June wanted to see me. Emmy was two months AWOL, and she was at her wits ends. The scene of the crime was Fast Forward, everybody knew. But Emmy was well past the age of consent, and had gotten the message back to June that she was in no need of rescue.
I wasn’t sure what dog I had in this fight if any, but June was never anything but good to me, so I drove over there. At a distance she looked the homecoming queen as ever, bare legs propped on the porch railing. I had to get close to see how two months had made her old. Lines by her mouth, tiny wires of white hair. She threw her arms around me, rocking like some sad last dance, her head on my shoulder. The women that loomed large in my
life were all getting small.
“Sorry,” she said, after she let me go. Wiping the corner of one eye. “Lord, June, don’t be. I spent the better part of middle school wishing for
that.”
“I believe it was Emmy you were after.”
“I was not one to shut any doors. You pick that up in foster care.”
She sized me up. “Look at you, all grown. After everything they put you through. An upstanding young man, living on your own. Where’s Dori? I told you I’d feed you both.”
“I already ate. She was tired. She said thanks.”
I felt less than upstanding, and Dori was out for the count. I’d finally gotten a shift at Sonic, and Dori was cutting hair at some bootleg beauty parlor in Thelma’s basement. We had our prescriptions. I’d snaked the
drains and replaced the fill hose in the washer. Life was back on its keel somewhat, but we had different schedules. I aimed at functional for much of
each day, whereas Dori set her sights on a couple hours of not poking out any eyes with her scissors.
“I’ve got a whole baked chicken I’m sending home with you, then.” My stomach did a little dance of hope. “You don’t have to.”
“I do, or it’ll go to waste. Most of everything I cook, I end up taking in for the girls at the clinic. I cannot get the hang of living alone.”
“I’m sorry.” I hadn’t thought of that. She never had. She’d started looking after Emmy at nineteen, while she was in nursing school. Living in the Peggots’ trailer.
She put her hands in her back pockets. “You know I’d lay down my life for that girl.”
“I know. I think she wants you not to, though. Anymore.”
She looked at me, surprised. “That’s just how it works, Demon. You should be as mad at her as I am. We give these kids all the advantages, and they won’t stoop to pick them up. Emmy’s acting like a child, and Maggot, good night. I don’t know where to start.”
“He’ll be all right. He just needs more time than most to find his way out of the weeds.”
“What he needs,” she said, “is a boyfriend.”
I might have blinked. “You’d be okay with that?”
“Of course I would. Even Mama would, I think. In time. If he could just find some nice boy to talk him out of his night of the living dead.”
“I’m not sure he’d choose that wisely.”
She spit out a bitter laugh. “We don’t any of us, do we? Here, let’s walk. There’s a spot up the road where you can see the sun hit the ridge on its way down.”
We walked out on the gravel road I’d once walked with Fast Forward and Mouse, letting her trash-talk all I knew. I’d let summer get by me without notice. Here it was. The sun coming down through tall trees in long
waterfalls of light, the birds starting up their evening songs. There’s one
like water trilling over rocks, pretty enough to make you cry. Wood robin. I thought about the night in Knoxville June told us she was moving back.
Screw those doctors looking down on her, calling her Loretta Lynn. She could have crushed it there. But she wanted this.
As far as Emmy and Fast Forward, June knew as much as I did about
where they were living, someplace in Roanoke. She said she woke up every day wanting to drive over there and bring the girl home. But this was
Emmy. You’d want a SWAT team. June was desperate for anything I could tell her. I picked my words, but I didn’t lie. I told her Fast Forward was one of these that has pull over people, like a magnet. And Emmy being a
magnet-type person also, they probably couldn’t help getting attracted. June asked if he was dangerous. I said the world is dangerous. She asked what
drugs he was involved with, and I said to the best of my knowledge he himself wasn’t doing a whole lot. That he was more into the money side of things.
“That is not going to help me sleep tonight,” she said.
I told her I was sorry, but she was putting me between the rock and the hard place. We walked to where we could see the sun hit the ridge, and the dark start to pour down the valley. On the way back she asked about my knee. I said I didn’t think about it anymore, which was a lie. I thought about it every single time I took a step. My own business.
“Just tell me this,” June said. “Is she taking pills?” “You want to sleep tonight? Or the truth.”
“I’m asking.”
“Then I’ll tell you. I don’t know a single person my age that’s not taking pills.”
June was quiet. I tried to decide if this really was true. Angus was the exception. Even Tommy popped NoDoz, due to the hours he kept. Late
nights at work, and then the McCobbs had him up early taking the kids to school. We were halfway back before she spoke again.
“They did this to us. You understand that, right?” I did not. Neither the who, nor the what.
She told me more of what I’d heard from Emmy, what she was seeing at the clinic. I asked if anybody was wanting to kill her lately, but she waved that off. “I’m not the one you need to worry about. It’s not just people your age. You know what I’m saying? If they’re old, sick, on disability? They need their scrip. If they’re employed, they get zero sick leave and can’t see me more than once a year, so there’s no follow-up. They need their scrip.
That bastard.”
I shouldn’t have asked what bastard. Kent. And his vampire associates, quote unquote. Coming here prospecting. She said Purdue looked at data and everything with their computers, and hand-picked targets like Lee County that were gold mines. They actually looked up which doctors had the most pain patients on disability, and sent out their drug reps for the full
offensive. June kept looking at me like she knew the parts of my business I wasn’t telling her. But Kent was nothing to me. If I had problems, they were my doing.
Back at the house, she wrapped up a lot of food for me to take, and walked me to the car. Instead of saying goodbye, she stood with her arms crossed, looking at me. Weirdly, I thought of that time at the Knoxville zoo, how she took hold of me by the ears and said she knew what I needed. And was exactly right. Of all the good people I knew, she was probably the best one.
Tommy let me draw a comic strip for the paper. How that came about, long story. Starting with Tommy in a newspaper office. This was basically his first-ever contact sport, Tommy vs. the great big world. Where had he been, up till then? Magic Treehouse. Having a job suited him, not a problem. But the big world itself? It was whipping Tommy’s ass.
These national type articles that came in over their machine were a grab bag, as mentioned. Election, Olympics, earthquake, Lance Armstrong, what have you. But it was a Pinkie requirement to run any of them with mention of Southwest Virginia or anything close, like Tennessee or Kentucky.
Which they mostly never did. But if so, dead guaranteed to be about poverty, short life expectance, etc. The idea being, we are a blight on the nation. Tommy showed me one with the actual headline “Blight On the
Nation.” Another one said “smudge on the map,” that he’d highlighted with yellow marker. He was saving these articles in a folder. Seriously. Where
was the Tommy of old, that took other people’s lickings and kept on
ticking? Over there on his spin-around stool was where, tugging on his stand-up hair, getting worked into a lather. I was like, Tommy. You didn’t know this? Evidently not. He couldn’t stop reading me headlines. “Rural Dropout Rates On the Rise.” “Big Tom Emerges as Survivor.”
“Technically that’s one for our side,” I said. “Our guy wins Survivor.” Tommy held up the photo they ran of Big Tom. Okay, not good.
I tried to explain the whole human-being aspect of everybody needing to dump on somebody. Stepdad smacks mom, mom yells at the kid, kid finds the dog and kicks it. (Not that we had one. I wrecked some havoc on my Transformers though.) We’re the dog of America. Every make of person
now has their proper nouns, except for some reason, us. Hicks, rednecks, not capitalized. I couldn’t believe this was news to Tommy. But I guess I’d
seen the world somewhat, with our division games where they called us trailer trash and threw garbage at us. And TV, obviously. The month I moved out of Coach’s, Chiller TV was running this entire hillbilly-hater marathon: Hunter’s Blood, Lunch Meat, Redneck Zombies. And the comedy shows, even worse, with these guys acting like we’re all on the same side, but just wait. I dated a Kentucky girl once, but she was always lying
through her tooth. Ha ha ha ha. Turns out, Tommy had squandered his youth on library books and had zero experience with cable TV.
He kept wanting to know why. Like I knew. “It’s nothing personal,” I said.
He was fidgeting with his shirtsleeves, unrolling and rolling them to his elbows. Finally he looked up. With tears in his eyes, honest to God. “It is, though. I’m afraid Sophie won’t ever want to come here. She says her mom keeps asking why she couldn’t date somebody closer to hand. What if her whole family thinks I’m just some big, toothless dumbass?”
Damn. I hoped Sophie’s family wasn’t watching Redneck Zombies. Or
Deliverance. You try to tune this crap out till it sneaks up and socks you,
like the sad day of Demon’s slam-book education. It’s everybody out there. Reading about us being shit-eater loser trash jerkoffs.
“Your teeth are A-okay,” I said. “She probably thinks you’re the exception to the rule.”
He looked defeated, shaking his head. “People want somebody to kick around, I get that. But why is it us? Why couldn’t it be, I don’t know, a Dakota or something? Why not Florida?”
“Just bad luck, I reckon. God made us the butt of the joke universe.” At that point I knew it probably wasn’t God. But I had nothing better on offer.
Where Tommy used to draw skeletons, now he collected proof of getting scorned. I told him to quit torturing himself, but he was as hooked on his poison as I was on mine. Even the comic strips were against him. Those
came in a packet every week, and he had to pick out four to lay out on the last page. All lame, unfunny four-panels of kids acting rated-G naughty, talking dogs, yuk-yuk. Tommy could choose any three, but the fourth
always had to be Stumpy Fiddles that they’d been running forever: lazy corn pones with hairy ears, big noses, patched clothes worse than any I
wore as a foster. Old Maw nags, old Paw skips out on any threat of work to hide behind the outhouse with his shine jug. It wrecked Tommy to run this strip. I offered to draw in palm trees to make it Florida, which we both
knew would not fool anybody. It was the same deal. This was the one comic strip of existence with so-called local interest.
“Local my ass,” I said. “Whoever draws this has never been here. He’s blowing his wad on us every week, everybody out there laughs, and we
swallow the jizz. Stumpy fucking Fiddles is garbage.” To prove it, I wadded him up and threw him away.
“Oh Lord,” Tommy said to the trash can. “Pinkie’s going to tan my hide.” “It’s not even good drawing.” I got it out, unwadded it, and flattened it on
the light table. “Look how he puts the same face on every character. Men, women, babies. That’s just lazy.”
Tommy got this wild look. “Okay, let’s see you do better. Superhero needed here. I’ll watch.” And he did. Just like in our Creaky Farm days of old.
I’d been thinking of this guy my whole life. And his universe. Not Batman’s Gotham City or Superman’s Metropolis or Captain America’s New York or Green Lantern’s Coast City or Antman’s LA. I’m discussing Smallville, where Superman’s nice fosters looked after him till the day he got his wings and tore out of there. I recall some ripping up of pages, as a
kid reading that. Not even understanding really why it broke my heart. But Jesus, even a kid knows the basics. Why wouldn’t any of them want to look after us?
I made him a miner, with a pick, overalls, the hard hat with the light on the front. I gave him a red bandanna like the old badass strikers that had their war. No cape, he doesn’t fly, just super strong and fast, running over the mountaintops in leaps and bounds. This guy is old-school. I drew it in the vintage direction where the characters are somewhat roundheaded with long noodle limbs, in constant motion. Fleischer style is the name of that, part Mickey Mouse, part manga. It was a style I could do, and it felt like getting back to the roots.
First panel: my guy spots an old lady crying in her little home up in the woods, because she can’t pay her bill and the electric’s gone off. Dark, stormy night. Second panel: the hero grabs a lightning bolt out of the sky and shoves it into the wires. You see it running all the way into her trailer home, the lights and stove all coming back on. In the last panel I made
music notes coming out of her radio and lights shining out the windows into the night. The lady and her little old man are dancing outside on their porch.
Just kid stuff, obviously. That’s all comics were, as far as we knew. I’d started with a different version where he swaps out lines at the pole, so instead of lightning he’s stealing the power of a mansion house up on a hill. You see it all fizzle out up there, satellite TV, outdoor security lights, while the little trailer goes bright. But Tommy said that might get him in trouble with Pinkie, so I went with the natural forces. I put a lot of emotion and contrast shading in the last panel, where you see the miner hero out in the dark woods, watching the happy old couple on their lit-up porch. I named my strip Red Neck. Signed, Anonymous.
