Page 89 of Demon Copperhead

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.