Summer was coming, and I was counting the days down. Not that moving to full-time hours on the garbage mountain enterprise was any great shakes, vacationwise. But still, for a kid it’s just ironed into you that summer is freedom. For three whole months, no more sitting in a too small desk trying to be not the biggest shit-eater in the room.
For the record, I didn’t always hate school. I was once known to put in a decent effort. One of the better readers, as far as the boys at least. Maybe I thought Mom would be proud, or maybe I wanted to show her I wasn’t going to be a dropout like her. Either way, it no longer pertained. Now I watched other kids raise their hands, get their answers right, and good for them. Topic sentences, Appomattox Courthouse, life cycle of a plant, what is all that? If all your brain wants to know is, where’s the door out of here and wherever it goes, will you still be starving.
The teachers, principal, and Miss Barks all gave me the same lecture on how I was not working hard or living up to my potential. I had no fight with them. You get to a point of not giving a damn over people thinking you’re worthless. Mainly by getting there first yourself. I wanted to tell them: This right here that you’re looking at is my potential. What the fuck would you call it? Do you seriously think this is the person I wanted to end up living
inside of?
But hard work? Let me tell you what that is: trying to get through every day without the gangling ugly menace of you being stared at, shamed by a teacher, laughed at by girls, or sucker punched. Again, if you’ve been there, you know. If you have to guess, you might not even be close. All these
people had to keep on asking and asking: Why was I flunking out? What
could I do but look at the wall and say nothing, just sorry. I was learning to love the brutal burnt screw-you taste of that word I’d been given to eat forever. Sorry.
But I still yet had a small fire in my belly for the first day of summer.
Picture me with my big smile, turning up at Golly’s at nine a.m. on a weekday, dropped off by Mr. McCobb on his way to wherever he hadn’t quit from lately. I can see Mr. Golly inside the store putting his two-for-one Corn Dogs sign in the window. Over at the far side of the dump lot, I see Swap-Out lighting a cigarette one-handed while pissing against a tree in full view of the passing cars. And I think, Jesus. This is all there is. Walk around back to bang on Ghost’s door and clock in.
The thing about school you don’t realize is, everybody’s moving towards something. Even if you’re one of the screwups, you still participate. Okay kids, let’s get through this lesson, this unit, this grade. In May we’ll take our Standards of Learning tests, maybe our sorry-ass school will do better on
the scores this year, the teachers will keep their jobs, and everybody moves on to the next grade. Every kid wants to be older anyway, so there you go, automatic improvement. It’s like the escalator thing at the Knoxville mall. Step on, take your ride. There’s always the chance you might run across something shiny and new on your way up.
Now I’d fallen off. At Golly’s we didn’t have any units or even weeks, we measured time in roll-offs. Which is a giant metal bin, like a railroad car, that you fill up with trash. Then a semi comes and hauls it off to the landfill. After we’d sorted people’s dropped-off trash into what could be sold for scrap, recycled, pawned, smashed, drained, whatever, the leftovers were the trash of the trash. Also pretty toxic, but not the point. That’s what we threw in the thirty-yard roll-off. It was nothing so easy as just tossing it in, either. The company charged four hundred dollars to haul it off and bring in an empty, so we had to be economical about it and get over a hundred ten-buck loads of people’s trash leftovers crammed in that dumpster. This meant using all our superpowers of stomping, flattening, breaking, rebreaking, then piling it higher than the canopy over the gas pumps. Towards the end of a load, it took a serious pitching arm to get anything up there on top. Plenty would fall off too, as they hauled it away, leaving a trail of crap from Golly’s to the landfill. Not our problem.
Here was our summer: filling that roll-off to the max, be it a month, six weeks, doesn’t matter. Because it goes away, the empty comes back, and
you’re back where you started. Here was the real world where nobody and nothing gets better. Biding my time till I turned sixteen and could drop out of school, with a whole life ahead for applying myself to full-time shit work. Maybe I was Ghost’s trainee, someday to graduate from battery-acid drainage assistant to the show he had going inside.
Meanwhile the McCobbs were in some serious shit. Their car got repossessed. It was a late-model Dodge Spirit, leased, sky blue, none of that I guess being the point. Mr. McCobb couldn’t get to work anymore, so he lost his job, was the point. You tell me why it makes sense for guys wanting money from you to come and take your car, so you can’t earn another dime. That’s the grown-up version I guess of teachers yelling at you for hating school.
First the McCobbs didn’t know what the hell they were going to do, other than possibly be homeless, because of already being behind on their rent.
Next they fired up a full-time marital spat between (1) starting a couple of new in-home businesses with Mr. McCobb doing telephone surveys and
Mrs. McCobb doing dog grooming, or (2) taking the kids and going to Ohio to live with Mrs. McCobb’s parents, dog grooming my ass. I myself was banking on Mr. McCobb winning, because he definitely wore the pants. It mattered to me which way this went, obviously. Since I would not be moving my personal ass to any Ohio.
Or grooming any dogs, either. I was working full time at Golly’s. It turned out Ghost lived over towards Fleenortown and drove right past, so he could pick me up on his way in. I wasn’t crazy about the hours he kept, or being alone in a Chevy pickup with Ghost and the thoughts in my head.
Christ. But I got to work most days, other than the weeks he’d disappear on some kind of bender. I had to stay longer in the evenings, due to Ghost doing a lot of his business in the after-dark hours. But I got used to it.
Swap-Out had a reliable source of weed and a generous heart. Definitely it helped the time go faster. Or maybe slower actually, but you didn’t care.
Once in a great while he’d show up with a Glock 19 that belonged to one of the guys he lived with, and we’d set up a row of bottles on the edge of the roll-off for target practice. It was years since Mr. Peg had showed me how to shoot, so I wasn’t that great, but my aim got better over time. Swap-Out’s aim was scary as hell, permanently, improvement being not a Swap-Out thing. We kept an eye out for the aerosols, which over and above the
huffing potentials made excellent targets. Big bang, for real. But we could get ourselves just as thoroughly entertained over some childish shit like stomping the bubbles of bubble wrap. Also you wouldn’t believe the number of hot dogs two deeply baked boys could put away. Mr. Golly had to be making extras on purpose.
After Swap-Out went home of an evening, I’d be on my own to hang out in the store and help Mr. Golly. He liked talking about his childhood in India, where evidently a lot of people lived in the dump itself. In houses they built out of actual trash. If that sounds like some wack fairy tale, I’m just going to say he was not a guy to lie to you. He acted like this was no big deal really, getting born and raised in a dump. He had all these great
stories about what boys did to mess with each other, like traps, stink bombs, etc. For their holidays (and we’re talking some whole other Christianity) they built giant statues of their goddesses and elephants and such, out of— wait for it—stuff they found in the dump! God made out of garbage, you can’t make that up. It seemed like the old man had been saving up these
stories his whole life, waiting for somebody to listen. He’d had a wife in there somewhere, but at this point in time I’m pretty sure I was it for Mr.
Golly. Technically it turned out that he was Mr. Ghali this whole time. I saw him write that on the thing you sign for deliveries. I was surprised, but he said I was not the lone ranger, everybody in the county thought it was Golly’s Market. According to him, “Golly” meant “Gee, that is really
great,” so the name was okay by him. Part of his advertising scheme.
Hearing these tales of his dump boyhood, sometimes I’d think of telling Miss Barks, how she’d be interested in the whole situation of foreign orphans. Then I’d remember: nope. I was back to Baggy Eyes as my caseworker, a sadder sack of person than ever, plus seriously pissed off at Miss Barks for abandoning ship to go chase her dreams. That made two of us, and I guess we both decided out of bitterness to say as little as possible to each other. She would call the house once a month while I was at work, and Mrs. McCobb would tell some lie about me being outside playing.
Baggy would be glad to hear it, no need to talk to me. Just to be clear: I’m eleven. She’s my legal guardian. And her idea of a perfect ward of the state is one that’s AWOL.
The McCobbs by this time were fighting like cats and dogs. I’d hear them going at it in the kitchen before I was even awake, and at night up in their room, voices raised to be heard above crying babies. And even still
Mrs. McCobb sometimes would up and tell me for no reason, like while she’s putting in a load of laundry, that she would never divorce Mr.
McCobb.
If true, that’s about all that could be ruled out in the department what the hell next. In July the landlord threatened to kick them out unless they paid their back rent. Which they did, by dipping into the cash I’d earned at Golly’s. No confusion now about me chipping in. Did they plan to tell me? No. I found out from Haillie that heard her parents discuss it, taking my cash out of the drawer where they kept it. I went postal. The poor kid pissing herself, to see the level of catfuck she’d let out of the bag. I stormed upstairs, yelling how I was going to turn them in to DSS. How would I do that, without going into various not-legal things I’d done to make this money they’d taken? No idea, I just went with my gut. Some items in their bedroom got busted, including a lamp. The babies went off like a car alarm. Not a good scene. I took what was left of my cash, put it in a peanut butter jar, and said if they wanted my help they could fucking well ask.
What else were they going to use, though? Honestly, once I got over my Hulk moment I was more worried than mad. Without any car they were in pitiful shape. Sending their grocery list for me to bring home from Golly’s, then freaking out over paying double for a can of beans, etc. But they couldn’t very well walk the five miles to Food Lion. Mr. McCobb was getting whittled down to size. He still talked down to the wife and kids, but me he started treating like one of his buds. He was drinking a good deal of beer in the afternoons now, so I’d get home of an evening to find him in the kitchen wanting to share his tales of woe. Rarely was I in the mood. But if I went in my dog room he’d just follow me in there, which was worse. No
place for two guys to sit, for one thing, underpants lying around for another. That weren’t even mine.
He felt like a loser, not providing for his family. He said it almost killed him to take my money and then get yelled at in front of his kids. He’d go all sorry, and the dog would look up at him with the whites of her eyes showing, and I’d feel like it was me that should apologize. Shame was a
shithole I knew. He’d get in these sloppy moods of giving me life advice,
like I was his real son. Which, even if beggars can’t be choosers, would not have been my first choice. He always ended up saying the same thing: If you spend one penny less than you earn every month, you’ll be happy. But spend a penny more than you earn, you’re done for. He’d look at me with
those dark, sad eyes and lay this on me. That the secret of happiness basically is two cents.
By late summer the dog-grooming side of the fight had gotten nowhere, signs pointing to Ohio. Mrs. McCobb’s parents would call and she’d get the kids on the extensions, both crying. Daddy’s so mean they can’t have the littlest thing, no Barbies, no Lisa Frank, waah. My Lord, to think of Mr.
McCobb moving in with those in-laws. A hot mess. They decided on leaving town before school started. Baggy would have to find me a new placement. And at least I’d finally be done worrying about that household, where the man of the house was the one sleeping in the dog room.
Now I could worry about my own next stop on the road to hell, with a caseworker that was not on the case. I had to call her to ask, was I going back to Creaky Farm. She said Crickson, and no. The DSS had discovered he was committing infractions, so they removed his fostering privileges.
They were looking for somebody else to take the hardship cases. “Our kids that resist permanent placement,” was how she put it, and of course I thought of Tommy. He would not resist but throw his arms around a permanent placement. Never to draw a skeleton again.
Around this time I made my plan. Dangerous possibly, crazy for sure. All I can say is, you try living in crazytown for a while and see what you cook up.
All I had to my name was the jar of money I kept stashed in my backpack day and night. Every dollar I got paid, I stuffed in there on top of whatever
the McCobbs had left me after paying off their landlord. I’d had no chance to make an exact count. No privacy at work, nor in my room at night, with the baby-cam. Those two watching me count my money, they’d pop a vein. But I got paid for eight hours most days, and had worked eight weeks that summer more or less. Less, due to Ghost going on some bad jags. It would have to be enough.
Because now it’s August. Mrs. McCobb is packing anything as yet unpawned into cardboard boxes, Mr. McCobb probably is weighing the
pros and cons of a bullet in his brain, and still nobody can tell me where I’m going to live. Baggy’s idea of working on it is asking the same questions again. Did I have friends that could take me in a pinch? She’d checked back with the Peggots, which was embarrassing. How many times did I have to hear it? No, they did not want me. They did say I could come visit for a few
days before school started, to spend time with Matthew. Meaning probably Maggot was bored, wearing eye makeup around the house and driving everybody nuts, and it dawned on the grandparents that I might be a good influence. And I thought: Damn it, I told you this. What I said to Baggy was, “Tell them I’ll consider it.”
The other thing she kept asking about was relatives. Did I have any. Had we not been through this? Lady, look it up. Mom: orphan, foster care, no living relatives she knew of, plus dead. Dad: skip straight to the dead part. Also not existent, according to my birth certificate.
But he did exist. Mom was very clear on that. Her story about the day I was born and some old biddy coming for me, okay, questionable. But the older I got, the more people said I looked like him. That I came from somewhere, in other words. From somebody.
The first Thursday of August, the McCobbs had a U-Haul truck sitting in their driveway pointed at Ohio. I’d told Baggy I was going to the Peggots.
She wouldn’t have to give me a ride, they were picking me up. I’d stay
there until she sorted out my placement. My last morning in the dog room, I crammed what I could into my school backpack: clothes, drawing notebooks, money jar. The rest was trash. What toys I had, I’d given to Brayley. I let the plug out of my bed and sat on it to let the air out. I would miss those kids, especially Haillie. I’d bought them goodbye presents from Golly’s: a plastic horse for Haillie and a pint of bubble-gum-flavor ice cream for Brayley. I rolled my bed up with the sheets and stuffed them in a laundry basket that I carried outside. I tried to say goodbye to the Mr. and Mrs. but they were yelling at each other over how to fit a queen-size
mattress in the U-Haul. Whatever. Haillie gave me a hug. Brayley wiped off his pink ice cream beard and waved from the steps. Ghost rolled up and I got in his pickup and that was me, over and out on the McCobbs.
It was a weird day at work. My head was not in the normal place, but it wasn’t just me. I mean, a lady leaning out her car window and yelling for a solid half hour about had we seen her motherfucking husband that had done hightailed it with her SSDI check. Also, finding a mother skunk with her four babies inside a twist-tied bag of trash. She’d made a little hole and got her family in there. This is skunks, right, so getting them all out is another story. Lethal Weapon III.
At the end of my shift the Peggots did not pick me up. I’d lied to Baggy, knowing she’d never in this life or the next one call up the Peggots to
check. I told Mr. Golly I wouldn’t be able to come in the next day, not a lie, so he gave me my week’s pay early. I picked up some items I said were for the McCobbs, and to put it on their tab. Candy bars, Slim Jims, easy-to- carry type things. If Mr. Golly noticed this wasn’t the usual McCobb grocery list, he didn’t say anything. With a good hour of daylight still hanging, I turned my back on Golly’s. Walked out to the junction, turned south on Highway 23, and stuck out my thumb.
It probably wasn’t five minutes before a guy pulled over in a rusted-out El Camino, those half-car, half-pickup type of deals, with two muddy dogs in the back. I thought that was a good sign, as regards the guy not being a child molester. Why carry around dogs to crime scenes? Anyway, I got in. Wherever those dogs had been to get so muddy, this guy was right there with them. He had dried mud on the sleeves of his shirt and caked in his hair. But fine, not blood. I thanked him for picking me up. He asked where I was headed tonight, and I told him Tennessee.
He laughed. “Where at in particular, buddy? Tennessee’s kindly big.”
I said it was a place he’d probably never heard of before. Murder Valley.
He told me I was right, that was a new one on him. But that he’d not be able to forget a name like that, now that he’d heard it. I said no, sir. You never do.
