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.