Have A Little Faith In Me (7 page)

Then he remembered Barrett’s gently mocking name for him.  “Little rocker.”  He was.  He was a little rocker.  And in a moment, he shed his old skin, just like that.  Like the folks in church, he had it, the epiphany, the moment of grace.

And he was Born Again.

“Rocky.  My name’s Rocky.”

“Thomas!” the teacher barked.  “What’s that on your feet?”

Dex looked up from his magazine, buried in the pages of his biology textbook.  He saw Thomas shrug. 

“Shoes.”  The other kids laughed.

“No…” Mr. Hicks said disdainfully.  “Above that.”

“Socks.” 

“Yes. 
Rainbow
socks.  You look like a clown.  Do you think this is a circus?”

Thomas shrugged again.  “Could be.”  Louder laughter this time.

Mr. Hicks made a great show of reaching for The Pad, the book of detention slips he kept on his desk.  “Get out of my class.”

Dex returned his attention to the latest issue of
Guitar Player.
  He’d seen kids get sent to detention for less.  Hell, he’d seen kids get arrested for less.  Well, black kids like Thomas, at least.  One black girl had needed to pee so bad, and for some reason Hicks wouldn’t give her a hall pass, that she jumped up and ran for the bathroom.  Hicks called the cops and they took her to Juvie. 

He must be in a good mood today,
Dex thought,
if all he’s handing out is a detention slip.
  Mostly it was white kids who got detention.  Black kids would often get sent to Juvie for even the most minor infractions.

“Now where were we,” Hicks said, running his hand absently through the thin strands of his combover, as if he still had all his hair.  “Right.  We’re talking about the study that proves,
proves,
that condoms have a 45% failure rate…”

Everyone was pretty much tuned out.  The Biloxi schools were big fans of abstinence-only sex education, which was why the STD and pregnancy rates were so high in Mississippi.  Two of Dex’s classmates had come back to school this fall, both as big as houses, both quite possibly impregnated by the same boy.

“Oh look!” Hicks said dramatically.  “It’s 2 o’clock.  That means it’s time for the football players in our classroom to get out early and go to practice.”  He put his hand on his forehead to shield his eyes from the flyblown fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling, and looked around like a sailor searching for land.  “Do we have any football players in this classroom?  Why no, we don’t.  Everyone here has to sit here another hour and listen to me talk.”

Everyone looked at Dex, who refused to take the bait.  Sixteen years old, six feet tall already, and 180 pounds of muscle…what the hell was wrong with him, why wasn’t he on the team?  Why was he letting the school down like that? 

As they gave in to the slightest nudge into mob psychology, he could feel them all turning on him.  It was his fault that the team wasn’t doing well this year.  As if he was good at football just because he was big.  He could even feel the classroom’s web camera judging him, the cameras the school district had installed in every classroom, ostensibly to “deter crime.” 

“Wouldn’t you like to be out there on this nice day, getting some fresh air and sunshine and exercise, instead of being locked in here?  I know I would.”

When the silence continued for painfully eternal seconds, Dex finally looked up.  “Yes, Mr. Hicks, that would be nice, but you know, it’s the football players in this school who really need to learn about condom failure rates.”

The class roared and Hicks blushed.  “That’s enough!  Shut up, all a’ you!”

Dex started putting his book (and hidden magazine) away, getting ready for the trip to detention, but it didn’t happen.  Hicks went on about Saving Yourself for Marriage, and the last hour of school went on as usual.  Dex went back to his magazine and waited, like everyone else, for the time to pass.

After school, he walked to the seafood warehouse, the job that was responsible for his current bulk.  He’d started there when he was 14, working under the table, and was still working under the table after two years, for the same amount of money.

Jake Shills, the owner, had given him a shit eating grin when he’d asked for a raise at the beginning of the school year. 

“Now, Dex, that’s true, you ain’t makin’ minimum wage.  But see, this way I don’t have to give the goddamn gummint half your check, and you don’t either, see?”

Dex didn’t see, but he also knew that arguing wasn’t going to do any good.  He really should look for another job, but half of what stopped him was the nature of the other available jobs (fast food cook, theater popcorn slinger), and half was…well, just inertia, he guessed.  “Gettin’ by” was the prevailing philosophy of everyone around him, and making changes required ambition, which Dex had pretty much reserved for his musical career.  What was the point of starting over at some other job where he’d have to prove himself all over again, especially if the shifts would interfere with his guitar practice?

At the warehouse, the grown men worked 39.5 hour weeks – always had and always would.  The company gave benefits to anyone who worked “full time,” which meant only a handful of managers.  And most of them worked a lot more than 40 hours, but since they got paid a salary, it often worked out to be less per hour than the warehouse men made. 

Dex had asked them once why they didn’t unionize, and they’d looked at him like he’d grown another head.  “You a socialist or something?”  Like so many working class people across America, they’d been well-schooled to believe that anything that would benefit them was “socialism,” a dirty word most of them didn’t even understand.

Shills had given him the job as a favor to his dad, a drinking buddy and old classmate.  When he’d started, it nearly broke his little body, hauling huge boxes.  His hands had frozen through the thin gloves they’d given to handle frozen fish – gloves he hadn’t been given the first week, a prank by the lifers.  When he realized what they’d done, he was furious – his hands!  His guitar playing hands had been jeopardized, for what? 

“Aww, we’re just funnin’ ya.”  They laughed at him, as if making him miserable was…hilarious.  He didn’t get it. Why?  Why was other people’s suffering so entertaining?  And it wasn’t just him.  They did it to each other, pulled dangerous pranks that left them doubled over in laughter when someone slipped on fish guts or hit his head.  As if the job wasn’t hard enough on your body, and dangerous enough too.  He’d bought his own high quality gloves with his first check.

They’d made him do the shit jobs, had thrown fish heads at him (frozen, if he was lucky), all the while laughing, hee haw.  And then he’d had a growth spurt, going from squirt to monster in a year.  One day, instead of saying “Stop it,” and hearing them all mock him, echoing “stop it, stop it” in little girly voices, he turned on them.

In a new, deep voice that surprised himself most of all, he looked at the ringleader, Cleve, and said, “You better knock it the fuck off.”

Everyone froze.  Dex held Cleve’s gaze, didn’t blink.  Finally the other man looked away.  “Aw, we’re just messin’ around.”

“Not any more, you’re not.”

And that did it.  Of course, after that, they started talking about football, how he should play football, discussing what football position they thought he’d be best at as if he wasn’t there, didn’t have a say.

As he’d learned at school, wisecracking was the best defense.  He looked at Cleve and smiled.  “If I played football, I wouldn’t have time to socialize with you gents, and I wouldn’t miss that for the world.”

Haw haw, the others cackled, jabbing Cleve in the ribs. 

It was getting dark when Dex got home around 7.  The closer he got, the more he slowed his pace, trying to bank a few more seconds of peace before he walked in the door, knowing what was behind it.

Tonight he was lucky, since only two of his three younger siblings were fighting in the hallway, screaming and arguing over nothing in particular.  Their mom, Carla, shouted from the living room.

“Shut up out there!  I’m watching Dr. Phil!”

Dr. Phil’s buffalo voice filled the house from the home theater speakers.  “Are YEW gonna DEW what DAWCTER PHIL tells YEW to DEW?”

Some hapless idiot sobbed on the TV, relentlessly bullied into saying yes, since the camera, the audience, the family members and of course the “doctor” would brook no other answer.

Dex’s mother was obsessed with Dr. Phil.  She worked as a cocktail waitress at the riverboat casino, and when she worked day shift, she taped it so she could watch it when she got home. 

“Carla!  Get me another beer!”  Mike shouted from the family room, where he was watching SportsCenter on the other big TV.

“One more, and that’s it,” she shouted back.  She saw her oldest son in the hallway.  “Dex!  Get your daddy a beer.”

Dex’s dad worked at the same casino, as a change person.  Probably not for long; there wasn’t much physical change to make anymore, since most of the slot machines now paid out in tickets.  If Carla was cutting him off at two beers, it meant he’d just woken up for a graveyard shift. 

Dex stepped his way to the kitchen through the toys scattered across the floor and frowned at the heap of dirty dishes in the sink.

“Carrie,” he said to his oldest sibling, twelve years old, as she cut past him at the fridge to get a juice box.  “What you been up to all afternoon?  Why didn’t you do the dishes?”

“Homework,” she said, tossing her hair.

He looked at her suddenly blond locks.  “Did you dye your hair?”

She sighed heavily.  “Duh.”

“You spent all afternoon on that, didn’t ya, instead of your homework, or the dishes.”

“There’s a beauty pageant coming up,” she said, as if that settled it.

“And that’s more important than your…”

“Yes,” she cut him off.  “God, Dex, you’re such a nagging housewife.”

Dex looked at the dishes.  “You load ‘em in the dishwasher, now.”  He grabbed the juice box out of her hand.  “Or I’ll whup you myself.”

“Mom!” she screeched automatically.

“Shut up!  Do what your brother tells you!”

“Dex!  Where’s my fucking beer!”

Dex brought his dad the Budweiser.  Mike Dexter was sprawled in the La-Z-Boy, the sound on the TV turned up to drown out Dr. Phil in the next room. 

The Dexters had taken maximum advantage of the housing boom.  Loans were easy to come by in 2004, even with a minimum wage job.  And once you had a house, the value just went up and up, and everyone knew that it would forever, for sure, a magical pot of gold that never emptied.  So the thing to do was to take out a home equity loan on the difference between what you bought it for and what it was worth now, and buy yourself some nice shit, like a new recliner and some big ass TVs.  Maybe a JetSki.

His dad looked at the beer.  “Why didn’t you bring me a tallboy,” he grunted, taking the twelve-ounce can grudgingly.

“Because a tallboy counts as two beers,” Dex said.  “And you gotta drive.”

He went back to the kitchen and loaded the dishwasher himself.  “What’s for dinner?” he asked his mom.

“There’s KFC in the oven.” 

He opened the oven door, where a bucket of chicken and a box of biscuits and gravy was being kept warm. 

“Again?”

“You want something fancy, bring us some seafood home from work and cook it yourself.  I can’t work all day and come home and make you a four course meal.”

“Well,” he muttered to himself below the sound of the dueling televisions.  “If you spent some time solving your own family’s problems instead of watching Dr. Phil… Lisa Sue!” he shouted.  “Get in here and help me serve!”

The six year old was glad to have an excuse to stop fighting with Kaleb, her eight-year-old brother.  There was still hope for her, Dex thought, if he could help it.

He handed her the paper plates and plastic silverware.  “How come we eatin’ off this?” she asked doubtfully, looking at the disposable dinnerware.

“
Why
are we eatin’ off this,” Dex corrected her.  “Because nobody did the dishes, that’s why.”

“Eww,” Carrie said as the family sat down at the dinner table.  “Gross.  I can’t eat off a paper plate.”

“Princess Carrie’s too good for paper plates!” Kaleb said gleefully.

“I am a princess,” Carrie flounced.  “Right, daddy?”

“You’re watching too much Disney Channel,” Dex said.  “The world needs less damn princesses, not more.”

“Dex!” his mother shouted.  “Language.  Mike, say grace.”  They joined hands and bowed their heads.

“Lord, thank you for this dinner, and for the Ole Miss football team, and please hurry up and make Dex try out for the team soon, amen.”

“Amen!”  they all chimed, and the carnage began.  Dex always thought of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory when he watched them eat – Augustus Gloops, all of them.

Dex pulled the batter and skin off a chicken breast before he ate it.  He was sick of eating KFC, sick of junk food, but that’s all they ever seemed to eat anymore.  The rest of them ate like wolves.

Mike looked hungrily at the thigh on Dex’s plate.  “You gonna eat that?”

“No, take it.”

“How you gonna get big and strong if you don’t eat more?  And how come you ain’t tried out for football yet?  Coach is bothering me, comin’ down to the casino to ask me why you ain’t tried out yet.”