A meandering walk through Devine

I talked about Rachel leaving Devine, and I suppose I should talk about the rest of Devine too. It was a small town that I'm told has expended a bit here and there, but which remains mostly the same. The town left such an impression on me that when I needed a quiet rural backdrop, Devine became my only choice for where to start The Lesser of Two Evils. In fact, the house Wendy Stoffel lives in is a real place that I lived in too. It can fairly be said that TLoTE is my most accurate book for matching real world locations to fake scenes.

In our time there, we lived in four houses, with each of them fucked up in their own way, and with the last being fucked up because we were right across the street from the police station. I'll end up in the station in this story eventually, but I want to back up to explain my money making patterns for several months. You see, being out in the boonies, bus stop scams are notoriously ineffective because there's no bus. I was reduced to picking up cans off of dirt roads and cleaning mud from them with a screwdriver. Bro sometimes went with me, and we'd take our honest earning to one of two recycling centers, which were next door to each other. One took in only clean cans and other metals, but the other place was a scrap yard that would even take in cars, engines and broken car parts.

Out on this one property, bro had located a dozen parked vehicles, not a one of them running or ever having a hope in hell of running. And bro says, "The center buys batteries. So these all have batteries."

Bro's plans always sucked a dick. Bro likes to call himself a smooth criminal in his stories to his friends, but let us review facts. Bro has a record as long as his arm, and I have a clean record despite running into the cops or confessing to them…oh hell, I've lost count how many times. Suffice it to say, any plan bro made had flaws, and this petty crime plot had two biggies.

First of all is, vehicle batteries are fucking heavy. And when you only weight ninety pounds soaking wet, a truck battery is an Olympic-level weight to pick up cleanly. Which leads to problem two: batteries are full of acid. Do you think it was bro who learned this? No, of course not.

I had a battery about halfway to our red wagon, scavenged from a pile of rusting bike frames at the abandoned house next door*. I lost strength in my left arm and the forearm dipped, spilling acid over my forearm and wrist. Fortunately, we had drinking water there, but I didn't get the acid off before it burned me. So all the way to the shop, I was panicking and trying to find water hoses to rinse my arm with because I didn't recognize that I'd been burned. I thought the acid was still clinging to me, and I was going to become as retarded as my cat, who had been splashed with acid on his head before I found him and nursed him back to health. (This cat is the inspiration for RT, Tommy's cat in Changeling.)

(*Oh, incidentally, all those properties around us were empty because ALL the houses were infested with snakes, scorpions, and spiders, both brown recluse and black widow. FUN. Some of the snakes were copperheads. Mom almost had a shit fit when she opened a cleaning cabinet and found a nest of snakes balled up for the night.)

Right, so we get to the center sans drinking water, near heat stroke, and both of us complaining bitterly at whose fault this plan was. All that work for this plan netted us $4. Motherfucker.

About a week later, my step-dad Marc takes a motorcycle radiator to the same recycling center, and he got $6. Well, I thought how light those radiators are, and I thought about those trucks, all lined up with radiators.

Admittedly, I didn't think about walking 1.6 miles in the baking sun with two radiators, but we took four big honkers in and got $20. All, right, not bad, and worth a few days of entertainment at the local rates for video game rentals.

As I was walking out, I noticed the stacks and stacks of huge diesel rig radiators at the scrap yard, and then I spotted the hole in the fence, big enough for an adult to walk through.

Although I usually follow my rule about never hitting the same target over and over, this was a scam too good not to keep going in on. So this one scheme kept me "employed" for quite a while.

Rachel and her sister moved in, and they even went on some runs to the scrapyard with me. But for the most part, I considered them more of a problem than little helpers, so I preferred working alone.

I think they'd been moved away for around three months when I got busted. I was just walking away from the scrap yard when I heard gravel crunching under a wheel, a vehicle driving very slowly behind me. In a little redneck town, there's no kidnappers in vans driving like that, leaving only one possible suspect.

So I put down my ill gotten gains without turning around, backed up, put my ass on the hood, and then turned around and put my hands on the hood. Then I looked up at the cop, who smiled as he got out and said, "Done this before?"

"Nope, but my brother did," I said.

"Ayup," he said, because he already knew my brother well. In a small town, a bad criminal gets well-known fast, and bro was awful.

But anyway, my polite surrender allowed me the privilege of riding up front without cuffs, or even the Miranda reading. It was hardly a proper arrest. The officer said, "I don't think you'll try to run away." And he was right. I was sure running would just lengthen my sentence.

I told myself I'd face up to my crime, "like a man," and since bro considered himself a man, I guess I succeeded. Because I did exactly what he always did, and I broke into tears and told a sob story about being poor and just wanting Christmas money for my dear, sweet parents. And the owner of the scrap yard was so moved, he gave me a job. No, for real. That was my punishment for robbing the place. They had me strip copper from solenoid coils, but for a reduced price, factoring in my crime. I got mentioned in the paper, but not by name.

The only other time I went to the police station was because my mother accused me of taking drugs. At first, I laughed at her, because where in the fucking middle of nowhere was I going to get drugs? And besides that, I had no money. I'd given up all scams and was trying for once to live an honest life. But mom said my eyes were red, so that must mean I was stoned. Couldn't be hay fever? No. So I eventually blew up, stomped across to the cop shop and began angrily demanding a drug test. They calmed me down, sorted out what I was blubbering about, and then went to my house to tell me mom "This kid isn't on drugs." And I wasn't. A steady drug supply wouldn't come until two years later. (Bro was my dealer.)

After Rachel left, I dropped into a depression. Some of the kids at school noticed and adopted me. While in their crew, I hung out during breakfast and played portable LCD games. Since all our games were one screen, one game consoles, we had to trade games to keep things interesting.

During this time, a popular game was "FAGIT/MAGIT" But FAGIT is "female ass grabber including tits." We were sitting around playing other games when this fad came to our table, and EVERYONE looked at me and went, "Of course you're a MAGIT, dude." Then they started signing, "You're a MAGIT, You're a MAGIT!" So I shouted, "No I'm not, I'm a FAGIT!" In a full cafeteria. Oy.

There was one silver lining. Being in a redneck town, all of the boys took up the strange notion that touching a gay person could turn one gay. And, because of this, it was a very rare instance where anyone tried to hit me. The two times someone tried, I hit back, and they went away. What I'm saying is, the backwoods redneck kids treated me way better that the big city kids. After people thought I was gay, even the teasing became milder and easier to bear. It didn't mean it didn't bother me, but comparing some name calling to previous yeas with broken bones and ghetto stomping and concussions, I was happy to have some relief.

I, was not a good student. I'm sure you can guess that, but at one point, my principal challenged me to prove that I really knew what I claimed and I wasn't just full of shit. He claimed that if I could give them just one six week period of good grades, he would have me tested for advanced placement in a higher grade. Why, I might even get out of high school early. Motivated by this chance for early release from hell, I applied myself and got straight As. I even got an A+ in my writing class. So I took my report card in, and the principal said, "Now if you just do this every semester…"

I tuned out the rest. I tuned out a lot of what he said, and after the counselor showed me her gun and told me she wasn't afraid to shoot niggers, I tuned her out too. Her, though, I at least pretended to like. The principal became my enemy, and I wasn't afraid to call him out. I'm probably the only student who ever called him a jackass to his face and didn't get thrown out with a permanent suspension.

Bro got busted for breaking into the post office, and that was a crime so big, he couldn't cry it away. So for a time, it was just me in town, alone. That sucked a dick. When you're like the town pariah, and the only person who will talk to you is the town drunk…and he only wants to talk about sex. Oh yeah, real fucking awkward staying away from him. Everyone else told me he was harmless, but the constant "flirting" told me otherwise.

Bro came back, and then he had some trouble with some of his friends. They showed up and cornered us in a convenience store, Pico. They said they were going to kick bro's ass, and I stopped thinking. I decked the biggest kid. So outside, the three of them kicked the shit out of me. Then they and my little brother went off to find trouble together. They found it.

I limped home alone. Mom came home and found me, and she started in with the alcohol and cotton balls to dab on the deeper scrapes. Then all of the sudden, my step-dad storms in and says I'm getting my thieving ass up, and we're going to the police. Why? Because I had just narrowly escaped arrest somehow while bro and the guys were busted for another B&E of the school district's stadium snack stand.

And, I HAD been there four weeks previously, when bro had first discovered the lax security standards. I had some chips and soda while bro hunted in vain for a cash box. Oh, also, I stole a pickle.

But, seeing as how I was quite impossibly beyond fast flight, and as how I wasn't going down with the assholes who had just rearranged my entire body, I got up in my step-dad's face and we had a screaming match until I convinced him to really look at me and see how badly injured I was. Then he found out the guys who beat me were the ones sitting in the clink with bro. So he calmed down and left.

Twenty years later, I found out that the police let my step-dad take bro out of the jail, and he hit bro up side the head with something, making him bleed. Bro still has deep scars on either side of his cheekbones because of this attack. During this time, my step-dad was telling bro that the cops arrested them because I called them. He was trying to guilt trip bro into confessing that I was there. Instead, he planted an idea in bro's head that made him hate me even worse. To this day, bro thinks I'm the spawn of Satan who was plotting against him. That's why he HAD to make preemptive strikes and keep attacking me throughout my teens. And people sometimes still wonder why I live on the other side of the planet from him.

My school knew about all of this drama. It was a small town, and rumors get around. I'd been in the office many times, often becoming confrontational. After I was accused of attacking a kid who I hadn't touched, I exploded at my principal and told him, again, in a full cafeteria, to sit his fat ass down and shut up for once. He just stared at me, and then he said, "I think you need to leave." So I did, to a standing ovation. I really thought that shit only happened in movies.

They got a shrink to try and prove I was unfit for school. The plan backfired because I confessed to my shrink about my past, and he felt so sorry for me that he told the principal they HAD to take me back.

I lost my rep as a homosexual in band class. I played xylophone, badly. The band auditorium was being renovated, so we were taking lessons on the stage in the cafeteria. (Most of my best Devine stories take place in that one room.) As the class was coming to a close, our substitute teacher said, "Class, remember to go home and practice your fingerings."

I turned to the guy next to me, the snare drummer, and said, "I thought only girls had to remember their fingerings."

The girl in front of me turned around and said, "No dear, you have to remember my fingerings too." Then she got up, sat in my lap, and pulled a back stage curtain around us. She unbuttoned her jeans and stuck my hand in. I froze like the classic deer in the headlights.

I'd just recovered my senses enough to test my new friend's resolve, and the substitute called my name. Because I was on the lunch program, and instead of reading cards from the top down, he pulled mine from the bottom. "Whitten! Whitt—hell, where's Whtten?"

"He's back here!" the kettle drummer shouted, and then drew back the curtain. And the whole cafeteria looked around, and there I am with a hot girl in my lap, my hand down her pants. The teacher wrote a fast note, held it out and said, "Office, now."

So we get to the office, and I'm getting prepared for World War Three. But my principal opened the note, laughed and groaned, "Oh, thank God." Then he set down the note and waved at the door. "Get out." Then he laughed some more.

I didn't get another chance with the girl. Teacher moved her seat far, far away from me, and I never even got her name.

At graduation, I thought I was going to be a summer school graduate. But I passed my year end exams, so the district chose to send me on to high school even if five of my six semesters were flat zeroes. I turned in no homework, refused to interact with my teachers unless I was forced to. I hated them, and I'm sure the feeling was mutual.

The night of my graduation, my principal handed me my rolled up diploma, took my other hand and pulled me in close. "I'm finally getting you out of my hair," he said.

"But sir," I said, "You're bald."

Which is why he's purple in the picture, and I'm red. Because I'm red trying to contain my laughter, and he was purple trying to avoid the urge to kill.

And that was my last good time in Devine before I moved back to Denison to live with my dad and bro again.