I was hungry at all the hours, but nights were worst. I drew pictures of food, pages and pages. Roast chickens with their drumsticks. Pork chops, mashed potatoes. I spent hours getting the shading right. Putting highlights on the gravy. This one girl at school, Maisie Clinkenbeard, probably thought I liked her due to me sitting as close to her as I could. But it was to see what was in her lunch box. Actually, some few girls had their lunch contest going. Bettina Cook thought she owned it, with her personal pudding cups and sandwiches cut in triangles, Bettina that got dropped off at school by her daddy’s secretary, and supposedly had a maid at home cutting those sandwiches. I was like, they throw away the crusts? It was Maisie Clinkenbeard for me. I guarantee you a mom packed those lunches, and we’re talking something amazing every day, thick slices of ham, potato salad, homemade desserts. Peach cobbler cut in a little square. Right now, I could draw that cobbler.
Around the end of January I started sneaking into the kitchen at night to raid the snacks. I was careful never to take much out of any one box, and always rolled the package back exactly how it was. Then after a week or so, I came home from school to see the top of the fridge bare naked. Huh, I thought. I reckon Mrs. McCobb wants the whole family to lose their baby weight.
But no. The snacks weren’t gone, just moved. Mrs. McCobb leaned over me at the sink washing her baby bottles, and she had Oreos on her breath. The kids would come bouncing downstairs with little pieces of Pringles stuck all over their damn pajamas. They had their own stashes. I beat myself up wondering how they knew I’d stolen. I was so careful, lying in bed till everybody was asleep. Thanking God for the food I was fixing to take. Then I’d slip in and take my holy communion: exactly two Pringles, one Oreo, one handful of each cereal. Never whole packs of Dunkaroos or anything they might keep track of. How the hell did they know?
The only way I found out anything in that house was from Haillie. For instance about the enterprise of registered English bulldogs that actually were a cross between their mutt and something that ended up not fooling anybody. He tried three or four litters with different dad dogs before giving it up. After that, Missy refused to go back in the dog room, so it wasn’t me. Bad memories, more like. Haillie said the puppies were so, so adorable, and every time her dad took them away due to not getting sold, she’d cried to keep all of them. Every time. That was Haillie, thinking she could have anything and everything if she cried enough. That’s what I had, this babyfied kid being the only actual straight shooter in the family. I was shooting in the dark.
Nevertheless I worked it, getting Haillie on my side. Oftentimes she would float into my room while I was sitting on my blow-up bed that was the only thing to sit on in there, other than piles of laundry. It was the size bed for a small kid, which maybe explained the not feeding me, so I wouldn’t outgrow it. I’d be drawing my pictures, look up, and there she’d be watching me from the doorway, this tiny girl with a troll doll in one hand, dangling by its blue hair. I’d wonder how long she’d been standing there. Was this a girl thing, to sneak up on a guy while he’s in his bed without his defenses? But this was different from Emmy obviously, Haillie being a child. She had the same brown eyes as her dad, like dark holes in her head. I would let her come sit and watch me draw. She made me draw puppies over and over, which was how the dog story came up, plus other stories that were just pitiful. The parents having bad fights, one time the mom throwing an entire blender at him with a diet shake in it. I let her use my colored markers to write her name in my notebook. Being new at it, she dotted all the letters in Haillie including the l’s, which is how I know how to spell it. “Brayley,” hell, that’s anybody’s guess.
Finally I asked her point-blank what was the deal with the snacks. She said her mom was letting her and Brayley keep food in their rooms now. She went on about this, that, and the other, how she liked picking the chocolate chips out of the Chips Ahoys, etc., till I thought I might pass out. Then a little light bulb went on in the tiny head. She leaned over and whispered, “Do you want me to bring you some?” I said yeah, if she didn’t care. And she said what did I want?
I said maybe a sleeve of Oreos, and she was like, “SSHHH!” Putting her hand over my mouth. She got up on her knees and with her lips touching my ear, whispered in the tiniest voice, “I’ll bring you a whole package, but don’t tell. Don’t eat them in here. Take them outside.”
I asked why not. She pretended to zip her little mouth shut, and pointed up at the shelf over the washer. There was junk up there, all the usual stuff you’d not look at twice. Detergent bottles, a plastic bucket. Dryer sheets. And a baby monitor. The kind with the camera.
21
Mr. McCobb found me a job at Golly’s Market, which is the little gas-and-go out on Route 58. The sign says “Mary’s Mini Mart” left over from ages ago, before Mary McClary got her divorce and lit out to Nashville to try to make it as a singer. Another story.
My first day, Mr. McCobb drove me over and introduced me to the owner, Mr. Golly that was from overseas, with an accent. I was to ride the school bus out there every day after school, and Mrs. McCobb would pick me up. The place had snacks and food so I could eat my dinner there free as part of my pay, which turned out to be the one good thing about working at Golly’s Market. Mr. Golly said it was a shame how much he always had to throw out in the way of hot dogs and such that he’d put under the heat lamp for the day. So I got to be his trash can, yes!
Other than food and gas, Golly’s sold the usual things you’d want to pick up on your way home: Hostess cakes, beer, Tylenol, Nicorette gum, etc. The more expensive items like medicine and cigarettes he kept on a shelf behind the checkout. Mr. McCobb chatted with Mr. Golly, and I got nervous. Having no idea how to work a cash register, plus was I going to sell cigarettes and beer? Would I go to prison? Reaching the cigarette cartons was not the problem, I was some taller than Mr. Golly, that looked like a little brown tree somebody forgot to water. People were always mistaking me for older. Probably he didn’t know I was eleven, and maybe Mr. McCobb was banking on that. But I was pretty sure they had laws about who could sell what in America.
It turned out I would not be selling anything. I would be working for a different business on the premises run by a person that was referenced to Mr. McCobb by Murrell Stone. I started backing out the door, saying, Nuh-uh, no way am I dealing with Stoner, and they said, No, not him. Some friend of his. I had no idea Mr. McCobb even knew Stoner, but again, it’s Lee County.
He wished me luck and took off. I waited while Mr. Golly did something to lock the cash register, wiped off his hands, and took me outside, doing those things slower than you would believe. We finally got around to the back, and here was shock number one of my new career: the highest mountain of trash I’d ever seen, outside of the actual dump. My new situation of employment, and, I was soon to find out, hell on earth.