It was that fall type of day where the world feels like it’s about to change its mind on everything. Cicadas going why-why-why, the air lying still, all the fight gone out of summer. My head kept telling me Run! Go now! But I didn’t know from where, to what. She got up from her weeding, settled her hat on her head, and we walked back to the house on the gravel shoulder. She took big steps like a person crossing plowed ground, and I followed behind. It felt like she was mad at me. I still didn’t know what to call her. After all my years wishing for a mammaw, I finally had one and the shoe didn’t fit. I called her yes-ma’am. The sun was behind us. I shifted so my shadow touched her, falling across her skirt and fast, lumpy legs. No good reason.

  Back at the house I put the clothes, toothbrush, and other things my grandmother gave me in the suitcase she gave me, wondering if this stuff was Demon now, and if so, was I erased. It’s not that I didn’t like the clothes or the suitcase. They were fine. The next day Jane Ellen was driving me to Kingsport, where Mr. Winfield would meet us at noon in the Walmart parking lot. After all those days and nights that about had killed me getting here, the trip home wouldn’t take but an hour and a half. Crazy. That’s Lee County for you. It pulls you back hard.

  I went downstairs to Mr. Dick’s room. He didn’t like to start a new book till he finished his kite on the last one, but he wasn’t doing that. Just looking out the window. I said I’d miss hanging out with him, and he said the same. I wondered if I would ever see him again. The Coach Winfield deal could fall through, of course, but one way or another it looked like I was Virginia bound. Would they come see me? Given her whole cars-equal-death thing, not likely. I told him I’d call on the phone or write, even though I had no idea how to buy a stamp or any of that. We sat quiet a minute. I wasn’t one for hugging, or else I would have.

  The clouds had bellied up since morning and a stout wind was kicking up outside, turning the leaves upside down and silvery. Mr. Peg always said that meant rain on the way. I asked Mr. Dick if his kite was ready to fly, and he said it was. Then let’s do it, I said. I got a shiver in my spine. Maybe that’s what my brain had been telling me all day: Run. Go fly a kite.

  He looked pretty shocked, but he said okay, he just had one more thing to write on it. I tried to be patient, with him being the slowest writer. He said this one was from a different book, some words he wanted to put up there for me. He wrote them at the very top:

  Never be mean in anything. Never be false. Never be cruel.

  I can always be hopeful of you.

  If that was from him to me, it was more man-to-man talk than I’d ever had in life so far. It beat the two-cents-equals-happiness thing, all to hell. I said, Okay, let’s do this thing.

  I didn’t ask how he usually did it, who helped him or what, because I had my own plan. He wheeled outside, down the porch ramp and onto the flagstones of the front sidewalk, this being all the farther his wheelchair could go. But still in the yard. No running room. He motioned me to take the kite and go on with it, but I said, My man! We can do better. I wheeled him off the sidewalk onto the grass, which wasn’t hard with him weighing probably not much more than a bale of hay. Out over the bumpy grass we went, Mr. Dick working his mouth until what came out was “Heee, heeee!” Which I took to mean Hell yes!

  I unlatched the back gate and wheeled him plumb out into the stubble of the hayfield behind the house. Then the going got pretty rough, wheelchairwise, so we didn’t go far, just to where I could get the runny-go I needed to send that sucker to the moon. The clouds were scooting by, throwing shadows like a herd of wild monsters rumpusing over the field, and I was right there with them. I hefted the kite and let out the string, more and more till it was not but a speck in the sky. I could feel rain starting to spit on us, and who cared. Let it thunder.

  The string was pulling hard in the wind, but I towed it back to Mr. Dick and put it in his hand. “Hang on tight,” I said, and flopped on the ground beside him, panting like a dog. He was quiet, holding that string and kite with everything he had. The way he looked. Eyes raised up, body tethered by one long thread to the big stormy sky, the whole of him up there with his words, talking to whoever was listening. I’ve not seen a sight to match it. No bones of his had ever been shoved in a feed bag. The man was a giant.

  28

  We sat in the parking lot waiting. Me with my gut full of rocks, Jane Ellen with her workbook opened out on the steering wheel, doing math problems. What is the deal with women, somebody tell me. A day can be going to hell in a hornet’s nest, you’re fixing to lose your breakfast, but she’s still going to get her homework done.

  “What if Coach Winfield doesn’t show?” I asked.

  “He will.” Her pencil never stopped moving. I guess I didn’t either. She’d already told me to stop fooling with the glove box before I busted it. An ’89 Comet is what she drove.

  “What if he doesn’t?”

  She erased something, then turned over her wrist to look at her watch. “He’s not that late yet. We got here early.”

  I wanted to go home. Which was nowhere, but it’s a feeling you keep having, even after that’s no place anymore. Probably if they dropped a bomb and there wasn’t any food left on the planet, you’d still keep feeling hungry too.

  “Je-sus,” I said. A car had pulled in, and the guy getting out of it was the weirdest-looking human I ever saw, not counting comic books. Stick legs, long white arms, long busy fingers that twined all over him. Running through his hair, wrapping around his elbows while he stood looking around the parking lot. A redhead, but not my tribe. He was the deathly white type with the pinkish hair and no eyebrows. That skin that looks like it will burn if you stare at it.

  “Great day in the morning.” Jane Ellen shut her workbook.

  “Snake Man to the rescue,” I said.

  She couldn’t help herself smiling, with that tongue stuck in the gap of her teeth. We both stared, rude as you please. His car was a late-model Mustang with a big trailer hitch, normal. But this guy, my Lord. He stood there hugging himself with those arms, looking around. Then looking at us. He walked around to the side of us, checking out Jane Ellen’s car.

  “What’s he looking for?” I whispered.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered back. “What does a snake eat?”

  She had her hand on the key, ready to start the engine. But then he came straight at us and we froze. Stuck his hand in the open window on my side. We both reared back.

  “I reckon you all are Betsy Woodall’s.” Creepy voice. Too quiet.

  “Who wants to know?” I asked.

  “Coach Winfield got tied up this morning. Saturday practice can run real long.”

  “Then who are you?” Jane Ellen was getting back on her game. Not about to turn me over to some random freak outside Walmart.

  He waved a long hand in front of him, like shooing flies. “I’m nobody. Assistant coach.” He leaned farther in and reached his hand across to Jane Ellen, causing her to rear back again. “Ryan Pyles,” he said. “They call me U-Haul.”

  She stared at the freckle-zombie hand. “Why is that?”

  He pulled back his hand, ran it through his stringy pink hair. We waited.

  “I move equipment for the team. Your pads, helmets, Igloo coolers. Coach wants it hauled, I’m the one gets it there.” He moved his head backward on his neck like he had extra bones in there. The man was a reptile. “I didn’t hitch up the trailer. You got a lot of gear, son?”

  Being no son of his, I said nothing. He stuck his head in the window, checking out my one suitcase on the back seat. “Okay, let’s get ’er done.”

  I looked over at Jane Ellen like, Don’t feed me to Snake Man! And she was like, What am I supposed to do? She couldn’t go back to Murder Valley with the boy-cargo still in tow, I knew that. Probably she’d get her education extended by twenty years.

  I went, but not without a fight. Jane Ellen marched him over to a pay phone and made him call somebody to vouch. They didn’t get Coach Winfield, but some secretary at the school evidently said, Yes, that sounded right. U-Haul Pyles will get the boy where he needs to go.

  That turned out to be a mansion, sitting on a big hill overlooking downtown Jonesville. This place had a lot more going on than a normal house, extra parts jutting out with their own separate roofs and windows. Not a castle but headed that direction. Which stood to reason. If Lee County had a king, he’d be the Generals coach. U-Haul geared down to take the steep driveway, and all I could think was, No way am I going in. A mansion. I wouldn’t know how to act.

  “Home sweet home,” he said, in this eat-me tone. He cut the engine and turned a glare on me that scorched. His brown eyes were almost red, like little round windows out of hell, no eyelashes for curtains. How did he look in the mirror with those eyes? He grabbed my suitcase, and with me thinking, Shitshitshit no escape plan as usual, I followed him in the front door.

  Inside was a shock. It looked like a regular house, with junk all over the place. Boxes of cleats, resistance bands, rolls of athletic tape, dumbbells, a busted car mirror. An exercise bike in the middle of the room with clothes draped on it. There were certain castle aspects for sure, a gigantic fireplace chimney with the mantel made of a sawed log. And a gigantic dangling light over the gigantic dinner table, where nobody had eaten I’m going to guess since the invention of forks. Amongst the piled-up papers and magazines I counted three pairs of sunglasses, more dip cans than you want to know about, and one Nike Air Max. On the table. It made me miss Mom.

  U-Haul said Coach would be down in a minute and to excuse him because he had things to do in Coach’s office. He shook my hand in a sneak attack, then slithered off towards the back of the house. I felt slimed. I wished for a bathroom where I could wash my hands. There was a big staircase with the curved railing like in a movie. I wondered if it was the same pigsty all over, or just concentrated here in the end zone around the front door. The one tidy spot was the mantel with a photo of a girl, or lady actually. Young. Sad-looking, apart from having the hair explosion thing from the eighties going on, which no girl would be caught dead in now. So, she probably was. Dead. The tragic wife raised up by my grandmother and taken young. Just a guess.

  I turned around and freaked out, due to a kid looking at me with the exact same face, the photo come to life. Scrawny though, almost my height but skinnier, wearing one of those dweeb flat caps that would instantly get a guy poundcaked at school, if not for the badass leather jacket and Doc Martins. Those things cost, meaning there’s backup somewhere, so watch who you’re punching. This kid looked sad, a little soft, a little scary. All of those, at the same time.

  “Hey,” he said. “I’m Angus.”

  “Angus like the cattle?”

  His eyes shot sideways, and back. “Exactly like that.”

  “So, I guess I’m supposed to be staying here a while. With Coach Winfield.”

  “Yeah, I know. He’s my dad.”

  Oh, the little orphan baby. Reset. I asked him what grade he was, and he said eighth.

  “So you’re on the JV squad?”

  He looked me over with his big gray eyes like he’s reading the instruction manual of me. With the plan of taking me apart or putting me back together, I had no idea. I started thinking over my options on who to call if they kicked me out of here before dark.

  “No,” he said finally. “Tragedy of tragedies. Not on the JV team.”

  Coach Winfield came down the stairway like something dumped out of a bucket, making a big man’s racket, talking before he’s even in the room. “Hey buddy, great to see you, sorry, practice ran long, we’ve got the Vikings Friday so you know what that means, Betsy said you’re a Lee County boy, is that right? So you know the territory . . .”

  He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, checking me out. He was big and broad, paunchy in that certain way of guys that start out all muscle before the beer takes over. Red cap, big black eyebrows. I couldn’t honestly say if I recognized him from the games, or just recognized the red windbreaker. “How old are you, young man?”

  I was so used to lying, I actually had to think. “Twelve next month.”

  He let out a long whistle.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Not a problem. That’s what she told me, starting middle school. I was expecting a different make and model. You look like a linebacker, son.”

  “Yes sir,” I said, with my stomach doing a little hell-yes dance. God in his heaven kicking a field goal and the angels doing cartwheels in their twirly skirts. Home sweet home.

  We didn’t eat at the giant table piled with crap, thanks to the Winfields having another table in the kitchen where it was a lot tidier on the whole. A lady named Mattie Kate set out the meat loaf and coleslaw and finished wiping down everything in sight with the tail of her apron, then said good night and left the three of us to eat our supper.

  They didn’t say any blessing, just dug in. With Angus still wearing that hat at the table, and Coach in his, so this was not going to be one of those houses with rules. Maybe different ones, though. Too soon to relax. I fed my face, probably too much, too fast. The windows were open and I could hear a tractor and smell the hay that somebody was cutting outside. I was glad it wouldn’t be me putting it up in the barn. I wondered if I’d get sent to a farm again, after here. Probably yes. I’d started to see how being big for your age is a trap. They send you to wherever they need a grown-up body that can’t fight back.

  We did more eating than talking, with Angus keeping the big gray eyes on me at all times. Giant eyes like a manga comic. Coach for his part had giant teeth, like too big, some way. Too flat across, too white. He didn’t smile much, and it looked like those teeth would hurt his lips if he tried. He asked the awkward things adults do if they’re making the effort, like what was my favorite subject in school. I told him lunch, which wasn’t a joke, but he laughed. I asked how the season was going so far, since I’d missed the first games. What I wondered was, How in hell is your son not doing JV football? It seemed like that would be a given. I mean, yes, I noticed the small hands and skinny shoulders, but still. It’s only JV. They’ll let anybody sit on a bench.

  Afterward we piled up the dishes for Mattie Kate to do in the morning and Coach told Angus to get me settled in my room, which surprised me. My own room. I figured we’d be bunking together, but no. We went up the stairs and then more stairs and down a hall to a room that was one of the castle-type parts of the house, rounder than it was square. Six walls, painted dark green, white window trims. Three of the walls had huge windows.

  “You can use that dresser,” Angus said. “Mattie Kate was supposed to clear it out if she had time. If you find anything in there, just throw it in the hall and she’ll get it tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” I said, which I wouldn’t. Throwing things on the floor for somebody else to deal with, seriously? Whatever else might be said about me, I was housebroke. There’s no tooth fairy living here, so pick up your damn shit, being basically the motto of foster care. How Mom got through it, and still the way she was? One of God’s mysteries.

  Angus started dragging open the big windows, saying it was stuffy in there, but I didn’t care. The smell reminded me of the Peggots’ attic. In back of the house the view was hills and hayfields as far as I could see. The guy was still down there on his tractor, working up and down his field in the yellow light of day’s end. The middle window looked down the driveway, and the front one looked across the top of Jonesville to a big hill behind it. I could see why they built houses like this, back in the day. Whoever launched an attack, you’d see them coming.

  It was the best room I’d ever been in, and also the best house. I said so, but Angus just shrugged. “It’s too much house for us.”

  “I didn’t think there was any such thing. Like too much money or too much food.”

  “A person can eat too much. Obviously. People die of it.”

  “Sign me up,” I said.

  Again the big sad eyes, puddles on a sidewalk.

  “Kidding,” I said. “Sorry. I won’t eat you all out of house and home or anything.”

  “I don’t think you’ll get a choice. Dad likes the look of your frame, so he’s going to bulk you up like his new prime steer.”

  “Snap,” I said. “Next comes the slaughter.”

  He almost smiled. “That’s one word for the game. Said you, not me, for the record.”

  “For the record, I never heard of anybody that died of being a linebacker. Maybe just fang-banged into a coma by horny cheerleaders.”

  His half smile yanked back in so fast, like a slug if you touch his little horns. All pulled back inside the pissed-off black leather and the blank eyes. Shit. I was piling stupid on stupid here, but didn’t know how else to go. As far as I’d seen, the basis of friendship for guys past the age of bedwetting is trash talk. Throw “fuck” into any sentence and you’re dead hilarious.

  “Tell your dad thanks for the bed,” I said. All else fails, try kissing up. “The last place I was living, I got the floor of the laundry room.”

  “At Miss Woodall’s? She made you sleep on the floor?”

  “No, not there. You know her? My grandmother?”

  My grandmother. It felt like casually pulling a hundred bucks out of my pocket. I saw something move behind the eyes of Angus, like, Damn, dude. One hundred bucks.

  “My mother used to take me to see her,” he said. “But I was too little to remember.”

  Right. Before all the cancer and the death.

  Angus showed me a bathroom that was for me and nobody else. Shower-tub combo. I’d find a way. His room and his dad’s were one floor down. I asked how many rooms were in the house total, which he didn’t know. Unbelievable. Counting is the first thing I’d do. I asked did they ever switch around.