Page 89 of Demon Copperhead
She shrugged her skinny shoulders. But he did. Stoned boys tell their secrets, and Fast Forward had long known mine. I tried to get more out of her, what the hell he’d wanted from me, some proof-of-manhood thing, facing down my father’s death, nothing there made any sense, and she wasn’t giving it up. Maybe she didn’t know. None of us ever would, now.
“You guys screwed it up by bringing Hammer,” is all she would say. Then she jumped up to pace around some more. Interrogation over. She went to the other side of the room and nosed around without touching anything. They had somebody else in the room with me, hidden behind a brown curtain, but I’d heard zero out of them all night. Another dead body, for all I knew. Rose came back and dropped into the chair. “You all are accessories to a death.”
“He fell, Rose. Climbed too high for his own good, end of story.”
“Not him. I mean Hammer.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The deceased had taken illegal drugs. Supplied to him by you.”
“You weren’t even there. Get over yourself.”
“Oh, I saw. Earlier in the day.”
I made myself sort back through it. Okay, that. “You saw me helping a stranded motorist.”
“I saw him hoovering meth in your Camaro.”
I laughed out loud. “Star witness, doesn’t know an Impala from a Camaro.”
“Whatever.” She chewed on her thumbnail, watching the door. “I know what I saw. If you’re the supplier of drugs and somebody dies, it’s a felony. I know that for a fact.”
“What you saw was me out in the rain trying to change my friend’s tire. If anybody goes looking, they’ll find a drug in Hammer that I haven’t touched but once in eighth grade. Anybody around here can back that up, so don’t try lying. Just leave me out of it.”
I rolled over and turned my back on her. I’d heard of this, about supplying drugs to somebody that gets in trouble. The trouble being in this case death. She had nothing on me, but she could nail Maggot. I felt rage building up in my gut. She didn’t leave. Nobody came to take my temperature. It came down to whether I could hold off exploding longer than Rose could go without nicotine. I lost. I sat up and yelled at her. “Why do you have to kick the fucking hornet’s nest? You think the Peggots aren’t punished enough? Hammer died trying to fucking save that snake-assed bastard. You want to cry over him, knock yourself out. But you’re not good enough to clean Hammer’s shoes.” She sat through all this with no expression at all. Asked if I was done. Said this was not about Hammer, it was about the rest of us. She’d lost everything, and now she had to make sure we all knew how that felt. Andthenshe got emotional, pulling out wads of Kleenex and blowing her nose. She said losing Fast Forward was like dying herself.
I tried to pull up the sheet. They had me wearing a stupid dress thing with snaps. “For fuck’s sake, Rose. Look how he treated you. He was cruel to everybody that ever knew him.”
She said I didn’t understand him. But I did. Fast Forward had a beautiful poison inside him that infected people and got them hooked. I told her it was bound to end this way because Fast Forward was a dangerous animal, and they aren’t known to have long lives.
Rose didn’t deny that. But she could have been the one to save him. She looked straight at me with her wrecked face full of tears and madness and swore that’s what she believed. That the scar he’d put on her was his way of making sure Rose would belong to him for life.
I’d watched Hammer Kelly die, and now I had to see it all over again with every Peggot that came through the door saying, Lord, it can’t be true, having to hear that it was. I dreaded coming back from the hospital to face the family. But I understood. They needed somebody alive to tell the tale. They were grateful, and didn’t blame me, and we all agreed there would be no getting over this. Hammer was the Peggots’ MVP.
June came to stay with us at Mrs. Peggot’s, padding around all week in her gray sweatpants, making coffee, making soup beans, running a hand over her mother’s rumpled head. Mrs. Peggot sat dazed at the kitchen table. The rest of the family rolled back and forth in waves between the Peggot house, which was home base, and Ruby’s, where he’d lived. They couldn’t plan a funeral, still waiting for final say from Hammer’s Texas relatives as to where the body was to end up. Hammer’s dad hadn’t visited in an age, and we’d pretty much forgotten about him having blood kin. But that’s who holds the cards in the end. The Peggots were stuck, not able to move forward with the normal death matters of cooking and drinking. It was all just loose ends and talk. Like if they hashed through it enough times, they might get to a different ending.
Maggot went upstairs and got cooked for the duration, so it was entirely on me to get this story on the family’s books. It’s a lot of responsibility. I did my best, save for a few details held back. We were notavengers on the trail of Fast Forward. There was no handle of gin, no meth. The Marlin he must have left in his truck, possibly stolen. It was by pure chance we happened on Hammer with his flat tire. Lost lug nuts, those made it into the story. Plenty here is true. We stopped by the house of an acquaintance to dry off, and heard that some friends had gone over to Devil’s Bathtub. Why not join them, ridiculous weather and all, boys will be boys, etc.
What matters in a story is the heart of its hero. With no thought for his own safety, Hammer dived in to save the young man that fell from the cliff. True. Always and forever true. I couldn’t change that if I wanted to, and oh I did. We all did. My story left us wishing Hammer had been born with a selfish heart to keep him alive. Which made us remorseful and in awe of his goodness. That was the comfort I could give the Peggots.
Rose had no place in this story. I left her out. As far as her plan of ratting out Maggot for getting Hammer high before he died, I listened but heard nothing about police involvement or drug-testing any bodies. So I didn’t even tell Maggot. Maybe her threats had no teeth.
For over a month now I’d been sleeping in Maggot’s top bunk, and it had been pretty much like the sleepovers of our numbskull boyhood days, with better drugs. Mrs. Peggot had the habit of leaving the TV on all the time, ever since Mr. Peg died, for the company she said, and I got used to that. But after Devil’s Bathtub, everything changed. The house was full of people, and the TV drone made my skin crawl, for the random weirdness of a perky voice in the living room plugging Tokyopop and cucumber-scented shaving cream. Ronald Reagan’s funeral, Jesus. They showed bird’s-eye views of the crowded streets, a million people boohooing over this famous old prune that lived a whole lot of years past firing on any or all of his pistons. More years than he needed, is what I’m saying. Salt in our wounds. Just a weird mix, TV and real life. Two or more women are sobbing their guts out at the kitchen table, while Everett sprawls on the couch watching the US Open. Like golf is even a watchable sport, that anybody we know has ever played.
A major topic among the women was Emmy. With half of themsaying she needed to be told. Meaning: That girl needs to feel good and sick over leaving Hammer such a mess. The ringleaders here being the Jay Ann and Ruby branch that spent years telling Hammer to give up his hopeless quest, Emmy was never going to have him. And then, after the shortest romance of all times, were never forgiving her for walking away and busting the guy’s heart. They wanted payback. I thought about what Rose said, wanting to see the rest of us hurt, because she was hurting. You have to wonder how much of the whole world’s turning is fueled by that very fire.
The other side of this argument: No real rush on telling Emmy that Hammer is dead, because he’ll still be dead next year. Emmy was on lockdown and would not be let out for any funeral, if there even was to be a real one, i.e. not in Texas. The whole business could wait until Emmy was sturdier with her sobriety. This was June’s opinion. June being the only person on the planet that Emmy was allowed to have contact with, so. There was no argument.
It was hard for me to believe in a cure for what happened to Emmy. Never had I seen a person fall so far. This place she’d been sent sounded like prison, and it’s well known that prison cures nothing. Other than for the people that got hurt and are wanting to see others hurt, as mentioned. No getting out, even for a funeral? No phone calling anybody other than your mom? Even Mariah got more than that, in Goochland. But June seemed pretty cheerful about it. She showed me pictures, and it looked amazing, mountains and trees, castle type buildings, a lake. Horses. Great wide mowed yards with girls sitting around on the grass, being sweet to each other no doubt. Pictures didn’t make me believe. There are no roads from here to there.
A snake with venom is going to bite. That’s just one of the rules God wrote down for us. Rose didn’t go away. Mrs. Peggot got a letter from the courts. I was there. I watched June read it, set it down on the table, and leave the house. The deaths were being investigated. The police had information about Matthew Peggot supplying illegal substances to one of the deceased, approximately three hours prior to the fatal accident.Nobody was saying murder, it was an accident. But Maggot was possibly looking at criminal charges, accessory to the death.
“Two boys dead already,” June said, before walking out the door, “and they think sending one more to prison is going to help a damn thing? God how I hate this world.”
Hate it or not, June always came back. That particular day, after a three-hour drive to God knows where. She’d kept going into her clinic all this time, because sickness goes on, the need over there was dire. Soon she’d move back to her own house. But she was the head of the family now. She would lead the charge this time on getting lawyered up for Maggot.
The story of Romeo and Mariah was just legend to me: his terrible abuse, her X-Acto knife revenge, the alligator-boots lawyer that had tricked the jury and got Maggot’s mom locked up. Now we watched it play out again, the Peggots back in that swamp, June determined to get them out alive. I knew Mrs. Peggot had her cross to bear over Mariah, but hadn’t thought how it must have been for June all these years. After letting her sister down. Ruby at first was upset about Maggot giving Hammer drugs, but June was not going to let this tear the family apart. And Maggot’s contribution was being barely too young or damaged or all the above to stand trial as an adult. Never did a household thank their God so joyfully for having a juvenile in their midst. His court date was set for the same month Mariah was due to get out.
