So that was June, seeing my little moments. Putting extra food on my plate at every meal. Not in the Lady Leaders way of “watch me being nice,” just on the quiet. I tried to use manners and not act like a person that’s been wanting seconds ever since around August.
What I dreaded was Christmas morning. The Peggots had brought presents they piled under Aunt June’s tree, but weirdly nobody discussed them, no shaking or checking tags to see who got the biggest. Because of me, the kid not supposed to be there. Awkward. I planned on making myself scarce Christmas morning. I’d fake a stomachache or take a really long shower until the presents all got opened. Mainly I just wished Christmas didn’t exist.
The worst was at night, with me and Maggot lying practically under the tree with the presents. Which wasn’t a tree, honestly, just fake, small, set up on a table. You’d expect better from somebody so classy. But where are you going to go cut a cedar in Knoxville? At home, any farmer will let you come get one out of his fencerow. At Creaky’s we cut cedars out of the pastures to pile up and burn, because they’re too many and a nuisance. Why Aunt June hated it in Knoxville, being so far away from everything: from free Christmas trees, just for example.
That’s where I was, thinking about shit like our last cedar bonfire at Creaky’s that got out of hand somewhat with Swap-Out and the gasoline. Maggot asleep. And all the sudden here’s Emmy touching my back. I almost shit myself, rolling over to see her lying two inches away. I’d not expected her to come back. She wasn’t just all about the murder baby this time, so that was a relief. We were quiet like before, and Maggot stayed asleep. Or else a good friend about it. He never said anything the next day, or any other day, because it happened every night after that. She didn’t surprise me again, either. I was always on the lookout.
We talked about everything under the sun, lying on those pillows. What we liked, what we hated. I told her my bathtub thing, due to my dad dying at a place called Devil’s Bathtub. Actually I said it was only whenever I was small, being scared of them. She didn’t laugh though. She was scared about moving, leaving Knoxville. I couldn’t believe it. I told her there’s trees, mountains, rivers, birds singing in your ears, we’ve got the whole rest of the world over there, other than people, which are only one thing. Going wherever we wanted to without adults, even at night. The woods. I got caught up in telling her all this and almost forgot my messed-up life, because in some ways she was worse off than me. She’d never even seen a lightning bug. That is just tragic. I told her the different ones. One kind goes totally dark, then they all blink together, thousands, one big sparkly pop all up and down the creek. It can thrill a person senseless.
In time we got into the darker side of things. My dead baby brother, for one. How Emmy ended up with Aunt June, for another. Complicated as hell. Turns out she had a mother out there at large all along, girlfriend of her dad, Humvee, that was killed. I’d heard people say a hunting accident. Emmy said yes, he was supposed to go get Pampers one day but instead ended up turkey hunting with some friends. Three men, three twelve-gauges, and a handle of fireball whiskey being one handle too many for the close quarters of a turkey blind, as anybody knows, except them evidently. Oh my Lord. She said it was Humvee’s shotgun but different stories, either he accidentally fired it or somebody sat on it. He was too messed up for the hospital in Pennington, they had to get him to Knoxville and too much blood loss on the way.
Poor Mrs. Peggot. Given the fireball whiskey aspects, no wonder her having her policies on what she called demon liquor. For Emmy’s part, she said she herself felt somewhat to blame, as far as the stresses and strains of a baby on such a young dad. His girlfriend was home with her at the time, so not involved, just probably waiting a long time for those diapers. But being a teen mom and then total wreck from the incident, she turned into the all-around bad-news type of mother, so. The Peggots had to step in and take Emmy. Then the next year after Humvee was killed, their daughter Mariah went to prison on her own matters, and Maggot turned up needing to be looked after also. The family you could say hit a bad patch.
This was news to me, that Mrs. Peggot had taken in not just Maggot but Emmy before him. Two tiny tots to raise. That’s the Peggots for you, doors wide open. I’d known them to take other cousins for whole summers before, including Hammerhead Kelly and his stepsisters after the parents split up, which was how Mr. Peg got him started on deer hunting. Emmy asked if Hammerhead still came around or had moved away with his dad in the split-up. I said he was still with the stepmom Ruby, June’s sister, and Mr. Peg’s favorite. I didn’t bring up hunting, given Emmy’s bad-luck dad, plus not knowing where she stood with the whole city-person outlook on shooting Bambi, but I knew Hammer and Mr. Peg still hunted together. Many a time in the fall I’d see Hammer dressing a buck in their driveway. It would kill you how big and gentle he looked, drawing his long knife up the middle of the carcass, easing the gut and lungs to slither out in a pile. Like he’s being sweet to that deer, even though dead.