The main librarian at our branch was Lyra. Not your father’s Oldsmobile. She had cherry-red hair with short, straight bangs, and a full sleeve tattoo representing the book of Moby-Dick. Sinking schooner, curling waves, wrathful whale. She wore shorts, spiderweb tights and motorcycle boots in all weather. Deadpan flirt. I hadn’t been laid since Dori, not even once. It’s a level of death, knowing another body that well, that’s touched every part of yours, thinking about it now cold in the ground. Some days, that killed me. Others, I felt nothing. Sex was just a vague and troublesome part of the feverish life I’d put on the other side of a glass wall. The counselors warn you this may be the case, and advise against romantic involvements till you’re on solid ground with your recovery. Triple underlined, if you’re a young man with multiple mommy issues and a thing for hot-mess rescue cases that are doomed to suck you under. Lyra seemed pretty solid, but I knew me and involvements. I couldn’t poke a stick at that beast without getting swallowed alive. This one came to work with weed on her breath and seemed in every sense a party girl. I opted not to find out.
We found other ways to share. She liked books obviously and pointed quite a few my way, some that made me smarter, some just weird. She helped me study for my GED, which turned out to be a hell of a lot easier than being physically present to two more years of disgrace and overpriced drugs cut with sheep wormer. Which would have been my lot, as a fallen General. I think most of humankind would agree, the hard part of high school is the people.
Lyra’s secret love was computers. She set me up with email, and showed me how to use the library’s scanner to upload my drawings. Red Neck as mentioned had to sleep it off for six months, but as soon as I had two sticks to rub together in my brainbox, I got right back on the job. Tommy had what he needed at the paper office so we could trade sketches. He pitched story ideas, I drew them, he shaded and inked. With both operatives sober, our efficiency was first class. Pinkie wanted to renew us for another year.
With some sadness, we decided against. We were both moving on. Tommy finally met his girlfriend, and it was the real thing. Sophie was crazy about Tommy, and so was her mom’s family, that threw a big dinner for all the relatives to check him out. Tommy came back home, gave Pinkie two weeks’ notice, untangled himself from the McCobb utility space, and moved to Allentown, Pennsylvania. He and Sophie got married at the Polish-American Citizens Club, followed by a huge reception with a polka band. Get me a hankie, somebody, and I’m not kidding. Tommy had a family. Before I saw him next, he would be a father.
On my end, I’d outgrown superheroes, even the much-needed hillbilly kind. The Fleischer style of Red Neck was hemming me in, those bulbous eyes and noodle limbs felt babyish. I wanted to try something harder-core. Lyra was educating me, and not in the ways my idle mind had toyed with. After turning me on to the adult comics and graphic novels section of the library, she showed me what was going on in the world of online comics, which rocked my marbles. She walked me through building my own website. Mainly this involved me getting out of her way so she could click furiously at the keys while I lost myself in the dramatic oceanscape of her left arm. I could upload my drawings to the site, and in this fashion I started my enterprise. Like most of Mr. McCobb’s, it made no money whatsoever for the first year. Unlike him, I stuck to it. It was my own little universe, created under my alias, Demon Copperhead. I was far from the football field and Lee County lore now, and had gotten used to my mom’s name again. Most people called me Fields. But I had this whole other part I didn’t want to lose. My dad.
It started with my long-ago idea of Neckbones. With Tommy’s permission, I did some of our famous local histories through the eyes of skeletons. Knox Mine disaster, Natural Tunnel train wreck. I also messed around with the idea I’d had in my saddest days with Dori: The Incapables, a strip about a junkie couple trying to keep house. The guy was Crash and the girl was Bernie, two teenagers trying to raise themselves. They grilled hot dogs on their car engine while driving around to find their connect, and did household repairs with bongs and roach clips. To the best of my abilities, I made it sad and true to the laughable mess of addicted youth. Also bitter. In one of my strips, Crash is filling his pill-mill scrip and the pharmacy lady leans over to warn him, “This one’s strong, hon. The Purdue rep takes it so he can sleep nights.”
I’m not saying there was a market for any of this. But the days of the big village were just starting. If there’s a shoe out there for every foot, the lonely and oddball foot by means of the internet had a vastly improved chance of finding it. My weird cartoons got a little following that grew, and after a year I sold subscriptions. Not very many. Luckily, I wasn’t in it for the money. One thing I learned from Mr. Armstrong while striving heartily to remain uneducated: a good story doesn’t just copy life, it pushes back on it. It’s why guys like Chartrain wear their clothes too big and their teeth edged with gold, why Mr. Dick puts words on kites and sends them to the sun. It’s why I draw what I draw.