Rusty Knob

by Erica Chilson

  Jack and I snort, both of us addicted to Facebook. Then his narrowed eyes cut to mine, asking me a silent question. He believes I never use Facebook because Wynn Gillette’s profile is inactive. I just smile to throw him off center.

  Realizing I’m on Facebook all weekend at Royce’s, “Take the goddamned laptop, Wynn,” Jack demands, when he’s never raised his voice to me before. Busted! “If you must, pay Royce for it in installments at the price he paid in the auction. But you’re not leaving here without it. Ya never know when you might need WebMD.”

  “I… I… I…” I start stuttering again, fingertips curling into my palms against the urge to pull the laptop from Duane.

  Jack grabs it out of a smirking Duane’s hands, then he speaks the coaxing words of the devil. “You know you want it. Just take it! What about when you start college? You wanna be the only kid without internet access?”

  With outstretched arms, I reach for the laptop just as Adam did with the apple. My fingertips curl around the edges possessively, and then pull it until it’s mine. I press it tightly to my chest, feeling an undesirable sensation burst in my chest.

  “Sweet!” Duane high-fives Francis. “I’ll hook up the signal extender this afternoon. Pretty sure we got one lying around somewhere.”

  “I’ve got the Netflix info!” Francis turns giddy. He wraps the laptop charger around my neck, and then pinches my ass. I allow it patiently, knowing the poor kid is starved for attention. “It’s like teaching a baby how to walk and talk! What should we force on Wynn first? Game of Thrones?”

  “Shameless,” Jack says with a straight face, and then busts out laughing.

  “Ass,” I mouth to my buddy, knowing all about that show.

  “Irony, my name is Frank Gallagher, the Urban Hillbilly,” Duane sings.

  “That is too fucking funny.” Francis gooses Jack, causing my buddy to blush. ‘Franny’ only has the balls to pester Jack and me because we are too nice to embarrass him. “Wynn better stay away from Shameless until he’s used to regular living. God, his hillbilly mind is gonna explode.”

  “It’s like they’re from another country,” Duane teases, and it makes me bark a laugh.

  “Try another planet,” I add in, meaning it. “You’re used to me, and I’m straddling the line between two worlds. Penny’s the same way, with her daddy having a business right in town. A real hillbilly like my daddy…”

  “I’ve had my ass beat by enough of them,” Duane mutters. His eyes cut to Francis, as if he’s thinking what we’re all thinking. Francis has a target on his back, and he better stay out of the hollers. “Violent. Feral. Shotguns. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Just stay in town and walk the other way in school,” is my only advice. “There is no reasoning with the old timers. They are set in their ways, and telling them different will get your head shot clean off.”

  “Such a way with words,” Francis bats his long eyelashes at me, giving me a hungry look I can recognize but I’ve never felt.

  Nothing against gays, but my balls just shriveled up. I might not know what I want, but it ain’t Franny. Don’t get me wrong, he’s adorable, and he’s got a natural sexiness the girls try to copy, but he freaks me out. Francis is the buddy who molests me on occasion to get a rise out me.

  In a daze, I walk out of the storage unit with my new laptop clasped to my chest and its charger wrapped around my neck like an electronic scarf. I hug it, never wanting to let it go. It’s one of the things I’ve always wanted, something most take for granted, but didn’t think I could ever have.

  Royce has shoved down my throat how to manage money for the past few years. He taught me the value of a dollar by writing down everything I earn, how much I spend on necessities, and what I should have had left over to buy the things I earned. He says everyone should do that to see what they waste. Like spending more on beer and cigarettes in a week than the monthly mortgage of a nice house in town. According to Royce, Daddy and Momma spent hundreds of thousands of dollars during my lifetime on smoke that pollutes the air and piss filling a toilet, with nothing but deteriorating bodies to show for it. All money neither earned, either pilfered from the state or stolen directly from Warren, Willa’s, and my pocket.

  I never wanted to believe Royce, even with the evidence of nearly four hundred a week of my Circle K earnings paying for their vices. It’s a new dawn, and I can finally see clearly.

  “A laptop instead of a mattress? Nice…” Bren drawls out when I get into the truck cab. “Welcome to the year 2002.”

  Eyebrows scrunched with confusion, I turn over the ignition. “It’s 2015, remember?”

  “Exactly,” he deadpans

  My fist flies out to mock-punch Bren in the shoulder. “Fucker!”

  Bren snickers while rubbing his arm. “I’ve got one word for ya, brother. YouPorn.”

  They Bruise Easier

  From the corner of my eye, I can see Penny looking at me while smothering her giggle with the back of her hand. “What?” I ask again for the tenth time in the past few minutes.

  We’re sitting on our porch steps. Penny’s keeping an eye on the children in the front yard, and I’m doing some of Royce’s busywork. I look down at the invoice again, making sure the number is correct, and then I input it into the Excel file.

  “It’s been almost two days, and you’ve yet to let go of your new baby. You even take your laptop into the shitter with you. I bet you spooned it last night.” A girly giggle slips past her lips. “It’s so fucking cute, I just can’t stand it.”

  “Shut up,” I snap, but then I crack a smile. “I’m trying to work here, remember? I’ve got to log in enough hours to offset our rent.” She rolls her eyes, knowing full and well it’s just a bunch of bullshit Royce is tossing my way to take away any guilt I feel over living off him.

  “I have some good news,” Penny announces, but then she’s running down the porch steps before she can share the wealth. “Hayley! No! You don’t hit the townie kids. They bruise too easily. What’d I tell ya?”

  Hayden is unfazed. He hands the poor kid who was just hit upside the head the purple sidewalk chalk Hayley didn’t want to share. The little boy, Tomlin, smiles brightly and draws the last arc of his rainbow.

  “No hitting townies, Aunt Penny,” Hayley parrots back in her girly, sing-song voice. It’s my turn to smother my laughter. “I sorry. I forgot that they bruise easier than the rest of us.”

  Eyes bugging out from my skull, “They do not,” I mouth to Penny. “It’s just ignorant bullshit passed down the generations so our parents don’t have to come out of the hollers to bail us out of the principal’s office.”

  “It’s true! They bruise easier,” Penny argues, and I worry about her level of intelligence.

  “Oh, really?” I set my laptop down for the first time since I took it from the storage unit yesterday morning. “Explain high school, then. We’re all bloodied and bruised in that war.”

  Penny’s brown eyes widen impossibly large, pleading with me to go along with her, then I realize what she’s up to. The kids have to go to school with townies, live in town, and they can’t act like hillbillies. I get it, but I don’t like lying to them. I won’t promote their ignorance, even if Penny is trying to not be embarrassed by their behavior.

  “Hayley. Hayden. Both of you c’mere a second. Please.” I widen my legs on the steps, making room for them to stand in front of me. They come to me easy enough, always listening to me. “Don’t hit anyone. Never. Hit. Not because they might bruise easier, but because it’s mean and nasty. Understood?”

  “Yes, Uncle Wynn,” Hayden agrees solemnly, and then he walks back over to Tomlin– his friend from school who’s now his next-door neighbor. The kid sits back down, and continues to add to their sidewalk landscape.

  “Hayley, as long as you’re not using it, you have to share. You can only use one color at a time, same as they can. So just wait your turn, and they will have to wait theirs. Next time you hit someone, I’m gonna
hafta take your chalk away and force you to watch your friends and brother use it.”

  “Fine,” Hayley bites out, glaring at me like she’s a grown woman and I’m the disappointing brat, then she stomps back to the sidewalk. I breathe a sigh of relief that she behaves, no matter how begrudgingly.

  In the holler, we don’t share. If we want something, we beat the crap out of whoever has it and then take it. Once we have something, we fight to keep it.

  “The girl’s gonna be the troublemaker,” I say to Penny when she retakes her seat next to me on the porch step. “Acts just like Warren. It’s her new badass hairdo giving her that attitude. Only six-year-old girl I’ve ever seen with a curly fauxhawk.”

  “Hayley’s a cute, naughty shit, for sure.” Penny laughs, remembering all the attitude she’s had to deal with in the past few days from my niece.

  “No more Hillbilly-isms. Just talk straight to the kids and tell them the truth. If Hayley keeps hitting, start taking her toys away and make her clean something. She needs to learn acting like a little asshole doesn’t make her tough.”

  Penny releases a nervous laugh, and then nudges my shoulder. “I think maybe my surprise should be yours.”

  “Huh?” I freeze midway as I grab for my laptop.

  Voice filled with pride, “I got a job,” Penny announces. “It’s what I wanted to tell ya before Hayley turned into Rocky… I’ma start calling her Rocky from now on.”

  I groan when I notice I still have a thick stack of invoices to input. “What’s the job?”

  “Childcare.” Penny glares in my direction when I snort. “I guess I can’t be telling the townie kids hillbilly fables, like how they bruise easier.”

  “Guess not,” I say with a straight face, but then my lips quirk up at the corners. “How’d you come upon this?”

  “After church this morning…” Penny groans, and this time I do laugh. The girl had never been to church in her life. “I waited with the other mommas while Bible School was letting out, then we all went to the park together to watch the kids play. I was chatting with a lady who runs the daycare.” She turns to me, huge brown eyes bugging out of her skull. “Can you believe those weirdos have other people watch their children while they work? The little fuckers are like ten and still being watched.”

  I bite back a snicker. “Inconceivable that they wouldn’t want their kids running around like heathens, getting into trouble and hurting themselves. I mean, at fourteen, they better move out and start a family of their own.”

  “Stop making fun of me,” Penny warns, sounding genuinely upset.

  “Sorry, sister.” I rub her back to take the sting of truth out of my words. “So, you’ll be watching these kids who are old enough to look after themselves?”

  “Newborns to fourteen, with the older kids having extended study hours in the church. I’m to start after school until six o’clock when the last of the parents show up. They’re okay with the twins coming with me as long as they don’t start any trouble. I guess most of their classmates will be with ‘em. I’m to fetch all the kids from the elementary school and walk ‘em to the church, give ‘em a snack, and then run ‘em ragged on the playground.”

  “Sounds perfect, actually.” I squeeze Penny to my side and drop a kiss to the top of her head. “I’m proud of you.”

  “Maybe if I… if I do a good job, they’ll let me place the baby while I’m at school so I can graduate.” Penny’s eyes cut to me, a childlike hope filling them. She knows she messed up by trying to snag Warren by getting knocked up on purpose, but instead of regretting it, she’s trying to learn from it and move on. “Ya know, maybe how those mothers do it when they go to work?”

  After witnessing the generosity of the townsfolk firsthand, I don’t doubt for a second that the ladies would allow Penny to do just that. If she fits in, they’d probably let her work there fulltime after she graduated. We all see their help as charitable arrogance, like they gain a point in their favor for turning one of our own against us. When in reality, they just get that same warm feeling I get when I help my family. That feeling I call love.

  I drop another kiss to Penny’s head and squeeze her again before I let go. I drag my laptop onto my lap, and then pick up the invoices.

  “Well…” Penny sighs loudly as she stands up. “I guess I better walk all those kids back to their houses. Get me some practice on walking kids like they’re dogs.” I chuckle at how flat her words sound. “Still can’t wrap my mind around the townies leashing their dogs and walking them down the street. They’re dogs. Let them be dogs. Next thing ya know, they’ll be leashing their kids.”

  I bust out laughing as Penny rounds up the neighborhood kids.

  Scratching the Itch

  “You wanna hit the dishes while I pack the lunches?” I reach up to pull the peanut butter jar from the cupboard, still amazed I’m in a house that has siding and a roof, let alone actual, functioning cupboards.

  “I’ll do it in the morning,” Penny skirts the task, trying to weasel out on working, just like she did with fixing supper.

  Sure, all I did was boil a box of pasta and dump a jar of sauce on it, but I was trying to work at the same time. Which is why I said no TV in this house. Even the twins tackled the sweeping, with Hayley manning the broom and Hayden the dustpan. Meanwhile, Penny was out on the sidewalk gabbing with the neighbor lady.

  “No, Penny. Tonight,” I order. I bite my tongue against any further comments. I start assembling four sack lunches with PB&Js, bananas, and juice boxes, so all we have to do is grab them out of the fridge in the morning.

  “Ya know, Wynn,” Penny starts in, sounding like my momma when I’d point out her shortcomings. “I’m gonna be working. I ain’t yer slave. We’re roommates. You ain’t my daddy or my husband, so you don’t get to tell me what to do.”

  I think, “You sound so mature right now.” But I say instead, “I understand that. I do. But I worked all day yesterday creating a home for us. Then I stayed up all last night because I wanted Royce to know how appreciative I was. Then I continued working after church, where I had to stop to make dinner. I haven’t slept since Thursday night and we’re hours from it being Monday.”

  “I said I’ll do it in the morning,” Penny stresses over her shoulder as she stalks out of the room.

  “I ain’t fighting with ya, Penny,” I raise my voice so it will follow after her. “But we both know how this will play out. How do I know? I’ve lived this way my whole life. Your momma took care of you, and I ain’t your momma or daddy. Come morning, there will be breakfast dishes piled up on dried-on supper plates, and no one will do ‘em. Then come supper time tomorrow, another batch of dishes will pile on that ‘cuz you went to school all day and then work. Then what?”

  Hackles rising, Penny points at me from her position in the living room. “I ain’t the maid, Wynn.”

  “Neither am I,” I volley back. “Whoever cooks the food, doesn’t do the dishes. To ask me to do both isn’t fair, especially when we both know you won’t be doing the yardwork either.”

  “Morning.” Unrelenting, Penny stomps out of the room grumbling, “I’m going to bed.”

  Fuck it!

  I twist the taps, and then squeeze out some detergent onto the dishes. If Penny wasn’t here, I’d have to do this shit all by myself anyway. It isn’t fair because she is here, but at least she was mindful of the kids so I could concentrate on working for Royce.

  “Penny had no plan on doing these here dishes,” I speak to the empty kitchen, not letting the truth of my words bog me down. “I’m alive for one thing– that almost ended for me. I’m standing in a nice house, with nice things, with actual dishes to wash because my belly is filled. I don’t have an ornery drunk pissing himself and abusing us, and there’s no smoke giving me nosebleeds. I’d say Penny being obstinate is the least of my worries.”

  “You like talking to yourself?” Jack’s amused voice flows from the screen door. “No shock on Penny shirking her duties, though,
” comes as he steps into the kitchen.

  Happy to see an unexpected, friendly face, I turn to look at Jack over my shoulder while I dry my hands on a dishtowel. “Hey, buddy. What are you doing here?”

  “I was in the neighborhood–”

  “Literally.” I laugh because Jack lives at the end of the street. “Unreal. When I came for a visit, it took me fifteen minutes to drive from the holler into town.”

  “I like it. It’s convenient to be able to bug you when I get the hankering.” Jack takes a plate from my hand and begins drying. “I was sent by the basketball team as their emissary. I come bearing top-secret security codes for Wi-Fi, Netflix, and Amazon Prime, with a list of shows, movies, and music that are a must. Bren wanted me to say, and I quote, ‘one word: YouPorn.’ Not sure what that was about, but I’ll be finding out come bedtime.”

  I snort. “Bren’s such a douche that I can’t dislike him.”

  “Ya know, maybe watching some porn isn’t such a bad idea.” Jack drops a bomb in my kitchen, “Rusty West. It might arouse you.”

  I freeze, muscles locking up. A plate slips between my fingertips, but Jack’s catching it before it hits the bottom of the basin. “Mind you, I’d wondered for a while, not knowing if I should ask. See, this guy is in a Facebook group I’m in. I don’t know if he realizes, but the moderator only lets kids from our school district into this group. So finding two guys with the same unique situation in the same area, is a bit of a stretch.”

  “Is Virginia Duncan standing in this here kitchen?” I act all aghast. “Rusty Knob, West Virginia,” I admit, “is a heck of a lot more creative than West Virginia, Jack Duncan. But nowhere near as stupid as Bren Kennedy and Francis Parker.”

  Jack hip bumps me, pushing me out of the way so he can finish the dishes. “We’re creative.” He releases a deep, evil snicker. “Bren and Franny are in-your-face obvious. But we can’t tell anyone.”

  “Or it could get bloody. Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Jack mutters softly, lost in thought. “I think Bren knows who we are, because he constantly tests you with the fag test, but never me. It terrifies me just the same that I might get tested.”