June was sending Emmy away to some residence place that would get her clean. None of this quickie rehab business that Mom wore out like a doormat, nor even the upscale three weeks that Stoner paid for, prior to shaming her over it to the point of death. We’re talking possibly years of Emmy’s life, starting it all over from scratch. In Asheville. There is no such reboot camp around here. Lee County being a place where you keep on living the life you were assigned.
June called to let me know if I wanted to say goodbye, this would be the day. What kind of bucks is this gold-star cure going to cost, you wonder.
But it’s rude to discuss money. I just asked the polite things like, Does this establishment have bars in the windows because you know Emmy’s going to try and bolt. June was pretty confident Emmy would stay put. The reason: Rose Dartell. She’d contacted Emmy, offering to relieve her of
some body parts. Holy shit.
I said I’d come over after work. I was still unfired at the co-op, probably because any other kid they hired would be as strung out as I was. I’d drag my ass in late, Rita and Les would hit pause on their Medicare war to join forces in eye-rolling. You get used to a routine. I needed the job, and if I lost my line on cheap livestock syringes, I’d be in trouble at home.
It was late winter now, where sunset puts its claim on much of the day. I drove up towards June’s place, looking at pink sky through the black trees. June opened the door, looking worn out. “She’s upstairs packing, hon. Hang on, let me go see if she wants you to come up there.”
Emmy came downstairs with her coat on, wanting to go for a walk. We headed up to the ruined cabin. She pulled her hat on fast, but I saw attempts
had been made to salvage the wreck. Some kind of pixie cut, spikes and wisps. It had been a few weeks since the rescue but she still looked too thin, too jumpy, old in a young body. Rode hard and put up wet, guys like to say. But in some other way, she was restored to full Emmy. She wanted a cigarette.
“She’ll know you smoked, if you go back in there smelling like a chimney.”
“She’s bigger on forgiveness than permission.”
“Fine then, let her blame me for corrupting you.” I produced what was required. Emmy leaned against a tree and inhaled so hard the flame from my lighter pulled into the paper and crackled. Breathed in, breathed out,
eyes closed, God don’t I know it. That moment where nicotine has to stand in for all other things you’re dying for.
“Late in the day for that, don’t you think?”
For contributing to the delinquency, she meant. I wondered so many things: Was Fast Forward some kind of drug lord now, did he really just
throw her away like trash. How does a person you’ve worshipped turn into a monster. And by the way Rose Dartell, what the fuck. None of this would Emmy want to talk about. We went into the skeleton cabin and sat on the log benches we’d dragged together as kids. She smoked and held her
cigarette away from her, the way girls do to try and keep the smell out of their hair. Old habit. She put her face down on her knees for a while, then sat back up. “Demon, I’m scared to death.”
“Of what?” I thought she’d say Rose, but no. She was scared to go away. Afraid they would brainwash her in this place. Afraid nobody there would understand her, she said. What she really meant was, nobody would know what she’d always been: queen bee, Emmy Peggot.
“You’ll rock the house,” I said. “You will rule rehab.”
But I didn’t really know. Here, all we can ever be is everything we’ve been. I came from a junkie mom and foster care, briefly a star, to some degree famous because of all that. Quick to burn out, right on schedule.
Emmy grew up in Knoxville and moved back here out of the blue, but she landed in Lee County High with the full pedigree. Daughter of Peggots, homecoming royalty. In Asheville she might just be a pale, conceited girl with an air of broken beauty.
I remembered to give her the snake bracelet. She cupped her hands and dropped it from one to the other, staring at it like lost treasure. “I wondered
what happened to that.”
I left Rose out of this. “I never got why you kept wearing it.”
She looked at me, surprised. Then leaned over, unzipped her little leather boot, and fastened it around her ankle.
“It’s junk jewelry,” I said. “June gave us five dollars to spend in that gift shop, and I probably got change back. Which I probably pocketed.”
“Pocketed to take home to your mom.”
“Well yeah. To buy her cigarettes and Mello Yello.” “And you wonder why I’d keep this.”
I did. Wonder.
She leaned over and put her two cold hands on my cheeks, looking in my eyes like she meant to kiss me. But then sat back on her log bench. “Try to take care of Dori,” she said.
“God, Emmy. I’m trying. I don’t.” There were no words. “She doesn’t deserve you.”
“That’s a hateful thing to say.”
“I know you love her. I’m not being hateful.” She shook her head, looking up at the trees. “It’s why I couldn’t be with Hammer Kelly. He’s that same kind of good like you are. Like there’s some metal or something in you that won’t melt down, no matter what.”
“Oh, I melt down. I could show you some fine broken shit.”
She still wasn’t looking at me. “I’m saying you wake up and you’re still yourself, every day. I’m not like that, I give in. I change my recipe, to suit people.”
Changing to suit people sounded like a good deal. Dori wouldn’t, for me. She stuck to her plan of getting emptier every day. I’d stopped carrying her downstairs now, I just let her stay in bed. I didn’t try anymore to talk about things we’d do after we got better. Dori that morning said we should have just been childhood sweethearts instead of trying to get grown-up about it. That way I could have moved on. I got so mad at her over that.
Pulling out of June’s driveway, I saw a pickup pulled over on the roadside. It wasn’t a vehicle I knew, and there was nothing wrong I could see, tires looked okay. I got out to see what kind of help was needed. It was Hammer. Elbows on the steering wheel, hair flopped forward in his eyes.
Knuckles digging in his eyes.
I tapped on the window. “You good in there, man?”
He rolled down the window and looked at me, blinking. “I’m not going in that house.”
“It’s fine. I’m sure they both understand. You two have moved on.” “No. No, I haven’t. She was the one, man.”
“Okay.” Serious damage here, nothing I could repair.
“Will you tell Emmy for me? Just goodbye, and that I’m sorry for everything. I don’t blame her at all. Tell her I still love her.”
My phone started ringing on the way over to Tommy’s, and I ignored it. It was always Dori, wanting me home. I had a strip due tomorrow that I’d barely sketched out. Dori argued that I could just as well draw pictures at home. She would hold my pencils and ink pens. She’d talk the whole time, and want me to get her something, and cry. And Jip.
It kept ringing after I got to Tommy’s. After an hour I’d almost finished the strip and was about to melt down my fucking inner wonderful metal, so I picked up.
Not Dori. Angus. “Oh my God Demon, where are you? Please come, right now.”
Was somebody bleeding? Because I did not want to see Coach. You get past shame, into let’s just pretend I’m dead now. But Angus was outside herself. I asked if I should call 911, and she cursed a blue streak. No cops. It was U-Haul, and she needed me if possible to kill him.
It takes twenty minutes to get over there and I was there in ten. Found the two of them in the living room cat-and-mousing around the table, circling
one way, then the other, screaming, but I got no real indication of who was
the mouse. U-Haul was red-faced, rope-necked, saliva flying out of him like a cartoon maniac yelling craziness. I’m not waiting anymore, you can fucking give it over tonight or watch this whole fucking ship go down.
She saw me. Then he saw me, and crouched like a different animal.
Eyeing the door.
“Don’t let him leave,” Angus yelled. I tackled him and she grabbed some papers off the table and got past us, out the door. I listened for the car but
she didn’t pull out. I would have to sit on the asshole till further notice. U-
Haul was pinching and clawing me with his long writhy arms. I asked
where was Coach, and he said where do you think, drunk on his ass. Then shocked me by sinking his teeth in my thigh. Mother fuck. I punched him in the jaw, but it wasn’t a great angle. I managed to get him turned on his
stomach with some distance between his teeth and any of my parts, but he was still writhing and spitting. I couldn’t understand why Angus hadn’t driven away. Then heard in my ears, like tape delay, what she’d said. Don’t let him leave.
I couldn’t hold him there long. The way he was squirming under me, it felt like sitting on a floor of rolling baseballs. Also I’d medicated between June’s house and now, so was not in top fighting form. The wily bastard went for the weakness, giving a savage backward yank on my bad knee, mother fuck. And scrambled away like a crab, out the door.
Outside in the dark I was blind, no porch lights on. Her Wrangler was in the drive. My Impala, blocking Coach’s Caddy, both still there. U-Haul’s precious Mustang also, with the man himself circling it, pounding on the windows. Angus had to be inside. They always left keys in the cars at
home, it’s what we do, barring the methier necks of the woods or situations of outstanding debt. I saw a glint of light: Angus inside his car, shaking a bouquet of dangling metal at me. She’d collected up all the car keys and locked U-Haul out of his mothership.
I edged in close, decked him, and scooted around to the passenger side. She unlocked, I dived in and locked it behind me. The car was thick with the oily smell of him.
“Shit,” I said, trying to breathe. His screaming was damped down some through the glass. “He’ll get a tire iron and smash a window.”
She stared at me. “Not his sweet baby Mustang, surely.” “No, you’re right. The love of his life.”
Her eyes got very wide. “Demon, he wants me.” “What do you mean?”
“You tried to tell me. I didn’t want to hear it.”
He’d come on to her. Told her he’d been keeping things of hers ever
since she was a little girl, underclothes. Watching her in the tub. He wasn’t waiting any longer. To have sex with her, he meant. Because now he could make her do it.
“What the hell kind of sick madness is that?” I felt like puking. My ears were ringing.
“Blackmail.” She got weirdly quiet. I watched her walking herself back from frantic to that place where she could go. Like this was happening to
some other Angus. U-Haul had told her he could go to the school board and
get Coach fired for drunkenness and worse. Embezzlement of school and booster funds. That would happen, unless she had sex with him.
He’d stopped banging on the car. We didn’t see him, and it was too quiet. My brain was having trouble turning over, like the fluids were cold. “Shit. He’s gone to get another key.”
“There’s no other key. He’s been pissed over that, he lost the other set.” “You’re sure.”
“Yeah. But the tire iron is still in the running.”
“This is all bark and no bite,” I said. “He’s just making shit up. Jesus.
Stealing from the boosters? That’s like taking out of the church collection plate, Coach would never.”
Wouldn’t, she said, but did. Without knowing it. U-Haul kept all the books. He’d been moving football funds into his mother’s bank account, for years evidently. I said if that was true, they’d have burned down their damn rat trap in Heeltown and gotten a life.
He was just waiting for the iron to strike, is what he’d told her. She’d been calling me for an hour, Jesus. How long was he chasing her around that table? She said not that long, it took a while to get to that point. She’d gone in Coach’s office that afternoon and found out he’d forged Coach’s
signature all over a ton of things, power of attorney and such. Stealing from Miss Betsy also, altering her checks. U-Haul came into the office then, she shoved this stuff in his face and one thing led to another, the blackmail and such, before it blew up into him trying to back her into the bedroom.
It was a lot to follow. Why would she go poking in Coach’s office?
Craziest thing. Some man had called the house saying U-Haul was putting a lot of Coach’s money in his so-called enterprise, and he needed to check
this out with Coach himself. Angus had taken the call. And that’s how it came down. Damn. Mr. McCobb blows open another guy’s con.
We sat in the car forever, waiting for the next moves of a crazed mind. Tire iron to the Impala being among my concerns. The coward must have walked home. Around midnight we called the coast clear. Checked on Coach, who’d slept through the show. I offered to take Angus someplace, but she was pulling it together. We went in the office and unlocked the drawer where Coach kept his Smith & Wesson 40 to take to bed with her. I
made sure it was loaded and showed her the safety, which is a little tricky, a grip safety that has to be palmed. She knew.
I sat with her a while in her room, even though I’d have hell to pay later on many fronts. I asked if Coach might have known this stealing was going on. She said no. He’d trusted U-Haul, then stayed too drunk for too long. “That part’s killing me,” she said. “U-Haul says I asked for this. I knew about Dad and didn’t speak up. That’s true, Demon. We knew.”
“You asked for nothing,” I said. “Jesus. You can’t think that.” “I know.”
“This was done to you. To you and Coach both.” Words I’d been hearing. “I know.”
She got a little wobbly, and I thought she might fall apart but she didn’t.
She sat on the bed talking through what she’d have to do, starting
tomorrow. Money to repay, shit to sort out. Lawyers. She looked like a kid, curled against the headboard in her white stretch pj’s, twirling a strand of her hair around one finger, talking like the head of the house. All I could think of was little Angus bearing those Hellboy eyes on her, all her life.
Growing her skin of leather.
I told her to push the heavy chest of drawers against the door after I left.
And waited to be sure she did.
