Page 8 of Demon Copperhead
I didn’t get let out for school the next day, even though I heard Mom telling him they had attendance officers that would be calling if I stayed out of circulation too long. He said if she knew so much about raising kids, how’d she wind up with a rabid biting dog for a son. Before she went to work, she tried to explain I would need bathroom visits and some kind of food. Then left Stoner to rule over me. Never did any two guys have less to say to each other.
Eventually I was allowed back to school, but on lockdown the rest of the time. A freakish existence. I told Maggot I was thinking of running away, which he advised against. He said I had nerves of steel and Stoner would be crushed in the end. I don’t remember how many days this went on, three or four, plus a heinously boring weekend. It all ran together. In the evenings I was hearing shit being said between Stoner and Mom that I didn’t like the sounds of. At all. The Peggots also were probably not liking the sounds of it, with windows being open at that time of year. I tried to blot them out by drawing in my notebook, inventing various genius ways to crush the Stone Villain. Eyeballs and gauges flying out of him with action lines and little cloud bubbles—Pop! Pop! Or I would bang on the wall with my baseball bat for hours at a stretch: thud, thud. To shut the two of them up, or drive them crazy if that was still an option.
Then one evening late, the door flies open and there stands Stoner. Surprising me in my T-shirt and underpants eating a bag of Cheetos in bed because why the hell not, if that’s all there is. Reading anAvengersthat I’d read, oh, nine thousand times already.
“Your mom wants to see you,” he said.
Interesting, I thought, what’s the catch. I had no intention of getting out of bed, but there he stood. I’d not realized he was home. Stoner had been going out in the evenings a lot, working some weird-shit hours or more likely carousing, because who needs their beer delivered that close to closing time? He must have come back to the house without my hearing his truck or his bike. Obviously. I asked him what Mom wanted, and he said she was wanting to show how much she loved me. A weird enough statement to make me nervous. I yelled for her. No answer.
“Mom!” I said louder, bolting out to the living room. Nobody, nothing. “MOM!” And now I’m thinking, Goddammit, she’s moved out. She marries the bastard, and I get stuck with him. In the kitchen there’s crap everywhere, dishes in the sink. A gin bottle on the table, oh shit. Oh hell. Empty. Not a new sight to my eyes. Stoner has this look on his face I could kill him for.
She’s in the bedroom. Lying there in her clothes, shoes and all, passed out. Faceup, not dead because that’s the first thing I checked. Breathing, so she didn’t drown herself yet. There’s pill bottles on the thing by the bed, closed, so I screw open the childproof caps one at a time, three bottles. I don’t know what they are, Xanax and shit she should definitelynot have around, but the bottles aren’t empty, thank God. She didn’t down the whole batch, so she’s just going for a Cadillac high, not the total checkout. But God knows she could get there anyway. Mom being not the most careful driver.
“Call nine-one-one,” I tell Stoner, and the damned fool asks why.
“Call nine-one-one!” I scream at him. “Christ, you ignorant asshole! She might have OD’d.”
At this point I’m not even thinking what “ignorant asshole” will get me in the Stoner rewards program. I already know. Life as we’ve lived it is over.
Chapter8
I was the one to grab the phone, with Stoner slinging punches to stop me, the two of us loud enough to get Mr. Peg banging on the kitchen door. Stoner said I’d regret making that call. I’ve wondered. Would Mom really have died? Or just followed her true colors and hurled up the works, living on for more Seagram’s-and-nerve-pill fiestas? Could I have lasted Stoner out? At the time, I thought my life couldn’t get any worse. Here’s some advice: Don’t ever think that.
I rode up front with the ambulance driver, trying to get my shoes tied. I’d managed to pull jeans on before the EMTs got there, but had to run out of the house carrying my shoes. That’s how fast it all went down. The Peggots’ truck followed on our tail. Stoner got to ride in back with Mom, because by this time he’s all “Yes, sir, I am the husband,” so much bullshit coming out of his mouth I was choking on the fumes, starting the minute they showed up and asked who made the call. Stoner did, of course. (Wait, what?) Patient’s name, date of birth, pill bottles pulled out of Stoner’s pocket where he’d stashed them quick. Names on the bottles confirmed by him to be Mom’s coworkers, and they would be getting a piece of his mind. All respectful andoh my goshandthose so-and-sos, like he’s a damn Sunday school teacher. It was the most words I’d ever heard come out of him without an “asshole” or “motherfucker.” Was this a whole new Stoner, shocked by dire events into manning up? Not a chance.
We tore down Long Knob Road, siren screaming, past all the little settlements of people in bed. In Pennington Gap we ran straight through the red lights and then were at the hospital with all parties running around six ways to Sunday. I wasn’t allowed in the ER, or the roomwhere they moved her after that, due to being a child. I sat in the waiting room with the Peggots forever. We were starving, so Mrs. Peggot went to get whatever they had in the vending machines, and hot coffee for Mr. Peg. We ate four packs of nabs each, then Maggot stretched out on the connected plastic chairs and conked out. Mrs. Peggot felt we should go home, since we had school tomorrow. Right then the lady from DSS showed up, saying she needed to speak with me.
I didn’t know this lady at all. She said her name, which I instantly forgot. She had on a green jacket and skirt, two different colors of green, and looked like she needed to go to sleep for a hundred years to get over what was eating her. Baggy eyes for real, like you could stash spare change under each eye. We asked for Miss Trudy that was my caseworker from a few years ago, and she said Miss Trudy was no longer with the department of social services. I’d get a new caseworker in the morning that might or might not be herself. She just happened to be on call at this hour, which I reckon explains the eyes. She told the Peggots they could go home, she would get me where I needed to go. Which freaked me out. Who the hell was she, to think she knew where I needed to go? I said thanks but no thanks, I’d go with the Peggots like usual if Mom was in rehab. The lady gave me this look like, Sorry kiddo, your money’s no good where I come from.
Mrs. Peggot gave me more nabs to shove in my pockets and some money plus change for a pay phone, which existed then, and said to call as soon as they could come get me. And off we went to a little room for our discussion, Baggy Eyes vs. the Demon. She started with the usual questions they ask, then got serious about the Peggots: anything that had happened in that household that made me uncomfortable. I was confused, thinking she meant stuff I had done tothem, such as busting their TV the one time, or swiping the small shit we traded at school for other small shit. We beat around a lot of bushes before I finally got what she was asking: had I been molested by Maggot or Mr. or Mrs. Peggot. Stoner must have put in his two cents. I said nothing of the kind had happened, the molester I wanted to discuss was Stoner.
She said okay, let’s go into that, and I did. Mind you, it’s three a.m.or something by now, I’ve eaten nothing I can recall that day other than nabs and Cheetos, I’m too tired to be polite, and madder at Stoner than a riverbank has rocks to throw. How would our relationship best be described, she wanted to know. I said maybe like two guys standing at the barrel and butt ends of one rifle, what relationship would you call that? And if you knew him, trust me, you’d want the trigger end. I even said something to the effect that if it was up to me, I’d not shoot the man all at once, I’d go kneecaps and elbows first to see him beg for mercy. She wrote all this down on her clipboard.
She had more questions around my stepfather, as she called him, which shows she was not getting our picture. Questions pertaining to my busted lip that I’d forgotten about, what with the newer reminders of our fight over calling 911. I could feel a shiner coming up on my left eye, and my right side hurt so bad I wished I didn’t have to breathe so much. Baggy Eyes asked if I minded taking off my shirt and letting her have a look, which made me feel like a baby. She got a camera out of her bag and took pictures. She even asked was there anything going on below the belt. No way José to that, I said, pretty much wanting to die already. Losing a fight was bad enough without people putting it in their damn scrapbooks.
She wanted to discuss my assaults on Stoner, the so-called biting incidents. I said there was noincidents, plural. If I’d gone for a repeat offense, I’d have no teeth left. She wrote that down. I could have gone on till her pen ran out of ink, but she blew out her air in this drawn-out way that reminded me of the night I spied on Aunt June. The slow leak of women that mop up after guys have torn each other’s soft parts out of their sockets. To this lady I was just one of those guys. I wanted to yell at her, It’s no fair fight. Stoner is a psycho, and I am a freaking ten-year-old.
Next step was some kind of checkup. I told her I wasn’t all that injured, but she said it pertained to the mental aspects, was I okay to be released. Or elsewhat? I’m eyeing the clipboard where she’s got me confessing to wishful murder. If you hurt or kill somebody due to mental disturbance, other than just being mad at them, I knew where you went:Marion. A prison for the insane, with razor-wire fences and guard towers according to Maggot. Where his mom got sent at first. Then after a while they decided she was just the normal pissed-off type of lady, not the insane type, and sent her over to Goochland Women’s. He’d visited her both places.
I must have zoned out, because next thing I knew, a man had his hand on my shoulder. Shirt and tie, not the white doctor coat. The dreaded clipboard. I sat up and said “Yes sir,” and asked were they sending me to Marion. I could see he was trying not to smile. He asked me what I knew about Marion. He looked tired but not the same tired as Baggy Eyes, more like, Let’s not make things any harder than need be. I told him I didn’t know anything about Marion except for definitely not wanting to go there. He said not to worry, he’d get me sorted out. He sat down and asked the regular things, and then got on the subject of Stoner. Was I just real mad at him right now, or had I ever really thought I wanted him to die. He asked if we were the hunting type of family, if we had guns, were they kept locked up or could I get them out. He asked if I had ever been so sad I wished I could go to sleep and not wake up. I said not really, I just usually went to sleep wishing I’d wake up in a different house. He said that was understandable.
Baggy Eyes came back later and said all righty. I was not going to Marion, evidently. But Mom’s situation was such that we’d be looking at several weeks of me on my own with Stoner, which was not happening. We were going with a new plan they’d all signed off on. The plan where Demon doesn’t get to go home. Mom evidently being conscious enough now to sign away her only child.
What were my out-of-home options, she wanted to know: trusted adults, Mom’s coworkers, anybody at all I could stay with? I said the Peggots, over and over, period. Which was not happening. She said Stoner made a complaint on the Peggots that would have to be investigated before they could consider placing me there. Stupid. I wondered though if the Peggots had a couple of strikes against, what with Maggot’s jailbird mom and the unmentionable Humvee. Not their fault, but people like to think the worst. The nut doesn’t fall far from the tree, etc.Then I thought of Aunt June. What if I had a trusted adult in Knoxville, I asked, but she said I couldn’t go out of state due to the paperwork. Maybe Emmy living there was some type of violation. It would explain the secret-keeping, but Aunt June being an outlaw made no sense. I just wanted to go to sleep. She took me to another little room that had a bed with paper on it, where I could lie down.
At some point later on, a guy woke me up in the dark with a tray of food like a TV dinner. He was rolling a cart of them. I was starved. This man had on whitish scrubs, white cap on his head, white bags over his shoes, so you saw the clothes and not him. Like he was a ghost. I told him I couldn’t pay. He said it was paid for already, but that hospital food oftentimes made people sick. He offered to eat the food for me. I was scared, and said okay. He sat down with the tray on his lap and ate it. He looked like a hungry ghost eating a TV dinner, which meant I had to be dreaming.
My new life started off bright and early with my new caseworker Miss Barks. She raised up the blinds and said, “Good morning, Damon. Let’s take you home.” For a split second I thought I had one, and was going there. Sometimes a good day lasts all of about ten seconds.
Miss Barks had the wrong name. No dog. She stood there smiling while I woke up and remembered all kinds of shit, and noticed also that she was a total babe. I’d run through caseworkers galore, you don’t get attached nor would you want to. But this one, another story. Younger than Mom, in a dress, not the jacket-type outfit that makes them look like wardens. That blond type of hair that’s all curly in little waves falling down, like you’d normally see on TV actresses, mermaids, or angels. Maybe Miss Barks was my guarding angel. About damn time.
She saw the empty plastic food tray the ghost left on the chair (so, probably not a ghost) and commented on my good appetite. She said they’d found a temporary placement for me that was on a farm, so hopefully they’d feed me pretty well out there too. I could feel my stomach eating itself, I was that hungry. But didn’t want to say anything she’d take the wrong way.
Outside it wasn’t even full morning yet, just the gray time where lights were still on. She walked fast in her little boots, click-click. Her car was a Toyota with a DSS sign thing on the door, an older model with a lot of mileage from the looks of it. I got in the back and was surprised to see somebody in the driver’s seat: Baggy Eyes. Christ, I thought. This lady must never go home at all. Miss Barks got in on the passenger side and we drove out on the same roads I’d covered on my ambulance ride. Why they thought it would take two of them to handle me, no idea. We passed by houses of people that had gone to bed and gotten up again, situation normal. Eating cereal now. All the kids with moms that had their shit together and dads that were alive.
Finally Miss Barks turned around with her elbow on the back of the seat and said let’s talk about where we were going. I’d be staying with a gentleman named Mr. Crickson that took kids for short-term only. He had boys there now. The Cricksons had been regular fosters until his wife passed away, and now he just took in the odd hardship case. She had a nice way of talking, like I was not a child but a person. She was sorry I’d had to wait in the hospital all night. They had to cover too many bases and not enough facilities, basically a whole lot of kids in my boat.
Which was not news, at school you heard talk about what kid was homeless or sleeping on the couch of some relative none too pleased of it. What pretty or ugly girls in seventh or eighth grade were kicked out for being knocked up. So on and so forth. Never did I dream I’d wake up one day as one of those kids. Miss Barks seemed shocked by my sad turn of events. Her partner up there behind the wheel, Miss Night of the Living Dead, not so much.
