Page 12 of Demon Copperhead

Tommy talked sweet to the cattle whenever we were graining them and putting them up for the night, even though they were just dumb giant monsters.

He was the same with me. Like he was trying to make up for all the bad things in our lives.

At least I wasn’t looking to get castrated and turned into hamburger, that I knew of.

Tommy said you got used to it here. He called it the Creaky Farm, a name made up by Fast Forward because he was a genius at thinking up names.

Fast Forward was the other foster kid here, not home yet because in high school and at football practice, a major star on the Lee High team, which are the Generals as everybody knows.

To hear Tommy tell it, Fast Forward was the best-liked person of everybody alive, even by Mr. and especially the dead Mrs. Crickson.

I would like him too, just wait and see.

He’d been at this farm forever and was kind of like their real son, even though he hated Mr. Crickson.

Or Creaky rather, which we were all supposed to call the old man, except to his face.

Tommy showed me where to wash up before we went in.

By the porch with the screens hanging off, they had a spigot for hosing off your hands, shoes, whatever you could without getting too wet.

I was already wet from getting rained on all day.

But excited about getting to eat something.

I wanted it to be true what Tommy said, that I could get used to this or at least lie low and get through it.

Maybe at school not too much trash-talk about me would be going around, if it was only up to Swap-Out, a kid that was respected by nobody.

I’d last out Mom’s three weeks in rehab and go back home with nobody the wiser.

Stoner, I had no plan for. Maybe the DSS did.

Maybe there was a God in his heaven after all, and we would all fart perfume.

Tommy Waddles let me hang on him while I stood on one foot trying to hose the shit off my shoes.

My shoelaces were all knotted up. I realized I hadn’t had my shoes off since I put them on last night in the ambulance.

No socks, same reason. Everything I was wearing was wet and smelled like cow shit.

All the clothes I had. Tomorrow at school, I’d smell like cow shit.

Fast Forward got home as we were sitting down to dinner, and everybody acted like it was Captain America out there in a Ford pickup.

“He’s here!” and all like that. This kid has done no chores whatsoever, plus he’s driving a Lariat F-150, two-tone red and silver with the square headlights.

Sweet. I wondered if the vehicle was his, or borrowed from the farm, or what.

I wondered if fosters were allowed to have anything belonging to them. I had much to know.

He came in the kitchen and even the damn dogs looked up.

First they’d moved all day. He’s long and lean with a look to him like somebody famous, all clean teeth and dark eyebrows and a head of hair not to be believed, like an explosion.

Mad curly, like Mariah Carey in her mop-hair days, only not that long obviously.

They’d not let you on a football team with long hair back then.

“Hey Fast,” all the other boys said, and “This here’s Demon. ”

Fast Forward stops dead in his tracks like he’s a comedy act, looking from the other kids to me, me to them, working out what to make of me.

I’m ready for the biter remarks, bared teeth and snarl.

But he smiles his rock star smile and says, “New blood! About time we upgraded the stock around here.” And Mr. Crickson smiles and nods like he thinks so too, and I’d been all his idea.

Nutso. A grubby little bunch of boys looking up to an older kid, that’s the normal.

But he’s even got the old bastard under his powers. Demon, I’m thinking, watch and learn.

Dinner was hamburger meat with cans of Manwich poured on it plus macaroni and melted cheese, awesome.

I would tell Mom about this. She never could think of a thing to make for dinner.

Mr. Crickson asked Fast Forward how was practice and who was on defense and did he still think the Generals would go undefeated this year.

So many words out of the old man’s janked throat.

He’d been saving it up all day for Fast Forward.

After supper Mr. Crickson went in the other room and watched TV, aka fell asleep in his recliner chair, and Fast Forward scooted out.

Leaving the rest of us to clean up in the half-assed way you would expect from three boys, one of them being quite a few bricks shy of his full load. Why that kitchen looked like it did.

Tommy showed me the rest of the house, our room upstairs, the bathroom we’d use, with Fast Forward getting first dibs obviously.

He had more to do, like shaving. Our bedroom had two bunk beds, not much else.

A closet for your stuff, if you were lucky enough to have any.

A table for doing your homework if you felt like it.

Tommy and Swap-Out shared one of the bunk beds and had a discussion of whether I should take top or bottom on the other one.

Swap-Out didn’t vote, with him being let’s just say not a talker.

But he liked climbing. I remembered from second grade, Swap-Out always getting up on the radiators like a freaking monkey, our teacher always yelling at him to get down, because one of these days the heat would come on and he’d get burned.

And one of those days, yes he did. Such howling, you never heard.

Whereas Tommy liked the bottom bunk so he could stash his library books underneath.

He had piles down there: Boxcar Children, Goosebumps, who even knew they’d let you check out that many?

He said the library at Pennington Middle was bigger, which was the only good thing about middle school.

I assumed all four of us boys would bunk together, but wrong, Fast Forward had his own room down the hall.

He’d lived here a long time. Mrs. Crickson while alive had started the procedures for adopting him, but she never got it finished up.

So Crickson was still drawing the five-hundred-dollar check every month for keeping him as a foster.

I didn’t learn all of this right away. It’s a complicated business to figure out, especially with the way Crickson and Fast Forward did it, having some kind of secret agreement to split the check between them.

We were not allowed in Fast Forward’s room without permission, so I looked from the doorway.

He had free weights of a different kind from Stoner’s.

Football trophies, newspaper photos of famous Generals moments taped on the wall over the desk (he had furniture).

Pinned along one wall, a slew of ribbons he’d won for his 4-H calf projects, Tommy said, but that was history.

Now Fast Forward had quarterbacking and a pickup truck and hot girls, everybody and her sister wanting a piece of this guy.

I’d known him two hours and could already see how it was.

His real name was Sterling Ford. Who could want better? Something to do with silver, the best engines ever built. But he said the name Fast Forward came to him early, and it did fit.

He had the run of the house and keys to the gun cabinet where the old man kept his rifles and the medicines Swap-Out was supposed to take every night if anybody remembered.

DSS made him lock up the medicines evidently after some past event where his other foster kids were selling them.

Uppers or downers, God only knows what Swap-Out was on, possibly both, the usual, half the kids at school had to line up for their pills from the nurse every day before recess.

Fast Forward anyway had full privileges, whereas we three lower-life boys kept to our room of an evening.

Nobody cared what time we went to bed, if we got ourselves up in the morning.

That first night I was dead tired but worried about going to bed in my cow-shit clothes, and out of the blue Tommy asked did they bring me here without anything.

Knowing the foster drill. He let me borrow one of his T-shirts to sleep in.

This Tommy was not your usual type of kid.

He said Fast Forward would come in before lights out for drill.

Sure enough, he came in saying: “Atten-tion!” Tommy and Swap-Out saluted and stuck out their chests and Fast Forward did inspection.

I guess we’ve all seen that movie. It seemed dumb but I couldn’t see not doing it, so I did.

He gave me a good looking-over, saying, “Me oh my. Check out this green-eyed boy.” He asked was I a Melungeon or a red-haired beaner or what. I told him my dad was Melungeon.

Next, Fast Forward asked what we had. Tommy dug in his pockets and came out with a pack of Chiclets, which Fast Forward took.

Then he stood waiting in front of Swap-Out.

Bent down and got in the little guy’s face.

Swap-Out says he’s got nothing. Fast Forward pulls a fist and Swap-Out shrinks back in his skin.

No punching was done, but you could see this kid knows what punched is.

I’m looking over at Tommy like, Is this normal? And he’s like, Yeah it is.

“Creaky gave you lunch money this morning,” Fast Forward says in a slow way because of Swap-Out lacking on his mental side. “You had lunch money, and you took the nutbutter.”

“I never,” Swap-Out says.

“You did. I’ve got eyes in your school, not just in my head. If you lie to Fast Forward, you’re letting down your brothers. You’ve got the cash Creaky gave you. Hand it over.”