These kids did seem young. Outside of the dummy classes, you’d be hard pressed to find a kid in Jonesville Middle that had even held down a job. Being friends with such people entailed listening to made-up problems to some degree. I could tolerate that, much more so than Angus. Girls can surprise you by knowing more than they’re letting on. Also for a guy it’s different. If you sit still and let your ears take all that girl business, other body parts may get their turn.
So the impossible happened. In due time, a school would be owned by Demon Copperhead in his Members Only jacket. He should have been the happiest damn fool ever. But no, he’s waiting for the shit to hit the fan, looking behind whoever is being nice to him that day to see what’s coming. Still your jack-shit homeless orphan, just faking it in nice clothes. I’d done nothing to deserve good luck, and I knew what people are made of. Sooner or later they will turn on you. Or die.
Also, there was this thing that happened with U-Haul. This was in late January. Awkward as fuck. After Coach went to bed U-Haul would spend hours in his office. Putting receipts into the books, jerking off, who knew what he did. And he scooted around the house in his white socks, for reasons of stealth. U-Haul never came into a room, he materialized. In the doorway of our beanbag TV lounge that night. There he was, crooking a skeleton finger at me.
“Hey! What’s up?” I said. Playing dumb as to the meaning of the “come here” finger.
“The playbook is messed up. Coach must have dropped it. The binder is busted.” He rolled his head to the side, heaving stringy hair out of his eyes. “I thought you’d help me put it back in order. You and him are so tight, I’d say you’ve got it memorized.”
I looked at Angus but she was like, Your funeral, pal. On the football front she’d made herself clear from day one. Not interested. I followed him downstairs wondering how a human could look that much like a reptile while walking down stairs. He slithered.
We got in the office and he closed the door. “Sit, sit,” he said, slinking around to Coach’s swivel chair behind the desk. I wanted to stay on my feet, but he burned the red-brown eyes into me and I gave in. Moved a box of kneepads and a mouth guard off a chair and put my butt in it.
He pulled the playbook out of a drawer. Nothing about it looked broken. He’d lied to get me in here. “So, is it Waggle, Bootleg, Shovel? On the Wing T plays? Or the other way around?”
He shoved the big binder across the desk and I opened it. Leafed through the pages and saw nothing out of the normal. Pages stained with fast-food grease, their worn-out holes mostly falling off the rings. Perfectly good playbook. U-Haul was staring at me.
“You think you’re some hot shit. Don’t you.”
I’d never been clear whether I was supposed to “sir” this creep or not. I opted out. “I might be shit. That has been said. Temperaturewise, it’s not really my call.”
He smirked. “I reckon that’s Gift-and-Talented for telling me to fuck off.”
Damn. How did he find that out? Angus hadn’t even told Coach, let alone U-Haul. She was honorable. “Whatever,” I said.
“Right. What would I know? Just a nobody assistant coach, from a long line of nobodies. Mercy’s sakes, don’t let me be the one to stop you.” He kept pushing his hand into the long red greasy hair, then running the hand down his face. Doing that one thing over and over.
“Stop me from what?”
“Oh, you know. Coming in here like one of the family. Using your tactics.”
This time as the hand ran over his face I caught a stealth nose-pick, one finger scooting into the nostril. He took his eyes off me to see what he’d mined out of there. Rolled it on his fingertips into a little ball. U-Haul was a horror movie. Brain says run. Eyes can’t look away.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Take it up with my grandmother, if you don’t think I should be here. It was her idea.”
“Well, sure it was. And Coach rolls over and takes it.” He leaned forward, rolling his fingertips still, but eyes back on me. “Eleven years I’m here at his bark and call, running his errands. Driving you kids around like I’m your motherfucking babysitter. If I had tits you’d be sucking on them. And I get sent home at night to my mother’s house. Why is that, I forget?”
I said nothing. It was hard to concentrate, Christ. I’d never seen his eyes blaze so red. And what was his plan for that booger?
“Oh, right. Because I’m a fucking nobody. Okay, that’s it!” He leaned back in his chair.
I waited. He didn’t move. “That’s what? You’re done, I can go now?”
“Consider this a friendly warning, if you think you’re part of this family. They’ll put out the welcome mat. Just watch out for the naked bootleg play that’s coming to take you down.”
I walked out of there wondering how long it would take to get the bad taste out of my mouth. Maybe forever. I needed no snake to tell me I didn’t belong in that family or house or life. I was the tree of knowledge.
I didn’t turn out to be full-gifted, only half. Still hanging on by the short hairs in math. But Language Arts held my interest. Mr. Armstrong the counselor was also a teacher. But he didn’t do the usual teacher thing of making sure you know you’re worthless. Or the Mrs. Jackson thing of, We’re all turds in this teapot kiddos so why don’t I just paint my nails. Mr. Armstrong would talk to us like humans. He was mainly Seventh and Eighth but subbed in for Sixth a lot that winter due to our regular English teacher getting shingles. His first day, he said let’s get to know each other, you can ask me anything, maybe wanting kids to relax about what he was. Some smartass asks, does he get sunburned. I thought for sure not. I’m only Melungeon-dark, and I’d never burned. But he said yes, he wore sunscreen to be outside, like mowing his lawn. He told us other surprising things. If a person is black, you’re supposed to write Black, because it’s not an adjective but a category like Chinese or American. All capitalized because proper nouns. I asked what about Melungeons, thinking he’d not have heard of them. Surprise again, he said good example. Melungeon is a proper noun.
He was from Chicago, that’s why the accent. He came here after college as a Vista, which was this program where people from the city come help you out for being poor. His wife was a Vista also, from some other city. They met here and got married. No kids. They played in a bluegrass band called Fire in the Hole, him banjo, her fiddle. I thought of Mr. Peg. He’d be glad his type music hadn’t totally died of old age. Mr. Armstrong never heard of bluegrass music before he came here, but he fell in love with everything about the mountains and stayed on.
I knew about the wife. If people don’t approve of something, it is discussed, and this was. She was white. And an art teacher, my good luck. In middle school they didn’t have any art, she taught at Lee High. But Mr. Armstrong took some of my drawings to show her, and she came over one day to meet with me. Ms. Annie. She talked in a voice that was almost like singing (which she did, in their band) and dressed like a hippie. Long blue skirt, flowery scarf on her long hair, earrings with little rocks on them, four colors of blue. Blond eyelashes, which you don’t see that much. We were in the empty teacher lounge that had a couch, but she put out some thick paper and pencils on the low table and sat on the floor, so I did the same.