The night before we left, I stuffed my pillowcase full of underwear and T-shirts and my notebook of superhero drawings, and slept in my clothes. In the morning I was out on the deck an hour before they packed up their truck, which was a Dodge Ram club cab with the fold-down back seats that face each other. Maggot and I would play slapjack and kick each other’s scabby knees all the way to Knoxville.
Mom sat out there with me waiting for the Peggots to shine, and the sun to come up over the mountains that threw their shade on us. Living in a holler, the sun gets around to you late in the day, and leaves you early. Like much else you might want. In my years since, I’ve been amazed to see how much more daylight gets flung around in the flatter places. This and more still yet to be learned by an excited kid watching his pretty mom chain-smoke and listen to the birds sing. She tried to pass the time by asking the bird names, which I’d told her before. I only knew some few, Mr. Peg knew them all. Jenny wren, field canary, joree bird. If we’d splash our armpits and faces in the sink instead of a real shower, he’d say we were taking a joree bath. Which is what I did that morning, in my big hurry to leave Mom. It’s all burned in my brain. How she kept thinking of things to remind me about: act decent, remember please and thank you, especially whenever they pay for stuff, and don’t go poking around June’s apartment. Things you’d need to tell a kid before he goes out of state. I told her to set the damn alarm clock. Which made her laugh because I’d already stuck a note on the refrigerator: set the dam alarm clock. She said she loved me a whole lot and not to forget about her, which was weird. Mom was not usually all that emotional.
Finally Mr. Peg down at the road hollered “All right then, we’re fixing to go.” I started down the steps, but Mom tackled me with all of them watching, kissing on my neck until I was pretty much dead of embarrassment.
And that was it, we left her. Mr. Peg waved, but Mrs. Peggot just stared at her, making a long kind of face. I could still see it any time she turned around to ask us if we were buckled up and did we want any cookies yet. She wore that face well over the state line.
4
Knoxville had a surprise in store: a girl named Emmy Peggot that lived with Aunt June in her apartment, the daughter of Maggot’s dead uncle Humvee. Of the birdhouse. She was a skinny sixth grader with long brown hair and this look to her, cold-blooded. Carrying around at all times a Hello Kitty backpack that she looked ready to bludgeon you with, then tote around your head inside. Getting to the bottom of all that was going to take some time.
Right away we piled into Aunt June’s Honda to take us all to lunch at Denny’s, except Mr. Peg that needed to put up his bum leg after the drive. Aunt June made us belt up, which was the first I’d seen of three functioning belts in a back seat. Emmy sat in the middle not talking to us, fishing hair scrunchies and whatever out of her backpack, making a show of not letting us see what else was in there, like it might be something too shocking for our young minds.
Aunt June let us order anything we wanted, so it was like a birthday. We sat by the window and it was hard to concentrate, with everything going on out there. I might have been the only kid at school that hadn’t been to a city before, other than a girl with no parents and epileptic by the name of Gola Ham. Other kids my age had mostly been to Knoxville because people have kin there. Now I was getting my eyes full. If something went by like a cop cruiser with a dog in back, or a tow truck pulling a crushed Mustang, I’d yell, Oh man, look at that! And Emmy would cut her eyes over at me like, So? People don’t total their fucking cars where you come from? Aunt June was busy talking to Mrs. Peggot about her job. She had to go in to work after lunch until the next morning: day and night shifts back-to-back. She talked about the long hours and what she saw in the ER, like a pregnant lady that came in gut-stabbed with her baby still inside. Which if you think about it, would make a crushed Mustang not that big a deal.
More ER stories were still to come, told to Maggot and me by Emmy after she got over herself and started speaking to us. It turns out, the worst shit people can think of to do to each other up home is also thought of and done in Knoxville. Probably more so. The thing about a city is, it’s huge. Obviously I’d seen city on TV because that’s all they ever show （other than Animal Planet）， so I was expecting something like Knoxville. Only I had the idea you’d go around a corner and you’d be out of it. Back to where you’d see mountains, cattle pastures, and things of that kind, alive. No dice. Whenever Aunt June took us out, we’d drive down twenty or thirty streets with buildings only. You couldn’t see the end of it in any form. If you are one of the few that still hasn’t been, let me tell you what a city is. A hot mess not easily escaped.