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.