He and I weren’t always friends. In the beginning he was just a smelly boy with dirty fingernails and shaggy hair covering his eyes. In the early years, I barely heard him utter a word except for “yes, ma’am” and “no, ma’am.” He’d shuffle behind me all the way down that dusty road to where Ms. Beels would greet us. We’d climb onto the yellow Fern County school bus and hunker down for the long hour-and-a-half drive to school. I always sat in the very first seat, and he’d walk straight to the back.
As we passed through town, we’d pick up a whole bunch of kids, at least thirty of all ages, but the two I remember well, besides Jax, were world-class assholes. I was convinced that Mikey McDonald, with his blond crew cut and baggy pants, wanted to make my life hell.
“Emerson? What kind of name is that? Isn’t that a boy’s name?”
I would roll my eyes and try to ignore him. I never got a chance to ask my parents what kind of crack they were smoking when they named me.
By the third grade, Mikey had a crony: Alex Duncan. Whatever I was carrying, they would walk by and try to slap it out of my hands, and then they would sit in the seat behind me on the bus and torture me all the way home. “Maybe you can marry a book someday, Emerson Booknerd. Haha, Booknerd. That could be your last name.”
Alex had a big birthmark right on the end of his nose, like he had been sniffing shit. For so long I kept my insults to myself, but everything changed in the fourth grade. The factory had been closed for almost a year, the money was running out, and my father wasn’t doing anything but drinking and listening to talk radio. Rush Limbaugh’s Oxy-laced voice was more familiar to me than my own father’s. He was shutting down. He had stopped talking. He got mean and so . . . my mom left. She left me alone with him, without even a brother or sister to help shoulder the burden.
Everything changes when a man can’t afford to put food on the table. Some men rise to the occasion and find a way to make ends meet, no matter what it takes. Other men have too much pride to see that their life is crumbling down around them. My dad was a third-generation American Paper Mill worker, and Jax’s dad was the same. It was all they knew.
After years of torment from Mikey and Alex, I hit my breaking point when quiet, reserved Jax decided to join in on their juvenile idiocy.
I always took care to make sure my clothes were clean and my face washed. After my mom left, my dad started hanging around with Susan, a woman who worked as a maid at a nearby motel. She didn’t dress like a maid, but she always brought us those little soaps from the motel bathroom, so I guessed she was probably a maid. I had to use cheap motel soap for everything, including washing my hair, so naturally, after a few weeks of that, my bouncy brown curls became a frizzy mess. The kids on the bus called me Medusa. If only I had been that scary.
On a typically humid day in June, Jax followed me down the road and took his usual seat at the back. Halfway through the route, Mikey and Alex called Jax to come up and sit with them. They started giggling behind me.
“What, did you stick your finger in a light socket, Medusa?” Alex said.
“If I touch it, will it bite me?” Mikey taunted.
“Yeah, cool hair,” Jax said.
I turned and shot daggers into his eyes. “Oh, nice one, Fisher. Real original. You better watch it or I’ll tell your father.” I didn’t care about the other boys, but I wasn’t about to take that shit from the neighbor kid. He didn’t respond—he just stared right at me and then squinted slightly. He didn’t come back with another insult; it even seemed like he felt bad. He wouldn’t take his eyes off of mine, which was quite the statement for a fourth grader.
“Take a picture; it’ll last longer,” I said. He blushed and then looked away.
I heard Mikey say to Jax, “Will she really tell your father?”
Jax shrugged. “I don’t care.”
Alex turned his attention back to me. “We’re so scared—Poodle Head is going to tattle on us. Ruff, ruff.”
The boys continued their taunting without Jax’s help. He just kept his head down and waited until it was just the two of us on the bus and we were speeding past the mile markers on El Monte once again. I wasn’t sure if Jax was frightened of my threat or if he realized what a bunch of twerps they were being, so I turned in my seat and peered over the bus bench at him. He was looking out the window. “I wasn’t kidding, Jackson Fisher, I will tell your father.”
“That might be kind of hard, Emerson. My dad’s gone. He left.” It was the first time I had ever heard him speak my name. He enunciated it so clearly, like an adult would do.
“Where’d he go?”
“Who knows? Where’d your mom go?”
I didn’t think he even knew about my mom—I thought it was the big family secret. But then again, there’s no such thing in a small town.
“They’re not . . . you don’t think . . .” I hesitated, embarrassed. Jesus, did my mother take off with Jackson’s dad?
“No, they’re not together. I just meant they went to the same place: away from us.” He looked back out the window and stared straight ahead.
I felt sad and confused. I wanted to pinch his nose and tug on his ears for making fun of me, but I also wanted to hug him. I knew what he was feeling, and it hurt so bad it made my teeth ache. At least Jax had an older brother at home. I had no one but my books.
We didn’t talk for the rest of the ride, but we did walk shoulder to shoulder in our amiable silence down the long dirt road. Something felt different, like a truce had been made. At the end of the road, I went into my dark house and he into his. I walked past my snoring father on the couch, clutching a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. I went into my room, found a pair of scissors, plopped down in front of the mirror, and slowly and methodically cut off all of my hair. I dozed off without eating dinner and woke up at three a.m. to the sound of my father’s drunken babbling. He was crashing into walls and cursing at no one. I cowered under the covers until he came stumbling through my bedroom door, my dark room filling with light from the hallway. I was terrified.