Angus as usual felt free to weigh in on the immature type of girls I was going out with. But for once, Angus had no inkling. Of this older woman that had me by the cerulean balls.

  The Peggots started taking me in their wing again. Asking me over for Sunday dinners, not worried anymore about me trying to worm in and get adopted. I’d forgiven them for all that. It worked out for the best, not just because Miss Betsy was rich and sending Coach checks every month for my upkeep. She was my true kin. Paying me back on what I never got from my dad.

  Angus would drive me to the Peggot house, with U-Haul supervising. She was in driver’s ed, needing her forty-five hours behind the wheel. She got curious about the trailer home where I was born and everything, so one time we walked up there but I got pretty sad. Big Wheels trike on the porch, toys left out in the rain. A naked doll half buried in dead leaves with all its hair cut off, just those hair dots all over the scalp. A whole new family in there. Mom and I were nowhere.

  Mrs. Peggot always would ask if my friend wanted to stay for dinner, and a time or two Angus did, but it was awkward. That winter she was into this black leather motorcycle cap, like they wore in the old movies prior to helmets. Mrs. Peggot, poor little thing, just stared at that leather hat with no gumption to make her take it off. So over here is badass Angus, over there is Maggot with the eye makeup, black nail polish, and ever-expanding lip ring collection. Big shock, Demon is the nice-looking normal kid at the table.

  They’d got so old, Mr. Peg worse than her. He always had the limp, but now it was the event of his day to get up out of his La-Z-Boy to come sit at the kitchen table. Maggot was taking his toll on them. He’d not say two words at dinner, just the black eyes bugged at me from time to time like, Rescue me. Which he was in no need of, Maggot did what he pleased. He laid out of school plenty, and I’d heard about the molly parties, the drugstore raids where he was ganking more than Max Factor. I wasn’t sure anymore how I fit into the Peggot situation.

  One evening Mr. Peg got me outside, shoving his walker out the kitchen door, huffing and puffing over to his truck, supposedly for my second opinion on his battery cable. Actually, to discuss Maggot. Same truck, the Ram. Pretty sure Mr. Peg would be buried in that vehicle. He said he and Mrs. Peggot couldn’t handle Maggot anymore. They were getting almost scared of him. I didn’t ask if Mariah was getting out of prison any time soon. I tried to stick to the positive, that Maggot was a tenderhearted person underneath the cosmetics and death metal business.

  Mr. Peg asked, “What is he thinking of, to go around looking thataway?”

  I said I didn’t know. Not wanting to be a traitor to Maggot. But also, I really didn’t.

  Mr. Peg elbowed the truck to keep his balance while he lit a Camel with his shaky hands. He smoked and looked up at the sky. His bottom eyelids drooped so their red insides showed. “Whenever I’s a boy,” he finally said, “we just done like we’s told. Is that so damn hard to do?”

  I said we probably were more messed up nowadays due to TV and cable.

  He asked why, though. What was so confusing? I don’t think he was wanting me to throw Maggot under the bus, just really and truly wondering what was so hard for us. Now, versus the old days. I said maybe the difference was we could see now what all we were missing. With everybody else in the world being richer than us, doing all kinds of nonsense and getting away with it. It pisses you off. It makes you restless.

  Mr. Peg finished his Camel and stamped it out on the ground, shifting the heel of his old leather shoe side to side, grinding in slo-mo. Even for that small thing, he was hard pressed. “Do you reckon we spoilt him?” he asked. “Me and his mammaw? Because I’ll tell you something. She’ll go to her grave a-wishing she done better for Mariah.”

  I told him Mrs. Peggot had always treated me with the exact same niceness as Maggot whenever we were small, and I was glad of it. That as far as home life went, I had run the full gamut, and theirs was the best by far. I didn’t think Maggot was mad or spoiled or anything like that. Just trying out being a different type person.

  “Well, what kind of gal is ever going to have him like that? If he keeps on?”

  I said maybe he was just having his wild oaks and would come around in time. Or else he’d find somebody. I reminded Mr. Peg of that thing people always say: There’s a shoe out there for every foot. Mr. Peg said he used to think that, but now he wasn’t sure if Maggot even wanted to find any shoe to fit him. And I didn’t say so, but I kind of agreed on that. Or if he did, because honestly don’t we all, probably Maggot’s kind of shoe hadn’t been invented yet. Or if so, they didn’t stock it in Lee County.

  Weirdly, I kept thinking of Fast Forward, how he could look at us and name the true person inside us. Even if we were pathetic losers for the most part. Fast Forward was proof that a kid could keep his head up and survive, no matter how shitty the waters. He’d called me a diamond. I don’t know what I thought he could do for Maggot. It just seemed like this was a situation for Fast Man.

  37

  What never changed was U-Haul Pyles despising me. Staring me down at practices, lurking around the house making sure I knew my place. I gave as good as I got. I hated him touching our mouth guards, and being the one to tape or ice us if we got hurt. I hated him going with us to Longwood for the playoffs, which is how far we got that year. State semifinals. I got more playing time than Collins, which I felt bad about because it was his last game. He was a junior, quitting school after the season ended due to his girlfriend having a baby. The other teams had the usual things of their cheerleaders making up special Trailer Trash cheers against us and the fans throwing cow manure on the field, which we were used to, any time we played outside our region. But we kicked ass pretty decently. Semifinals would have been the highlight of my young life, if not for the Hellboy eyes burning me from the sidelines. And then later that night, U-Haul coming around to our motel rooms lecturing us about no partying, like we’re infants, putting Scotch tape on the outside of our doors so he could check in the morning to see if we’d been out. The man could leave a layer of scum on any good thing.

  Sometimes he’d make me go with him on nonsense errands, like running over to the machine shop to help him load up the tackle sled they repaired. Asking in front of Coach, so I wouldn’t share my true feelings on where he could put his tackle sled. Sometimes he’d stop by his mom’s over at Heeltown, which wasn’t a single-wide but one of those built houses from the old days, small, front porch with the steps falling apart. So much crap on that porch, my Lord. Sofas and chairs stacked one on top of another, upside down and sideways. Cats crawling all over and through the piles like head lice. While U-Haul went in and did whatever he did, I would sit in the car and count the louse cats. As far as going inside, you couldn’t pay me.

  Mrs. Pyles would want us to drop her off at Foodland or Walmart. She was heavier set, not a skeleton like him, but had the same red eyes and weird bad manners, old-person version: Honey, I’m just a little old nobody, now scooch ’at seat forwards and give me some room. She had a creepy way of getting intel out of me. On the McCobbs for instance, that were back from Ohio, living in Pennington Gap. Honey, is it true what I heert about her a-pawning off solit gold jewry, ain’t nobody can figure how she come honest by them kind of things. I was dumb enough to tell her about Mrs. McCobb’s rich parents spoiling the grandkids, before it dawned on me what she was actually trying to find out: were the McCobbs trading in stolen goods.

  Another couple she wanted to discuss was Ms. Annie and Mr. Armstrong. What made him think he deserved that beautiful woman for his wife. They’s a world a people a-wondering on that. Why she’d stoop to lowerin’ herself thataway. “Beautiful” in this instance meaning white, I wasn’t stupid. Ms. Annie was a tattooed hippie. If she’d married any other guy in Lee County, they’d be asking why he had lowered himself. A kid of my raisings is not going to tell an older person flat-out, Lady, get the hell out of my face. But I came close.

  Finally one day I told U-Haul that on errands involving his mom, he could count me out. He drilled those red eyes into me and said maybe he wasn’t a Gifted, but he knew things. Who I talked to on the phone. Where I hid my weed. How he knew, I can’t guess. But if I mentioned to Coach about us going to his mom’s house, he said, I’d be looking for a new place to live.

  After the season ended, I had time on my hands. The Peggots sometimes would pick me up on a Saturday to go see June and Emmy. No more Kent. That show was over, and according to Emmy not just a breakup but World War III. Kent was a con man, June was a paranoid bitch, take it from there. I hated to think about it, but Maggot wanted details, what weapons were drawn, etc. Probably from living with grandparents he was action-deprived. This was a Saturday in February, cold as tits, and still the adults sent us outside to mess around in the woods. Probably so they could have this same conversation inside. We made a pitiful little band: Maggot freezing because he refused to wear the camo hunting coat the Peggots bought him. Emmy in her puffy coat that was black-and-white-printed like a cow, seriously. We dragged our feet through leaf slop, kicking up the smell of acorns. There was an old wrecked cabin on the property, logs and a fallen-down chimney but no roof. We would have called it a fort if we were kids, but now it was nothing. A stupid place we were forced to hang out because we couldn’t yet drive.

  Emmy said Kent and June didn’t use weapons, just mouths, both parties packing serious heat in that department. Kent was a yeller, but mouthwise, June was an AR-15. Instant reload, engineered to kill. Maggot wouldn’t let it alone, wanting to know what June was so mad over.

  “I don’t know. Him being a shiznet?”

  Emmy’s cheeks were bright pink and her eyelashes sticking together, so pretty and sad. We were sitting on the wrecked chimney, cold rocks freezing our asses. Emmy and Maggot both picking at their nail polish, me pitching rocks through the gaps. The logs were gigantic, stacked at the corners the way you’d twine your fingers together, with big spaces between. They’d had some mother trees to cut down up here, back in the day. I could see Emmy’s weird house down below us through the trees, a giant wooden bowl upside-down with Peggots inside.

  “Wait, correction,” she said. “A weapon was drawn. Mom had her Ginsu knife and kind of waved it around. Not chasing or anything. She was trying to get supper before it all blew up.”

  What got the knife pulled on Kent was him telling June to leave it to the professionals because she wasn’t a doctor, just a nurse. Snap. A nurse practitioner is a trained professional and can prescribe medications, Emmy said, June was just choosing not to give out any more of Kent’s poison. She’d organized a meeting on it over at town hall with the biggest crowd they ever had showing up, to sign a petition thing against Kent’s company. Which he took to be a major backstab from his girlfriend. He said she was uncompassionate to people in pain. June said if he wasn’t such a damn coward he’d come down to her clinic and see all these decent people with hepatitis from needles, and their family farms going bankrupt in six months. Which I didn’t get honestly, about the needles. Kent’s thing was pills.

  We stayed up there a long time in the cold. If we were kids on TV we’d have been sitting in a booth of some shiny diner or at a swimming pool mansion, instead of dead-looking woods. I used to like being outside with all the little beings poking after their business, but at that moment I felt ripped off. All we had was this junkbone cabin with its valuable parts, if any, long since stolen. Some squirrels to shoot at, if we’d been properly armed. The day would have been more tolerable if I’d brought a joint and we could get blazed, which Maggot would have been up for. Emmy, a question mark. June protected that girl like she was made of ice. Emmy was old enough to be driving, but June was all, No ma’am, these Lee County roads are teenage death traps, etc. You had to wonder why Emmy wouldn’t push back. I knew her and didn’t know her, regardless our onetime marriage plans. I watched clouds of frozen breath coming out of her face while she worked her way through the drama of June and Kent like it was the end of the world.

  Long story short, whatever supper June was working on with that Ginsu knife did not get made. Screaming happened, hightailing was done. Kent being top salesman of his company had sold a gazillion of his pills in Lee County and actually won the giant bonus, Hawaii vacation for real, that he was going to take Emmy and June on over spring vacation, so. Bad timing on that one. The breakup rattled her so bad, June had asked Hammer Kelly to come over and spend a few nights at the house in case the bastard came slinking back around. Emmy said Hammer was so nice about it. He sat up on the couch all night, sleeping with his deer rifle in his arms.

  I was and always will be an idiot. I just pray to get old enough one day to recall Linda Larkins without wanting to curl up with my balls between my legs and die. It was her little sister that dropped the bomb, and the only saving grace was that May Ann herself had no clue. Just pokes me on the shoulder in class one day and says hey. Her sister got married.

  “Your sister Linda?” I got an instantaneous half-mast. In fucking Algebra. Then the rest of it slowly dawned. “Married? Who to?”

  “This guy from over to Hillsville, Loring Blake, that drives stock cars. I doubt you’d know him. My mom only met him the once, before Saturday. We all thought she was going to community college after she got that Rotary math-whiz thing. And then shebam. Married.”

  “Saturday,” I said. It was the end of class, where we were doing our homework. Never mind a grenade had gone off in my brain, I was expected to keep my voice down.

  “It was no big deal,” May Ann said. “They just went to the courthouse and then we had the family over. They picked up ribs at Fatback’s. And then Linda’s all like, That was brilliant, barbecue ribs, because she’s wearing a white dress, and . . . why am I telling you all this?”

  “I give up. Why?” I was kind of seeing stars, the way a shock can make you somewhat go blind. As soon as that part was over, I knew I would feel like throwing up, laughing, crying, and jerking off in public. About equally.

  “Because, Linda said,” May Ann rolled her eyes, “Quote, do you still see that tall redhead kid Demon that’s on the team, will you please tell him I done got married? Unquote.”

  “Why would she mention me?”

  “How should I know? Send her a present for the damn baby shower.”

  I’d had no reason to think Linda had any feelings for me. None. She never even wanted to go get McDonald’s or drive around or anything. But to find out she was playing me utterly? The mystery of her thinking, plus no more of those phone calls, cold turkey, and nobody ever even knowing about it, was a black hole of misery. A huge thing that basically didn’t happen.

  Angus came close in those days to knowing everything about me, but not this. I never told her about the Linda calls, too embarrassing. Even more so now. Dumb little horn dog boy that thought he was a man. The breakup, if you can call it that, weighed on me hard, and ended up wrecking the next weekend that happened to be our big road trip to Murder Valley. Angus and me only, no U-Haul, which should have been the happiest of events. Angus had gotten her license and wanted to celebrate by driving us someplace other than Walmart. She settled on wanting to see the house where she used to go with her mom, to visit Miss Betsy. On the drive down, she started up her usual teasing about my girlfriends, and I told her she could stuff a sock in it.

  “I could,” she said, grinning. “But how fun would that be?”

  “It’s not a joke. You are cordially invited to stay the fuck out of my personal business, for a term of one hundred years to life.”

  She said nothing. Eyes on the road, hands on the wheel at eight and four o’clock.

  “If you think my love life is so interesting, Angus, why don’t you get your own?”

  “Why? Let me think. Because males are infantile, and females are exasperating? So, what does that leave me, animals? You know, I might get there. But so far I’m just not feeling it.”

  Silent treatment after that. For over an hour, which was hideous. We’d never really had a fight before, other than our nonsense ones that were purely for entertainment. I hated that I was harsh with Angus, but you can’t help what you are. I spent some time idling on the memory of punching the dash of Mrs. McCobb’s car. Eventually Angus tried to bring up another subject, of being worried about her dad. But Coach seemed the same as always to me, and I said so.

  Things didn’t lighten up till we got down there to the house. Angus jumped out of the car with a big smile, walking all around with her hand clamped on her hat like she’s in shock, and it might fly off. Looking at things outside the house, inside the house, like this happy big-eyed fairy in a white T-shirt and leather vest, saying, Oh, I remember this! Which I’m sure she did, since nothing probably had changed in that house since God was a child. I hadn’t really thought before about the place being special to her, like seeing my dad’s grave was to me. The house where her mom grew up. The bed where she slept, the bathtub. A dead parent is a tricky kind of ghost. If you can make it into more like a doll, putting it in the real house and clothes and such that they had, it helps you to picture them as a person instead of just a person-shaped hole in the air. Which helps you feel less like a person-shaped invisible kid.

  They were tickled at us for coming, and had cooked a feast. Mr. Dick had a kite to show me, not ready for takeoff. Miss Betsy wanted to have a discussion on our futures, and sat us down in her living room where old furniture goes to die. Angus went first, being older, junior year, which Miss Betsy said was time to think about college. Angus said she definitely wanted to do that, and study psychology or sociology, which I wasn’t even sure what those were. But so what, because that was her plan, Angus had no intention of staying in Jonesville. Not that she’d made any promises, but I felt betrayed. She was leaving us. What about Coach?