Right away we piled into Aunt June’s Honda to take us all to lunch at Denny’s, except Mr. Peg that needed to put up his bum leg after the drive. Aunt June made us belt up, which was the first I’d seen of three functioning belts in a back seat. Emmy sat in the middle not talking to us, fishing hair scrunchies and whatever out of her backpack, making a show of not letting us see what else was in there, like it might be something too shocking for our young minds.
Aunt June let us order anything we wanted, so it was like a birthday. We sat by the window and it was hard to concentrate, with everything going on out there. I might have been the only kid at school that hadn’t been to a city before, other than a girl with no parents and epileptic by the name of Gola Ham. Other kids my age had mostly been to Knoxville because people have kin there. Now I was getting my eyes full. If something went by like a cop cruiser with a dog in back, or a tow truck pulling a crushed Mustang, I’d yell, Oh man, look at that! And Emmy would cut her eyes over at me like, So? People don’t total their fucking cars where you come from? Aunt June was busy talking to Mrs. Peggot about her job. She had to go in to work after lunch until the next morning: day and night shifts back-to-back. She talked about the long hours and what she saw in the ER, like a pregnant lady that came in gut-stabbed with her baby still inside. Which if you think about it, would make a crushed Mustang not that big a deal.
More ER stories were still to come, told to Maggot and me by Emmy after she got over herself and started speaking to us. It turns out, the worst shit people can think of to do to each other up home is also thought of and done in Knoxville. Probably more so. The thing about a city is, it’s huge. Obviously I’d seen city on TV because that’s all they ever show (other than Animal Planet), so I was expecting something like Knoxville. Only I had the idea you’d go around a corner and you’d be out of it. Back to where you’d see mountains, cattle pastures, and things of that kind, alive. No dice. Whenever Aunt June took us out, we’d drive down twenty or thirty streets with buildings only. You couldn’t see the end of it in any form. If you are one of the few that still hasn’t been, let me tell you what a city is. A hot mess not easily escaped.
Did Maggot already know about Emmy, before we came? Yes. Everybody in his family knew, and so did my mom, which freaked me out. For some reason the subject of dead Humvee having a daughter living with Aunt June was not to be mentioned back home, ever. Maggot said I could talk to Mom since she already knew, but not Stoner. I said I was pretty sure he and Mom would break up by the time we got back, so. Not a problem. This conversation was on our first night, with Emmy asleep. We’d stayed up watching Outer Limits and finally she conked. Maggot crawled over and took her backpack out of her hands to make sure she was really asleep.
So Aunt June’s spare room was actually home to the Ice Maiden. She had to move out of it for her grandparents to use for our two weeks visit. We kids slept in a giant nest we made in the living room out of pillows and sheets. We called it a fort, but Emmy corrected us that it was our “ship.” The SS Blow It Out Your Anus, Maggot suggested, which got him demoted. She had all these tiny stupid dolls in tiny stupid suitcases, and in Emmy’s world they had ranks: lieutenant, private, etc. Maggot usually ended up below the entire suitcase-doll militia as something like dishwasher, whereas I was in the middle. We tried involving her dolls in robberies and murders, which she surprised us by being totally into. She said there was a place outside Knoxville called Body Farm where they buried dead bodies and then dug them up after they’d rotted, to study the scientific aspect of crimes. Fine, we played by her rules and slept in a pillow ship. I asked if she’d ever seen the ocean. Never and no thanks, was her answer. She’d been to Undersea Wonders Aquarium in Gatlinburg, and the sharks terrified her.
If you asked me, her building was scarier than any sharks. Like being trapped in a Duke Nukem doom castle. A thousand other families living there, every front door opening into one hallway. Stairs going down past other hallways. Outside the main front door, a street full of cars and cars, people and people. There was no outside anywhere. I asked Emmy who all these other people were, and she said she had no idea but you couldn’t talk to them due to stranger danger. Doom castle was normal to her. Supposedly she had school friends with Nike Air Maxes, Furbys, etc., meaning cooler than us grimy fourth graders, but where were they? Nowhere. She couldn’t see them all summer. They lived in other doom castles. There was no running wild here like we did at home, adults around or not, ideally not. Emmy was not on her own for one second, due to all the unknown people and murder potential. After school she went to a lame place where they did crafts until the moms showed up, with kids that were not at her level. Her words. On Aunt June’s night shifts, because they kept that ER going around the clock, there was an old lady downstairs with two stink-eye cats where Emmy went for sleep, breakfast, and TV watching, meaning one neighbor at least was not a criminal mind. Her cats, possibly. That was the life of Emmy: school, making crap out of Popsicle sticks, sleep.
Aunt June had days off coming, and said we’d do stuff then. In the meantime, Mr. and Mrs. Peggot sat at the table with the lights shut off, not wanting to use up their daughter’s electricity. Mr. Peg didn’t know the streets, and there wasn’t any yard. I mean, none, because I asked. I didn’t believe the world would even have a place like this. Not just from the kid viewpoint of no place to mess around. Where would these people grow their tomatoes?