At what, I wanted to ask. Cities? Harsh streets and doom castles where nobody lived that I cared about? I couldn’t stand to live anyplace without Coach and Angus. And Mattie Kate, I included her. The Peggots close at hand, and my teammates, and all of Lee County chanting my name from the stands: Dee-mon Copper-head! To start over someplace from scratch, as nobody and nothing? I hated the thought. I was only just now starting to exist.
The drive home was no better. Well, Angus was better, chatty and cheerful. But I was still hurt at her, with more reason. Miss Betsy had got her off and running. She wanted to talk about the colleges she’d thought of applying to. There was one in eastern Virginia she had her eye on, so she might actually end up living near the ocean! That was just lording it over me, I felt. She was older, leaving first. Making sure I knew she wasn’t scared of a thing. Worldly-wise.
I rolled down my window and tuned her out. I could smell the dirt of the fields waking up, see the mountains with every tree lighting up on top like a candle, first neon green of spring. It should have been enough for any human person. I did know that, I have to say. Give me a view, pretty as a picture, I’m still pissed that I’ll never get to see the ocean. I wondered what would it take to stop me feeling like I had rotten fruit down in me instead of a heart.
All I could think about on that drive was my lonely runaway spree that got me down to Murder Valley the first time. I took notice of all the sorry attractions as we went past them: the barn where I hid out to sleep in somebody’s haymow. The mini-mart where I curled up starving behind a dumpster, in the rain. The truck stop where I lost everything, and cursed a hooker to die. My entire life’s savings, that probably amounted to less than Angus had spent on her latest change of clothes. I didn’t point out any of those places to Angus. I’d been so young back then. And still was, I guess. She liked to tease me that if we lived to a hundred, she would still be the one to get there first. Which was true. No credit given for all the extra miles that take you nowhere.
38
Once I’d stopped being a kid, summers were nothing more than a crap job to clock into. That or school, same difference. But living with Coach, summers came back. I was a kid again, as far as somebody else taking care of the harder aspects, bill-paying, etc. I should have been thankful, and can’t say why I wasn’t, other than that growing up goes one direction only. You can’t stuff a baby back where he came from, and on from there.
Oh, I said thank you. All the time. To Mattie Kate for feeding me, to Angus for driving me places, to Coach for every freaking thing. Saying thanks, but at the same time thinking, where can I hide my dope, how can I get out of doing all this homework, who is he to tell me I can’t go riding around with my friends on a Saturday night, I’m not a damn child.
That summer, I wanted a job and my own money. Coach said there was no need to fool with that, just tell him what I wanted and he’d get it taken care of. Which was my whole problem, having to ask. He said to remember football camp started in July. That was two months away. I seldom pushed back on Coach, but this time I did. So he asked around, and found out Coach Briggs’s brother that was managing the Farm Supply in Pennington needed somebody over there pronto. Briggs said the job was mine if I wanted it because his brother was in total charge, due to the owner having a heart attack. They needed an extra pair of hands and muscle enough for loading bags of feed into people’s trucks. Muscle I had, plus I was fifteen, so having a job was legal now. Coach filled out some forms and I started the day after school let out. Seven bucks an hour to save up for a car.
Because that’s the thing: until you have your wheels, you’re still a child. Anyplace I went, I had to ask. Angus now had a ’99 Jeep Wrangler that Coach gave her for the sole reason of turning sixteen. She drove me over to Pennington for my job. Or worst case, U-Haul would. If I wanted to go out someplace after work, I had to make that somebody else’s business. Fifteen is the hardest age. Emmy had told me in Knoxville they had these city buses that could take you all over. Not just to school, but for people of every age to ride to the movies, skate park, wherever. Or if in a hurry, you could call up a taxi. I’d seen those things on TV, but didn’t totally believe Emmy. That they would have all that for any regular person to use.
Farm Supply was the best job I’d had so far: decent customers, zero rats that I was aware of, nobody cooking meth. The whole store had this sweet-feed smell that’s a cross between fresh-cut grass and Cheerios. They sold all the regular type things: calf and sheep wormer, horse tack, lawn chemicals, chain saws. In May they had tomato plants and the like, for people to get their gardens put in. I’d set all those on a table outside the store in the mornings, and move them back inside for closing. Next came the chicks, also my job: unloading them from the cardboard shipping boxes into big troughs in the store where people could see and buy them. Keeping up their feed and water, the heat lamps on at all times, changing out the newspapers under them because man could those little dudes poop. The life of a chick: eat, shit, peep such a ruckus inside those galvanized troughs, you could hear it from the parking lot. Hard to believe every old beady-eyed hen starts out that way, as a little fuzz ball, yellow or black or spotted. Mornings before we opened, it was my job to scoop out the ones that had died overnight, cold and flattened out from being walked on. Each one I took out back to the dumpster was its own tiny sadness.