Maggot went upstairs and got cooked for the duration, so it was entirely on me to get this story on the family’s books. It’s a lot of responsibility. I did my best, save for a few details held back. We were not avengers on the trail of Fast Forward. There was no handle of gin, no meth. The Marlin he must have left in his truck, possibly stolen. It was by pure chance we happened on Hammer with his flat tire. Lost lug nuts, those made it into the story. Plenty here is true. We stopped by the house of an acquaintance to dry off, and heard that some friends had gone over to Devil’s Bathtub. Why not join them, ridiculous weather and all, boys will be boys, etc.

  What matters in a story is the heart of its hero. With no thought for his own safety, Hammer dived in to save the young man that fell from the cliff. True. Always and forever true. I couldn’t change that if I wanted to, and oh I did. We all did. My story left us wishing Hammer had been born with a selfish heart to keep him alive. Which made us remorseful and in awe of his goodness. That was the comfort I could give the Peggots.

  Rose had no place in this story. I left her out. As far as her plan of ratting out Maggot for getting Hammer high before he died, I listened but heard nothing about police involvement or drug-testing any bodies. So I didn’t even tell Maggot. Maybe her threats had no teeth.

  For over a month now I’d been sleeping in Maggot’s top bunk, and it had been pretty much like the sleepovers of our numbskull boyhood days, with better drugs. Mrs. Peggot had the habit of leaving the TV on all the time, ever since Mr. Peg died, for the company she said, and I got used to that. But after Devil’s Bathtub, everything changed. The house was full of people, and the TV drone made my skin crawl, for the random weirdness of a perky voice in the living room plugging Tokyopop and cucumber-scented shaving cream. Ronald Reagan’s funeral, Jesus. They showed bird’s-eye views of the crowded streets, a million people boohooing over this famous old prune that lived a whole lot of years past firing on any or all of his pistons. More years than he needed, is what I’m saying. Salt in our wounds. Just a weird mix, TV and real life. Two or more women are sobbing their guts out at the kitchen table, while Everett sprawls on the couch watching the US Open. Like golf is even a watchable sport, that anybody we know has ever played.

  A major topic among the women was Emmy. With half of them saying she needed to be told. Meaning: That girl needs to feel good and sick over leaving Hammer such a mess. The ringleaders here being the Jay Ann and Ruby branch that spent years telling Hammer to give up his hopeless quest, Emmy was never going to have him. And then, after the shortest romance of all times, were never forgiving her for walking away and busting the guy’s heart. They wanted payback. I thought about what Rose said, wanting to see the rest of us hurt, because she was hurting. You have to wonder how much of the whole world’s turning is fueled by that very fire.

  The other side of this argument: No real rush on telling Emmy that Hammer is dead, because he’ll still be dead next year. Emmy was on lockdown and would not be let out for any funeral, if there even was to be a real one, i.e. not in Texas. The whole business could wait until Emmy was sturdier with her sobriety. This was June’s opinion. June being the only person on the planet that Emmy was allowed to have contact with, so. There was no argument.

  It was hard for me to believe in a cure for what happened to Emmy. Never had I seen a person fall so far. This place she’d been sent sounded like prison, and it’s well known that prison cures nothing. Other than for the people that got hurt and are wanting to see others hurt, as mentioned. No getting out, even for a funeral? No phone calling anybody other than your mom? Even Mariah got more than that, in Goochland. But June seemed pretty cheerful about it. She showed me pictures, and it looked amazing, mountains and trees, castle type buildings, a lake. Horses. Great wide mowed yards with girls sitting around on the grass, being sweet to each other no doubt. Pictures didn’t make me believe. There are no roads from here to there.

  A snake with venom is going to bite. That’s just one of the rules God wrote down for us. Rose didn’t go away. Mrs. Peggot got a letter from the courts. I was there. I watched June read it, set it down on the table, and leave the house. The deaths were being investigated. The police had information about Matthew Peggot supplying illegal substances to one of the deceased, approximately three hours prior to the fatal accident. Nobody was saying murder, it was an accident. But Maggot was possibly looking at criminal charges, accessory to the death.

  “Two boys dead already,” June said, before walking out the door, “and they think sending one more to prison is going to help a damn thing? God how I hate this world.”

  Hate it or not, June always came back. That particular day, after a three-hour drive to God knows where. She’d kept going into her clinic all this time, because sickness goes on, the need over there was dire. Soon she’d move back to her own house. But she was the head of the family now. She would lead the charge this time on getting lawyered up for Maggot.

  The story of Romeo and Mariah was just legend to me: his terrible abuse, her X-Acto knife revenge, the alligator-boots lawyer that had tricked the jury and got Maggot’s mom locked up. Now we watched it play out again, the Peggots back in that swamp, June determined to get them out alive. I knew Mrs. Peggot had her cross to bear over Mariah, but hadn’t thought how it must have been for June all these years. After letting her sister down. Ruby at first was upset about Maggot giving Hammer drugs, but June was not going to let this tear the family apart. And Maggot’s contribution was being barely too young or damaged or all the above to stand trial as an adult. Never did a household thank their God so joyfully for having a juvenile in their midst. His court date was set for the same month Mariah was due to get out.

  I wouldn’t be around for it. The day before June went back home, she called me upstairs and laid down the cards. She could get me into a Suboxone clinic. No probing questions as to what I was on, she wasn’t beating around the bush. Not her clinic, this wouldn’t happen here. Nor Asheville, there was no money for such. But she could reenroll me in Medicaid, a simple thing that none of my guardians had thought to do since Miss Barks dumped me. It would cover me in a rehab clinic for a couple of weeks. Nothing fancy, just to get me over the worst, and after that I could go into a halfway-house situation. All I could picture was half of a house with the front ripped off, exposing the chairs and bathroom fixtures inside.

  June and I were in the little dormer room that had a twin bed and a low, peaked roof over the window. It had girl wallpaper from back in the day, and a window bench they called the catbird seat. Mrs. Peggot had made a cushion for it with all the kinds of birds. One of my oldest memories was sitting there watching Mom outside smoking on our deck. This week it was June’s room again. Her things were all around, shoes, hairbrush, the fruit shampoo smell I’d loved since I fell for Emmy in fourth grade. I was in the catbird seat, and June was sitting on the bed, explaining my life to me. She brought up the social security money I could use after I turned eighteen. She could help me out until then, if need be, and the halfway house would involve a job. Nothing interesting, probably loading boxes in a warehouse, the idea being just to keep busy.

  “It’s all work and no play, for a while,” she said, tucking her foot up under her on the bed. She was in her doctor clothes, ready to go in to work, but still barefoot. “The deal in these halfway houses is you can go to your job, and then you come straight back. No running around. Your friends are all other people in recovery. It’s the best way to make it stick.”

  I sat letting her words happen, smelling her fruit, and it hit me between the eyes: It was always June. This thing I’d had for the Knoxville women, aka dome house women. All along June, never Emmy, not past the puppy love. This was the full-throttle type love that I never got figured out properly, due to being raised in shotgun fashion. What my twisted little raggedy heart had always, always wanted. A mother, simple as that.

  I asked her why me, why not Maggot. She had her reasons. Meth addiction is tough, no medical remedy. She said with opioids you can swap out the bad one for a different one that won’t get you high, but you won’t be dopesick either. Just take a pill and get on with your life.

  “Right,” I said. Not mentioning the part about wanting sum-total obliteration of your life.

  “I would do anything for Matthew, you know that. But rehab is something a person has to do on their own two feet, and he’s not ready.”

  I sat on my two hands to keep from fidgeting. Wanting a little bump of something, so very very much. Maggot wasn’t ready, and I was? She said she and Mrs. Peggot had their doubts on Maggot ever taking responsibility, he just wasn’t cut out that way. So it would have to be somebody else making him stick to the program. Not voluntary. Meaning the law. They’d been waiting for that, assuming an arrest or a good scare was what it would take. “We thought a shoplifting charge,” she said, shaking her head. “Not that somebody would have to die.” She got kind of emotional then, but told me not to blame myself. She said there were a hundred people she could blame for what happened that day, and Maggot and I were not even on the list.

  “I had my part in it,” I said. “We all kind of lost our minds.”

  She looked at me like there was something written on my face that she was trying to read. “For God’s sake, Damon. It’s the same place your father died. You didn’t start this fire.”

  I felt rage boiling up. My ears were ringing and I wanted to scream: Yes. It’s the place I hate the most, and that’s why I got lured out there. That’s the motherfucking deal I get. I turned away from her and looked outside at the deck where my blondie teenager mom used to light every cigarette off the last one. She saved all the Pall Mall coupons to get us free stuff. Once, a radio that looked like a jukebox. It was mostly plastic and quit working after a couple of months and I thought it was made by God’s own hands.

  Some minutes passed. June was not letting this go. “It’s not natural for boys to lose their minds,” she said. “It happens because they’ve had too many things taken away from them.”

  I asked her like what. She got up and walked around the room, upset. No decent schooling, she said. No chance to get good at anything that uses our talents. No future. They took all that away and supplied us with the tools for cooking our brains, hoping we’d kill each other before we figured out the real assholes are a thousand miles from here.

  I told her I didn’t hold with that line of reason. I knew plenty of assholes at close range.

  She smiled in the sad way I knew well. The hard kid to handle. But instead of leaving, she sat down on the bed again. “The question you have to answer now is, What are you willing to do for yourself? And I won’t lie, it’s going to be harder than anything you’ve done before.”

  I doubted it. Getting smacked around daily for my betterment came to mind. Going hungry for the entirety of fifth grade. Did she think I was looking for a new personal best in the hardships department? I told her it was a lot to take in. I didn’t say, You think I’m strong, but I’m not. I will always want that next hit.

  She said she’d come back over tomorrow, and we’d talk some more.

  I asked where all this would be happening and she said Knoxville, which freaked me out. Not my idea of happytown. She said it wasn’t like I was thinking, not a big apartment building downtown. They have regular houses there, with yards and such. The kind of living situation I’d need would be more on the outskirts, she said. I could get used to it. “You’d have to. Because if you do this, I don’t want you coming back here for at least a year.”

  “A year.”

  “I know. You can’t see it. I couldn’t either, I had to leave here, and then come back as kind of a different person.” June looked so beautiful and kind. She was killing me.

  “What if I like the person I am now?” Said with a straight face, no small trick.

  “I’m not saying the problem is you. It’s not the drugs either. It’s a whole lot of other things that are wrong, and they won’t get better as long as you stay here.”

  A year was not thinkable. Where I would go, who I would be. Damn her. If we were all such a mess, did she think the whole of Lee County should empty itself out? I pictured the long line of cars and pickups backed up on 58. Next in line behind us, our neighbors: Scott County, Russell, Tazewell. Half of Kentucky. Leaving behind empty houses, unharvested fields, half-full beer cans, the squeaky front porch rockers going quiet. Unmilked cows lowing in the pastures, dogs standing forlorn in yards under the maples, watching the masters flee from the spoiled paradise where the world’s evils all got sent to roost.

  I told her I would think about it. She had to know I was lying.

  60

  I packed up that same afternoon. The earthly goods were down to a couple of boxes now, I’ve known homeless guys that had less. Shirts, a spare pair of shoes. Football trophies won by a shiny kid with two excellent knees. I threw those out. I kept the notebooks and art supplies that filled up one whole box, and it weighed on my conscience. I’d been hiding from Tommy. My only real valuables were in bottles, stashed in an old leather shaving case that used to be Mr. Peg’s. Maggot had taken it for his stash, then at some point it became mine. I rarely thought twice about using Mr. Peg’s nice case for pharmaceutical purposes, but from time to time I felt his eyes on me, seeing the waste of flesh I’d become. Now being one of those times. Maggot was asleep or dipped off. I punched him in the shoulder to tell him I was checking out.

  He rolled off the bed onto the floor, a surprisingly smooth move, and lay looking at the ceiling. “Checkout time, checkin’ it out,” he said. Sang actually, some tune I almost recognized.

  “Serious, man. I’m going.”

  He raised his head off the floor and frowned at me in a fuddled way, like some zoo animal had subbed in as roommate while he was napping. Anteater, sawfish. His head dropped back to the floor. “Going where?”

  “To be determined. Not really figured it out yet.”

  “Then don’t figure. Saves wear and tear on the haggard brain cells.”

  “Nope. Can’t stay here.”

  He sat up, drew his knees to his chest, and hugged them with his long arms. Lots of weird jewelry on the hands as well as the face, and still into black, but the Goth vibe was scaled way back. Probably more negligence than fashion choice. He oftentimes didn’t smell that great.

  “Nothing personal,” I said. “You’re the easiest person I probably ever cohabited with. Other than the snoring.”

  He rubbed his face with the back of his hand and watched me stuff underwear in a plastic bag. The black ring that hung down from his septum pierce gave the permanent impression of booger. “Not my fault. It’s adenoids, brother. I was born this way.”

  I plopped the underwear bag into a cardboard box, and that was me, over and out on the Peggots. “I have to get out of here before I break something. It’s this family. They’re so goddamn nice, you end up feeling like you owe them. And then I get really pissed off, because there’s no way I can ever get it right or pay it back. You know?”

  He gave me a woeful look. He didn’t. He wouldn’t, ever.

  What surprised me was the rage. That it kept coming, in waves. Why? Out on my ass was the normal for me. I’d never yet met the people that could keep me. June was not my mother, regardless the ten or so minutes I almost laid claim to her. She just wanted the better version, not the broken boy I was. Nothing new here under my sun, and yet here was this car and me at the wheel, taking all the curves too fast, hating everything I saw. The kudzu hanging off the trees, the ignorant caboose car in front of Pennington Middle, the bric-a-brac mammaw houses with flamingo birds in their yards. I’d have rammed my car into any one of them, but that would have stopped me, and I needed to keep moving. For the whole afternoon I leaned on my pissed-off heavy foot, because going nowhere fast is a kind of juice.

  Then the energy started going out of me and I felt new kind of bad coming on. I stopped on a godforsaken road around Fleenortown to run inventory on Mr. Peg’s leather bag and the emergency supplies I kept in the glove box, and took what I needed to stave off the pressure in my chest. That ache was an old, old story and it wasn’t ending. In Jonesville I stopped to fill up the tank. If I kept driving I might stay ahead of the monsters. Back in the car, pointed west, I tried to think of one place on the planet of earth where I would feel happy to be. Came up bust. Then tried to settle on someplace I could stand to be. Nothing again. No house or vehicle or yard or pasture came to mind. No place. A guy could take this to mean he ought to be dead.

  I was in and out, as far as paying any attention to the road. Which can run you into trouble as far as stop signs or speed traps, but we’re not big on those here. I ended up way the hell out past Ewing, with no idea I’d gone that far till I noticed the white cliffs on my right side, lining the ridgetop, catching light. I kept on going and there they still were, laughing. Up here asshole, we’re up, you’re down. Those cliffs run on for a hundred miles. My car found the park where Miss Barks brought me, on that fateful day where my brain ran away with itself, thinking of being up there and jumping off to see if I’d fall or fly. And I mean really seeing it in my mind, because that’s the troublesome brain I have, it’s got excellent eyes. Look at him up there. The boy on the edge of the cliff, the widespread arms and piked legs, the crash-dive or the sail. Even before I watched the end of Fast Forward, I don’t know how many times my brain had put me up there on those white cliffs, easily a thousand. To ask that question. Which, let’s face it, is not a real-world question.

  There was nobody around in the gravel lot where the trail started up. The sign said Sand Cave, White Rocks, so many miles. I didn’t register details. I’d heard of people hiking up there to that cave, those white rocks. It was doable. I had nothing in mind that would pass for a plan, only the need to move. I left my keys in the car.

  Not sure why I thought walking would be any better than driving. It comes down to velocity. This was a business of outrunning ghosts, and there was no end to my dead. Not even counting parents or Mr. Peg. Death of your olders is natural. I was losing people right out from under my living days. My doll baby, that I couldn’t love well enough to make her stay. My childhood hero that was a dangerous animal. Hammer that finished last. Maggot that would surely die if they put him in prison, and Mariah on the outside, of heartbreak. I connected my worn-out rubber soles to the dirt of the trail, again, again, again. Knee bones grinding, heart pumping, unthinkable matters battering the skull door. My dad. For him I’d gone to that waterhole of hell, maybe finally to tell the man to go fuck himself, thanks for abandoning me and Mom. Or to prove something. Fast Forward dared me and I went, took the devil’s bath and came out with blood on my hands. Where do you go after that? All I knew to do was keep putting my feet to the rocky ground, waiting to register something in the body instead of the brain.