“I’m not saying the problem is you. It’s not the drugs either. It’s a whole lot of other things that are wrong, and they won’t get better as long as you stay here.”
A year was not thinkable. Where I would go, who I would be. Damn her. If we were all such a mess, did she think the whole of Lee County should empty itself out? I pictured the long line of cars and pickups backed up on 58. Next in line behind us, our neighbors: Scott County, Russell, Tazewell. Half of Kentucky. Leaving behind empty houses, unharvested fields, half-full beer cans, the squeaky front porch rockers going quiet. Unmilked cows lowing in the pastures, dogs standing forlorn in yards under the maples, watching the masters flee from the spoiled paradise where the world’s evils all got sent to roost.
I told her I would think about it. She had to know I was lying.
60
I packed up that same afternoon. The earthly goods were down to a couple of boxes now, I’ve known homeless guys that had less. Shirts, a spare pair of shoes. Football trophies won by a shiny kid with two excellent knees. I threw those out. I kept the notebooks and art supplies that filled up one whole box, and it weighed on my conscience. I’d been hiding from Tommy. My only real valuables were in bottles, stashed in an old leather shaving case that used to be Mr. Peg’s. Maggot had taken it for his stash, then at some point it became mine. I rarely thought twice about using Mr. Peg’s nice case for pharmaceutical purposes, but from time to time I felt his eyes on me, seeing the waste of flesh I’d become. Now being one of those times. Maggot was asleep or dipped off. I punched him in the shoulder to tell him I was checking out.
He rolled off the bed onto the floor, a surprisingly smooth move, and lay looking at the ceiling. “Checkout time, checkin’ it out,” he said. Sang actually, some tune I almost recognized.
“Serious, man. I’m going.”
He raised his head off the floor and frowned at me in a fuddled way, like some zoo animal had subbed in as roommate while he was napping. Anteater, sawfish. His head dropped back to the floor. “Going where?”
“To be determined. Not really figured it out yet.”
“Then don’t figure. Saves wear and tear on the haggard brain cells.”
“Nope. Can’t stay here.”
He sat up, drew his knees to his chest, and hugged them with his long arms. Lots of weird jewelry on the hands as well as the face, and still into black, but the Goth vibe was scaled way back. Probably more negligence than fashion choice. He oftentimes didn’t smell that great.
“Nothing personal,” I said. “You’re the easiest person I probably ever cohabited with. Other than the snoring.”
He rubbed his face with the back of his hand and watched me stuff underwear in a plastic bag. The black ring that hung down from his septum pierce gave the permanent impression of booger. “Not my fault. It’s adenoids, brother. I was born this way.”
I plopped the underwear bag into a cardboard box, and that was me, over and out on the Peggots. “I have to get out of here before I break something. It’s this family. They’re so goddamn nice, you end up feeling like you owe them. And then I get really pissed off, because there’s no way I can ever get it right or pay it back. You know?”
He gave me a woeful look. He didn’t. He wouldn’t, ever.
What surprised me was the rage. That it kept coming, in waves. Why? Out on my ass was the normal for me. I’d never yet met the people that could keep me. June was not my mother, regardless the ten or so minutes I almost laid claim to her. She just wanted the better version, not the broken boy I was. Nothing new here under my sun, and yet here was this car and me at the wheel, taking all the curves too fast, hating everything I saw. The kudzu hanging off the trees, the ignorant caboose car in front of Pennington Middle, the bric-a-brac mammaw houses with flamingo birds in their yards. I’d have rammed my car into any one of them, but that would have stopped me, and I needed to keep moving. For the whole afternoon I leaned on my pissed-off heavy foot, because going nowhere fast is a kind of juice.
Then the energy started going out of me and I felt new kind of bad coming on. I stopped on a godforsaken road around Fleenortown to run inventory on Mr. Peg’s leather bag and the emergency supplies I kept in the glove box, and took what I needed to stave off the pressure in my chest. That ache was an old, old story and it wasn’t ending. In Jonesville I stopped to fill up the tank. If I kept driving I might stay ahead of the monsters. Back in the car, pointed west, I tried to think of one place on the planet of earth where I would feel happy to be. Came up bust. Then tried to settle on someplace I could stand to be. Nothing again. No house or vehicle or yard or pasture came to mind. No place. A guy could take this to mean he ought to be dead.
I was in and out, as far as paying any attention to the road. Which can run you into trouble as far as stop signs or speed traps, but we’re not big on those here. I ended up way the hell out past Ewing, with no idea I’d gone that far till I noticed the white cliffs on my right side, lining the ridgetop, catching light. I kept on going and there they still were, laughing. Up here asshole, we’re up, you’re down. Those cliffs run on for a hundred miles. My car found the park where Miss Barks brought me, on that fateful day where my brain ran away with itself, thinking of being up there and jumping off to see if I’d fall or fly. And I mean really seeing it in my mind, because that’s the troublesome brain I have, it’s got excellent eyes. Look at him up there. The boy on the edge of the cliff, the widespread arms and piked legs, the crash-dive or the sail. Even before I watched the end of Fast Forward, I don’t know how many times my brain had put me up there on those white cliffs, easily a thousand. To ask that question. Which, let’s face it, is not a real-world question.
There was nobody around in the gravel lot where the trail started up. The sign said Sand Cave, White Rocks, so many miles. I didn’t register details. I’d heard of people hiking up there to that cave, those white rocks. It was doable. I had nothing in mind that would pass for a plan, only the need to move. I left my keys in the car.
Not sure why I thought walking would be any better than driving. It comes down to velocity. This was a business of outrunning ghosts, and there was no end to my dead. Not even counting parents or Mr. Peg. Death of your olders is natural. I was losing people right out from under my living days. My doll baby, that I couldn’t love well enough to make her stay. My childhood hero that was a dangerous animal. Hammer that finished last. Maggot that would surely die if they put him in prison, and Mariah on the outside, of heartbreak. I connected my worn-out rubber soles to the dirt of the trail, again, again, again. Knee bones grinding, heart pumping, unthinkable matters battering the skull door. My dad. For him I’d gone to that waterhole of hell, maybe finally to tell the man to go fuck himself, thanks for abandoning me and Mom. Or to prove something. Fast Forward dared me and I went, took the devil’s bath and came out with blood on my hands. Where do you go after that? All I knew to do was keep putting my feet to the rocky ground, waiting to register something in the body instead of the brain.