Sometimes he’d make me go with him on nonsense errands, like running over to the machine shop to help him load up the tackle sled they repaired. Asking in front of Coach, so I wouldn’t share my true feelings on where he could put his tackle sled. Sometimes he’d stop by his mom’s over at Heeltown, which wasn’t a single-wide but one of those built houses from the old days, small, front porch with the steps falling apart. So much crap on that porch, my Lord. Sofas and chairs stacked one on top of another, upside down and sideways. Cats crawling all over and through the piles like head lice. While U-Haul went in and did whatever he did, I would sit in the car and count the louse cats. As far as going inside, you couldn’t pay me.
Mrs. Pyles would want us to drop her off at Foodland or Walmart. She was heavier set, not a skeleton like him, but had the same red eyes and weird bad manners, old-person version: Honey, I’m just a little old nobody, now scooch ’at seat forwards and give me some room. She had a creepy way of getting intel out of me. On the McCobbs for instance, that were back from Ohio, living in Pennington Gap. Honey, is it true what I heert about her a-pawning off solit gold jewry, ain’t nobody can figure how she come honest by them kind of things. I was dumb enough to tell her about Mrs. McCobb’s rich parents spoiling the grandkids, before it dawned on me what she was actually trying to find out: were the McCobbs trading in stolen goods.
Another couple she wanted to discuss was Ms. Annie and Mr. Armstrong. What made him think he deserved that beautiful woman for his wife. They’s a world a people a-wondering on that. Why she’d stoop to lowerin’ herself thataway. “Beautiful” in this instance meaning white, I wasn’t stupid. Ms. Annie was a tattooed hippie. If she’d married any other guy in Lee County, they’d be asking why he had lowered himself. A kid of my raisings is not going to tell an older person flat-out, Lady, get the hell out of my face. But I came close.
Finally one day I told U-Haul that on errands involving his mom, he could count me out. He drilled those red eyes into me and said maybe he wasn’t a Gifted, but he knew things. Who I talked to on the phone. Where I hid my weed. How he knew, I can’t guess. But if I mentioned to Coach about us going to his mom’s house, he said, I’d be looking for a new place to live.
After the season ended, I had time on my hands. The Peggots sometimes would pick me up on a Saturday to go see June and Emmy. No more Kent. That show was over, and according to Emmy not just a breakup but World War III. Kent was a con man, June was a paranoid bitch, take it from there. I hated to think about it, but Maggot wanted details, what weapons were drawn, etc. Probably from living with grandparents he was action-deprived. This was a Saturday in February, cold as tits, and still the adults sent us outside to mess around in the woods. Probably so they could have this same conversation inside. We made a pitiful little band: Maggot freezing because he refused to wear the camo hunting coat the Peggots bought him. Emmy in her puffy coat that was black-and-white-printed like a cow, seriously. We dragged our feet through leaf slop, kicking up the smell of acorns. There was an old wrecked cabin on the property, logs and a fallen-down chimney but no roof. We would have called it a fort if we were kids, but now it was nothing. A stupid place we were forced to hang out because we couldn’t yet drive.
Emmy said Kent and June didn’t use weapons, just mouths, both parties packing serious heat in that department. Kent was a yeller, but mouthwise, June was an AR-15. Instant reload, engineered to kill. Maggot wouldn’t let it alone, wanting to know what June was so mad over.
“I don’t know. Him being a shiznet?”
Emmy’s cheeks were bright pink and her eyelashes sticking together, so pretty and sad. We were sitting on the wrecked chimney, cold rocks freezing our asses. Emmy and Maggot both picking at their nail polish, me pitching rocks through the gaps. The logs were gigantic, stacked at the corners the way you’d twine your fingers together, with big spaces between. They’d had some mother trees to cut down up here, back in the day. I could see Emmy’s weird house down below us through the trees, a giant wooden bowl upside-down with Peggots inside.
“Wait, correction,” she said. “A weapon was drawn. Mom had her Ginsu knife and kind of waved it around. Not chasing or anything. She was trying to get supper before it all blew up.”
What got the knife pulled on Kent was him telling June to leave it to the professionals because she wasn’t a doctor, just a nurse. Snap. A nurse practitioner is a trained professional and can prescribe medications, Emmy said, June was just choosing not to give out any more of Kent’s poison. She’d organized a meeting on it over at town hall with the biggest crowd they ever had showing up, to sign a petition thing against Kent’s company. Which he took to be a major backstab from his girlfriend. He said she was uncompassionate to people in pain. June said if he wasn’t such a damn coward he’d come down to her clinic and see all these decent people with hepatitis from needles, and their family farms going bankrupt in six months. Which I didn’t get honestly, about the needles. Kent’s thing was pills.
We stayed up there a long time in the cold. If we were kids on TV we’d have been sitting in a booth of some shiny diner or at a swimming pool mansion, instead of dead-looking woods. I used to like being outside with all the little beings poking after their business, but at that moment I felt ripped off. All we had was this junkbone cabin with its valuable parts, if any, long since stolen. Some squirrels to shoot at, if we’d been properly armed. The day would have been more tolerable if I’d brought a joint and we could get blazed, which Maggot would have been up for. Emmy, a question mark. June protected that girl like she was made of ice. Emmy was old enough to be driving, but June was all, No ma’am, these Lee County roads are teenage death traps, etc. You had to wonder why Emmy wouldn’t push back. I knew her and didn’t know her, regardless our onetime marriage plans. I watched clouds of frozen breath coming out of her face while she worked her way through the drama of June and Kent like it was the end of the world.
Long story short, whatever supper June was working on with that Ginsu knife did not get made. Screaming happened, hightailing was done. Kent being top salesman of his company had sold a gazillion of his pills in Lee County and actually won the giant bonus, Hawaii vacation for real, that he was going to take Emmy and June on over spring vacation, so. Bad timing on that one. The breakup rattled her so bad, June had asked Hammer Kelly to come over and spend a few nights at the house in case the bastard came slinking back around. Emmy said Hammer was so nice about it. He sat up on the couch all night, sleeping with his deer rifle in his arms.
I was and always will be an idiot. I just pray to get old enough one day to recall Linda Larkins without wanting to curl up with my balls between my legs and die. It was her little sister that dropped the bomb, and the only saving grace was that May Ann herself had no clue. Just pokes me on the shoulder in class one day and says hey. Her sister got married.
“Your sister Linda?” I got an instantaneous half-mast. In fucking Algebra. Then the rest of it slowly dawned. “Married? Who to?”
“This guy from over to Hillsville, Loring Blake, that drives stock cars. I doubt you’d know him. My mom only met him the once, before Saturday. We all thought she was going to community college after she got that Rotary math-whiz thing. And then shebam. Married.”
“Saturday,” I said. It was the end of class, where we were doing our homework. Never mind a grenade had gone off in my brain, I was expected to keep my voice down.
“It was no big deal,” May Ann said. “They just went to the courthouse and then we had the family over. They picked up ribs at Fatback’s. And then Linda’s all like, That was brilliant, barbecue ribs, because she’s wearing a white dress, and … why am I telling you all this?”
“I give up. Why?” I was kind of seeing stars, the way a shock can make you somewhat go blind. As soon as that part was over, I knew I would feel like throwing up, laughing, crying, and jerking off in public. About equally.
“Because, Linda said,” May Ann rolled her eyes, “Quote, do you still see that tall redhead kid Demon that’s on the team, will you please tell him I done got married? Unquote.”
“Why would she mention me?”