing her hair spray out of a paper bag, the lady could scold the hair off your head.
She was the only one to use my real name after everybody else let it go, Mom included. I didn’t realize until pretty late in life, like my twenties, that in other places people stick with the names they start out with. Who knew? I mean, Snoop Dogg, Nas, Scarface, these are not Mom-assigned names. I just assumed every place was like us, up home in Lee County, where most guys get something else on them that sticks. Shorty or Grub or Checkout. It’s a good guess Humvee was not Humvee to begin with. Mr. Peggot was Peg after he got his foot crushed by one of those bolting machines they use in the coal mines. Some name finds you, and you come running to it like a dog until the day you die and it goes in the paper along with your official name that everybody’s forgotten. I have looked at the obits page and thought about how most of these names are harsh. Who wants to die an old Stubby? But in life it’s no big deal, you can buy a beer for your best friend Maggot without either one of you giving it a thought.
So it was not usual for Mrs. Peggot to keep my born name in the mix after others had moved on from it. It’s Damon. Last name of Fields, same as Mom’s. At the time of filling in the hospital forms after my action-packed birth, she evidently had her reasons for not tagging me to my dad. From what I know now, there’s no question, but looking like him was something I had to grow into, along with getting hair. And in those days, with her looks still being the main item in Mom’s plus column and the words “bad choice” yet to join her vocab, maybe there were other candidates. None on hand to gentleman up and sign over his name. Or drive her home from the hospital. That job, like most gentleman-up stuff in Mom’s life, fell to Mr. Peg. Was he happy about it or not, another story.
As far as the Damon part, leave it to her to pop out a candy-ass boy-band singer name like that. Did she think she’d even get me off her tits before people turned that into Demon? Long before school age, I’d heard it all. Screamin’ Demon, Demon Semen. But once I got my copper-wire hair and some version of attitude, I started hearing “LittleCopperhead.” Hearing it a lot. And look, no red-blooded boy wants to be Little Anything. Advice to anybody with the plan of naming your kid Junior: going through life as mini-you will be as thrilling as finding dried-up jizz on the carpet.
But having a famous Ghost Dad puts a different light on it, and I can’t say I hated being noticed in that way. Around the same time Maggot started his shoplifting experiments, I was starting to get known as Demon Copperhead. You can’t deny, it’s got a power to it.
Chapter3
From the day Murrell Stone walked up our steps with his Davidson boot chains jingling, Mom was like, He’s a good man. He likes you, and you like him. I had my instructions.
Stoner is the name he went by, and if he said nice things to Mom, she was all ears. By now she’s been sober long enough to keep her Walmart job through all restocks of the seasonal aisles: Halloween costumes, Santa crap, Valentines, Easter candy, folding lawn chairs. She’s up on the rent and has her drawer full of sobriety chips that she takes out late at night and looks over like a dragon sitting on its treasure. That much I remember. Mom getting home from work and into her cutoffs, cracking open a Mello Yello, sitting on our deck smoking with her feet up on the rail and her legs stretched out trying for the free version of a tan, yelling at Maggot and me down in the creek not to get our eyes put out from running with sticks. Life is great, in other words.
What I don’t remember is what I didn’t know: How does it feel to turn legal drinking age, and already be three years into AA? How much does it suck to have a school-age kid and a long-termed relationship with the Walmart party-supplies aisle while the friends you used to have are still running around looking to get high or drunk or married, ideally some perfect combo of all three? All Mom had to work with were middle-aged type people in their thirties at least: sobriety buddies and Walmart buddies that would tell her “You have a blessed day, hon,” and go home to their husbands and buckets of chicken andJeopardy. She’d tried and failed at more boyfriends by this time, post me getting born, which all dumped her because (a) they got her off the wagon and into hot legal water with motherhood, or (b) she was no fun.
Then along comes Stoner, claiming he respects a clean woman. Looking something like Mr. Clean himself, cue-ball head, big biceps, gauges instead of the earring. Mom said he could grow hair if he wanted to, but liked shaving his head. To her mind, a ripped, bald guy in a denim vest and no shirt was the be-all end-all of manhood. If you’re surprised a mom would discuss boyfriend hotness with a kid still learning not to pick his nose, you’ve not seen the far end of lonely. Mom would light me a cigarette and we’d have our chats, menthols of course, this being in her mind the child-friendly option. I thought smoking with Mom and discussing various men’s stud factors was a sign of deep respect. So I came to know such things: a whole head with a five o’clock shadow, dead sexy. But Stoner ran out of steam on his shaving at a certain point because he had a full beard, the biggest and blackest you’ll see outside of a Vandal Savage comic.
One of the above powerful figures has plagued the earth with misery since before all time. And one makes Mr. Clean’s Clean Freak spray that will take the mold off your crappy shower curtain and make it like new. According to Mom, Stoner was door number two.
She started coming home from work and getting into more makeup instead of less, in case he showed. And he did, passing out compliments. Mom is gorgeous, she’s killing him with it, prettier than two peaches. Me, he called His Majesty. What is that supposed to mean, for a kid that owes most of his growth so far to signing his mom’s name on the SNAP free-lunch forms? Stoner said my trouble was, I’d gotten used to being a mama’s boy. If he caught me lying with my head on Mom’s lap while we watched TV, he’d say, “Oh look. The little king is on his throne.”
But he owned a late-model Ford pickup and a Harley FXSTSB Bad Boy, both completely paid off, and that part of the Stoner deal was hard to despise. He’d kick down the stand on the Harley and go inside to see Mom. Cue for me and Maggot to spend the next solid hour touching that hog, looking at our own stupid faces in its chrome, daring each other up onto its seat. Fully believing if Stoner came outside at that moment, we’d get the electric chair.
So the day he roared up and asked if I wanted a ride, just down tothe highway and back, Christ on a crutch. Why wouldn’t I? Maggot looked at me like,Man, you have all the luck. Mom yelled down from the deck, “You hang on to him, Stoner, I’ll tar you if you get him hurt.”
My problem was no shoes. It was a Saturday, and we’d been doing target practice with Hammerhead Kelly, that was some form of Peggot-cousin add-on by marriage, older than us. Quiet kid, Mr. Peggot’s favorite to take deer hunting. He’d brought over an air rifle, with our creek being full of items to shoot at, anyway the point being I had to think where my shoes were. Maggot’s house probably. Mom seemed to think I needed them and said go get them on, so I did. But not without Mrs. Peggot first grilling me about what was up. She was watching out her window. Mom had walked down to the road and Stoner was bent over kissing her like he was trying to suck something out of her guts with a straw. And her a willing party to the crime.
Mrs. Peggot gave me the advice that I would probably fall off that boy’s motorcycle and crack my head wide open. “And the worst of it is, he might drive off and leave you,” she said.
Jesus. As much as I’d wanted to climb on that Harley and tear down the road for all to see, now I couldn’t stop picturing my head lying open like the halves of a walnut shell, neighbors all crowded around, Stoner speeding off for the blue yonder. I mean, Mrs. Peggot was not one to blow smoke, the lady knew shit. What a boy’s brains look like laid open, I had no idea of at the time, which now I do. It’s high on a list of things I wish I could unsee. But my little mind had a brutal talent for pictures. I went outside and told Stoner my stomach hurt. Maggot would have sold his own nuts to go in my place, but being a true friend, he just told Hammerhead we should all go inside and play Game Boy till I felt better.
“Suit yourself,” Stoner said. But it was how he said it, like “Shoot yourself.” Standing with his arm draped over Mom’s shoulders like he’d already made the down payment.
The day would come though, for me to ride on that hog, crammed between him and Mom like the cheese of a sandwich, getting a better lookthan needed at his neck tattoos. Mom behind me with her yellow hair flying and her arms reaching around to hold on to Stoner’s ripped abs. The neck tattoos ran quite a ways up onto his scalp. I wondered if those came before or after the idea of shaving his head. The dumb things a kid thinks about instead of the bigger questions, like, Where is this joy ride taking the three of us in the long run?
The first time, it was to Pro’s Pizza. Stoner ordered us an extra-large with everything, a pitcher for himself, Cokes for me and Mom. After we’d put a pretty good hurt on the pizza, Mom excused herself for a minute to the ladies’. These two friends of Stoner’s came over and sat down in our booth like it was no big deal, they were just taking the next shift.
I didn’t know these guys. In Lee County they say you have to look hard for a face you’ve not seen before, which surely was true for Mom, who’d directed anybody that could walk to where the Solo cups are kept on Aisle 19. But it’s different for a kid, where you stick closer to your own. I’d noticed these men looking Mom up and down, but I didn’t see how they were part of our group. The one that slid in next to Stoner was pale and white-haired, with a lot of ink, including an extra eye on the middle of his throat, don’t ask me why that’s a good idea. The one sitting by me reeked of Axe spray and had the small type mustache and goat you’d normally see on the devil and Iron Man. My brain with its kid obsession of superheroes and evil supervillains wandered off to how I would draw them. The inked one I would name Extra Eye, that could see your thoughts. The other was Hell Reeker, with the power of slaying you with his smell.
They got in a conversation with Stoner. What’s this one called. A little Demon, huh? Demon Spawn, jokes I’d heard a million times. Then Reeker came up with “Spawn of the Centerfold,” and Extra Eye said, “A fox is going to whelp her pups, Stoner. You’re lucky it’s just the one.” And Stoner said he’d better watch it because some people are smarter than you think.
“Oh yeah, who’s that?” Extra Eye asked. I was curious too.
“Bear,” Stoner told him, which was a letdown. I thought maybe he’d meant me.
“Bear who?” they wanted to know.
Stoner did a fast little wink. “Mr. Grin’s friend, you damn idjits. Mr. Bear It.”
“Oh, I got ya,” Reeker said. “Mr. Cross-to-Bear.”
