Page 13 of Demon Copperhead
Taking the peanut butter sandwich for a normal kid meant they’d let their lunch money run out, or for a free lunch kid their mom forgot to sign the forms. Either way, the lunch ladies would lay that nutbutter on you like, Here’s your fuck-up badge.
Swap-Out had taken the sandwich of shame to pocket the money.
His close-set eyes jumped around like a trapped rabbit’s.
Fast Forward snapped his fingers in the scrambled little face, held out his hand. Swap-Out shelled out the bills.
I was next. Fast Forward stared. I said, “Dude, I don’t even have any fucking socks!”
I wasn’t sure if this was an f-bomb household, nor if Fast Forward to me was a Dude or a Sir, but I risked it and the guys laughed. I told him I’d gotten dumped off with nothing.
Fast Forward got this look. “Nothing. You’re sure.”
“Positive.”
“Holding out on Fast Forward is not how we do things here, Demon. I’m giving you another chance. Come clean, and all will be forgiven. Check your pockets.”
I did, and pulled out some squashed nabs, which shocked me.
Last night at the hospital seemed like a movie about somebody’s sad mess of a life.
But that was me, in possession of nabs, ten bucks, and phone change.
If I’d remembered, I’d have eaten the nabs for sure.
I felt my ears burning. One, because I hadn’t had that much money in quite a while if ever, and two, I’d just lost it.
Three, it looked like I got caught lying. Plus, how did he even know?
Fast Forward said he was proud of me for contributing to our goals and objectives.
So that was good, him liking me. He said he held on to the valuables here to keep them safe.
We’d celebrate by having a party as soon as he could get supplies.
A farm party, he said. The others said, Yay, farm party!
He explained we were the Hillbilly Squadron, which was like the Boy Scouts except not ass-kissers.
He was our Squad Master and made the rules for our own good.
He said don’t let Creaky get us down. Then he said, “At ease!” and we were at ease.
He left, and Tommy and Swap-Out climbed into their bunks.
I put on Tommy’s big T-shirt and climbed into mine.
I chose the top. I was still thinking of the rats all over the corn barn and Creaky lurking around in the dark, maybe wanting to file off my teeth. The top bunk seemed advisable.
Hillbilly is a word everybody knows. Except they don’t.
Mr. Peg at one time had a sticker on his truck bumper, “Hillbilly Cadillac,” but I was a small kid with no comprehension of anything.
I mainly knew it from this one rerun that came on Nick at Nite, Beverly Hillbillies, which was this family running around a city wearing ropes for a belt, packing antique rifles, and driving a junkass truck.
Dead hilarious. More so than most of the old black-and-whites they ran, Gunsmoke, Munsters.
Then one time Maggot’s high school cousin Bonnie saw us watching it and said we were clueless little turds.
Bonnie was in Drama, Gifted and Talented, your basic all-around ass pain.
She said be careful who we laughed at, that family was supposedly us.
Meaning what? There’s not a person here that carries on like that or drives such crap, I assure you.
Not even the Antique Tractor Club guys that tuck their shirts in their underpants and drive their ancient machines in the Christmas parade.
Those guys are just old. But shooting the lights out, yodeling, keeping pigs in the house?
Maggot told Bonnie to go screw her stuck-up boyfriend she met in Governor’s School and leave us be. Which she did. But I did wonder.
For, like, years. Until one time Mr. Peg was smoking by his truck and I was out there messing around, and thought to ask him why he had that on there, Hillbilly Cadillac.
I asked did it mean something bad, and his answer shocked me: hillbilly is like the n-word.
And of course I said what everybody knows, n- is not a word to be used unless by assholes.
He said all right, but some do, that aren’t white guys being assholes.
Which is true, Ice Cube, Jay-Z, Tupac. Mr. Peg was not a fan of those guys, in fact the opposite, but they still got heard in the house thanks to Maggot and me, so he would know.
The n-word is preferred by those guys. Mr. Peg said other people made up the n-word, not Ice Cube.
And other people made up hillbilly to use on us, for the purpose of being assholes.
But they gave us a superpower on accident.
Not Mr. Peg’s words, but that’s how I understood it.
Saying that word back at people proves they can’t ever be us, or get us, and we are untouchable by their shit.
The world is not at all short on this type of thing, it turns out. All down the years, words have been flung like pieces of shit, only to get stuck on a truck bumper with up-yours pride. Rednecks, moonshiners, ridge runners, hicks. Deplorables.