Not my problem. I was living the life I’d been waiting for. From time to time Big Bear would step from the Lariat hood onto another vehicle and lie on the roof, leaning over the window to talk to the driver. From time to time somebody would give him a joint, he’d take a couple of drags, then walk back over onto our hood and pass it inside to Fast Forward. We’d pass it across, and I’d hand it back out the window to Big Bear. The sun hung low over the mountains like a big red tit, the lights blazed green and red off the glass store windows, the girls bent their beautiful faces together keeping their secrets, their bodies of sweetness, Fords and Chevies, the river flowed. This is how it’s done, I thought, and I am doing it. Dragging Main.

  39

  I don’t know why, and God help me. But whatever it was Maggot needed, I thought Fast Forward could put him together with it. If I was a friend to both, I was duty-bound. So I invited Fast Forward to come with us to Fourth of July at June and Emmy’s.

  Word was out on this being the party of parties. Regardless June Peggot being no friend to fireworks, happy to sit you down and tell you all she’d seen professionally in the way of blown out body parts. No matter. Emmy crossed all normal lines of popular, hanging out with certain of the geeks, plus drama kids. Put those together and stand back. They’d been going to Tennessee for the banned-in-Virginia items, your aerials and laterals. Collections were taken up. Angus was like, Idiots with gunpowder, no thanks. But I was jacked for the day to come.

  Fast Forward picked me up with two passengers already, surly Rose and this chick called Mouse, due to her tiny size I’m guessing. Not shyness. She had on a silver bodysuit thing like MTV-wear, already in the middle of a story as I climbed in. Full Yankee accent: “So he’s on air in two minutes, I am losing my shit and ohmygod I get it, this is a comb-over on top of a toupee! I am supposed to do what with this? So I pick it up and lob him with the powder so he won’t shine through and then pop it back down, you guys, I could be a very rich woman if I decide to extort.”

  Fast Forward said he thought she already was a rich woman. She laughed and hugged her giant purse. Turned to me, blinked her huge eyelashes. “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure.”

  Mouse told me she did hair and makeup for celebrities, in case I’d missed that. Fast Forward told her I was the rising star of our football team. To anybody else he’d say “of the Generals,” so this Mouse individual had to be from a galaxy far far away. Filly she said, which is a girl horse and made no sense until she clarified it was a town, Philadelphia. I gave the directions to Maggot’s house, and then we were five in the cab. Cozy. Mouse hops in my lap with her feet dangling. She’s pretty, I guess, her head too big for her small body, snub-nosed, but makeup obviously at the pro level. Her hair was this exploded whale spout situation that got in my face. She was like a doll on my lap. Still running at the mouth, she’s got a gig coming up for a Britney show or whatever, constantly interrupting herself to remark on some ramshack place like she’s never seen poor. Her big purse was on the floor at this point, rolling and clanking. I saw the end of a Pringle can sticking out. In case you were wondering what does a mouse eat.

  Maggot was twitchy as hell. I saw Fast Forward checking him out sidewise. I was used to Maggot, to the extent you can get used to the black-dyed hair curtains, the neon mesh sleeves and giant black pants that he and his Batcave pals got at their Goth outfitters place over to Christiansburg. Chains all up and down the legs, so if you needed to put the boy on a leash you’d find many convenient attachment points. Maggot would always be my blood brother, but at that moment I was embarrassed. Mouse was staring at his makeup and dye job like she might not live through the experience. It could have been worse, Maggot was known to turn up at school with his scalp dyed black on accident. I gave directions to June’s. Fast Forward drove with one hand on top of the wheel, cigarette out the window, eyeshades at Slim Shady half-mast, while Chatty Cathy ran her travelogue, ohmygod that dog is chained up, how can people be so cruel, what is that green shit growing on the side of that house (it was normal moss) ohmygod. Half a mile out from June’s the line of vehicles started, parked all sigoggling on both sides of the road. We pulled over and walked down the gravel road, already hearing music through the woods.

  “Nice sidewalks you have here in East Jesus Nowhere,” Mouse said, grabbing Fast Forward’s arm, teetering in her giant platform sandals. She was barely waist-high to him, toting that gunny-sack purse. Rose fell back into walking alongside Maggot and me, but looked like she’d snatch us baldheaded if we tried striking up a chat. Maggot checked out her dog-snarl scar, which maybe he thought was wicked, who knows. At the bottom of June’s driveway he stopped to light a joint. Rose said “Bogart much?” so Maggot passed it to her in a futile gesture of friendship. He probably needed to balance out whatever he’d taken for pregame. The lad was wound tight. NoDoz crushed and snorted was a Maggot go-to, a grade school discovery I’d needed to try no more than once. I mean. Is life not menacing enough without feeling like ants have moved into your skin? Not if you’re Maggot. He moved on from there to Adderall, which is doctor-legal, anybody can get it from anybody. And lately, smurfing Sudafed from drugstores to sell to the cookers. Probably getting paid in merchandise.

  Rose took her time with the joint, waving bugs away from her face and her big cloud of hair. I took a couple of hits and headed in. Two guys ran through the woods wearing shoes and nothing else, yelling about swimming. There was no pond around. Guys were shooting bottle rockets at each other. Leggy girls slumped among the trees like wilted daisies, probably running replays of failed attempts, like we did with football games we should not have lost, but did.

  I wanted to find June so she could meet Fast Forward, but he and Mouse were already gone. Maggot spotted his friend Martha aka Hot Topic in a little fist of kids in their chain pants and fingerless gloves, and made a beeline. If this was a Maggot rescue mission, I was failing. I spied June on the upstairs deck of the dome house, looking as usual hotter than a truck stop shower. Little red shorts, tall drink, fluffing the hair off her neck. She had a gang of ladies with her, some in nurse scrubs, and Ms. Annie in her hippie attire acting like she’s one of their crowd. She was Emmy’s choir director, but invited to parties now? That seemed like showing off.

  June’s house had no real yard, just a clearing in the woods, now crowded with people yelling at each other over top of Eminem. Extension cords ran from the house to some big speakers borrowed from school, because drama kids got away with shit like that, so the cattle in the neighbors’ farms were now trying to chew or moo over top of Eminem. The trees were shaking, and the dirt under our feet. I shouldered in to find the keg that Emmy’s parties were starting to get famous for, regardless June keeping Emmy in the egg carton. June would not have us driving the winding roads to get our drinking on. Do it here and sleep it off, was her policy, and she meant it. Start slurring or tripping and she’d take your keys, ordering you to sleep on whatever floor you could find, and please not on your back. Live to see another day. She was convinced the population of Lee County was headed for zero, because in any given year she saw more people dead of DWI-wrecks and vomit-choke than babies born.

  Near the keg were folding tables strewed with paper plates and leftovers of a feast I was sorry to have missed. And Emmy, bent over a giant sheet pan cake decorated like the flag, flipping her long hair back over her bare shoulders, trying with a too-big knife to cut out little blue squares with one star each. She was a shiny star herself in her little white top, white hip-hugger jeans, some prime real estate in between. I got a rush to recall touching that belly under the blankets. You don’t forget your first, even if we’re only talking the minor bases. She was in the big leagues now, laughing, padding around in Chinese-looking flip-flops, giving out cake squares on napkins. I wondered how it would feel to like who you are, changing it up as needed to stay on top with ease. While other girls went on trying too hard, wearing the hair big, the makeup bright, the baby-blue sweatsuits with the whale-tail of thong showing in back above the pants rise. I felt safer in those waters, honestly. Technically Emmy was like me: dead dad, messed-up mom. But damned if you’d ever guess. She seemed like a person born to have sidewalks under her feet.

  I chugged my beer and said hey a lot because I knew every Dawnella and Preston in this place. Mash Jolly, one of the rough kids I rode the bus with long ago, pounded me on the back and said “Damn, man, tight end! I totally fucking called that one.” I said yeah, he totally fucking did. He said some of them later were driving over to that waterfall place with the swimming hole in Scott County, Devil’s Bathtub. The hair on my neck stood up. But I just said Sure, man, knowing full well they’d be shitfaced and doing no swimming in the dark.

  I watched the smile and curly head of Fast Forward moving through the crowd like the slick fish he was. Guys were pushing in to speak to the famous QB. Girls, more so. I saw Emmy hand him a piece of cake, arching her back in that girl way, where you notice the ass. Him laughing, her laughing, the little bow he made, taking the cake. So much starshine between those two, sunglasses needed. I wondered if she knew I brought him here. Well, that he’d brought me.

  “Demon! Where the hell you been hiding at?”

  I racked my beer-lubed brain for the name of this girl that had popped me too hard on the arm. One of the Peggot cousins I’d not seen in dog’s years. Jay Ann. Ruby’s daughter, Hammer Kelly’s stepsister. I was still working through this while she told me she heard I’d moved away, and then I turned up on the football field, what the hell and so forth. I filled her in.

  “Coach Winfield? In that house that looks like the frickin Disney Castle?”

  I told her the house wasn’t that big on the inside, which was a lie.

  Ruby was the oldest of June’s sisters, and those kids were the crustier end of the lot. But good as gold, like all Peggots. I thought of Hammer sitting up with his rifle, protecting June and Emmy. Jay Ann asked me did I know about Hammer and Emmy, which everybody did: he’d been wanting to go out with her ever since they moved back here. Maggot always teased Emmy about it. She always threatened to rip out a nose ring, or geld him. “Hammer’s a brave man,” I said.

  “He has done swallowed the rubber minner, hooks and all. Slow and sure wins a race.”

  “Points for trying,” I said.

  Jay Ann said the party had started at noon as a family picnic with some aunts and cousins. Then June’s nurse friends showed up after their shifts, and then the rest of the county, so this wingding was officially out of control. Right on cue, June came walking down among us with a metal first aid kit the size of an overnight grip. Somebody cut the music.

  “Y’all listen here. I am off work today, so if you’re intending to blow a hole in yourself, there’s some gauze and Betadine in here. Help yourself.”

  Somebody up in the woods lit a string of firecrackers, tat-tat-tat. Everybody laughed.

  “If the damage runs to eyes or limbs, you can come in the house and call the ambulance. That’s all. I love ya and I mean it, try to keep what you came here with. I’m talking to you, Everett.” She aimed a finger pistol at her brother.

  Everett raised his Solo cup. “No problem. I’ll find me one of your pretty nurse friends.”

  “No sir you will not. They’re here to wind down after twelve-hour shifts, so if you ask them to doctor you, I will personally ruin your life. Got it? Happy Fourth. Have a big time.”

  Everybody cheered like she’d given the speech of all ages. She walked back up to the house waving one arm, not in a bad mood, just being June. I had yet to say hello, so I swam through bodies to the house. It was almost as crowded as outside, mostly with Peggot kin. Aunts standing close in the kitchen like cigarettes in the pack, uncles splayed on furniture like butts in the ashtray. Ruby could always be found under her smoke cloud, hair sprayed to moderate fire-hazard level, sporting on this occasion a top made out of a bandanna that probably mortified her kids. Old homecoming queens never die. She and June were standing with Maggot and Emmy and, it took me a second to realize, Hammer, that was with Emmy. I’m saying with her. He had his arm draped around Emmy’s shoulders. Looking sure enough like the fish that swallowed the rubber minnow. I made my way over, shooting Maggot a look, wondering what the hell I’d missed here.

  “Demon, hey,” Emmy said, leaning forward to give me a hug, then holding out her droopy hand like I was supposed to kiss it. “Isn’t it precious? It’s a garnet. My birthstone.”

  I stared at Emmy’s hand. June laughed at me. “The ring, hon.”

  “Oh.” A garnet must be a tiny chip you’d sweep up after breaking a glass that was red in color. “So you two are what,” I said. “Engaged?”

  Emmy laughed, the aunts laughed, Hammer’s fish smile got wider if possible, and June clarified they were just going out. The ring was a birthday present. Was this a birthday party? Ruby in her gravel voice said, “Hammer’s been stuck like a tick on this gal for years. I reckon he finally done wore her down.” More laughing. Maggot shot me a look like, I have told you this.

  June was tickled. Tall, polite, flop-haired Hammer Kelly that the Peggots all adored since the day he came on board with Ruby’s husband. (Now ex.) Not one of your hard boys to handle. Seeing June dote on him put me in a mood to break something. I needed to get out of there.

  I saw Ms. Annie across the room, not with Mr. Armstrong but, big shock, Mr. Maldo. If there’s any less of a party guy than Mr. Maldo on the planet, pray for him. Maybe she meant to fix him up with some Peggot bachelorette. Out of his janitor coveralls, in a pink long-sleeved shirt that mostly hid his shrunken arm, it was him all right, even if I had to look twice to be sure. Then right at that minute something caught my eye through a back window, moving in the woods. People. Fast Forward and Mouse booking it up the hill with a crowd behind them, mostly older kids I didn’t know.

  I slipped outside. They were all headed up to the wrecked cabin. I got close enough to see Mouse holding court in her silver jumpsuit, dealing out something from a Pringles can that was not Pringles. Small black disks. People with money in hand, Fast Forward watching over everything like he’s the Squad Master. I got a bad feeling and split.

  The fireworks had started. Not Roman candle shit but the real deals that shriek up and burst. Fire flowers. I found a gap in the woods and sat on the ground to watch them crack open. Flowers making other flowers, taking turns with the colors. I wondered how you’d go about that, painting the sky. It’s Chinese people that do it. Their writing is on the boxes, with only the names in English: Waterfall Mountain, Peony Diadem Comet, Aerial Dragon Egg Salute. Maybe in Chinese they’re all called Orgasm with Lots of People Around. Because that’s the sum of it.

  I had myself a moment there, against a poplar trunk, in the woods where once on a time I was happy. Fat trees with fat green leaves, fat boomer squirrels full up with the fat of the land. July being God’s month. And the end of the road for my dad. I’d spent so many Fourths mad at Mom for being a killjoy, without thinking of the man that gave me life, signing off from his. Never taking a minute to count up all I’d seen, that he never got to see. Yes, life sucks, hungry nights and hurtful people, but compared to buried in a box, floating in a universe of nothing and never? I wouldn’t trade. I watched a pinwheel of green fire swirl up over the treetops throwing white sparks. My dad, mom, and little brother were missing out on a lot of amazing shit.

  I guess I took a small snooze, because a crack of fireworks woke me. It was full dark now. I went back up to the cabin, too curious for my own good, and sorry for it too. There was no more action up there, just guys lying on their backs, and girls that should have fixed their dresses before passing out. Mash Jolly and some other guys sat against the log walls with their heads slumped on their chests. I felt sick. Needles have always rattled me like that. Kit on the ground, or still in people’s hands. No Mouse, no Fast Forward.

  I got back down the hill quick. Somebody had made a bonfire, and I was glad to see Fast Forward squatting on his bootheels, feeding sticks to the flames. It was the stage of a party where the keg has run dry, Solo cups roll sadly in the dirt, cans and bottles turn up from emergency supplies. The Peggot aunts must have seized the equipment because the music was oldies, Michael Jackson and Prince. People sat in lawn chairs watching the fire like a TV show. Maggot was standing by himself. I smacked him from behind, harder than I meant to.

  “Damn, you spilled me brother. Beer.” He was woefully drunk, looking down at his chain pants. You have to wonder how they’d wash. Pretty sure that was up to Mrs. Peggot.

  “What happened to the lovebirds?”

  He cogitated. “Give it up, man. Emmy’s a Britney, and you sir. You are a SpongeBob.”

  “Fuck you. I’m a General, first string.”

  “’Scuse me. A SpongeBob with a number on his SquarePants whaddayacallit.”

  “Jersey. Eighty-eight.”

  A long pause. “Jer-sey. Ten-four.”

  “Explain to me how Hammer Kelly gets to fly in the Britney zone.”

  Another pause. “I have a theory. He found Aunt June’s G-spot.”