Page 39 of Demon Copperhead

My words came around to haunt me. Before another night passed, I’d be hunkered in the dark between a dumpster and the back of a gas station, wondering would I die there by morning.

I got shed of that hell-hole truck stop in a hurry, picked up by a long-hauler with a fist of skoal in his cheek and nothing to discuss.

His radio was all Garth and Reba, fine, just no Willie please.

I was wiped out from what had happened, so I told him I was Tennessee bound and then I guess fell asleep.

Mistake. Tennessee turns out to be something ridiculous like four hundred miles long.

We covered over half that before I woke up to see the sun rising over these skyscrapers like a freaking movie.

One building had horns like Hellboy, I’m not even kidding.

Nashville, says the driver, and I’m like, Mother fuck, mister, Nashville? Simple as that. How I got farther away from Murder Valley than I’d ever been in my life so far.

This did not sink in right away. I asked if Nashville was anywhere close to Unicoi County, which was all I knew about where my dad was buried other than the valley with the downer name.

The driver didn’t know Tennessee counties but had a map that he unfolded all over the wheel.

He gave it a good study at the same time he’s roaring down the interstate, changing lanes, eating a sandwich.

Scary. After a while he gave up and pushed the map at me.

In due time I found Unicoi, and Nashville, and asked if he could let me out right there please because I’d spent the last five hours going the wrong way.

Son of a bitch. Off to seek my fortune, and on day one I’d put myself in the hole by some-odd hundred dollars and half of Tennessee.

The trucker pulled over on an exit to dump me out.

I stood breathing air that didn’t smell like egg sandwich and farts.

The signs said my options were three flavors of gas station, a Taco Bell, or a hospital.

It was too much daylight for pissing in public, so I headed for a restroom.

If I dared. I was starving. I dug in my pack for an apple and ate it as I walked along, thinking of Mr. Golly I’d stolen it from, charging it to the McCobbs.

Thinking of Creaky calling us pissants if we didn’t eat the apple seeds and all.

Interrupting this report card of my happy life, somebody yelled “Hey brother!”

I jumped. I’d had my eye on the Phillips 66 and totally missed this couple camped by the road.

The guy came staggering out of the tall weeds with his dirty Jesus hair and pale glassy eyes, asking am I his brother and am I saved.

The girl tagging behind him was all hangdog, hair in her eyes, like he was the master.

They both had the look that comes of hard living, clothes and skin all the same drab color of washed-out leather.

“I’m as far from saved as it gets,” I told him and kept walking.

“Give me five bucks then,” he yelled. “The Lord will bless you for it.”

“I got no money.” I didn’t turn around. “Reckon the Lord’s got nothing on me.”

The guy came around and grabbed the apple out of my hand. He walked backwards in front of me, teasing me with it. “Repent!” he said. “Whosoever sows generously will reap!”

“Oh for fuck’s sake. Really?” I stopped walking. “Somebody already stole everything I had, and you’re going to take my last half an apple?”

That threw him. We stood in the empty gas station bay while he stared at my apple in his hand like he thought it might speak up and settle this. “Who is this coming from the wilderness?” he asked it. “Beneath the tree I awaked thee where thy mother was in labor and gave thee birth.”

Hangdog girl came edging around behind him, looking at me and shaking her head, like: Seriously friend, be afraid.

She didn’t have to tell me twice. I walked away fast while he and the apple were still working things out.

Sidled into the men’s, slammed the door.

Luckily it was the one-person type around the back where you can lock it from the inside.

It smelled like a cesspool, but I planned on staying there until homeless Jesus moved along.

I stopped being hungry, due to the stink, but was dying of thirst. I drank out of the smelly tap, and sat on the trash can to face various facts.

How I had no money now, zip. How hungry I would be, after I got out of that bathroom.

How I was farther away from home than I’d ever been.

And if I really had to go that many hundred miles on accident, damn: how I could have gone the other direction and been at the ocean by now.

Also, that being a long way from home isn’t really your problem if you don’t have one.

Twice somebody banged on the door and then went away. My brain wormed its way to the worst place and got stuck there: I’d cursed another person to die. She was probably better off than I was right now, if God or whoever was paying attention. Which probably they were.

Finally a guy came with jingling keys and hollered there’d be no loitering in his facilities, so I eased myself out and looked around.

Coast clear. I told the attendant sorry, and headed out.

Crossed the interstate to the other on-ramp to catch a ride headed east, but there wasn’t a lot happening.

An ambulance screamed by, and I thought of how one of those carried me off from home.

The last day of my life I really had one. The little does anybody ever know.

The sun got high and I was still on the shoulder with my thumb out, wondering if I looked homeless yet.

As long as I’d been in that bathroom, I could have changed out of the T-shirt and underwear I’d had on forever.

Cars went by, business guys, moms with kids.

Nobody looks you in the eye whenever they’re leaving you flat.

I kept thinking about the food in my pack that was all I had, so I needed to save it.

Then ate the candy bars and beef jerky, one by one.

It did dawn on me, this was Nashville. Amazing, given who all lives there, Garth Brooks, Dolly Parton, etc.

Carrie Underwood. Too bad, but without money the city is no place you want to be.

I knew that much, even if this was only my second one.

I remembered guys on the streets in Knoxville with their deer-carcass eyes and pitiful cardboard signs: “Help Please,” “Hungry,” “Disabled Vet.” Or the name of someplace they wanted to get the hell out of there to.

Bingo. I got out my drawing pad and made an amazing sign using all the colors: UNICOI.

Freaking unbelievable. The very next car to come along pulled over, a yellow VW, not a Beetle but one of those sporty sedans. Power windows. The girl driving it rolled down the passenger side and said, “Go you!” so I did. Headed the right direction at last.

Could this girl ever talk. The first subject she got onto was how she had a thing for unicorns, same as me, was that too bangin’ crazy or what.

I had no idea what to say, being actually not a fan, but I was not needed for this conversation.

I watched the miles go by while her list of favorite unicorn items went in one ear and out the other.

Bedspread, raincoat. I spent all that time trying to figure out how old this girl was.

She had to be Miss Barks’s age or so, because of driving a car for one thing, and for another her too-small T-shirt was showing off her bare middle part and plenty else.

On the other hand, glitter nail polish, pouffy bangs, those little butterfly clip things like bugs in your hair, pretty much on par with Haillie McCobb, second grader.

She moved on eventually to TV shows, her favorite one being Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

I told her I liked comics better than TV.

It might have been the first thing I’d said since I got in the car a hundred miles before, and she was like, “Go you!” It turned out she said that a lot.

If I told her I knocked off an old lady and hid her body in a thirty-foot roll-off, I’m pretty sure this girl would have said, “Go you!” She was slugging down a giant thermos of coffee and driving barefoot to keep herself awake, with her shoes up on the dash which were these red sandals with gigantic bottom parts made out of wood.

All new shit to me, I was out in the world now.

She’d been driving all night since Memphis, going to see her boyfriend in Knoxville that looked exactly like Paul from Mad About You except younger. Nerdy in the cute way.

Knoxville, damn. Probably Emmy had moved now. I would be in Knoxville soon, she’d be in Lee County, and whoever was sitting at control center of the universe, laughing his ass off.

My Unicoi sign was still on my lap, and it finally did hit me that she’d read it wrong, duh.

Unicorns. The entire three hours of me in her car was a mistake.

We started seeing signs of how many miles to Knoxville, countdown on me getting ditched by the roadside again like the stray cur I was: unwanted, not yet drowned.

I’d gone past hungry into crazed, and was wondering if I had anything in my backpack I could sell this girl.

If I’d learned one thing from Mrs. McCobb, it was that people will buy the weirdest shit.

I had my marking pens, but was not parting with the best gift anybody ever gave me.

I wondered if Aunt June even remembered.

Barefoot driver girl asked where I wanted left off, and I said anyplace but a truck stop. So that was that, an exit marked Love Creek. One last “Go you!” and off she flew.