Then Fast Forward pulled up outside, and I got excited for the Peggots to meet my friend that was a Lee High Generals MVP. Out we all went. I could see Mrs. Peggot sizing up this good-looking young man, and Maggot just, gaah. Maggot that didn’t give two shits about football. That was Fast Forward’s powers at work. Creaky and Mr. Peg came back from the barn where they’d gone to look at the heifers, and Mr. Peg shook hands with him. I hate to say it, but I looked at the Peggots from a Fast Forward viewpoint, wondering if he might think they were a couple of old bumpkins, and that boy of theirs just a little bit odd, or what.

  By the time they took off, the other guys had started on supper. Swap-Out for all his derpness could chop onions like a ninja. You just had to not watch. I came in, and Creaky asked where the hell was Tommy, and I said, Oh shit, oh Jesus. I’d left him up in the field with the rolls of barbwire. It had been hours, and Tommy would still yet be up there in the tall grass. He’d wait there till the sun went down, because I’d said I would be right back, and he believed me.

  12

  Mom graduated from rehab and got to go home. Now instead of McDonald’s I could go sit in our kitchen, or in my room that was the exact mess I’d left it the night it all happened, visiting Mom with my chest hurting for how much I missed being a normal kid. Any minute Miss Barks was going to tap on the door and say, “Sorry, time’s up.” Then bam, back to foster life. Some years down the road it would be like this with the girls saying, Pull out now, quick! Honestly, give me all or nothing at all. Give me the damn visits at McDonald’s.

  But Mom said she lived for these times. Regardless the unfairness of her being allowed home while I wasn’t. Me being not the one of us that screwed up. She still had drug tests to pass and a hard row to hoe, so Miss Barks said it was a realistic goal for us to get me home for Christmas. She didn’t babysit us at the house, even though if Mom had wanted to do me damage there were a lot more options there than at McDonald’s. Miss Barks said Mom was earning trust. She’d drop me off and sit outside in her car for the hour, doing her homework or her case files. Homework, yes. Miss Barks was seriously young. She was taking night classes to get certified for a teacher, which she said was her dream, because she loved kids. And I thought, What am I?

  My first visit back home, I went after school while Stoner was at work. Mom said Stoner was still anti me moving back in, due to the stress of the three of us as a family making Mom relapse. You’re going to say, What kind of shit is that for a mother to be telling her kid? Even I thought that, at the time. But Mom had milk and cookies out on the table for me, so probably she was trying to learn the drill from TV. She was nervous. I cut her some slack. She showed me the presents Stoner got her for coming home, including a new microwave that told the time in lit-up numbers. She asked if my foster was still being an asshole, and I told her a person could get used to anything except hanging by the neck. Something I’d heard from Mr. Peg.

  After our time was up, Miss Barks came in and said I should get together anything I wanted to take with me. My first thought was to load up on stuff I missed like Snickers bars and my best comics. But anything valuable I would have to turn over to Fast Forward, so I ended up not taking much. Just two of my small-size action heroes that I could sneak in. I would hide them in Swap-Out and Tommy’s beds, and they’d never know who put them there. God, maybe. The surprise toy in the shitburger happy meal of their lives.

  On the drive back we rolled down the windows. “Just smell that,” she said. “Fall time.” Plowed-under silage fields, smoke from people’s leaf burning, and something a little bit sweet, maybe apples that had rotted on the ground. She was a country girl. She showed me where her parents’ farm was because we went past that road. The happiest I remember being that fall was in the car with Miss Barks. She was chatty and would ask questions like who were my caseworkers before, which I couldn’t remember, honestly. I’d see one a couple of times, she’d be all like, Hey, I’ve got your back. Next visit, here’s a new one reading my name off the files.

  Given her looks, I figured Miss Barks would have a boyfriend wanting to get her knocked up and married, but she made no mention of that. She’d moved out last year and got her apartment with the roommate in Norton, which her parents thought was a waste of money, but she wanted that bad to be on her own. I asked why did she want to be a teacher, and she said you have to follow your dreams, plus it pays better than DSS. She wanted an apartment by herself because her roommate left dirty dishes and her crap all over. She said her two best high school friends had gotten their scholarships and gone away to college, but she didn’t get one and it about killed her. Everybody knows there aren’t that many to go around, but she was still ashamed. She’d thought she was as smart as her two friends were. But here’s the thing, she told me, you don’t give up, sometimes you just have to take second choice. In her case the job at DSS, slob-roommate apartment, and night classes at Mountain Empire Community College.

  She asked me what I wanted to be whenever I grew up. I had to think about that. We went past some barns and tobacco fields with their big yellow-green leaves waving in the sad evening light. She looked over at me and said, Hey, why so glum, chum?

  I told her nobody ever asked me that question before, about growing up and what I wanted to be, so I didn’t know. Mainly, still alive.

  Eventually I got to spend a whole Saturday with Mom, which was the day she told me her surprise: Mom was pregnant. Holy Jesus. I was as ignorant as the next kid, but knew enough to ask, How did you get pregnant in rehab?

  She laughed, and said it was going on longer than that but she didn’t know until they ran blood tests on her for other reasons. Now she knew. Next April I was going to have a brother or sister. Which blew my mind actually, to put it that way. Me, Demon, that never had even a cousin to my name, soon to be a big brother. Maggot would be jealous. He’d never had any brothers or sisters so far, with future hopes slim to none. Goochland being women only.

  We had an amazing day, me and Mom. We went outside and raked up leaves and Maggot came over and we jumped in them. I wanted to run over and see Mrs. Peggot but Mom needed me all to herself, so I stayed. At one point she looked at me and said, Oh my god, Demon, I think you went and got taller than me! Which was impossible, so we measured ourselves with marks on the wall, the official way with a cereal box on your head. Of our two pencil lines, mine came out on top, by a hair. Mom always said she was five-feet-sweet in her two bare feet, but it turns out all this time she was only fifty-nine inches. Which rhymes with nothing, but now that was me too, plus a hair. Unbelievable. I was used to being taller than most kids, except the ones that had been held back a lot of grades. But taller than your own parent is a trip. We put on music and danced crazy, which was a thing we did, and sat on the floor and played dumb board games, which we hadn’t done forever. I kept thinking about the baby. I asked her what we should name it, because I had ideas. Tommy was a good one. Also Sterling, which Mom didn’t know was even a name.

  I asked where its room would be, and she was vague on that. Actually it kind of killed the mood. It turns out she and Stoner had been having arguments on moving to a bigger house. They hadn’t been married that long yet and he still liked the good times, so he was not keen on her having this baby. Which was ridiculous. If he wanted to run around with the no-kids version of Mom, he already missed that boat by ten years. Plus, the baby was on the way. You can’t take it to customer service and get your money back, I told her, but she didn’t laugh. Without really going into it, she told me that was more or less what Stoner had in mind.

  I changed the subject by turning over the whole checkerboard and getting in a tickle fight, just basically acting like an idiot. We about peed ourselves laughing.

  Stoner was supposed to get home around four, and it was required for me to wait and at least say hello. Our so-called work to do on learning to be a family. Miss Barks said she’d come in and get me at four thirty. I’d not seen Stoner since the night of Mom’s OD, so I kind of froze up. He looked the same: denim vest, leather bracelet, gauges. I’d spent a lot of time making him die in my drawing notebook. Even if he never saw those drawings, I’d made them, and looking at him now, I felt like he knew. Not sensible, just an in-my-mind thing.

  He gave Mom a kiss and asked what we two had been up to. She said nothing much. She got a beer out of the fridge and cracked it open for him, and asked why didn’t he sit down and talk to me a little, to start things off on a new foot. Fine, he said. He turned one of the kitchen chairs around and sat in it backward, straddling it with his arms folded on the back, looking at me. Mom pushed her hair out of her eyes, edgy. She’d been happy and fun all day and now without even looking at her straight on, I could feel her change.

  Stoner asked what I was learning in foster care. I said so far mostly putting up hay, working cattle, stretching fences, and riding the bus two hours each way to school. I told him basically everything else was the same as home, in terms of always having to watch my back. His eyes changed. He said he meant, how was I doing with the attitude.

  I told him fine, thanks.

  “Guess what!” Mom said. “I told him about the baby, and he’s as excited as he can be.” She was looking at me, mouth-smiling but not the eyes. Those please-save-me eyes. “Just think if this one’s a boy, and Demon gets a little brother. They’ll be two peas in a pod.”

  Stoner stared at her. “It wouldn’t be a fucking mulatto.”

  “My dad was Melungeon,” I told him. “Not a, whatever you said.”

  Mom tried to change the subject, asking where all Stoner made deliveries today, and why didn’t we go in the living room because the chairs were more comfortable and her back hurt.

  Stoner was still staring her down. “You wanted us to talk. We are fucking talking.”

  He had much to say. How I would have to be more considerate now, due to Mom’s fragile situation. Stoner had learned a lot, he said, from him and Mom going to their counseling. New words to help us all get along. Opposition disorder being one of them. Supposedly that was a disease, and I had it. If I wanted to move in here, I’d need to go on the medication to knock some of the wind out of my sails. Evidently I had too much of that in my sails. Wind.

  Mom acted somewhat like she didn’t hear any of this and brought up the different subject of Christmas. How I would be coming home then, and that we would do something special. I remembered to tell her the Peggots were going to Knoxville again over vacation. Probably they would invite me to go too.

  Not so fast, buddy, was Stoner’s advice. He said I was still not to hang out with Maggot, which I could tell was a surprise to me and Mom both. I told him Miss Barks had checked out the Peggots and given the thumbs-up. It turned out Miss Barks had dated one of Maggot’s cousins in high school. And Mom was like, Ha-ha, Lee County, wouldn’t you know it.

  Stoner slowly turned his head and fixed on her, like a big guard dog. “Since when does this Barks bitch make the rules about what we do as a family?”

  I’d been thinking it was ever since the night Mom almost offed herself and Stoner gave me a black eye, but maybe that’s just me. According to Stoner, the Peggots and me were a no-go. He said he was getting an injunction, so if I went over there the cops would arrest me.

  I looked over at Mom like, Is this true? And she made just the tiniest, tiniest shake of her head. He didn’t see it.

  The microwave he’d bought her with the blue lit-up clock said 4:21. Nine minutes to go. I didn’t want to be in that kitchen, and didn’t want to go back to the farm. I sat still, trying to be nothing and nowhere, watching my minutes tick out.

  13

  Like the saying goes: They passed out the brains, he thought they said trains and he missed his. That was Swap-Out. Tommy, though. Smart as hell, he could think himself out of any hole, but then would crawl back into it and sit there. It was like he chose the shit end of the stick, so nobody else would get it. A hard thing to watch.

  The day we had no water, for an example. This was a Sunday. We got up, flushed, nothing. Empty pipes howling. Bathroom sink, nothing. Kitchen, ditto. The guys said bad news, the well got drained. It would recover in a day or two, in the meantime look out. Sure enough, Creaky called us in the kitchen for his lecture on how farming is a war. All your livelong days, it’s you and your livestock and machinery against the bank that wants to foreclose on you. If you waste one thing, that’s a win for the bank. So, you do not waste one thing. Not food, not an ounce of grain, not water. I’m trying to be Christian here, he says, taking in orphan boys, and what does one of the damn idjits do but go and waste a whole goddamn well full of water.

  I wanted to tell him I was no orphan, plus, if he was so Christian we’d all be in church right then discussing certain rules like, don’t be pimping onto others as you wouldn’t want to get pimped on yourself. But I was not the damn idjit of Creaky’s concern.

  The natural suspect was Tommy, because of how we divided up barn chores: Swap-Out was shovel, I was feed, Tommy was water. I grained and got the calves in the paddocks with their right mothers, Tommy hosed out buckets and filled the barn troughs. There was this blue-handled spigot thing called a hydrant you had to open up to let the water in the barn, and that same line ran out to fill all the troughs on thirty-some acres. If you went back to the house without remembering to yank the hydrant handle back down, the water ran on and on, overfilling the troughs all night, as long as there’s water in the well. Not a minute more. It’s the easiest thing in the world to turn off the hose and go on your way, forgetting to shut down the hydrant.

  Tommy didn’t make that mistake. He’d done it once, and got leathered for it. After that he kept a clothespin on the hydrant handle. The brain of Tommy, as mentioned. He’d pinch the clothespin on his shirt whenever he turned the hydrant on. Finished, back it went on the handle. If he got to the house and somebody noticed a clothespin dangling on his shirt like an extra nipple, shit! Run back to the barn, it’s all good.

  Here’s who had sucked the well dry: Fast Forward. Long after we’d finished chores, he was out there hosing off his Lariat, leaving no speck of mud on the chassis or whitewall tires, because Saturday nights were for cruising. Meaning every person in Lee County between the ages of sixteen and married drives up and down main street to see and get seen. Fast Forward had washed his truck and gone cruising and left the well to run dry.

  So Fast Forward would tell Creaky that’s what happened. I was sure of it. He knew how the damn hydrant worked, he’d been there longer than any of us. And Creaky wouldn’t punish him, because as far as Creaky was concerned, Fast Forward’s shit smelled like hand lotion. The old man would figure some way this water was a necessary sacrifice working to the benefit of America and Lee County football. So confess and get on with it, I’m thinking. Creaky is asking Tommy what a stupid wasteful boy has to say for himself, and Fast Forward is over by the stove getting his coffee. I’m staring. Catching Fast Forward’s eye as he turns around. Thinking, Squad master, yo. What in the hell?

  Not a word. Creaky goes outside and fetches a piece of dirty old broken hose, like this is justice for a water-related crime, and makes us watch while he thrashes Tommy twenty licks on his sad big bottom. Fast Forward leaves the house. Tommy takes it for the team. He’s bent over hanging on the counter, trying not to cry, but most of all he is not ratting out Fast Forward. I was amazed, honestly. I’m just not that good of a person. Not that brave.

  We went on with our day the best we could, waterless, and later I found Tommy in the barn. There were nooks and crannies between the stacked hay bales, and he was curled up in one of those with his head hanging, doodling on an old paper grain bag. He always carried a pencil just in case, the way another person would carry Band-Aids or their heart pills. I sat down with him, wanting to ask why. But not really. I got it. Where in some universes you get reward chips for going X many days without drinking, in ours you got chips for getting through a day unhated. Creaky hating you was just background noise. But Fast Forward hating you would actually mean something. Anyway, the deal was done, with Tommy now going for the Guinness record of most skeletons ever drawn on a grain bag.

  I watched him draw for a long while. “So, are you like a Goth kid?”

  He looked surprised. He always did, of course, given the standing-up hair. But I don’t think he knew what I was talking about. “Skulls and death,” I said. “Usually isn’t that a Goth thing?” We had this one girl in our grade that wore black lipstick and showed people where she’d cut herself, even back then in the nineties. Way ahead of her time.

  Tommy said he drew skeletons because they were easy. He wasn’t a talented person like me that could do faces and expressions, arms with muscles and all like that, so he stuck to skeletons. Whenever he wanted to see them, there they were, he said. His little buddies.

  Mom was doing her recovering but none too cheerful about it. We had visits once a week, on a weekend if she could swing it but she had to work crappy hours. She was lucky and got her job back but had to start at the bottom again on taking the shifts nobody else wanted. Stoner made himself scarce whenever I came around, fine by me and Mom. She wanted to gripe about him. Stoner was not being all that supportive, babywise, saying it was her nickel if she wanted to do this. He didn’t want to hear about her long days on her feet restocking Halloween costumes and candy, just wishing she could sit in one of the marked-down lawn chairs and go to sleep. Or throw up. She was doing a lot of that. She said don’t ever be pregnant during the lead-up to Halloween because it will put you off candy corn for life. I told her thanks for the advice.