Page 50 of Demon Copperhead
She said nothing. Eyes on the road, hands on the wheel at eight and four o’clock.
“If you think my love life is so interesting, Angus, why don’t you get your own?”
“Why? Let me think. Because males are infantile, and females are exasperating? So, what does that leave me, animals? You know, I might get there. But so far I’m just not feeling it.”
Silent treatment after that. For over an hour, which was hideous. We’d never really had a fight before, other than our nonsense ones that were purely for entertainment. I hated that I was harsh with Angus, but you can’t help what you are. I spent some time idling on the memory of punching the dash of Mrs. McCobb’s car. Eventually Angus tried to bring up another subject, of being worried about her dad. But Coach seemed the same as always to me, and I said so.
Things didn’t lighten up till we got down there to the house. Angus jumped out of the car with a big smile, walking all around with her hand clamped on her hat like she’s in shock, and it might fly off. Looking at things outside the house, inside the house, like this happy big-eyed fairy in a white T-shirt and leather vest, saying, Oh, Irememberthis! Which I’m sure she did, since nothing probably had changed in that house since God was a child. I hadn’t really thought before about the place being special to her, like seeing my dad’s grave was to me. The house where her mom grew up. The bed where she slept, the bathtub. A dead parent is a tricky kind of ghost. If you can make it into more like a doll, puttingit in the real house and clothes and such that they had, it helps you to picture them as a person instead of just a person-shaped hole in the air. Which helps you feel less like a person-shaped invisible kid.
They were tickled at us for coming, and had cooked a feast. Mr. Dick had a kite to show me, not ready for takeoff. Miss Betsy wanted to have a discussion on our futures, and sat us down in her living room where old furniture goes to die. Angus went first, being older, junior year, which Miss Betsy said was time to think about college. Angus said she definitely wanted to do that, and study psychology or sociology, which I wasn’t even sure what those were. But so what, because that was her plan, Angus had no intention of staying in Jonesville. Not that she’d made any promises, but I felt betrayed. She was leaving us. What about Coach?
So I was already upset whenever it came my turn to tell Miss Betsy my future. Plus I’d never given it a thought, other than hoping to be still alive. All I could come up with was maybe trying for college on a football scholarship. Miss Betsy said the same thing as always: “As long as you don’t let the sports interfere with your studying.” With no comprehension that on a football scholarship, sports are kind of the whole point. She wasn’t opposed though. She said it was important to leave Lee County at some point and “take a look around.”
At what, I wanted to ask. Cities? Harsh streets and doom castles where nobody lived that I cared about? I couldn’t stand to live anyplace without Coach and Angus. And Mattie Kate, I included her. The Peggots close at hand, and my teammates, and all of Lee County chanting my name from the stands:Dee-mon Copper-head!To start over someplace from scratch, as nobody and nothing? I hated the thought. I was only just now starting to exist.
The drive home was no better. Well, Angus was better, chatty and cheerful. But I was still hurt at her, with more reason. Miss Betsy had got her off and running. She wanted to talk about the colleges she’d thought of applying to. There was one in eastern Virginia she had her eye on, so she might actually end up living near the ocean! That was just lording it over me, I felt. She was older, leaving first. Making sure I knew she wasn’t scared of a thing. Worldly-wise.
I rolled down my window and tuned her out. I could smell the dirt of the fields waking up, see the mountains with every tree lighting up on top like a candle, first neon green of spring. It should have been enough for any human person. I did know that, I have to say. Give me a view, pretty as a picture, I’m still pissed that I’ll never get to see the ocean. I wondered what would it take to stop me feeling like I had rotten fruit down in me instead of a heart.
All I could think about on that drive was my lonely runaway spree that got me down to Murder Valley the first time. I took notice of all the sorry attractions as we went past them: the barn where I hid out to sleep in somebody’s haymow. The mini-mart where I curled up starving behind a dumpster, in the rain. The truck stop where I lost everything, and cursed a hooker to die. My entire life’s savings, that probably amounted to less than Angus had spent on her latest change of clothes. I didn’t point out any of those places to Angus. I’d been so young back then. And still was, I guess. She liked to tease me that if we lived to a hundred, she would still be the one to get there first. Which was true. No credit given for all the extra miles that take you nowhere.
Chapter38
Once I’d stopped being a kid, summers were nothing more than a crap job to clock into. That or school, same difference. But living with Coach, summers came back. I was a kid again, as far as somebody else taking care of the harder aspects, bill-paying, etc. I should have been thankful, and can’t say why I wasn’t, other than that growing up goes one direction only. You can’t stuff a baby back where he came from, and on from there.
Oh, I said thank you. All the time. To Mattie Kate for feeding me, to Angus for driving me places, to Coach for every freaking thing. Saying thanks, but at the same time thinking, where can I hide my dope, how can I get out of doing all this homework, who is he to tell me I can’t go riding around with my friends on a Saturday night, I’m not a damn child.
That summer, I wanted a job and my own money. Coach said there was no need to fool with that, just tell him what I wanted and he’d get it taken care of. Which was my whole problem, having to ask. He said to remember football camp started in July. That was two months away. I seldom pushed back on Coach, but this time I did. So he asked around, and found out Coach Briggs’s brother that was managing the Farm Supply in Pennington needed somebody over there pronto. Briggs said the job was mine if I wanted it because his brother was in total charge, due to the owner having a heart attack. They needed an extra pair of hands and muscle enough for loading bags of feed into people’s trucks. Muscle I had, plus I was fifteen, so having a job was legal now. Coach filled out some forms and I started the day after school let out. Seven bucks an hour to save up for a car.
Because that’s the thing: until you have your wheels, you’re still a child. Anyplace I went, I had to ask. Angus now had a ’99 Jeep Wrangler that Coach gave her for the sole reason of turning sixteen. She drove me over to Pennington for my job. Or worst case, U-Haul would. If I wanted to go out someplace after work, I had to make that somebody else’s business. Fifteen is the hardest age. Emmy had told me in Knoxville they had these city buses that could take you all over. Not just to school, but for people of every age to ride to the movies, skate park, wherever. Or if in a hurry, you could call up a taxi. I’d seen those things on TV, but didn’t totally believe Emmy. That they would have all that for any regular person to use.
Farm Supply was the best job I’d had so far: decent customers, zero rats that I was aware of, nobody cooking meth. The whole store had this sweet-feed smell that’s a cross between fresh-cut grass and Cheerios. They sold all the regular type things: calf and sheep wormer, horse tack, lawn chemicals, chain saws. In May they had tomato plants and the like, for people to get their gardens put in. I’d set all those on a table outside the store in the mornings, and move them back inside for closing. Next came the chicks, also my job: unloading them from the cardboard shipping boxes into big troughs in the store where people could see and buy them. Keeping up their feed and water, the heat lamps on at all times, changing out the newspapers under them because man could those little dudes poop. The life of a chick: eat, shit, peep such a ruckus inside those galvanized troughs, you could hear it from the parking lot. Hard to believe every old beady-eyed hen starts out that way, as a little fuzz ball, yellow or black or spotted. Mornings before we opened, it was my job to scoop out the ones that had died overnight, cold and flattened out from being walked on. Each one I took out back to the dumpster was its own tiny sadness.
This girl Donnamarie that ran the register was the one to train me, nice as could be other than acting like she’s my mom, all honey-this and honey-that and “You think you can remember all that, sweetie?” Just three or four years out of high school herself. But she did have three kids, so probably she’d wiped so many asses she got stuck that way. Ididn’t hold it against her. Coach Briggs’s brother stayed upstairs in the office. Heart attack guy was a mystery. First they said he might come back by the end of summer. Then they all stopped talking about him.
As far as customers, every kind of person came in. Older guys would want to chew the fat outside in the dock after I loaded their grain bags or headgates or what have you. I handled all the larger items. They complained about the weather or tobacco prices, but oftentimes somebody would recognize me and want to talk football. What was my opinion on our being a passing versus running team, etc. So that was amazing. Being known.
It was the voice that hit my ear like a bell, the day he came in. I knew it instantly. And that laugh. It always made you wish that whoever made him laugh like that, it had been you. I was stocking inventory in the home goods aisle, and moved around the end to where I could see across the store. Over by the medications and vaccines that were kept in a refrigerator case, he was standing with his back to me, but that wild head of hair was the giveaway. And the lit-up face of Donnamarie, flirting so hard her bangs were standing on end. She was opening a case for him. Some of the pricier items were kept under lock and key. I debated whether to go over, but heard him say he needed fifty pounds of Hi-Mag mineral and a hundred pounds of pelleted beef feed, so I knew I would see him outside. I signaled to Donnamarie that I’d heard, and threw it all on the dolly to wheel out to the loading dock.
He pulled his truck around but didn’t really see me. Just leaned his elbow out the open window and handed me the register ticket. He’d kept the Lariat of course, because who wouldn’t.
“You’ve still got the Fastmobile, I see,” I said.
He froze in the middle of lighting a smoke, shifted his eyes at me, and shook his head fast, like a splash of cold water had hit him. “I’ll be goddamned. Diamond?”
“The one,” I said. “How you been hanging, Fast Man?”
“Cannot complain,” he said. But it seemed like he wasn’t a hundred percent on it really being me loading his pickup. He watched me inthe side mirror. The truck bounced a little each time I hefted a mineral block or bag into the bed. Awesome leaf springs on that beauty. I came around to give him back his ticket, and he seemed more sure.
“I’d have taken you for a stranger,” he said. “You’re twice the man you used to be.”
Weightwise, possibly true, and at least a foot taller since fifth grade. “Doing my best,” I said. “You taking all this to Creaky’s cattle?”
“Hell no. That shithole ran itself into the ground some while ago. Tempting as it was to stay and watch the old man cry, I did not.”
“So is he dead now?” The last time Angus and I were out there to steal another Christmas tree, we’d seen bank auction signs stapled on the gate.
Fast Forward took a drag on his cigarette, eyes sliding sideways. “Maybe. For all the shit I give.” I just stood there burning it all to my brain. Dragging like that, not giving a shit like that.
