Then Gleanna said she didn’t feel so hot, and without further ado puked all over herself and the two of us in the back seat. Sudden death on the songs of praise. We pulled off at a truck stop where Gleanna was issued a ginger ale and her victims took our overnight bags to the rest rooms to get cleaned up and changed. Then we headed out again, one carload of worse-for-wear Christians with Gleanna up front now, where she supposedly wouldn’t get carsick. I had my hunches though on it being some other kind of sick, because this is I-81 we’re on. The one straight highway between Jonesville and anywhere.
Sure enough, halfway through “I Have Joy Like a Fountain in My Soul,” Gleanna hurls again, nailing Driver Mom. Who by now is disgusted with the whole business, and tells us at the next exit she’s going to go find a pay phone and call the Super 8 Motel where we were supposed to stay. To let the others know our carload was turning around and going home.
My ocean quest ended in a rout, at Exit 114. Christiansburg. Irony.
35
Ms. Annie had a tattoo nobody knew about, on her shoulder. I could draw it for you right now. A goldfish, with its long fins and tail flowing and twisting like it was swimming on her skin. All the perfect scales, with each little curve edged in gold. In class she always wore big paint-stained shirts that were her smocks, probably Mr. Armstrong’s that got too ratty for him. I tried not to think about him and her doing husband-wife type things. I saw her tattoo because after the weather warmed up, we’d go outside to eat our lunch. She’d do that in just her tank top.
We ate lunch together because of how nice she was, plain and simple. She saw that I never finished up in an hour, so one day she said instead of riding the Vo-Ag bus over from the middle school, I could come earlier during lunch period to spend extra time. Meaning, after Mr. Armstrong’s class, straight over to Lee High and Ms. Annie’s art room. That was trippy, sitting there watching him comment on somebody’s Backgrounds presentation, thinking how the man would be unthrilled that I was crushing on his lady. He had no idea. She didn’t either.
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.