Riding the bus with high-schoolers was where you learned everything: how girls get pregnant, how to watch your back. Given the time we put in, the way-out country kids got the most education. I saw more than one guy fingering his girlfriend on a school bus, or her going down on him. More than one face slapped by a girl that wanted none of it. A lip or two busted. Once this fierce tiny towheaded girl got so fed up of a big guy calling her Q-tip, she stood on the seat behind him and cracked her Etch A Sketch over his head. Screen side down, the silver shit running down to cover his whole face. Picture Tin Man out of the Oz movie. That girl was going places. Probably she’s the president of something by now. At the least, not pregnant.
And while we’re all wasting our young lives on a yellow stinking bus, Fast Forward gets the extra hours in his rack every morning before getting up and cruising over to Lee High in his Lariat. Why every red-blooded boy dreams of turning sixteen with his own wheels: for the sleep.
At school I got to see Maggot again. He was like, My man! We thought you were abducted by aliens! Which is one way of looking at it. Maggot was my reason for living at that point in time. He saved my ass by getting clothes and stuff I needed from home. Mr. Peg had the keys, so they snuck over there like robbers while Stoner was out and stuffed my valuables in pillowcases, drawing notebooks included. Maggot brought it to school, a pillowcase at a time. They said Stoner was hardly showing his face around there anymore. So school was what I had left in the way of normal now, with Creaky Farm waiting at both ends.
Time went by, and promises were kept. First, the hay. Creaky did the mowing on his tractor while we were at school. Then came baling, with his tractor pulling this ancient baler machine that kept breaking down every fifty feet. It would make a hellacious grinding noise, and every single time in his raspy voice he’d yell: “Goddamn piece of Tazewell shit!” He must have bought it from somebody over there, while the dinosaurs still roamed in Tazewell County. He’d have to stop and shut everything down, and then he and Fast Forward, but mostly Fast Forward, would climb up on the baler and reach in and yank stuff around and then it would work again. The rest of us hauled and stacked the bales in the field, to get ready for loading them on the truck. These were the square bales a person can carry, not the giant round bales most farms went over to at that time, where tractors and forklifts do the work. No sir, Creaky had his slave boys, and we were a shit show. First of all, Tommy had his good points, but being strong, not one. He’d grab a bale with both hands on the twine, then stand there going red in the face like he’s constipated, until I could get over to help. And Swap-Out, Christ. One hay bale weighed as much or more than Swap-Out, and all this kid wants to do anyway is climb onto the piles we’re stacking, to where he ends up knocking things over and just general nonsense. We have to get all two hundred and some bales onto the flatbed, a load at a time, then unloaded and stacked in the barn, with more climbing, constipation faces, and nonsense. By then Creaky is cursing the fosters agency even worse than Tazewell County as far as trading in damaged goods.
That was my first weekend. Sunday night I never got to take a shower, due to Fast Forward taking his time in there. There was another bathroom downstairs with an old nasty tub, but the sewage backed up there on a routine basis, so I was not the only one scared of that tub. Even Creaky used the upstairs. It took all I had left in me to haul ass up into my bunk and lie there on fire, my whole body itching from getting scrubbed by two hundred Brillo pads of hay. I had three weeks to serve in this prison, and not one of them fully behind me yet. I wondered how Mom was doing. She always said drying out was the worst hell imaginable, and I felt sorry for that. Not now. Tell me about hell, I told her in my mind. All you had to do today is your moral goddamn inventory and a lot of lying around. On nice clean sheets.
Another promise kept: our Hillbilly Squadron farm party. Fast Forward had mentioned about getting supplies, and I’d thought maybe items from Aisle 19 of Walmart: Solo cups, paper plates. That’s the dumb kid I was.
First he brought out the snacks, which I was utterly thrilled about. At night in those days I’d get homesick and torn up just thinking of the Snickers Mom kept in the fridge. So now I’m all, Reese’s and cookies, yess! Thinking that’s what this party is about. Fast Forward though was patient with my education. Like a big brother, honestly. He said this was my initiation. We had the party in his room, which was amazing, getting to look around and even touch some of his stuff. Which is how I found out those gold sports trophies they give you in high school are actually plastic. But they looked amazing. We had the lights shut off and a candle burning that we got from the kitchen stash for the power outages. Creaky, gone to bed. After he’s taken his hearing aids out, they said, he’d just as well be a corpse.