To get the earlier ride, she organized for me to come with the janitor Mr. Maldo that cleaned the Jonesville Middle bathrooms in the mornings, Lee High in the afternoons. He’d get me there before lunchtime, so. Two whole hours of art. Afterward, I’d walk over to Lee Career and Tech and wait with Fish Head and those kids for our bus back to the middle school. One thing about Tech, that place was crawling with recruiters. Army, navy, these guys with their accents and complicated uniforms that made them seem not quite real. They had tables set up, wanting us to come sit down and chat, probably not realizing we weren’t yet of age, just bussed-over seventh graders. And I’m going to tell you something, these military guys could look you in the eye and shame your ass: Is your dad at home right now in his boxers watching Spike TV? Did your mom get you diagnosed ADHD so you could get your Medicaid and see a doctor for the first time? Did you know less than half the people in this county have jobs? Evidently we take the prize of America, as regards unemployment. Answer to these problems: Let’s get you signed up. Probably Fish Head and them were counting the days.

  As far as my janitor ride, Mr. Maldo, he was quieter than anybody you ever saw. He would talk some to Ms. Annie and eat his lunch in her art room before getting on with his bathrooms. But he never said one word to me, all the mornings I rode in his truck. Otherwise a regular guy, with something going on with his left hand that was small and no muscle tone, but he still could do everything as far as driving and janitor. Ms. Annie told me he was always alone so she’d started taking coffee breaks with him, and from there the lunch thing came about. The other teachers wouldn’t give him the time of day, even though their pay was not much better. Ms. Annie said all God’s children have to take a shit, but you’d never know it from the way they treat the ones that clean it up. She actually said shit. You can see why I was so gone on her.

  In Mr. Armstrong’s Backgrounds project we learned one thing: if you throw a rock in Lee County, you will hit somebody with a family that’s worked coal. Almost everybody in our class had great-grandparents that came over from some country to work in the mines. Or they were here already, and worked in the mines. They told stories of all the kids in a family ending up working in a mine underneath the same land that was bought from them. The coal guys came in here buying up land without mentioning the buried treasure under it. And then all that was left was to work. Even little kids, pushing tubs of ore from the coal face to the tracks. “Low coal” was working thirty-six-inch-tall seams, stooping under a mountain. The Pappaw stories were mostly along the lines of: How awesome was that, us busting our asses. Whereas the Mammaw stories leaned more towards, not awesome. Getting your paycheck in fake money that you had to use in the coal company’s stores that charged you double. Breathing black dust all day, coughing up black hunks of lung all night. Husband and sons all dying in one day in a shaft that blew up.

  One girl’s presentation she called “The Other Side of the Coin.” This is flippy-hair Bettina Cook with her posse of gal pals and her dad that owned the Foodland grocery chain, seven stores in the tristate area. Packed-lunch sandwiches with the cut-off crusts that flabbergasted me back in third grade, yep, same Bettina. Her family on her mom’s side were major shareholds of the Bluebonnet Mine. She passed out brochures on all the good the company has done for Lee County in the way of town park benches, etc. Her great-grandfather won an award from the governor for buying one of the biggest coal veins under Kentucky and figuring out how to pull it out of the ground on the Virginia side so they didn’t have to pay some certain tax. She had a slew of relatives that were senators and such in the State House, that she showed us pictures of on her computer. Yes, her own computer, brought from home. Also a Motorola phone. Queen Bettina, we all knew she operated at her own level. But Mr. Armstrong said okay, everybody gets a turn, just listen.

  For the most part though we listened to the crushed-leg, dynamite-explosion type of stories. This was the oldsters’ chance to complain to their grandkids that usually have no time for old-people shit. If a miner didn’t get buried alive, the question was what part of him would give out first: lungs, back, or knees. I thought of Mr. Peg that was giving out all over, on disability ever since he got hurt. Another old-guy topic: how they didn’t want handouts. They grew up hardworking men and that’s what they believed in, working. Even if they were on disability now, goddammit to hell. They’re not that person. They hate that person. They also talked about Union. But I mean, this word. Like it was a handshake deal between them and God. We had the general idea of workers wanting their pay, safety, and such. But where did that go, and what was the or else?

  Or else they’d all walk off the job and let the coal bosses suck their own dicks, Mr. Armstrong said. Not his words, but he got it across. He showed us films. Obviously we loved teachers showing films: nap time, makeout time if applicable. But this one, Jesus, you needed to see how it came out. Men calling a strike, the company calling in the army to force them back to work, the miners saying guess what, we’ve got guns too. Serious shit. Battle of Blair Mountain, that turned into the biggest war in America ever, other than the civil one. Twenty thousand guys from all over these mountains, fighting in regiments. They wore red bandannas on their necks to show they were all on the same side, working men. Mr. Armstrong said people calling us rednecks, that goes back to the red bandannas. Redneck is badass.

  Anyway, it was all in the past, nobody in class had parents working in the mines now. We’d heard all our lives about the layoffs. The companies swapped out humans for machines in every job: deep-hole mines went to strip mines, then to blowing the heads off whole mountains, with machines to pick up the pieces. Bettina was like, Get real, you all, companies are in business to make money, that’s just a fact. The facts being, there’s hardly any coal jobs left around here. Bettina also said there’s no such thing as unemployed, just not trying. Her posse all stuck up for her side, and other kids said city people were the problem, for bad-mouthing coal.

  I wasn’t from mining people that I knew of, so it wasn’t my fight. I drew a lot of pictures and kept quiet. I dreamed up the idea of a comic strip about an old time red-bandanna miner that’s a superhero, busting the company guys’ nuts. I could ask Ms. Annie for tips on how to make him look old-time, because she was amazing like that. She’d know exactly how to do it.

  Mr. Armstrong as usual let the argument go rogue for a long while. But, he finally said. Didn’t we wonder why there’s nothing else doing around here, in the way of paying work?

  Our general thinking was that God had made Lee County the butthole of the job universe.

  “It wasn’t God,” he said. Just ticked off enough for his accent to give him away. I remember that day like a picture. Mr. Armstrong in his light-green shirt, breaking a sweat. We all were. It’s May, there’s no AC, and even the two cement bulldogs out front probably have their tongues hanging out. Every soul in the long brick box of Jonesville Middle wishing they could be someplace else. Except for Mr. Armstrong, determined to hold us there in our seats.

  “Wouldn’t you think,” he asked us, “the miners wanted a different life for their kids? After all the stories you’ve heard? Don’t you think the mine companies knew that?”

  What the companies did, he told us, was put the shuthole on any choice other than going into the mines. Not just here, also in Buchanan, Tazewell, all of eastern Kentucky, these counties got bought up whole: land, hospitals, courthouses, schools, company owned. Nobody needed to get all that educated for being a miner, so they let the schools go to rot. And they made sure no mills or factories got in the door. Coal only. To this day, you have to cross a lot of ground to find other work. Not an accident, Mr. Armstrong said, and for once we believed him, because down in the dark mess of our little skull closets some puzzle pieces were clicking together and our world made some terrible kind of sense. The dads at home drinking beer in their underwear, the moms at the grocery with their SNAP coupons. The army recruiters in shiny gold buttons come to harvest their jackpot of hopeless futures. Goddamn.

  The trouble with learning the backgrounds is that you end up wanting to deck somebody, possibly Bettina Cook and the horse she rode in on. (Not happening. Her dad being head of the football boosters and major donor.) Once upon a time we had our honest living that was God and country. Then the world turns and there’s no God anymore, no country, but it’s still in your blood that coal is God’s gift and you want to believe. Because otherwise it was one more scam in the fuck-train that’s railroaded over these mountains since George Washington rode in and set his crew to cutting down our trees. Everything that could be taken is gone. Mountains left with their heads blown off, rivers running black. My people are dead of trying, or headed that way, addicted as we are to keeping ourselves alive. There’s no more blood here to give, just war wounds. Madness. A world of pain, looking to be killed.

  36

  I was born to wish for more than I can have. No little fishing hole for Demon, he wants the whole ocean. And on from there, as regards the man-overboard. I came late to getting my brain around the problem of me, and still yet might not have. The telling of this tale is supposed to make it come clear. It’s a disease, a lot of people tell you that now, be they the crushed souls under repair at NA meetings or the doctors in buttoned-up sweaters. Fair enough. But where did it come from, this wanting disease? From how I got born, or the ones that made me, or the crowd I ran with later? Everybody warns about bad influences, but it’s these things already inside you that are going to take you down. The restlessness in your gut, like tomcats gone stupid with their blood feuds, prowling around in the moon-dead dark. The hopeless wishes that won’t quit stalking you: some perfect words you think you could say to somebody to make them see you, and love you, and stay. Or could say to your mirror, same reason.

  Some people never want like that, no reaching for the bottle, the needle, the dangerous pretty face, all the wrong stars. What words can I write here for those eyes to see and believe? For the lucky, it’s simple. Like the song says, this little light of mine. Don’t let Satan blow it out. Look farther down the pipe, see what’s coming. Ignore the damn tomcats. Quit the dope.

  Two thousand and one was the year I had everything and still went hungry. I was a General. A freshman, and already I had that. Fridays, being worshipped, wearing my number 88. Roaring out of the Red Rage field house with my herd of men. Big tackles, locker room wrestling, all that hard flesh on flesh was like feeding a whole other empty stomach I never knew I had. Even the bad felt good. Pushing myself in the weight room till every string in my arms was on fire, my chest clenched like a heart attack, the guy spotting me saying Jesus, man, your face looks like a damn hemorrhoid. Laughing because it’s so fucking good to hurt that bad. Most people never get anywhere close to being that much alive.

  Learning the plays by heart and then making them on the field, there are no words to describe. It’s an act of magic to take an idea and turn it into bodies on bodies, a full-participation thing for all to see. Like what’s said about the Bible, the word made flesh. Learning to read the QB’s mind, knowing what he’ll do almost before he does. The Generals were always a running team, but now the Demon was changing their game. Passes fired and completed, you’d hear the stands go dead for one heartbeat before they roared. Excuse me for saying, but damn, it’s like an orgasm. To blow up a crowd by doing what nobody expected.

  Coach Winfield was like a father. Just guessing on that obviously, but he was the first and only man that ever saw what I could do. Not just do for him, there were those, many in number. This kid can cut my tobacco, make me a buck, eat my shit. With Coach, everything we did, we did for God and country but specifically Lee County. More than once I got mentioned by name in the Courier, because who doesn’t love the shooting star, “From Foster Homes to Football Fame.” I got a tiny bit full of myself over that, but Coach was more so. If he had his eye on me at all times, driving me hardest, that was his patriotism. I knew he’d lost a lot in his life. The young wife, and before that, his career, getting hurt and messed up as a kid not much older than I was now. I knew he went to bed too early, that he drank to shut himself down. And I also knew that whatever good a man like that could still feel for another person, he felt for me.

  So I had more than I deserved. Ms. Annie, for another example. In high school art was a real class, for juniors and seniors, but she gave me special permission. I could take her class all four years if I wanted. Assuming I stuck around that long. Lee High is where kids like us come to our crossroads of life: walk up the steps of the big brick box and turn right, through the front door into the classrooms. Or left, down the long chain-link tunnel, past a thousand army and navy recruitment posters, into Lee Career and Tech. Nothing arty down there, trust me.

  Thanks to the September 11 thing that happened that fall, the posters now were stapled on top of each other, and the recruiters likewise. Let’s go kick terrorist ass, they all said, and many answered the call. Why not. Lured by the promise of one paying job at least, between high school and death. Because the attack itself didn’t seem quite real. To us, skyscrapers are just TV, so watching two of them fall down, over and over, looked like the same movie effects of any other we’d seen. We knew people died. We had our assembly, flags down, sad and everything. I’d had nightmares of falling like that from on high. I know it was real buildings. And they still have lots more standing in those cities, so I guess that’s a worry. Here, if any terrorists came flying over, they’d look down on trashed-out mine craters and blown-up mountains and say, “Keep going. This place already got taken out.” It was hard to see how September 11 was my fight. As far as doing good for my fellow man, my better option was football.

  Lee Career and Tech looked like a path to freedom, definitely. A shot at working in an auto shop, no more to be held prisoner at a desk? Yes please. But Mr. Armstrong had nailed my destiny to the classrooms. Spanish, Geometry, Personal Finance, like I would have need for any of that. I stuck it out for one reason only, my daily hour of Ms. Annie. That was the plus side of being in her art class. Downside: having to share. She was sweet to everybody, it turned out, walking around the room saying “Nice composition,” or “I like your use of color there,” or at the least, “I can see you worked really hard on that, Aidan.” I had to do the same assignments as everybody else, elements of design, linear and grid drawing, value shading. Life drawing. She had us take turns sitting as the model, but clothes stayed on, so. Not like my earlier art enterprise. This was about proportions and such, tension versus a body at rest. I won’t say I didn’t learn things. Oil paints, all these pigment colors with automotive names: titanium, cadmium, cobalt. For homework we did still lifes. Angus helped me think of excellent ones, like False Teeth in Salad Bowl. If I did cartoons now, they had to be on my own clock.

  All the middle schools fed into Lee High, which meant I was back in school with my own people. A Maggot-Demon reunion. And Emmy, a junior like Angus. But all going our different ways, as you do. I was a jock. Maggot mainly hung with the Goth girl Martha that cut his hair. Emmy sang in the choir that Ms. Annie was director of, and ran with the popular end of the arty kids, Drama and them. What Angus had to say about the Drama girls, you can guess. But even still, I was sharing those halls with people that knew me. Some were my wingmen, some had put ice down my back. One of them still remembered my mom. It felt like I existed.

  What I didn’t have was the thing I thought about night and day. In high school now, a General, and I’d still not been laid. Not the full thing. For various reasons, it hadn’t happened. My number-one crush being twenty-some years and a marriage outside of bounds. And a teacher. I knew they had laws, thanks to that home ec teacher scandal in Gate City that people won’t stop talking about until the sun goes cold. No way. But girls my age seemed young, more heavily into showcasing the goods than backing up the inventory. Angus had tainted my judgment.

  And then I fell face-first into Linda Larkins. Long-legged homework club flirt, older sister of May Ann. She was out of high school now, nobody I would run into, but out of the blue sky one day she calls me up. I’m waiting for “Sorry, wrong number,” but she’s discussing Friday’s game, how great I looked. And then without even a warmup stretch, she’s talking about my tight end like that’s a sight she’d like more of, she’d bet my ass is all muscle and hers is pretty tight as well, had I ever had my tongue up a pussy like hers. With Mattie Kate and Angus not six feet away pouring Cokes over their ice cream. This is the kitchen phone we’re on, and me shitting bricks, saying I appreciate that, okay I’ll think about that, thank you. I kept my front to the wall and made a break for privacy.

  This was to become a regular thing. I would mumble something and run to take the call upstairs. We had a phone up there on a long cord we could drag into our rooms. I was a good liar. But Jesus. This girl. I’d have her breathing in my ear, I’m about to come, and Mattie Kate is outside the door hollering, “Do y’all kids have anything to put in a dark load?” Linda would not stop until we both got ourselves off. Full-color descriptions. Sometimes I’d have to fake the big finish for safety reasons, like if I had people waiting on me and needed a hasty exit. But holy crap. For a young male, a blueball shutdown like that I’m pretty sure could be fatal.

  I kept expecting her to give me the coordinates for a meetup, but no. Linda Larkins was phone-sex only. My entire freshman year. It never crossed my mind that I could just, you know, hang up on her. This older person had singled me out, and it felt like the NFL draft, you go where you’re called. I spent a lot of time trying to think of things I could say to sound more adult. That year I also did the regular things with other girls, homecoming dance etc. But it put a weird spin on normal dates and conversations and the making out, if that happened, to know that this chick that could probably suck the enamel off a phone receiver was waiting to polish off my night.