He gave Mom a kiss and asked what we two had been up to. She said nothing much. She got a beer out of the fridge and cracked it open for him, and asked why didn’t he sit down and talk to me a little, to start things off on a new foot. Fine, he said. He turned one of the kitchen chairs around and sat in it backward, straddling it with his arms folded on the back, looking at me. Mom pushed her hair out of her eyes, edgy. She’d been happy and fun all day and now without even looking at her straight on, I could feel her change.
Stoner asked what I was learning in foster care. I said so far mostly putting up hay, working cattle, stretching fences, and riding the bus two hours each way to school. I told him basically everything else was the same as home, in terms of always having to watch my back. His eyes changed. He said he meant, how was I doing with the attitude.
I told him fine, thanks.
“Guess what!” Mom said. “I told him about the baby, and he’s as excited as he can be.” She was looking at me, mouth-smiling but not the eyes. Those please-save-me eyes. “Just think if this one’s a boy, and Demon gets a little brother. They’ll be two peas in a pod.”
Stoner stared at her. “It wouldn’t be a fucking mulatto.”
“My dad was Melungeon,” I told him. “Not a, whatever you said.”
Mom tried to change the subject, asking where all Stoner made deliveries today, and why didn’t we go in the living room because the chairs were more comfortable and her back hurt.
Stoner was still staring her down. “You wanted us to talk. We are fucking talking.”
He had much to say. How I would have to be more considerate now, due to Mom’s fragile situation. Stoner had learned a lot, he said, from him and Mom going to their counseling. New words to help us all get along. Opposition disorder being one of them. Supposedly that was a disease, and I had it. If I wanted to move in here, I’d need to go on the medication to knock some of the wind out of my sails. Evidently I had too much of that in my sails. Wind.
Mom acted somewhat like she didn’t hear any of this and brought up the different subject of Christmas. How I would be coming home then, and that we would do something special. I remembered to tell her the Peggots were going to Knoxville again over vacation. Probably they would invite me to go too.
Not so fast, buddy, was Stoner’s advice. He said I was still not to hang out with Maggot, which I could tell was a surprise to me and Mom both. I told him Miss Barks had checked out the Peggots and given the thumbs-up. It turned out Miss Barks had dated one of Maggot’s cousins in high school. And Mom was like, Ha-ha, Lee County, wouldn’t you know it.
Stoner slowly turned his head and fixed on her, like a big guard dog. “Since when does this Barks bitch make the rules about what we do as a family?”
I’d been thinking it was ever since the night Mom almost offed herself and Stoner gave me a black eye, but maybe that’s just me. According to Stoner, the Peggots and me were a no-go. He said he was getting an injunction, so if I went over there the cops would arrest me.
I looked over at Mom like, Is this true? And she made just the tiniest, tiniest shake of her head. He didn’t see it.
The microwave he’d bought her with the blue lit-up clock said 4:21. Nine minutes to go. I didn’t want to be in that kitchen, and didn’t want to go back to the farm. I sat still, trying to be nothing and nowhere, watching my minutes tick out.
13
Like the saying goes: They passed out the brains, he thought they said trains and he missed his. That was Swap-Out. Tommy, though. Smart as hell, he could think himself out of any hole, but then would crawl back into it and sit there. It was like he chose the shit end of the stick, so nobody else would get it. A hard thing to watch.
The day we had no water, for an example. This was a Sunday. We got up, flushed, nothing. Empty pipes howling. Bathroom sink, nothing. Kitchen, ditto. The guys said bad news, the well got drained. It would recover in a day or two, in the meantime look out. Sure enough, Creaky called us in the kitchen for his lecture on how farming is a war. All your livelong days, it’s you and your livestock and machinery against the bank that wants to foreclose on you. If you waste one thing, that’s a win for the bank. So, you do not waste one thing. Not food, not an ounce of grain, not water. I’m trying to be Christian here, he says, taking in orphan boys, and what does one of the damn idjits do but go and waste a whole goddamn well full of water.
I wanted to tell him I was no orphan, plus, if he was so Christian we’d all be in church right then discussing certain rules like, don’t be pimping onto others as you wouldn’t want to get pimped on yourself. But I was not the damn idjit of Creaky’s concern.