Stoner and I ran out of steam on our supervised visit halfway through lunch. He’d take a bite, chew, stare at the foil wrapper, repeat, like he’d found religion in a combo meal. I kept picking up my extra-large beverage cup and looking down its throat like whatever I’d lost might be in there.
Rattling ice. Your basic two guys that would like to be not looking at each other. I’d never at any time had much to say to the man, but we did have the Demon improvement program to keep us entertained. It used to get him worked up in a pretty good lather. Not today.
I kept looking over at Miss Barks, hoping she’d come bail us out, but she was reading a book. She’d made it clear Mom wanted this, Stoner and me patching it up. If you think a mother is a hard rock to run up against, try pushing back on a dead one. She and Stoner had gone to the counseling, and he’d agreed to starting over from the top, family of four and all that.
But with two of the four now scratched from the lineup, heels were dragged. Miss Barks had badgered him into this visit. Now here we were, duty done. She was keeping her nose in her damn book.
“I guess you’re moving,” I said.
“I’ll finish up getting my stuff out of there whenever I get time. They liked to killed me these last couple weeks with the long-haul deliveries. You’d think a man could get a break.”
I wondered what else he meant to take from our trailer home, maybe
doorknobs and copper wiring. According to Maggot he had already cleared out, lock, stock, barrel, and Satan.
“You thinking to leave Lee County?” I asked him. Bite, chew. He looked up at me. “Who’s asking?”
“Nobody. I just wondered. Where you meant to live and everything.” “I’m back over at Heeltown, same place.”
“I thought somebody else was in that apartment now. Some guy you knew.”
“Nah.”
I pictured Stoner walking backward to where he’d met Mom, which was in Walmart, on his way to sporting goods. He could rewind his life to that spot, turn down a different aisle, and start new. Find some other girlfriend to jump on the back of his Harley with her hair flying. Off they go. I had to quit this line of thinking for fear of what might happen, crying in front of
people or a punch thrown at Stoner. He was getting a complete do-over, and I was stuck with the leftovers of him and Mom, like paper torn off a package. Here, now, nothing.
Stoner took off his reflector sunglasses and rubbed his eyes. The funeral shirt and tie had gone back to whoever he borrowed them from, but the
sunglasses indoors he seemed to be keeping as his new look. The grieving husband thing. Given the shaved head and leather jacket, though, the shades just leaned it all in more of the criminal direction.
“She could of been real happy,” he said, out of nowhere. “Her and me. If things were different. Gal was a spitfire, all said and done.”
Why I needed to hear my own mother called any name at all, by a guy that had mostly pissed on her flame, was a question. If things were different. The existence of me having screwed up his wonderful marriage: there it sat. Same pile of crap waiting to be stepped in. I looked over at Miss Barks again and was shocked to see her looking straight at me. I rolled my eyes
towards the door like, Please? But she ratcheted her eyebrows together, that thing she did, meaning, You’ve got some fish to fry here, young man.
Which I did, she wasn’t wrong. The main one being, what the hell comes next for me, and will Stoner have anything to say about it.
The DSS had been on the fence at first, but now were coming in on the side of yes, Stoner could have a say, if he wanted to. He’d shown up to counseling with Mom, and acted agreeable to helping support me. What
about my busted lip, what about my black eye, what about getting locked in my room for days at a time? Questions were asked. But Mom always took up for him, claiming I was a hard kid to handle. She said she was the one doing the child abuse, more so than Stoner. This fairy tale, reported to me by Miss Barks, made me so mad at Mom, I wanted her back just for the
purpose of calling her a goddamn lying bitch. Which was not happening unless I meant to go dig her up out of Russell County clay. What I did
instead was come close to busting out Miss Barks’s passenger-side window, the day she told me. This chat of ours taking place in her car, parked out on Millers Chapel Road. All that got busted though was my knuckles. And my cred, I guess you could say. As far as being a kid that was hard to handle.
I wasn’t forgiving Mom for it, but after Miss Barks talked me down, I could see the reasoning. No part of the Stoner deal was ever supposed to happen to me, and I’d told Mom that. Like, daily. A mother is supposed to protect a kid from being made to lick a man’s boots and take his punches. Mom screwed up, and she knew it. I’d never in the past been a hundred percent on all her moral inventory blah-blah-blah, but I was getting it now.
The upshot of her taking full responsibility was that no charges were ever filed against Stoner. Leaving the two of us free to discuss our feelings in a burger place on 58. Normally with a stepdad I guess nothing is set in stone, as far as child support for the kid of the dead wife. But legal-guardian-wise, I was short on options. Not a great time for him to lose interest entirely.
I was waiting for him to ask about school, or anything else. Was I making progress in the discipline-and-respect-for-others department. Nope, nobody home, Stoner boot camp had closed up shop. This probably sounds nuts, but I started wishing he would make some insult of my character, to show interest. I was blurting out any random thing that might make me sound like a worthy person, which to be honest there wasn’t much. Even my drawing, the one thing I was pretty good at, was over and out since Mom died. I couldn’t even open my notebooks to look at my older stuff. Too sad, I guess. I was the opposite of Tommy, as far as sadness and drawing.
And now I was embarrassing myself, trying to dig up bones for Stoner. I said I was going out for JV football. And had started weight training. Which was not a complete lie, Fast Forward was psyched about me and football and was letting me use his free weights, teaching me the body parts lingo
some guys had: quads, triceps, lats. Those words did get the tiniest spark of attention from Stoner. For about ten seconds, before he went back to opening up the layers of his Quarter Pounder and separating out all the pickles.
I decided to let Stoner make the next move. A boring game, since he didn’t seem to notice I’d stopped talking. He ran out of anything fascinating to eat, and was looking around like maybe somebody better had showed up.
It was mostly just parents with kids eating their value meals in what you had to assume were happier situations. Our table was by the door, so we got a fresh blast of December whenever anybody came in. Freezing rain type of thing. I didn’t have any winter coat that fall. Mom kept meaning to get me one, but never did.
I said nothing, Stoner said nothing. I turned up my Coke and drank it down. I needed more ice in me right then like a hole in the head. Now my whole chest hurt. A couple came in with a kid, one of those good-looking
families you just want to believe in, like a commercial. The little guy was in a puffy jacket and boots and looked like a tiny moon man, walking on his toes. The mom had on a purple coat and tall boots, cheeks red from the cold, young looking. Like Mom whenever she first had me. The husband or boyfriend went to order and she squatted down on her boot heels to unzip
the kid out of his coat, flicking her shiny hair over her shoulders, talking to this kid, smiling in his face like there was no place else she wanted to be. I wondered if Mom was ever that thrilled with me. She’d fought tooth and nail with her fosters about not giving up the baby, and ended up having to move out on her own, pregnant, broke, and boyfriendless as she was. She always said I was the first good thing that ever happened to her. And seemed that thrilled about baby number two, even if Stoner wasn’t.
He was running his fingers around the inside of the paper sleeve that his fries came in, and licking the salt off his fingers. I could see little grains in his black beard. I wondered if he ever thought about the baby he was going to be the dad of, or if he’d forgotten it completely, as part of his total reset.
At the funeral no mention was made about this being a two-in-one, meaning probably nobody else knew. So now, in the entire world, there was only me left to lie in bed at night thinking about those two being dead forever. It seemed like a lot for one person to be responsible for. The whole life of my brother that never got to happen.
Miss Barks got my attention, pointing at her watch. Shit and hallelujah.
I folded the dead-meat mess of my lunch back into its foil, laying it to rest. Or on second thought, to save for later because I’d be starving in an hour. “So, report cards are coming next week and I’m looking good,” I said. “Possibly honor roll.” Even for a Hail Mary, this was dumb, Stoner giving no particular shit about school. Plus not true. But not totally false, either. I told him I’d busted my butt trying to make up a ton of work, due to missing a month of school.
He looked up at me from his little salt project, with no exact expression. “October,” I said. “I was cutting tobacco.”
“Huh,” he said. “So the foster parents don’t care if you lay out of school?”
“Jesus fuck, Stoner.”
He sat up like I’d kicked him, and looked all around for whatever Sunday school teachers might be present. “There’s no call for language.”
I glared at him. “There’s no parents. It’s one old guy running a slave farm for homeless boys. You know where I’m living. Miss Barks told you about it, and so did Mom. What were you, unconscious? I hate it there.”
“Fine, sorry.” He spread his hands.
“Anyway, I won’t be there much longer because the work is pretty much done for now. He doesn’t keep boys on the farm through the winter
months.”
Stoner just nodded, like I was explaining how my sock drawer was full and I needed some place to stash my extras. Not at his place, was a good guess. I was wishing so hard for him to give a damn, and also for him to disappear from the planet of Earth. I wished both those things at the same time. And wish number three, not to be the eleven-year-old redheaded boy that everybody saw crying at the burger place on Route 58.
I had one weapon left. “So it looks like I’ll be hanging out with Maggot. The Peggots invited me to go with them to Knoxville after school lets out. Next week. Over Christmas break.”
Stoner looked blank. Did he not know schools let out for Christmas? Had his reset button truly erased everything, even the unrepeatable-word son of a jailbird next door?
“You all have a nice time,” he said. And the bottom fell out of my stomach. That’s how far he was willing to let things slide, as regards the kind of people we were in this family.
That was my last shot. The Peggots going to Knoxville, that was true. Me invited to come with them, that was not. But I would go. Because where
else was there.
