That summer, I wanted a job and my own money. Coach said there was no need to fool with that, just tell him what I wanted and he’d get it taken care of. Which was my whole problem, having to ask. He said to remember football camp started in July. That was two months away. I seldom pushed back on Coach, but this time I did. So he asked around, and found out Coach Briggs’s brother that was managing the Farm Supply in Pennington needed somebody over there pronto. Briggs said the job was mine if I wanted it because his brother was in total charge, due to the owner having a heart attack. They needed an extra pair of hands and muscle enough for loading bags of feed into people’s trucks. Muscle I had, plus I was fifteen, so having a job was legal now. Coach filled out some forms and I started the day after school let out. Seven bucks an hour to save up for a car.
Because that’s the thing: until you have your wheels, you’re still a child. Anyplace I went, I had to ask. Angus now had a ’99 Jeep Wrangler that Coach gave her for the sole reason of turning sixteen. She drove me over to Pennington for my job. Or worst case, U-Haul would. If I wanted to go out someplace after work, I had to make that somebody else’s business. Fifteen is the hardest age. Emmy had told me in Knoxville they had these city buses that could take you all over. Not just to school, but for people of every age to ride to the movies, skate park, wherever. Or if in a hurry, you could call up a taxi. I’d seen those things on TV, but didn’t totally believe Emmy. That they would have all that for any regular person to use.
Farm Supply was the best job I’d had so far: decent customers, zero rats that I was aware of, nobody cooking meth. The whole store had this sweet-feed smell that’s a cross between fresh-cut grass and Cheerios. They sold all the regular type things: calf and sheep wormer, horse tack, lawn chemicals, chain saws. In May they had tomato plants and the like, for people to get their gardens put in. I’d set all those on a table outside the store in the mornings, and move them back inside for closing. Next came the chicks, also my job: unloading them from the cardboard shipping boxes into big troughs in the store where people could see and buy them. Keeping up their feed and water, the heat lamps on at all times, changing out the newspapers under them because man could those little dudes poop. The life of a chick: eat, shit, peep such a ruckus inside those galvanized troughs, you could hear it from the parking lot. Hard to believe every old beady-eyed hen starts out that way, as a little fuzz ball, yellow or black or spotted. Mornings before we opened, it was my job to scoop out the ones that had died overnight, cold and flattened out from being walked on. Each one I took out back to the dumpster was its own tiny sadness.
This girl Donnamarie that ran the register was the one to train me, nice as could be other than acting like she’s my mom, all honey-this and honey-that and “You think you can remember all that, sweetie?” Just three or four years out of high school herself. But she did have three kids, so probably she’d wiped so many asses she got stuck that way. I didn’t hold it against her. Coach Briggs’s brother stayed upstairs in the office. Heart attack guy was a mystery. First they said he might come back by the end of summer. Then they all stopped talking about him.
As far as customers, every kind of person came in. Older guys would want to chew the fat outside in the dock after I loaded their grain bags or headgates or what have you. I handled all the larger items. They complained about the weather or tobacco prices, but oftentimes somebody would recognize me and want to talk football. What was my opinion on our being a passing versus running team, etc. So that was amazing. Being known.
It was the voice that hit my ear like a bell, the day he came in. I knew it instantly. And that laugh. It always made you wish that whoever made him laugh like that, it had been you. I was stocking inventory in the home goods aisle, and moved around the end to where I could see across the store. Over by the medications and vaccines that were kept in a refrigerator case, he was standing with his back to me, but that wild head of hair was the giveaway. And the lit-up face of Donnamarie, flirting so hard her bangs were standing on end. She was opening a case for him. Some of the pricier items were kept under lock and key. I debated whether to go over, but heard him say he needed fifty pounds of Hi-Mag mineral and a hundred pounds of pelleted beef feed, so I knew I would see him outside. I signaled to Donnamarie that I’d heard, and threw it all on the dolly to wheel out to the loading dock.
He pulled his truck around but didn’t really see me. Just leaned his elbow out the open window and handed me the register ticket. He’d kept the Lariat of course, because who wouldn’t.
“You’ve still got the Fastmobile, I see,” I said.
He froze in the middle of lighting a smoke, shifted his eyes at me, and shook his head fast, like a splash of cold water had hit him. “I’ll be goddamned. Diamond?”
“The one,” I said. “How you been hanging, Fast Man?”
“Cannot complain,” he said. But it seemed like he wasn’t a hundred percent on it really being me loading his pickup. He watched me in the side mirror. The truck bounced a little each time I hefted a mineral block or bag into the bed. Awesome leaf springs on that beauty. I came around to give him back his ticket, and he seemed more sure.
“I’d have taken you for a stranger,” he said. “You’re twice the man you used to be.”
Weightwise, possibly true, and at least a foot taller since fifth grade. “Doing my best,” I said. “You taking all this to Creaky’s cattle?”
“Hell no. That shithole ran itself into the ground some while ago. Tempting as it was to stay and watch the old man cry, I did not.”
“So is he dead now?” The last time Angus and I were out there to steal another Christmas tree, we’d seen bank auction signs stapled on the gate.
Fast Forward took a drag on his cigarette, eyes sliding sideways. “Maybe. For all the shit I give.” I just stood there burning it all to my brain. Dragging like that, not giving a shit like that.
“So, where you living at now, man?”
“Got my own place. Close to fifty acres up by Cedar Hill.”
“Sweet, your own farm. Is it over by where they have the bison?”
“A few miles shy of that. North side of 58.”
“Sweet,” I said. Again. Just struck dumb, because holy crap. A foster kid going that far in life, not even all that old yet. “You got a tobacco bottom?”
“Two-and-a-half-acre allotment, so it’s just about right. Manageable.”
“Well, if you ever need help cutting or anything. You know I’m there.”
“I appreciate it. But what I need to know is, can the boy keep the damn gloves on.”
He smiled, I laughed. The times we’d had. I mean, yes, this was getting poisoned that we were laughing about. Every minute of those days had sucked. But with another person knowing it was hell, you had something. I wanted to ask if he ever saw Tommy or Swap-Out, but really I wanted to be the only one that mattered to him. I saluted him, as in times of old. I needed to get back to work, but my feet were glued to the ramp. Fast Forward, human magnet. And his F-100.
He threw the butt of his cigarette onto the cement pad. “Like I said, I almost didn’t know you up close. But I have seen you on the field.”
“You’ve seen me play?”
“What do you think, Eighty-Eight? I’m a General. It’s not something you get over.”
The engine engaged, the Lariat pulled out, and I waited to see if my heart would settle down. He’d seen me play.