Tommy showed me the rest of the house, our room upstairs, the bathroom we’d use, with Fast Forward getting first dibs obviously. He had more to do, like shaving. Our bedroom had two bunk beds, not much else. A closet for your stuff, if you were lucky enough to have any. A table for doing your homework if you felt like it. Tommy and Swap-Out shared one of the bunk beds and had a discussion of whether I should take top or bottom on the other one. Swap-Out didn’t vote, with him being let’s just say not a talker. But he liked climbing. I remembered from second grade, Swap-Out always getting up on the radiators like a freaking monkey, our teacher always yelling at him to get down, because one of these days the heat would come on and he’d get burned. And one of those days, yes he did. Such howling, you never heard. Whereas Tommy liked the bottom bunk so he could stash his library books underneath. He had piles down there: Boxcar Children, Goosebumps, who even knew they’d let you check out that many? He said the library at Pennington Middle was bigger, which was the only good thing about middle school.
I assumed all four of us boys would bunk together, but wrong, Fast Forward had his own room down the hall. He’d lived here a long time. Mrs. Crickson while alive had started the procedures for adopting him, but she never got it finished up. So Crickson was still drawing the five-hundred-dollar check every month for keeping him as a foster. I didn’t learn all of this right away. It’s a complicated business to figure out, especially with the way Crickson and Fast Forward did it, having some kind of secret agreement to split the check between them.
We were not allowed in Fast Forward’s room without permission, so I looked from the doorway. He had free weights of a different kind from Stoner’s. Football trophies, newspaper photos of famous Generals moments taped on the wall over the desk (he had furniture). Pinned along one wall, a slew of ribbons he’d won for his 4-H calf projects, Tommy said, but that was history. Now Fast Forward had quarterbacking and a pickup truck and hot girls, everybody and her sister wanting a piece of this guy. I’d known him two hours and could already see how it was.
His real name was Sterling Ford. Who could want better? Something to do with silver, the best engines ever built. But he said the name Fast Forward came to him early, and it did fit.
He had the run of the house and keys to the gun cabinet where the old man kept his rifles and the medicines Swap-Out was supposed to take every night if anybody remembered. DSS made him lock up the medicines evidently after some past event where his other foster kids were selling them. Uppers or downers, God only knows what Swap-Out was on, possibly both, the usual, half the kids at school had to line up for their pills from the nurse every day before recess. Fast Forward anyway had full privileges, whereas we three lower-life boys kept to our room of an evening. Nobody cared what time we went to bed, if we got ourselves up in the morning. That first night I was dead tired but worried about going to bed in my cow-shit clothes, and out of the blue Tommy asked did they bring me here without anything. Knowing the foster drill. He let me borrow one of his T-shirts to sleep in. This Tommy was not your usual type of kid.
He said Fast Forward would come in before lights out for drill. Sure enough, he came in saying: “Atten-tion!” Tommy and Swap-Out saluted and stuck out their chests and Fast Forward did inspection. I guess we’ve all seen that movie. It seemed dumb but I couldn’t see not doing it, so I did. He gave me a good looking-over, saying, “Me oh my. Check out this green-eyed boy.” He asked was I a Melungeon or a red-haired beaner or what. I told him my dad was Melungeon.
Next, Fast Forward asked what we had. Tommy dug in his pockets and came out with a pack of Chiclets, which Fast Forward took. Then he stood waiting in front of Swap-Out. Bent down and got in the little guy’s face. Swap-Out says he’s got nothing. Fast Forward pulls a fist and Swap-Out shrinks back in his skin. No punching was done, but you could see this kid knows what punched is. I’m looking over at Tommy like, Is this normal? And he’s like, Yeah it is.
“Creaky gave you lunch money this morning,” Fast Forward says in a slow way because of Swap-Out lacking on his mental side. “You had lunch money, and you took the nutbutter.”
“I never,” Swap-Out says.
“You did. I’ve got eyes in your school, not just in my head. If you lie to Fast Forward, you’re letting down your brothers. You’ve got the cash Creaky gave you. Hand it over.”
Taking the peanut butter sandwich for a normal kid meant they’d let their lunch money run out, or for a free lunch kid their mom forgot to sign the forms. Either way, the lunch ladies would lay that nutbutter on you like, Here’s your fuck-up badge. Swap-Out had taken the sandwich of shame to pocket the money. His close-set eyes jumped around like a trapped rabbit’s. Fast Forward snapped his fingers in the scrambled little face, held out his hand. Swap-Out shelled out the bills.
I was next. Fast Forward stared. I said, “Dude, I don’t even have any fucking socks!”
I wasn’t sure if this was an f-bomb household, nor if Fast Forward to me was a Dude or a Sir, but I risked it and the guys laughed. I told him I’d gotten dumped off with nothing.
Fast Forward got this look. “Nothing. You’re sure.”
“Positive.”
“Holding out on Fast Forward is not how we do things here, Demon. I’m giving you another chance. Come clean, and all will be forgiven. Check your pockets.”
I did, and pulled out some squashed nabs, which shocked me. Last night at the hospital seemed like a movie about somebody’s sad mess of a life. But that was me, in possession of nabs, ten bucks, and phone change. If I’d remembered, I’d have eaten the nabs for sure. I felt my ears burning. One, because I hadn’t had that much money in quite a while if ever, and two, I’d just lost it. Three, it looked like I got caught lying. Plus, how did he even know?
Fast Forward said he was proud of me for contributing to our goals and objectives. So that was good, him liking me. He said he held on to the valuables here to keep them safe. We’d celebrate by having a party as soon as he could get supplies. A farm party, he said. The others said, Yay, farm party! He explained we were the Hillbilly Squadron, which was like the Boy Scouts except not ass-kissers. He was our Squad Master and made the rules for our own good. He said don’t let Creaky get us down. Then he said, “At ease!” and we were at ease. He left, and Tommy and Swap-Out climbed into their bunks. I put on Tommy’s big T-shirt and climbed into mine. I chose the top. I was still thinking of the rats all over the corn barn and Creaky lurking around in the dark, maybe wanting to file off my teeth. The top bunk seemed advisable.
Hillbilly is a word everybody knows. Except they don’t. Mr. Peg at one time had a sticker on his truck bumper, “Hillbilly Cadillac,” but I was a small kid with no comprehension of anything. I mainly knew it from this one rerun that came on Nick at Nite, Beverly Hillbillies, which was this family running around a city wearing ropes for a belt, packing antique rifles, and driving a junkass truck. Dead hilarious. More so than most of the old black-and-whites they ran, Gunsmoke, Munsters. Then one time Maggot’s high school cousin Bonnie saw us watching it and said we were clueless little turds. Bonnie was in Drama, Gifted and Talented, your basic all-around ass pain. She said be careful who we laughed at, that family was supposedly us.
Meaning what? There’s not a person here that carries on like that or drives such crap, I assure you. Not even the Antique Tractor Club guys that tuck their shirts in their underpants and drive their ancient machines in the Christmas parade. Those guys are just old. But shooting the lights out, yodeling, keeping pigs in the house? Maggot told Bonnie to go screw her stuck-up boyfriend she met in Governor’s School and leave us be. Which she did. But I did wonder.