But what if he’s us, with only three that can be plowed? In the little piece of hell that God made special for growing burley tobacco, farmers always got seven thousand an acre. A three-acre field is no fortune, but it kept him alive. No other crop known to man that’s legal will give him that kind of return on these croplands, precious and small that they are. The rules are made by soil and rain and slope. Leaving your family’s land would be like moving out of your own body. That land is alive, a body itself, with its own talents and, I guess you could say, addictions. If you farm on the back of these mountains, your choice is to grow tobacco, or try something else—anything else, it turns out—and lose everything. While somebody, someplace, is laughing at your failure, thinking you got what you deserved.
Around the time I topped and cut my first tobacco, we noticed the cigarette ads stopped playing. No idea why. If we’d known it was people thinking tobacco was dangerous for kids even to see on TV, with their eyes, we’d have found that dead hilarious. Our schools had smoking barrels. Teachers smoked on their breaks, kids at recess. The buyers were telling us the cancer thing was a scare, not proven. Another case of city people trash-talking us and our hard work, like anything else we did to feed ourselves: raising calves for slaughter, mining our coal, shooting Bambi with our hunting rifles. Now these people that would not know a tobacco plant if they saw one were calling it the devil.
If Philip Morris and them knew the devil had real teeth, they sat harder on that secret than you’d believe. Grow it with pride and smoke it with pride, they said, giving out bumper stickers to that effect. I recall big stacks of them at school, free for the taking. Grow and smoke we did, while the price per pound went to hell, and a carton got such taxes on it, we were smoking away our grocery money. We drove around with “Proud Tobacco Farmer” stickers on our trucks till they peeled and faded along with our good health and dreams of greatness. If you’re standing on a small pile of shit, fighting for your one place to stand, God almighty how you fight.
15
November 19. A birthday never to forget.
I expected it to be a big nothing, since nobody knew. Mom would, obviously, but she hadn’t scheduled any visit as far as I knew. Maybe trying to get off work that Saturday. Meantime I didn’t plan on telling anybody, especially not Creaky, because he would hold it against me. Like, just from getting born I was expecting too much.
But the night before, lined up for squad inspection in our room, I blurted it out: tomorrow I’m turning eleven. This can be a monster thing for a kid to keep inside. And Fast Forward was a true brother. He’d thought I was already older than that, due to being tall for my age. He said it was too bad I didn’t give him more warning because he would have organized something. But he would still try. Another pharm party was my guess, or the special girlfriend cookies. Life wasn’t giving me a lot to go on right then. Regular cookies would have totally made my day.
I hung on to that thought, something good coming my way. Woke up, got dressed, waited on the bus with Tommy and Swap-Out in total and complete darkness because it’s way down in the fall by now, and I’m thinking the whole time: Hang on Demon, today’s the day.
Mrs. Peggot had to know, being the only person that had ever baked me a cake, but I saw Maggot at school and he had no clue. I didn’t tell him either, because why make your best friend feel bad. Mr. Goins took attendance, and the announcements came over the intercom. And then they called my name, Damon Fields to the office. Yes! Somebody knew. My first thought was that Mom got permission to come take me out of school. Or maybe Mrs. Peggot had brought me something. Food, I hoped.
I got to the office and saw it was Miss Barks. Okay, she could bring me a package, no law against that. She looked upset though, and told me to come into the attendance office. She closed the door and sat down. I looked all around. If she’d brought me anything, I wasn’t seeing it. I was still happy though. Obviously something was up. I sat down and looked at her across the big desk.
“Damon,” she said, and then nothing. It was utterly weird. She did not look so good.
“I know,” I finally told her, starting to get it. “It’s okay.”
She stared at me. “What’s okay?”
“That Mom forgot my birthday.”
Her blue eyes went big and round. “Oh my God. Damon. When’s your birthday?”
“Today. But that’s fine, that you didn’t know. I’m used to it.”
Miss Barks looked horrified and started crying. I mean, boo-hoo, grabbing Kleenexes out of the box next to the pictures of the attendance officers’ kids. Nose blowing, black makeup running off her eyes. This was batshit.