Now we’re just sitting. Those two staring each other down in the front seat, both of them like, Nuh-uh, you. Baggy finally says, “You’re the legal on this one. You need to take him in.”
Miss Barks is scared. Whatever is in that house, she doesn’t want to be the one to take me in there and say, So long kid, sucks to be you. Probably this is her first day on the shit job of removing kids out of their homes for the DSS, and she’s just figured out she doesn’t even want to be on her end of the stick, let alone mine. So much for my guarding angel. I was her test drive.
9
Crickson was a big, meaty guy with a red face and a greasy comb-over like fingers palming a basketball. Little eyes set deep in his head, pointy nose, your basic dog type of face. But a meaner breed than the two old hounds lying on the floor under the cold wood stove in his kitchen. They looked like whenever frost came around, they’d be right there ready.
The old man’s voice came out in a Freddy Krueger whisper, like it hurt him to talk so you’d damn best listen. Yes I had seen that movie, at the drive-in, from the back seat with Mom and Stoner thinking I’m asleep. Education of many a Lee County kid. Scary guy says sit, we sit.
Miss Barks meanwhile was working down her checklist, nervous as heck. Would I sleep in the same bedroom as his other fosters, was it inspected, was he briefed on me by phone that morning. He was like, Get this over with, lady. The other boys had left for school and he needed to be out seeing to his cattle. Miss Barks wasn’t disagreeing on any of that. I sat tight, getting my gander at the inside of Amityville: nasty curled-up linoleum, yellow grease on the wall over the stove, open jars of peanut butter and crap all over the counter. A crust of scum on everything. I recalled her saying this man’s wife had passed away. I wondered if her body was still lying somewhere back in that house, because I’d say there’d been zero tidying up around here since she kicked off.
Miss Barks finished up and handed over a big yellow envelope. He asked was his check in there. She said he could look for it in the mail like always. I couldn’t believe she was going to leave me with Freddy Krueger, but she gave me those same eyes I’d seen on Mom a million times: Sorry. And off she went in her little boots, click-click. I wondered if DSS had anything like Step 9, where you eventually have to apologize to all the kids you’ve screwed over.
Once she was out the door, I thought the old man would run off to his everloving cattle, but he was in no big hurry, pouring coffee out of a dirty-looking pot into a dirty-looking cup. Under his flannel shirt he had on a long-sleeved waffle undershirt with the cuffs all frayed and grimy, like he lived in that one shirt day and night. Regardless Mom and her sloppy ways, she did not raise me to be unclean. I couldn’t stomach watching the old man slurp his coffee.
He looked over at me like, questioning, so I said no thanks, I didn’t drink coffee all that much. He said something in his creepy strangled voice, so quiet I couldn’t make it out.
I asked him, “Sir?”
“I said, the other boys ain’t liking a biter. I done told them. Ain’t nobody likes a biter.”
I looked at the dogs under the stove, trying to work out what he meant. They looked dead actually. Or so old, they would have trouble gumming down cat food out of a can. But this seemed like something I would need to know. I asked him, “Which one bites?”
He looked at me like I was an idiot. “You.”
He watched out the window while the DSS car drove away. I noticed his fly was undone, or maybe the pants were so old the zipper had given up the ghost. After a minute he whispered, “A wonder nobody’s yet filed off your teeth.”
I had the day to get sick to my stomach, waiting to find out how much the other boys hated a biter. Stoner must have gone on the record. So I might as well have a sign on my back saying: Druggie Mom, Queer Best Friend, Hand Biter. Whatever Crickson told his fosters that morning, everybody at school was hearing now. I never wanted to go back there. Or be here. I was running on dead empty, but Crickson didn’t ask if I’d had breakfast. The kitchen had this rank cooking smell, a cross between feet and bacon, and even that was making me hungry. But he just downed his coffee and said, “Let’s go.” And outside we went, for a day’s work.
We started with haying the cattle. The barn smelled like cow shit, no surprise, but I mean this smell is a freaking storm front. Enough to make your eyes water. The cattle were muddy and black and pushy and of a size to kill you if you weren’t quick on your feet, and that’s about all I can tell you about haying cattle. A pitchfork was used, hay was thrown around. He said he had around two hundred head, most of them out on pastures. You don’t hay your cattle in August except the pregnant heifers, which these were. He asked what I knew about cattle, which was nothing, and could I drive a tractor, ditto. I could see he was pissed about how worthless I was. He asked if I’d ever put up hay, because that needed doing if the damn rain ever stopped. Had I topped or cut tobacco, that was also coming. He said he kept the boys home from school for tobacco cutting because it was God’s own goddamn piece of work to get it all in, so he hoped I wasn’t keen on school or anything. I said yes sir, no sir, trying to ride it out.
I followed him around, carrying whatever he handed me. It rained on us off and on. All I could think of was home: Mrs. Peggot that would be worried sick about where I was. Our creek and its excellent mud. On the bright side, this guy would not be making me scrub any floor with Clorox. But I might at some point decide on doing that anyway. We moved cattle through gates. We walked for hours checking a ratty old fence for barb wire that had come loose off the palings. He had a giant staple gun that looked and sounded like a weapon of war, and he used that to attach the barb wire. He said pay attention because tomorrow I’d do fence lines on my own. Seriously. Putting that weapon in the hands of me, a known menace.
I was too hungry to think straight. Finally it was time to go have lunch, which he called dinner but who cared. It was bacon-tomato sandwiches. He fried up the bacon and tomatoes both, in a pan looked like it had lived its life without a wash, no fresh grease needed. I could see bacon was the gas for the engine of this house of boys. Big packages in the fridge. Loaves of bread still in the wrappers, stacked up like bricks on the counter. So, some good news.
After lunch we walked more fences and changed the spark plugs in a tractor engine. It was long in the afternoon before I spotted two boys walking up the lane from where the bus must have dropped them out by the highway. They went in the house to dump their backpacks, then came running out to the barn where Mr. Crickson had left me with a hose and a scrub brush, spraying out a bunch of slimy grain buckets, ready at this point to puke from nervousness. Sure enough, the littler one bared his teeth at me, let out a wolfman howl, and laughed like a kook.