Mr. McCobb was big on ideas for making that little bit extra to turn things around, and had tried most of them: selling Amway, breeding AKC pups with fake papers, human advertisement, sperm donor, etc. Plus buying lotto tickets, obviously. His newest idea was taking in a foster. If I went okay, they might take in two, for twice the cash. It didn’t hurt my feelings. Creaky made no bones about wanting that five hundred a month per head. I knew the score.
The trouble that Mr. McCobb didn’t count on, though, was needing to spend money on me. For example, buying more groceries so I could eat. The first week I was there, he asked if I was going to chip in for my meals and so forth.
“Chip in, like what?” I asked. Not having the slightest idea what he was talking about.
“Just a little cash, buddy. For the extra food.”
The two of us were sitting at the kitchen table doing an enterprise where I licked the stamps and sealed envelopes after Mr. McCobb put brochures in them. Every time he leaned over to reach himself more brochures, I saw pink scalp shining through his buzz cut on top.
“I am all about the fair and the square,” he said. “As far as your bunking quarters, that’s going to be grateese.” He explained grateese meant he wasn’t going to charge me anything for my bedroom.
“Thanks,” I said, even though it wasn’t a bedroom, it was a dog room. The day Miss Barks brought me there, she inspected the DSS-approved cute bedroom that supposedly was for me, with cowboy wallpaper, bedspread of Woody from Toy Story, etc. But after she left, it turned out that was their son Brayley’s room. Mrs. McCobb said not to tell Miss Barks or I would get sent back, so I didn’t. Sleeping in the McCobbs’ dog room was preferable to whatever DSS might cook up next. This room was attached on the back of the house with the washer and dryer and a seriously rotted-out floor where their old washer had leaked. You had to be careful where you stepped, or the linoleum would give way. It’s where they’d had their AKC puppy enterprise some while back, and smelled like it. Plus noisy, due to the washer and dryer going all hours, what with all those kids and babies.
Mr. McCobb asked me how I was liking it in the so-called annex. His wife had bought me one of those air-mattress beds and a little cardboard dresser for my stuff, so I told him it was fine. But that I couldn’t pay for my meals because I didn’t have any money. Sorry.
Mr. McCobb stopped stuffing envelopes and squinted his eyes, like he was working out the whole situation of me. He had those extra-dark brown eyes that were like looking down two holes. Intense. “That’s a deficit, buddy. You’ve got a problem. But it can be addressed.”
“Okay,” I said.
I licked some more stamps for his enterprise. This one had to do with blue-green algae pills that supposedly could cure anything but a broken heart. (Which is what Mr. Peg always said about duct tape.) Brayley and Haillie were upstairs in their rooms having a loudness war between Lion King and Spice Girls on their CD player, and Mrs. McCobb was in her bedroom trying to feed the twins. All told, a good deal of commotion coming from up there.
I didn’t feel that welcome upstairs, so I hadn’t been, other than the once where Mrs. McCobb gave us a tour and showed Miss Barks my so-called bedroom. Downstairs, the kitchen was the only place to hang out, the rest being dark, with the living-room blinds closed at all times due to there being no furniture. The McCobbs lived on a busy road, and I reckon they didn’t want everybody in the county knowing they didn’t have any living-room furniture. Miss Barks was pretty surprised over it. Mrs. McCobb said they did have some, until a few months before. The nicest imaginable, from Goodman’s Furniture, not Walmart, plus a bedroom suite in some certain style where all the pieces matched. At this point in time, though, Mr. and Mrs. McCobb’s bedroom only had the mattress that luckily they got to keep, because the repo guys don’t take mattresses back after they’ve been slept on.
The kitchen was an okay place, other than making me hungry. I was pretending the taste of stamps on Mr. McCobb’s envelopes was something better, like strawberry Gushers, but my stomach was growling, to the point of embarrassing. Their bulldog Missy was flopped on the floor, not even bothering herself over the half-full bowl of dog food by the door. Red, chunky dog chow that looked like meat. Probably this sounds sick, but even that was making me hungry.
Mr. McCobb said I should think about getting a job after school. I told him my problem was, I was eleven. I’d always heard they don’t hire you till sixteen. He said those rules only applied in certain cases, and that younger kids were allowed to work in family enterprises.
“Like I’m doing right now?” I perked up, thinking he might pay me. But no. He said this didn’t count because of something called nefrotism. He couldn’t pay me and be my foster father both, so I needed to look farther afield. He said he would put out his antennas.
Mr. McCobb was the straight shooter of the family, according to himself, but half the time I couldn’t make the wildest guess as to what he was saying. He’d always let you know he’s been around the block and you haven’t. He served in the military in Operation Bright Star and some other ones, which explained the haircut and how he dressed, not T-shirts but always button-ups like he’s the boss of something. After he got home from the Middle East he used the benefits to get his business degree at Mountain Empire, which is how he knew about starting enterprises. He had a list of everything he was an expert on. Mrs. McCobb said anybody would be a fool not to hire him, which they did, about every other week: medical supply store, gas station, lawn and tree service, flooring company, and other places he worked while I was living there, the years before that, and still to this day, if I had to guess. The pay at those places was lousy and he was too overqualified, plus knowing a lot more than his supervisors. A man can’t stay long in a situation like that.
What I remember most about that year is food. Not eating it, thinking about it. Meals at the McCobbs’ were never enough to tide me over. Dinner usually was burgers that Mr. McCobb picked up at a drive-through on his way home, two each for the adults and one for us kids. Maybe some fries to share. Or Mrs. McCobb would microwave some of the Lean Cuisines she had in the freezer, again one each for the kids and two for the grown-ups. She’d bought a slew of those little box-type meals on sale because of trying to lose her baby weight. After babies-times-four she was one of those ladies with the small, pretty face and everything else kind of pillowy.
She kept boxes of snacks on top of the fridge, and I mean the works: Pringles, Oreos, Dunkaroos, your basic snack festival going on up there. I kept waiting for somebody to give me my snack bowl like at Aunt June’s, but nobody ever said “Make yourself at home” in the McCobb house. Even though I didn’t have any other one. After school Mrs. McCobb would sometimes get down a box and dole out a snack to each of us, but not every day, and I knew not to ask.