Page 71 of Demon Copperhead
“Your girlfriend’sfatherjust died. People miss school for a death in the family. Goddamned stuck-up old fart-breath bitch, where is the motherfucking compassion?”
Angus cursing somebody out was not casual. She applied herself. She became a creature of fierce beauty, like a thoroughbred running the Kentucky Derby of cursing. You just had to get out of the way. I let her run my grandmother up the devil’s flagpole while I sorted out the weirder CDs she’d loaned or given me from the ones I wanted to keep. She wanted me to promise I would go back to school in the fall, but I couldn’t see the point. She said it was only two more years, and would make all the difference in my future, etc. I asked her to name one great job I could do around here with a high school diploma, that I couldn’t do now.
I watched her press both thumbs into the sole of her bare foot, thinking. Finally she admitted she couldn’t come up with anything off the bat, but that didn’t prove she was wrong.
Her eyes darted to the doorway. Coach was there, leaning on the doorframe with one outstretched arm, looking at the floor. He wanted me to know the money my grandmother had been sending was of no consequence, this was still my home if I wanted to stay. I said nobody was holding any gun to my head, it just seemed like it was time I moved out.
A gun would have been kinder than the truth, that I was too messed up for football. He knew it. I’d kept myself thoroughly trashed of late, but occasionally I caught sight of it myself, lying out there in the weeds: what small greatness I’d had, I was not getting back. No further success lay ahead for me, and if I stayed here pretending it did, I’d be lying to Coach. Taking advantage of his free ride. I wanted to be a better man than that.
He said he wished things could have turned out different, but he accepted that I wanted to move in with my girlfriend. He wished me well, and ducked out.
Angus was roaming around the room now, touching the few things of mine still left. She picked up the bottle-ship she’d given me. Then set it back on the desk. “How deep are you into the junk?” she asked. Prissy but trying to sound cool, the way a child would say “dog-doo.”
I told her I was still on the painkillers Dr. Watts had prescribed, and that I still felt a lot of pain if I stopped taking them, so. I took them.
She just stared. “You don’t have to bullshit me, Demon. I’ve got no power here.”
I’d never perfected lying to Angus, so I went ahead and told her I was in a little deeper than that. It wasn’t about my knee anymore. She asked, were we talking about meth or heroin. This may have been just DARE officer info, rather than real life, but she wasn’t completely ignorant. I told her I was kind of all over the place, but not meth. And that I wasn’t shooting anything because needles made me want to puke. She didn’t seem surprised. She suggested maybe I could start backing out of this mess the way I got in, step by step. Maybe if I talked to an adult, they could give me advice. Not Coach obviously. Maybe June. Or Ms. Annie.
“Adult,” I said. Ticked off, all the sudden.
She shrugged. Picked up the bottle again, turning it slowly, looking at the little sails and everything inside there. Oh, I was going places, she’d said. She did warn me though, about gravity and shit. Not to ask for miracles. She looked up. “You taking this?”
“Yes. I’m taking all the presents you gave me. I’m moving six miles away. I’ll probably be over here for dinner twice a week because Dorilives on air and Reddi-wip and our stove doesn’t work.” I said that with pride:our stove. Regardless the rest of the sentence. I told Angus the adult in my life was me. A man, living with my lady. And something to the effect of childhood being a four-star shit show as far as I’d ever seen, so I was glad to be done with it. Angus took one of my shirts out of a box, rolled up the bottle-ship in the shirt, and set it into the box, gently. Like a baby in a cradle.
I asked her straight. “You don’t like Dori, do you?”
She pulled out the desk chair and sat in it backward. Stoner used to do that, his arms draped over the back of the chair and his vile brain set on Demon-control. No two humans could be more different. Angus was sticking out her chin, tapping it with the flat of her hand, like there were words she was trying to get into her mouth, but they’d have to be just right. Not hurtful.
“I do like her,” she said finally. “Remember how you were laid up in bed and she came over with presents all the time? That was great. The happy little Christmas elf. Ilovedthat.”
“You were not a fan of the chicken.” Sad history of Lovechild: he got out of the tool shed and tangled with the neighbor’s German shepherd.
“Okay, fair enough. Hate the gift, love the giver.”
“Why, though,” I asked. “Whydo you like her?”
I’m not sure what I was fishing for. Angus folded her hands together. “I’ve known you how long, four years, going on five? And I never saw you happy, in all that time. Here and there maybe, but not for a whole day. And now you are. With Dori. I can see that.”
If anybody else had ever wanted me happy, they could have fooled me. Possibly Mom, as long as it didn’t cross tracks with her own maneuvers. That’s all people really want, for you to fit into their maneuvers. Angus though, Jesus. Angus was a freaking wonder.
Chapter48
Emmy ran off with Fast Forward. All graduated and scholarshipped to UT Knoxville, then drops the bomb that she’s not going. June was floored: so smart, so beautiful, Emmy could be anything. Except the girlfriend of that grass snake. June laid down the law, Emmy stopped coming home. Age-old story.
But in this version, new to me, the mom doesn’t rest until she’s turned over every rock on the planet. We heard it all from Maggot, after he took up residence on our couch. Emmy got three days’ head start on her getaway, supposedly hanging out with Martha Coldiron. June finally called over there and learned Martha had been kicked out of her parents’ house some weeks prior. Now June was fit to be tied. She called the cops. She called our house at all hours, in case Emmy showed up there. June distrusted Maggot and would only speak to me. If I lied, she’d have my balls on the barbecue. I said yes ma’am. I gave her Fast Forward’s cell phone number, which he wasn’t answering lately. He’d left the Cedar Hill place. Rose was right, he was just a shit shoveler there.
I said all the things you say: Emmy will turn up, she’s no fool. But had a bad feeling. Whatever Fast Forward had been to me, I could see he was bad medicine for Emmy.
“Don’t be so sure,” was Maggot’s opinion. “I bet she’s got him eating out of her hand.”
This was around three in the morning, which seemed a safe hour to go on about our lives. We were sitting on the floor of Dori’s bedroom. “Eating what?” Dori wanted to know.
“It’s just a saying,” I told her. Sometimes she would trip up on the smallest things.
“Eating vajayjay,” Maggot clarified.
“Out of herhand?” Dori often got a little giddy at these times. Maggot put the 80 on the aluminum foil and Dori flicked the lighter underneath. The brown blob bubbled and melted and gave off its happy little smell of metal and burnt tires, sliding around on the shiny foil. I went first, then handed the metal straw to Dori and took over handling the foil. I might have been crap from the knee down, but still had my reflexes. You have to tip it this way and that, to keep it swimming around. Chasing the dragon, breathing its fire. We sucked smoke until nothing was left but a snail trail of melted rubber. And all I could think was: Eighty dollars.
