It had mainly fallen to Angus over the years to crack some of the harder nuts of Demon, due to her always being around and putting up with me. Also Mr. Armstrong, notorious serial-nutcracker of Jonesville Middle brains. But the one you’re never going to guess: Tommy. Going all the way back to woeful Tommy in the paper office pulling his hair, crushed by the news of us hill folk being the kicked dogs of America. Leading to the shocking demise of Stumpy Fiddles, the pencil thrust in challenge: Let’s see you do better. We were just a couple of time-hardened foster boys shooting the shit. What good could ever come of that? You wait.
Tommy was lonely at the paper office now, that much I knew, based on how much he was emailing. Still reading books, and emailing me about the books and ideas he got from the books, just like he used to tell me the entire plot of his latest Boxcar Children, down to the last detail I heard before conking off. Now he was all into the history of Appalachian everything. This Dog of America thing being a major sticking point, Tommy was not moving on. But we were good, like old times, discussing his girl Sophie, my new rehab pals, both of us in the same boat now as regards girlfriend action. Our Red Neck strip went on ice for a time. We got some grace from Pinkie, as long as we promised to come back eventually and finish the twelve-month agreement. This option was written into our contract by Annie. Evidently she saw my downfall coming.
As far as the books he wanted to discuss, I can’t even tell you what they were about. I honestly wished for a good Boxcar with a beginning and end, because these went nowhere. Theories. I told him about the hard and surprising knocks of city life, and he explained it all back to me in book words. He said up home we are land economy people, and city is money economy. I told him not everybody here has money, there are guys with a piece of cardboard for their prize possession, so pitiful you want to give them the shirt off your back. （Which Tommy would.） And he was like, Exactly. In your cities, money is the whole basis. Have it, or don’t have it, it’s still the one and only way to get what all you need: food, clothes, house, music, fun times.
Maybe that sounds like the normal to you. Up home, it’s different. I mean yes, you want money and a job, but there’s a hundred other things you do for getting by, especially older people and farmers with the crops, tomato gardens and such. Hunting and fishing, plus all the woman things, making quilts and clothes. Whether big or small, you’ve always got the place you’re living on. I’ve known people to raise a beef in the yard behind their rented trailer. I was getting the picture now on why June’s doom castle had freaked me out. Having some ground to stand on, that’s our whole basis. It’s the bags of summer squash and shelly beans everybody gives you from their gardens, and on from there. The porch rockers where the mammaws get together and knit baby clothes for the pregnant high school girls. Sandwiches the church ladies pack for the hungrier kids to take home on weekends. Honestly, I would call us the juice economy. Or I guess used to be, up until everybody started getting wrecked on the newer product. We did not save our juice, we would give it to each and all we meet, because we’re going to need some of that back before long, along with the free advice and power tools. Covered dishes for a funeral, porch music for a wedding, extra hands for getting the tobacco in. Just talking about it made me homesick for the life of unlocked doors that Chartrain called Not the Real World. You couldn’t see him sticking around one day in Lee County. We all want what we’re used to.
Tommy and I discussed this nonsense way too much, with all my emailing at the library involving some degree of shenanigans with a hot librarian named Lyra, more on her later. I expected nothing to come of it. Mostly, it was Tommy being aggravated. He pointed out how a lot of our land-people things we do for getting by, like farmer, fishing, hunting, making our own liquor, are the exact things that get turned into hateful jokes on us. He wasn’t wrong, cartoonwise that shit refuses to die. Straw hat, fishing pole, XXX jug. Kill Stumpy Fiddles, along will come Jiggle Billy on adult swim. But all I could say was, Tommy, you know and I know, neither way is really better. In the long run it’s all just hustle. So our hustle is different. So what?
And he said, I’m still figuring that part out.
62
Thanks to my orphan jackpot, I didn’t work full-time like most of my housemates. June had offered to help if I needed it, and she was keeping tabs on me. But I was well used to paying my own way. The monthly house fees came out of my social security account, and part-time at Walmart covered the rest. The entertainments of sober living are all those best things in life that are said to be free. Breathing, sleeping, enjoying your newly regularized bowels. Eating your own bad cooking. Bumming Camels and playing penny poker, listening to two Kentucky boys tell Tennessee jokes that you grew up telling as Kentucky jokes. Listening to hair-raising tales of the hood, in a language you wish had subtitles. I spent a lot of time at the library.