“People,” Mr. Armstrong finally kind of yelled, like he did whenever we were ignorant in class. “Are you following me here? A war. Opposite sides. Flying both those flags at once makes no sense. It’s like rooting for the Generals and the Abingdon Falcons in the same game.”

  Whoah. We were all like, Crap. Because that’s unthinkable.

  Some guys started mumbling heritage and nothing personal, and Mr. Armstrong took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, looking as usual somewhere between interested and flat-out flummoxed. “Whose history are we talking about?” he asked. “Because Virginia voted to join the Confederacy, that’s true. To support the plantation owners. But the people here in this county were not represented in that vote.”

  Nobody wanted to tangle with him. Of all of us still out there that hadn’t yet got on buses or edged back into the building, I’m going to say not one person would have taken up a rifle for any plantation fat cats. We were actually glad of what he told us, that the mountain people of Virginia rounded up their own militias to try and fight on the other team, Union. He said we should feel free to pass on this info to certain guys, and we shook our heads like, Those assholes, regardless some of those assholes being brothers or friends or dads. Because that was Mr. Armstrong. Even if you didn’t necessarily want to, you would end up on his side.

  Melungeon turns out to be another one of those words. Invented for hating on certain people until they turned it around and said, Screw you, I’m taking this. These people were mixed, all the colors plus Cherokee and also Portuguese, which used to be its own thing, not white. The reason of them getting mixed was that in pioneer days Lee County was like now, with nobody having a pot to piss in. These folks being poor as dirt just had a good time and ended up with the all-colored babies. If they went anywhere else, these kids got the hate word, melungeon, which Mr. Dick said is some other language for mixed-up piece of shit.

  Mr. Dick got into my Backgrounds project in a big way. It would have taken three or more kites to hold everything he wrote down. He explained how in those times a person would get called the n-word if they were even the smallest tad of not-white. Meaning they couldn’t vote, have their own farm, etc. So these mixed-ups that everybody called melungeon went to the courthouse and said okay, that’s what I am. Write it down. (Proper noun, capital M.) The courthouse people probably studied on it but couldn’t find a thing in their books to say a Melungeon couldn’t do this or that, so. Nice trick.

  Those were my people. Mr. Dick and Miss Betsy’s father moved away from here to find Jesus, but mainly to stop being one of these people. If his kids ever wondered about aunts or cousins, they’d get leathered for asking. They never heard the word Melungeon. But they still got wind of these dark-skinned, green-eyed people back in Virginia. My dad grew up asking if it was true. At the time he ran off, he and Miss Betsy were hurt at each other so not speaking. She never knew if he’d made it back here till he wrote the letter saying he was in Lee County with a girl, fixing to have a baby. The little green-eyed Copperhead he’d never see.

  Mr. Dick wrote all this up and gave it to me in an envelope and said to read it later, by myself. And I’ve never been one to get choked up or weepy, even as a small kid. But after I read about my people and my dad, I shoved my face in the pillow and cried like a baby.

  Angus said I’d better start a little notebook on my girlfriends, to keep them all straight. This was just Angus being Angus, not mad, more like she’s proud of my success. I never had that many at one time, or for long. To be honest, the most interesting female type of person in my life right then was Ms. Annie, art teacher, obviously out of the girlfriend running. Also I might have been pretty far gone for Linda Larkins, the big-sister math genius and killer flirt from the homework club, but ditto, not a real thing. She was seventeen.

  As far as these others that actually liked me, they kept me busy. We were too young yet to do anything in cars like normal kids, but where there’s a will there’s a couch and blankets or my bedroom, if everybody else in the house was asleep. Study sessions that ran long. It got to where if I wasn’t doing something with a girl, I was thinking about doing something with a girl. My body went on wishing even if I managed to get the brain on something else. Exactly like it does if you’re hungry. I’d been a no-toucher person for a lot of years. I vaguely recalled Mom being a big hugger, but then came Stoner, and family life turned into a whole other kind of contact sport. This skin-on-skin was all new. I did get nerves over not knowing what I was doing or what was allowed, these middle school girls being dead set against going all the way, like they’d made a girlwide agreement. But I knew where all the bases were now. I got tutored.

  Once in the blue moon I’d go with the Peggots to see Emmy, but over and out on that onetime romance. Maggot swore she was dating Hammer Kelly now, which she denied. She made fun of Hammer’s countrified haircut, and said the only person in love with him was Mr. Peg, that took him hunting. So Hammer was not the problem, Emmy was just not that hot on me anymore. I was hurt at first and then wasn’t, because like they say, plenty of fish in the sea. Jump in there wearing your football jersey to school on a Friday and my Lord, it’s like that Bible miracle. Fishes coming out of everywhere.

  For the record, gifteds can and do play football. Some of the guys found me out, but they didn’t give me that much grief over it. I never missed a practice. These guys were solid, future Generals all. Cush Polk for one, our JV quarterback, decent as milk, a preacher’s kid from way the hell over by Ewing. Tall, blond, actual red cheeks, the type that still said “Yes ma’am” to teachers. He claimed he got his speed from being youngest in a family of nine, and his mom only ever cooked for eight. And Turp Trussell for another, that once drank a shot of turpentine for purposes that remain unclear. Big clown, built like a brick shithouse, boldness of a bull in rut. Brain of a deer tick, but that’s not something to hold against a running back.

  My main gifted thing was twice a week after lunch riding over to the high school with Fish Head and the Vo-Ag crowd. They did auto mechanics, I got an hour with Ms. Annie in her art room. I thought she would make me do fruit pictures, but no. If it’s cartoons I cared about, she said, draw them. I just had to use the different media to see how they worked. One day she sat still and let me do her portrait. Which I’d been doing secretly anyway. She didn’t always wear long skirts, sometimes it was these big balloon pants with all the pockets full of brushes, rulers, paint knife, pocket knife. Hippie food items like cereal bars. Always the scarf on her long blond hair, and the dangle earrings. She was a small lady in big, swishy clothes.

  She had unheard-of things in her art room, watercolor, gouache. I got to try them all. She made me use perspectives, vanishing point, etc. She gave me human body charts to copy out for learning the muscles, because a cartoon isn’t a realistic person but there’s a real person under it. Like the skull and the face. That room, those hours. I can still smell them. I would be just getting into something before it was time to put away the paints and get on the bus back to middle school. Never in my life have I known time to fly away like that.

  Angus got on a tear that year to start an academic team, which nobody knew what that was. She explained to me that it’s like a sport, only between teams trying to know the most of all the different units like math, literature, etc. A victory of smartness type of thing. She was in high school now, with her big crazy dreams. I said it’ll never fly, that bird has got no wings. She said it’s already flying. They actually did this in other high schools. She heard of it from her friend Sax’s cousin that lived in Northern Virginia. Kids up there evidently had brains coming out their ears, to the extent of needing to meet up with other kids for brain-to-brain combat.

  I said what Mom always did if I wanted to do something extra like make my bed: Why make life harder than it is? Angus ignored me and wrote a proposal that Sax’s cousin’s teacher helped her with, over the phone. She had this whole presentation she practiced on me prior to giving it to a teacher’s meeting. I said maybe tone down the outfit, which was a DC Brainiac shirt and giant glasses she found at Goodwill, but other than that, perfect. So she gave it for the teachers and then the PTA. Next, the freaking school board. I’m sure they thought, this weird girl is getting no dates, fine, let her fill her empty life. Then snoozed till the word competition came up, which meant going to other schools, on buses. Meaning money. They all said the same thing: This category is already covered in the budget. Gifted kids got to take a school trip in sixth or seventh. By high school, evidently if you’re still gifted, you just need to get over that.

  Defeat only made Angus more determined. I didn’t get it. I asked if she was jealous over me getting all my art attention, and she said art, was I kidding? If I wanted to discuss unfairness, let’s talk about football. Uniforms, equipment, buses to away games, state championships. The school board threw money at all that like water on a house fire. And I was like, Angus. It’s football. Take that out of high school, it’s church with no Jesus. Who would even go?

  Sax had helped hatch this plan, but wimped out under pressure. Angus was on her own. You’d think at least teachers would back her up. This girl that aces everything she looks at, and reads books for actual fun. But they waffled. Granted, it’s Angus, of the full metal clothes closet and opinions not kept to herself. Plus Coach was always pulling rank on teachers to keep his flunk-ass players eligible. Not Angus’s fault, but complicated. Finally she went to her old Jonesville Middle pal Mr. Armstrong, that helped her get an assembly set up to present the idea at the high school. Which ended up being a small meeting in a classroom of any kids interested, aka wanting to get out of class for that period. Sax called in sick, aka gutless. It was my art time, so Ms. Annie and I went to the assembly of Angus. She gave her talk about improving skills, school pride, etc., all boss in her black T-shirt with green-skin Brainiac, plus combat boots, hair in fifty little ponytails representing nerve ends. (No hats allowed in school. The girl could push dress code to an inch of its life.) The only nervous part of her was her eyes. She gave examples of what some teams did, like making team shirts with math equations on them or the names of books they’d read, and wearing these to school. “Like football players wearing their uniforms on Fridays,” she said. “But we could pick Monday or Tuesdays, so smart kids get their own day to be lords and masters of the high school social pyramid.” That got a pretty huge laugh.

  Only two teachers were there, plus the principal to make sure things didn’t get out of hand. He looked like he was napping. One of the teachers frowned the entire time and took notes. Angus finished up, and Mr. Armstrong said he applauded Ms. Winfield’s initiative and believed her project could notch up the culture of academics at their school. He had knowledge of how these teams functioned, and was there to answer any questions they might have.

  Frowny teacher had questions, all right. Who pays for this. Are these kids taken out of class, and how is that made up. Are teachers expected to put in time after school. This lady looked like she’d gone to prom in the eighties and got frozen, big hair, big shoulders. Scary. But Mr. Armstrong stayed on his even keel, talking about cost-benefit ratio, teachers volunteering to prep students in their subject areas, making good use of resources we already have.

  Miss Shoulder Pads wasn’t sold. “I heard her say it involved having meets at other schools. You can’t tell me you’re not going to want a budget allocation for this activity.”

  Mr. Armstrong said yes, probably. Shoulder Pads asked what the school board said about it. The principal woke up and said they’d already made their decision, so we really had no say. He said it’s not like we have any new information here, that those men don’t know.

  We kids had zoned out, waiting for something to happen, which finally it was. Mr. Armstrong was getting ticked off. We could always tell by his accent getting stronger. He said with all due respect to our school board, we all know who those gentlemen are. Which honestly, we kids did not. Miss Shoulder Pads probably did. She was in the back of the room, and Mr. Armstrong in front, with all the kids turning back to front, watching. You could actually hear the action. She asked him what he was implying. (Turn, shuffle.) Mr. Armstrong said, Only that most of the men on the school board were experienced in the corporate world and coal business. (Turn back.)

  She said, And is there something wrong with business experience.

  He said, All he meant was that these men weren’t trained in education per se. They came up in another era when mining labor was the end game, and college was not on anybody’s radar.

  Angus meanwhile is looking at me like, Help! But what did any of us kids know? As far as school board, college, radar, our general thinking on that topic was: So what and who cares.

  Mr. Armstrong made a point of asking who among us kids had participated in any school activity other than football that brought us into competition with other schools. Which was ridiculous. We had Science Fair once that some few kids had wanted to do, girls and nerds. But not in state competitions obviously. We said duh, no. We’d get creamed. Everybody knows this.

  And he said that’s right, we would. Because every school district to the east of us in this state has AP classes and science labs and other things our students have never had here.

  That’s where the bell rang, fight over. The principal had already slipped out with nobody noticing, Shoulder Pads packed up her business and left, but some few kids stuck around to disagree with Mr. Armstrong, remembering the fun times of seventh-grade Language Arts. No, they told him. Wrong. We’d get creamed because the kids in Northern Virginia and those places just have more brains. But outside of a schoolroom, we could whip their asses.

  And Mr. Armstrong rubbed his eyes and shook his head and said, “Oh, my effing God.” Which we felt was walking a fine line, languagewise.

  I was sorry for the crushed dream of Angus, but art time with Ms. Annie was all the extra I needed. Other than it being another thing to want more of, Demon and his cravings: for food, for love and touch, and now her lit-up face seeing something I’d done right. I didn’t really care about the main gifted thing, the spring trip over school break. All year we had to study on this certain place and write our papers so we’d be all wised up whenever we got there. Which makes no sense. I mean, why not just go? Whatever. Sixth-grade trip I couldn’t, being not yet up to par on my grades. It was just science museum in Charlotte, no overnighter due to budget cuts, so. Rip-off. The teachers promised they’d make it up to us the next year, which I didn’t believe for one minute. Angus said wait and see. Her failed victory of smartness thing was a setback, but in better days she was always one to tell me I should start trusting the wild ride, meaning life or whatever. Because it’s not one hundred percent fucked up, once in a while it delivers.

  And in seventh grade, holy God, it did. They said we were going to Colonial Williamsburg, plus an afternoon at Busch Gardens amusement park, and one entire day at Virginia everloving goddamn Beach. The ocean. For my paper I didn’t even know where to start, but I narrowed it down eventually. Currents. They travel around the earth in gigantic circles, you seriously would not believe it. Then March rolled around and the school said there wasn’t money after all for a bus. No trip. And I was the idiot for listening to Angus, trusting the damn ride.

  But then came a last-minute save: some volunteer moms would drive us. Hot damn. The car I got assigned to was a Plymouth Eagle wagon of me, driver-mom, her daughter Lacey, and her two bffs Gleanna and Pristene. All being mad Christian from the same church, so they knew all these Jesus songs they sang back-to-back from the minute of pulling out of the school parking lot. Hand motions. This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine (hold up a finger like a candle), don’t let Satan blow it out (PHWOOF!). I thought of Mr. Peg saying a man can get used to anything except hanging by the neck. Fine. I was going to see the motherfucking ocean.

  Then Gleanna said she didn’t feel so hot, and without further ado puked all over herself and the two of us in the back seat. Sudden death on the songs of praise. We pulled off at a truck stop where Gleanna was issued a ginger ale and her victims took our overnight bags to the rest rooms to get cleaned up and changed. Then we headed out again, one carload of worse-for-wear Christians with Gleanna up front now, where she supposedly wouldn’t get carsick. I had my hunches though on it being some other kind of sick, because this is I-81 we’re on. The one straight highway between Jonesville and anywhere.

  Sure enough, halfway through “I Have Joy Like a Fountain in My Soul,” Gleanna hurls again, nailing Driver Mom. Who by now is disgusted with the whole business, and tells us at the next exit she’s going to go find a pay phone and call the Super 8 Motel where we were supposed to stay. To let the others know our carload was turning around and going home.

  My ocean quest ended in a rout, at Exit 114. Christiansburg. Irony.

  35

  Ms. Annie had a tattoo nobody knew about, on her shoulder. I could draw it for you right now. A goldfish, with its long fins and tail flowing and twisting like it was swimming on her skin. All the perfect scales, with each little curve edged in gold. In class she always wore big paint-stained shirts that were her smocks, probably Mr. Armstrong’s that got too ratty for him. I tried not to think about him and her doing husband-wife type things. I saw her tattoo because after the weather warmed up, we’d go outside to eat our lunch. She’d do that in just her tank top.

  We ate lunch together because of how nice she was, plain and simple. She saw that I never finished up in an hour, so one day she said instead of riding the Vo-Ag bus over from the middle school, I could come earlier during lunch period to spend extra time. Meaning, after Mr. Armstrong’s class, straight over to Lee High and Ms. Annie’s art room. That was trippy, sitting there watching him comment on somebody’s Backgrounds presentation, thinking how the man would be unthrilled that I was crushing on his lady. He had no idea. She didn’t either.