Page 66 of Demon Copperhead

I don’t know why, and God help me. But whatever it was Maggot needed, I thought Fast Forward could put him together with it. If I was a friend to both, I was duty-bound. So I invited Fast Forward to come with us to Fourth of July at June and Emmy’s.

Word was out on this being the party of parties.

Regardless June Peggot being no friend to fireworks, happy to sit you down and tell you all she’d seen professionally in the way of blown out body parts.

No matter. Emmy crossed all normal lines of popular, hanging out with certain of the geeks, plus drama kids.

Put those together and stand back. They’d been going to Tennessee for the banned-in-Virginia items, your aerials and laterals.

Collections were taken up. Angus was like, Idiots with gunpowder, no thanks. But I was jacked for the day to come.

Fast Forward picked me up with two passengers already, surly Rose and this chick called Mouse, due to her tiny size I’m guessing.

Not shyness. She had on a silver bodysuit thing like MTV-wear, already in the middle of a story as I climbed in.

Full Yankee accent: “So he’s on air in two minutes, I am losing my shit and ohmygod I get it, this is a comb-over on top of a toupee!

I am supposed to do what with this? So I pick it up and lob him with the powder so he won’t shine through and then pop it back down, you guys, I could be a very rich woman if I decide to extort. ”

Fast Forward said he thought she already was a rich woman. She laughed and hugged her giant purse. Turned to me, blinked her huge eyelashes. “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure.”

Mouse told me she did hair and makeup for celebrities, in case I’d missed that.

Fast Forward told her I was the rising star of our football team.

To anybody else he’d say “of the Generals,” so this Mouse individual had to be from a galaxy far far away.

Filly she said, which is a girl horse and made no sense until she clarified it was a town, Philadelphia.

I gave the directions to Maggot’s house, and then we were five in the cab.

Cozy. Mouse hops in my lap with her feet dangling.

She’s pretty, I guess, her head too big for her small body, snub-nosed, but makeup obviously at the pro level.

Her hair was this exploded whale spout situation that got in my face.

She was like a doll on my lap. Still running at the mouth, she’s got a gig coming up for a Britney show or whatever, constantly interrupting herself to remark on some ramshack place like she’s never seen poor.

Her big purse was on the floor at this point, rolling and clanking.

I saw the end of a Pringle can sticking out.

In case you were wondering what does a mouse eat.

Maggot was twitchy as hell. I saw Fast Forward checking him out sidewise.

I was used to Maggot, to the extent you can get used to the black-dyed hair curtains, the neon mesh sleeves and giant black pants that he and his Batcave pals got at their Goth outfitters place over to Christiansburg.

Chains all up and down the legs, so if you needed to put the boy on a leash you’d find many convenient attachment points.

Maggot would always be my blood brother, but at that moment I was embarrassed.

Mouse was staring at his makeup and dye job like she might not live through the experience.

It could have been worse, Maggot was known to turn up at school with his scalp dyed black on accident.

I gave directions to June’s. Fast Forward drove with one hand on top of the wheel, cigarette out the window, eyeshades at Slim Shady half-mast, while Chatty Cathy ran her travelogue, ohmygod that dog is chained up, how can people be so cruel, what is that green shit growing on the side of that house (it was normal moss) ohmygod.

Half a mile out from June’s the line of vehicles started, parked all sigoggling on both sides of the road.

We pulled over and walked down the gravel road, already hearing music through the woods.

“Nice sidewalks you have here in East Jesus Nowhere,” Mouse said, grabbing Fast Forward’s arm, teetering in her giant platform sandals.

She was barely waist-high to him, toting that gunny-sack purse.

Rose fell back into walking alongside Maggot and me, but looked like she’d snatch us baldheaded if we tried striking up a chat.

Maggot checked out her dog-snarl scar, which maybe he thought was wicked, who knows.

At the bottom of June’s driveway he stopped to light a joint.

Rose said “Bogart much?” so Maggot passed it to her in a futile gesture of friendship.

He probably needed to balance out whatever he’d taken for pregame.

The lad was wound tight. NoDoz crushed and snorted was a Maggot go-to, a grade school discovery I’d needed to try no more than once.

I mean. Is life not menacing enough without feeling like ants have moved into your skin?

Not if you’re Maggot. He moved on from there to Adderall, which is doctor-legal, anybody can get it from anybody.

And lately, smurfing Sudafed from drugstores to sell to the cookers. Probably getting paid in merchandise.

Rose took her time with the joint, waving bugs away from her face and her big cloud of hair.

I took a couple of hits and headed in. Two guys ran through the woods wearing shoes and nothing else, yelling about swimming.

There was no pond around. Guys were shooting bottle rockets at each other.

Leggy girls slumped among the trees like wilted daisies, probably running replays of failed attempts, like we did with football games we should not have lost, but did.

I wanted to find June so she could meet Fast Forward, but he and Mouse were already gone.

Maggot spotted his friend Martha aka Hot Topic in a little fist of kids in their chain pants and fingerless gloves, and made a beeline.

If this was a Maggot rescue mission, I was failing.

I spied June on the upstairs deck of the dome house, looking as usual hotter than a truck stop shower.

Little red shorts, tall drink, fluffing the hair off her neck.

She had a gang of ladies with her, some in nurse scrubs, and Ms. Annie in her hippie attire acting like she’s one of their crowd.

She was Emmy’s choir director, but invited to parties now? That seemed like showing off.

June’s house had no real yard, just a clearing in the woods, now crowded with people yelling at each other over top of Eminem.

Extension cords ran from the house to some big speakers borrowed from school, because drama kids got away with shit like that, so the cattle in the neighbors’ farms were now trying to chew or moo over top of Eminem.

The trees were shaking, and the dirt under our feet.

I shouldered in to find the keg that Emmy’s parties were starting to get famous for, regardless June keeping Emmy in the egg carton.

June would not have us driving the winding roads to get our drinking on.

Do it here and sleep it off, was her policy, and she meant it.

Start slurring or tripping and she’d take your keys, ordering you to sleep on whatever floor you could find, and please not on your back.

Live to see another day. She was convinced the population of Lee County was headed for zero, because in any given year she saw more people dead of DWI-wrecks and vomit-choke than babies born.

Near the keg were folding tables strewed with paper plates and leftovers of a feast I was sorry to have missed.

And Emmy, bent over a giant sheet pan cake decorated like the flag, flipping her long hair back over her bare shoulders, trying with a too-big knife to cut out little blue squares with one star each.

She was a shiny star herself in her little white top, white hip-hugger jeans, some prime real estate in between.

I got a rush to recall touching that belly under the blankets.

You don’t forget your first, even if we’re only talking the minor bases.

She was in the big leagues now, laughing, padding around in Chinese-looking flip-flops, giving out cake squares on napkins.

I wondered how it would feel to like who you are, changing it up as needed to stay on top with ease.

While other girls went on trying too hard, wearing the hair big, the makeup bright, the baby-blue sweatsuits with the whale-tail of thong showing in back above the pants rise.

I felt safer in those waters, honestly. Technically Emmy was like me: dead dad, messed-up mom.

But damned if you’d ever guess. She seemed like a person born to have sidewalks under her feet.

I chugged my beer and said hey a lot because I knew every Dawnella and Preston in this place.

Mash Jolly, one of the rough kids I rode the bus with long ago, pounded me on the back and said “Damn, man, tight end! I totally fucking called that one.” I said yeah, he totally fucking did.

He said some of them later were driving over to that waterfall place with the swimming hole in Scott County, Devil’s Bathtub.

The hair on my neck stood up. But I just said Sure, man, knowing full well they’d be shitfaced and doing no swimming in the dark.

I watched the smile and curly head of Fast Forward moving through the crowd like the slick fish he was.

Guys were pushing in to speak to the famous QB.

Girls, more so. I saw Emmy hand him a piece of cake, arching her back in that girl way, where you notice the ass.

Him laughing, her laughing, the little bow he made, taking the cake.

So much starshine between those two, sunglasses needed.

I wondered if she knew I brought him here. Well, that he’d brought me.

“Demon! Where the hell you been hiding at?”