I wasn’t sure what dog I had in this fight if any, but June was never anything but good to me, so I drove over there. At a distance she looked the homecoming queen as ever, bare legs propped on the porch railing. I had to get close to see how two months had made her old. Lines by her mouth, tiny wires of white hair. She threw her arms around me, rocking like some sad last dance, her head on my shoulder. The women that loomed large in my life were all getting small.
“Sorry,” she said, after she let me go. Wiping the corner of one eye.
“Lord, June, don’t be. I spent the better part of middle school wishing for that.”
“I believe it was Emmy you were after.”
“I was not one to shut any doors. You pick that up in foster care.”
She sized me up. “Look at you, all grown. After everything they put you through. An upstanding young man, living on your own. Where’s Dori? I told you I’d feed you both.”
“I already ate. She was tired. She said thanks.”
I felt less than upstanding, and Dori was out for the count. I’d finally gotten a shift at Sonic, and Dori was cutting hair at some bootleg beauty parlor in Thelma’s basement. We had our prescriptions. I’d snaked the drains and replaced the fill hose in the washer. Life was back on its keel somewhat, but we had different schedules. I aimed at functional for much of each day, whereas Dori set her sights on a couple hours of not poking out any eyes with her scissors.
“I’ve got a whole baked chicken I’m sending home with you, then.”
My stomach did a little dance of hope. “You don’t have to.”
“I do, or it’ll go to waste. Most of everything I cook, I end up taking in for the girls at the clinic. I cannot get the hang of living alone.”
“I’m sorry.” I hadn’t thought of that. She never had. She’d started looking after Emmy at nineteen, while she was in nursing school. Living in the Peggots’ trailer.
She put her hands in her back pockets. “You know I’d lay down my life for that girl.”
“I know. I think she wants you not to, though. Anymore.”
She looked at me, surprised. “That’s just how it works, Demon. You should be as mad at her as I am. We give these kids all the advantages, and they won’t stoop to pick them up. Emmy’s acting like a child, and Maggot, good night. I don’t know where to start.”
“He’ll be all right. He just needs more time than most to find his way out of the weeds.”
“What he needs,” she said, “is a boyfriend.”
I might have blinked. “You’d be okay with that?”
“Of course I would. Even Mama would, I think. In time. If he could just find some nice boy to talk him out of his night of the living dead.”
“I’m not sure he’d choose that wisely.”
She spit out a bitter laugh. “We don’t any of us, do we? Here, let’s walk. There’s a spot up the road where you can see the sun hit the ridge on its way down.”
We walked out on the gravel road I’d once walked with Fast Forward and Mouse, letting her trash-talk all I knew. I’d let summer get by me without notice. Here it was. The sun coming down through tall trees in long waterfalls of light, the birds starting up their evening songs. There’s one like water trilling over rocks, pretty enough to make you cry. Wood robin. I thought about the night in Knoxville June told us she was moving back. Screw those doctors looking down on her, calling her Loretta Lynn. She could have crushed it there. But she wanted this.
As far as Emmy and Fast Forward, June knew as much as I did about where they were living, someplace in Roanoke. She said she woke up every day wanting to drive over there and bring the girl home. But this was Emmy. You’d want a SWAT team. June was desperate for anything I could tell her. I picked my words, but I didn’t lie. I told her Fast Forward was one of these that has pull over people, like a magnet. And Emmy being a magnet-type person also, they probably couldn’t help getting attracted. June asked if he was dangerous. I said the world is dangerous. She asked what drugs he was involved with, and I said to the best of my knowledge he himself wasn’t doing a whole lot. That he was more into the money side of things.
“That is not going to help me sleep tonight,” she said.
I told her I was sorry, but she was putting me between the rock and the hard place. We walked to where we could see the sun hit the ridge, and the dark start to pour down the valley. On the way back she asked about my knee. I said I didn’t think about it anymore, which was a lie. I thought about it every single time I took a step. My own business.