“He probably hung himself,” I said. “With her compressure hose.”
That cracked all of us up. Maggot included. He’d been awake all along.
We were back at the Peggots’ a few days before I got up my nerve, but the time came. The house was quiet. Mr. Peg took Maggot and some cousins to go bowling with their church youth league. They invited me, but I said I didn’t feel like it. After they left, I went downstairs to the kitchen where Mrs. Peggot was cooking her big pot of blackeye peas they always had for New Year’s, for a year of good luck. A Peggot thing. Mom always said she’d never heard of that. But then, look at her luck.
I hung around the kitchen watching Mrs. Peggot put things in her soup. Onions, carrots, a lot more than blackeye peas, plus it had to cook all day and then some. She always put in the big bone from the country ham they ate at Christmas. This year they’d taken the ham to Knoxville for Christmas dinner, then wrapped the bone in foil and brought it back. So that bone had more miles on it than most people I knew. All that, for the luck. Steam rolled out of the pot, fogging up the window and making the kitchen smell amazing. I told her she was the best cook and this was the best house I was ever in. She looked over her shoulder at me, then went back to stirring. I thanked her for the presents she and Mr. Peg gave me for Christmas, that I wasn’t expecting. I’d said thank you at the time, but I wanted to use all my manners before I got to the main question.
“We had us a good Christmas, didn’t we?” she asked, and I told her yes, I’d had the biggest time in Knoxville and was glad she let me come. She went on stirring. I told her the soup smelled so good, I wished I wouldn’t ever have to leave.
She set down her big spoon and stood still, looking out the foggy window. Then untied her apron and came and sat down at the table. Her glasses were so foggy I couldn’t see her eyes, and for a second I got terrified. Thinking of Stoner in his reflectors and all other adults that seemed like they went blind if they really had to look at me. Then the steam cleared and I could see her blue eyes, still kind of cloudy. Maggot had told me she had the cataracts and needed an operation on her eyes. But she was looking at me straight.
“Damon, are you asking if we can keep you permanent?”
I was afraid to tell her yes. Because then I knew the answer would be no.
It turned out she and Mr. Peg had already discussed it. The week after the funeral Miss Barks came over to meet with them about a possible foster placement, since I was more comfortable with them than anyplace else. The DSS evidently had cleared up the Stoner lies, and they’d decided the Peggots were my best shot. So she and Mr. Peg had talked it over. Talked and talked, she said. But decided they couldn’t. Not as guardians or fosters or anything official.
I hated Miss Barks for not telling me this. I wanted to die of embarrassment. Mrs. Peggot looked sad, and kept rubbing her head. Her gray hair stuck out this way and that, like she’d forgotten to comb it that morning, which maybe it didn’t matter. Nobody really looked that much at a lady her age, including me usually. But I did now. She was my only chance.
She said I would always be welcome to visit. But she and Mr. Peg were getting old, with him having the arthritis so bad his leg hurt him day and night. Plus he had the sugar, that he took shots for in his stomach. She didn’t mention her eye thing, but I got the picture. She said it was only two more years until Maggot’s mom was getting released, maybe sooner for good behavior. Not likely, considering it’s Mariah. But at some point, she would come take Maggot and finish up raising him. I asked where, and Mrs. Peggot said they would have their own place.
I couldn’t even imagine Maggot not living in that house. “Does he know about it? That he’s going to have to move out?”
“Yes, honey. He does. We’ll be a little sad, but a boy ought to be raised by his mother, and that’s what she wants. Mr. Peg and I can’t always do for him now that he’s getting so big.”
Maggot wasn’t that big, to be honest. For his age. I was, though. I kept quiet.
“You and Matty will be teenagers here before you know it. Learning to drive, courting girls. Lord have mercy.” She smiled and looked sad at the same time, waving one hand like shooing away mosquitoes. That hand looked a hundred years old. Knuckles and gristle.
I’d given no thought to what lay up the road for us. Maggot learning to drive, courting whatever he had in mind, disaster possibly. He was already in a war with Mr. Peg over his long hair, the music he liked, some of his weirder magazines. Attitude in general. Nothing like the attitude wars of Stoner and me. But you could see how low-level fighting went step by step, with more hazards at the higher levels like in Super Mario.