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.
I wouldn’t be around for it. The day before June went back home, she called me upstairs and laid down the cards. She could get me into a Suboxone clinic. No probing questions as to what I was on, she wasn’t beating around the bush. Not her clinic, this wouldn’t happen here. Nor Asheville, there was no money for such. But she could reenroll me in Medicaid, a simple thing that none of my guardians had thought to do since Miss Barks dumped me. It would cover me in a rehab clinic for a couple of weeks. Nothing fancy, just to get me over the worst, and after that I could go into a halfway-house situation. All I could picture was half of a house with the front ripped off, exposing the chairs and bathroom fixtures inside.
June and I were in the little dormer room that had a twin bed and a low, peaked roof over the window. It had girl wallpaper from back in the day, and a window bench they called the catbird seat. Mrs. Peggot had made a cushion for it with all the kinds of birds. One of my oldest memories was sitting there watching Mom outside smoking on our deck. This week it was June’s room again. Her things were all around, shoes, hairbrush, the fruit shampoo smell I’d loved since I fell for Emmy in fourth grade. I was in the catbird seat, and June was sitting on the bed, explaining my life to me. She brought up the social security money I could use after I turned eighteen. She could help me out until then, if need be, and the halfway house would involve a job. Nothing interesting, probably loading boxes in a warehouse, the idea being just to keep busy.
“It’s all work and no play, for a while,” she said, tucking her foot up under her on the bed. She was in her doctor clothes, ready to go in to work, but still barefoot. “The deal in these halfway houses is you can go to your job, and then you come straight back. No running around. Your friends are all other people in recovery. It’s the best way to make it stick.”
I sat letting her words happen, smelling her fruit, and it hit me between the eyes: It was always June. This thing I’d had for the Knoxville women, aka dome house women. All along June, never Emmy, not past the puppy love. This was the full-throttle type love that I never got figured out properly, due to being raised in shotgun fashion. What my twisted little raggedy heart had always, always wanted. A mother, simple as that.
I asked her why me, why not Maggot. She had her reasons. Meth addiction is tough, no medical remedy. She said with opioids you can swap out the bad one for a different one that won’t get you high, but you won’t be dopesick either. Just take a pill and get on with your life.
“Right,” I said. Not mentioning the part about wanting sum-total obliteration of your life.
“I would do anything for Matthew, you know that. But rehab is something a person has to do on their own two feet, and he’s not ready.”
I sat on my two hands to keep from fidgeting. Wanting a little bump of something, so very very much. Maggot wasn’t ready, and I was? She said she and Mrs. Peggot had their doubts on Maggot ever taking responsibility, he just wasn’t cut out that way. So it would have to be somebody else making him stick to the program. Not voluntary. Meaning the law. They’d been waiting for that, assuming an arrest or a good scare was what it would take. “We thought a shoplifting charge,” she said, shaking her head. “Not that somebody would have to die.” She got kind of emotional then, but told me not to blame myself. She said there were a hundred people she could blame for what happened that day, and Maggot and I were not even on the list.
“I had my part in it,” I said. “We all kind of lost our minds.”
She looked at me like there was something written on my face that she was trying to read. “For God’s sake, Damon. It’s the same place your father died. You didn’t start this fire.”
I felt rage boiling up. My ears were ringing and I wanted to scream: Yes. It’s the place I hate the most, and that’s why I got lured out there. That’s the motherfucking deal I get. I turned away from her and looked outside at the deck where my blondie teenager mom used to light every cigarette off the last one. She saved all the Pall Mall coupons to get us free stuff. Once, a radio that looked like a jukebox. It was mostly plastic and quit working after a couple of months and I thought it was made by God’s own hands.
Some minutes passed. June was not letting this go. “It’s not natural for boys to lose their minds,” she said. “It happens because they’ve had too many things taken away from them.”
I asked her like what. She got up and walked around the room, upset. No decent schooling, she said. No chance to get good at anything that uses our talents. No future. They took all that away and supplied us with the tools for cooking our brains, hoping we’d kill each other before we figured out the real assholes are a thousand miles from here.
I told her I didn’t hold with that line of reason. I knew plenty of assholes at close range.
She smiled in the sad way I knew well. The hard kid to handle. But instead of leaving, she sat down on the bed again. “The question you have to answer now is, What are you willing to do for yourself? And I won’t lie, it’s going to be harder than anything you’ve done before.”
I doubted it. Getting smacked around daily for my betterment came to mind. Going hungry for the entirety of fifth grade. Did she think I was looking for a new personal best in the hardships department? I told her it was a lot to take in. I didn’t say, You think I’m strong, but I’m not. I will always want that next hit.
She said she’d come back over tomorrow, and we’d talk some more.
I asked where all this would be happening and she said Knoxville, which freaked me out. Not my idea of happytown. She said it wasn’t like I was thinking, not a big apartment building downtown. They have regular houses there, with yards and such. The kind of living situation I’d need would be more on the outskirts, she said. I could get used to it. “You’d have to. Because if you do this, I don’t want you coming back here for at least a year.”
“A year.”
“I know. You can’t see it. I couldn’t either, I had to leave here, and then come back as kind of a different person.” June looked so beautiful and kind. She was killing me.
“What if I like the person I am now?” Said with a straight face, no small trick.