I had the vague idea that if money became essential, tobacco season was around the corner and I’d make some then. People were hard up for labor. With most every kid in the county hammered, what few farmers were still on their land were having to scout high and low to get decent hands for the hard work. Mainly these were coming to us across the Mexican border. Along with all the heroin. No connection, as far as I know.
The one thing I was still holding together, by a thread, was Red Neck. I couldn’t let Tommy crash and burn, he of all people deserved better. He was more than pulling his weight at this point. In the beginning we’d brainstormed a lot of ideas, and now he was sketching those into panel strips. Skeleton versions. At least once a week I’d get myself sober enough to go over and put flesh on the bones. My style was required by the fan base. But Tommy’s rough drafts had their own weirdly terrifying vision, more truthful than any we ever put in the paper. Our people, our mountains, all our worries: a universe of ghosts. I called his drawings Neckbones, and asked if I could save them. Tommy said this was a dark inclination on my part, but he let me.
The day everything happened, the hitting bottom as it’s known in our circles, came in June. One of those hot, rainy days where you feel like you’re breathing your own breath out of a paper bag. But weather was not the worst of that day’s evils. I’m pointing my finger now at Rose Dartell. Running into her that day would put the nail in the coffin. I’d give anything to have stayed home. If wishes were horses, like they say. We’d all have different shit to shovel.
Maggot and I were at the famous Woodway crack house where Swap-Out was still living with some other guys. People came and went through there like barn cats, you didn’t always bother with names. Maggot needed to get hooked up. For my own part I was okay, I’d scored a pity bottle of oxy off of Thelma at the funeral and had multiplied the investment. Pain clinic, first Friday of the month: loaves and fishes. But I drove Maggot over to Woodway and made the effort to be social. Had a chat with Swap-Out, asked if he still had any doings with Mr. Golly, which he didn’t, too bad. That man had a place in my heart. Then Maggot and the other crackheads got to the part of ring-around-the-rosy where they all fall down, and I went and sat outside, deeply cooked and making the best of it. Breathing the halitosis of summer, basking in the sick glory of that porch. The rotten mattress, the dresser with no drawers, the refrigerator on its side with its mouth hanging open, harboring a tiny waiting room on top of four black plastic chairs joined together. I remembered rescuing Martha from this very porch, a lifetime ago, and wondered what became of her. June would be getting her straightened out, for sure. Maggot and I weren’t crossing our path with June if we could help it.
Half the porch was taken up by stacked firewood that had been there so long, it was covered with a shredded sheet of white dusty cobwebs. I watched a mother rat run in and out of the logs, carrying her babies by their napes from one part of the stack to another. She’d appear with them one by one, all business, like she’s on the clock here, relocating her office space. How she decided one part of this wreck was less dangerous than any other, no guess.
A dirt-brown Chevy pickup came down the road, the first vehicle of any kind in over an hour, and surprised me by pulling up to the house. More surprise, Rose Dartell flung herself out of it, slamming the door and moving fast, carrying a pizza box.
“Damn, Rose. Did you bake me a pie?”
She pulled up hard to a stop. Her hair was different some way, less frizzed out, but the face was unchanged. That scarred-up sneer. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same.”
“I work for Pro’s. That and the phone company, for a couple of years now.”
“Pro’s Pizza delivers all the way out here to fucking Woodway?”
“Regular customers. They pay cash. Any more questions, or can I do my job?”
“Knock yourself out.”
I wondered if they’d be paying her more than cash in there. She stayed long enough. Mr. Pro probably had no idea where all she was driving on his dime. I couldn’t help thinking of our last meetup, the dark highway pullout where Rose gave me the news of Emmy like a drink she’d spit in. I was just about to go in and advise Maggot that it was time to say grace and blow this dump, but she came back out. Sat down on the edge of the woodpile. Mother rat, look out.
“Did Fast Forward call you yet?” She mumbled it, lighting a cigarette.
“Why would he do that?”