Chapter Text
Eddie’s first memory is ice cream. Vanilla, specifically.
He’s sitting on a park bench between Mama and Pa, and they’re all watching the ducks swim in the little pond in front of them. It’s late afternoon, in the spring, maybe, and it’s warm enough that Eddie is comfortable in a t-shirt and shorts.
Mama wears her big curly hair up in a clip. She’s got a black tank top and her blue jeans on, and she laughs when one of the ducks starts quacking loudly at another.
Pa wears a work shirt for a job he doesn’t have anymore, and he’s got a rare smile on his face. He’s got his arm around Mama, pulling her close enough to squish Eddie in the middle, though he doesn’t mind.
Neither of them have ice cream. Eddie watched Mama count change on the kitchen table before they walked over, so he picked vanilla when they got to the shop. No sprinkles, no toppings, though Pa asked if he was sure a couple times.
When they got to the park, Eddie offered them some, but they shook their heads and let him have the whole cup.
He works the cheap little spoon into the ice cream, almost cracking it, and tastes vanilla and wood on his tongue and feels warm sunlight on his back.
As far as first memories go, it’s a really, really good one.
Mama and Pa are fighting again.
Eddie’s on his mattress in a room on the other side of the house, door closed, and he can still hear them. It’s not as loud and scary like this, but it’s still loud and scary.
It’s the end of summer, and it’s starting to get colder at night, so Eddie knows they’re moving again soon. He thinks they’re gonna find another house like this, a big one with lots of rooms and new people who have the same little baggies as Mama and Pa, but they could be staying in a motel again. He isn’t really sure.
His parents are still fighting. Eddie thinks he hears the word “rent” from Pa and his name from Mama.
He turns over and covers his ears. It’s a shame that school starts next week and not today.
Mama screams, and Pa starts shouting loud enough for Eddie to make out his words, even though he doesn’t want to.
“I know he starts school soon, but I can find a place and a job by then!”
“What if I can’t?” Mama shouts back. “We can’t afford to live anywhere without both of us working.”
“I guess you better find a job, then.”
“Oh, because that’ll be so easy-”
Both of them are screaming made-up words, words Pa taught Eddie and Mama told Eddie not to repeat.
Eddie rolls off his mattress and onto the floor - it’s not a long drop, the mattress is on the floor - and races to the beat up stereo on a table in the corner of the room. He turns it on and starts flipping through the stations that don’t have static, trying to find the loudest one. He flips the tune dial one more time and lands on it.
It is drums so loud they crash in Eddie’s head. It is bass that thumps the stereo so hard the table it’s on squeaks. It is a voice screaming about life and love and other things Eddie can’t understand. It is music.
It is a dazzling guitar, shifting from one note to the next so fast Eddie has to race to hear it.
He listens to this station for the rest of the day, tapping his feet to the beat and playing air guitar during the solos. He listens to the DJs during the breaks and makes sure to remember the names of the bands: Black Sabbath, Kiss, Judas Priest, Rush.
He listens to this station and itches for a guitar to run his hands over, for a microphone he can scream into. He listens to this station and can’t hear if Mama and Pa are fighting anymore until Pa comes into the room, unsteady on his feet, and turns the stereo down halfway.
“Just a little quieter, Ed, I got a headache and people are trying to sleep,” Pa says. His words are unsteady, too.
When he leaves, Eddie sits closer to the stereo so his head is full of nothing but music. And he starts school a week late.
Eddie is seven years old the first time he goes to the library.
Mama drops him off with a promise to pick him up at dusk and an instruction to be quiet. Eddie stands at the front desk, feeling a little lost before he gets the courage to ask the lady sitting behind it for help.
She looks nice enough, even if her narrow glasses make her deep-set eyes look cold.
“I’m lookin’ for a book to read,” he tells her.
She pushes those glasses up into her short gray hair. “Well, what kind of book would you like?”
Eddie shrugs.
The lady gets up from behind her desk and starts walking away. Not sure of what else to do, Eddie follows.
She leads him to the back corner of the library. The shelves here are shorter, so small that Eddie can see over them without going on tip-toe. Instead of tile, like the rest of the library, the floor here is a bright rug with pictures of fuzzy animals. The books on display are also bright, with simple words and pictures on their covers.
“This is the children’s section,” the lady explains. “You can start here and get an idea of what you like and don’t like. Don’t be afraid to go to other parts of the library if you want something else.”
Eddie nods and waits until she’s back at her desk before he starts wandering the library.
He walks through the stacks, craning his neck to see if the high shelves touch the ceiling. They almost do.
He passes through roses and rows of shelves, each neatly labeled on the outside: biographies, reference, fiction. None of the titles sound interesting, so Eddie keeps walking.
The next row he sees is labeled fantasy. Eddie kinda remembers liking something to do with that in school, so this is promising. He scans the shelves, looking for something interesting. His eyes land on the only word he isn’t familiar with.
The Hobbit. What the hell is a “hobbit?”
Eddie decides he wants to find out.
He takes the book from the shelf and plops down in the nearest chair. He opens the book up to find a beautiful map of a different world, called “Middle-Earth.” Then, he gets sucked into a world of hobbits - those are small people who don’t need shoes - dwarves, wizards, and elves. Eddie follows Bilbo and Thorin and Gandalf through the Shire, the Mirkwood, and Lake Town. He sees battles and magic and stolen treasure.
A voice startles him just as the adventurers are leaving Lake Town.
Eddie looks up from the book and finds Mama. She stands in front of him, dark curly hair pulled back in a clip, a small smile on her face. Her eyes are focused, and Eddie takes that as a good sign.
“Good book?” she asks.
Eddie nods and sneaks a glance out the window. Sure enough, the sky is a spill of oranges and yellows and pinks. Sunset. It’s a shame that he can’t finish the book.
Mama starts walking toward the door, and Eddie follows. He takes a small detour to go put the book back on its proper shelf.
When he does that, Mama stands at the end of the row, hands on her hips.
“Whatcha doin’?” she asks, amused.
“Puttin’ the book back?” Eddie answers like a question.
Mama laughs. “I’m gettin’ you a library card, sugar. You can take it with us.”
“How much?”
“As many as you want, but only for a week.”
“No, how much is it?”
Mama’s smile falls, just for a second, before she puts it back on. “It’s free.”
That doesn’t sound right, but Eddie wants to keep that smile on Mama’s face. He takes the book back from the shelf and follows Mama back to the front desk. There, the lady from earlier and Mama explain to him how a library card works, that all he needs is a phone number and an address.
Eddie reckons that now ain’t the right time to point out that the house they live in doesn’t have a phone.
“Each library has their own card,” the lady explains. She talks more with Mama there than she did earlier. Maybe she’s like Eddie, and she’s better with adults than kids. “And you can check out up to ten books at a time for one week.”
Eddie only checks out The Hobbit , though ten books sounds amazing.
He never gets to return it. They move to Kentucky later that week.
Eddie learns a lot from his parents.
Pa teaches him how to make breakfast. Looking back, it ain’t much, but back then, learning how to make Bisquick and eggs felt like making a Michelin star meal.
“You need to know how to make breakfast,” Pa tells him when they’re letting the batter sit, “because breakfast food is for anytime. Morning, noon, night, pancakes are easy and delicious.”
Eddie nods. It makes sense to him that he should be able to cook for himself, even a little, at eight years old.
When he goes to flip them, Mama stops him.
“They’re barely done,” she says, laughing. “You gotta be patient. Not everyone likes them almost raw.”
Eddie doesn’t mind them that way. That’s how he makes them the times he has to cook for himself for a few days, when Mama and Pa can’t get off the bed or couch or floor to do it. He knows Mama likes hers almost burnt and Pa likes his with butter, so that’s how he gives them to them, on paper plates he leaves beside the bed or couch or floor.
Since he was eight years old, Eddie only eats cereal when the electricity gets shut off or if they’re living in a car.
Mama teaches Eddie how to sew. Her stitches are neat and orderly, and they pull the fabric together real tight.
“If you sew this way,” Mama says, “then you know how to do stitches on skin, too.”
Most kids would think that sewing up clothes like sewing up people is morbid, but Eddie isn’t most kids. He thinks it’s cool, and he thinks about it as he mends his sleeves and sews up his arm after a particularly nasty fall from a tree.
Mama must have taught him well. His sleeves look new, and his arm never scarred.
Pa teaches Eddie how to hotwire and how to pool hustle. Mama teaches him how to wipe off fingerprints and make cards and cash disappear in his hands. Both of them teach Eddie not to touch the needles and baggies they sometimes have, either by slapping his hands away or saying real seriously, “Don’t touch that shit.”
They aren’t angry when they tell him that. They sound scared and almost sad, but Eddie doesn’t know exactly what that means.
“You gotta take responsibility, Ed, and own up when you’re wrong,” Pa tells him. He spends a week in jail for an outstanding warrant in Kentucky.
Mama looks at him real seriously. “Never put yourself in a position where you owe someone. Never let anyone have leverage over you.”
Eddie takes the advice. Mama must not because a few days later, her necklace, the gold one with the little star, is gone. She has a stack of cash for maybe three hours before she meets with a man in an empty lot and swaps it for a brown paper bag.
So, Eddie learns a lot from his parents. He learns how to pick locks with a credit card and live out of a backpack. He learns how to make do when he’s only got one light jacket for winter and how to make leftovers last for a week.
He learns that Mama is better when Pa is in jail. He learns that Pa is better when Mama’s off on a bender. He learns that his parents are doing their best to do good by him even though they ain’t good for each other.
The first thing Eddie does when they move to a new town is get a library card.
Librarians won’t give him one if he comes alone, but Mama is usually willing to go with him. If she’s passed out or can’t fake sobriety well enough, Eddie convinces Pa to come instead.
Eddie does all the talking. He gives the librarian his name, his address (a fake one if they’re in a motel or a car) and his phone number (the same fake, adjusted for the area code). The librarians are always impressed with him, and when they give him the card, they make that clear to whoever he’s with.
“You’ve got a smart boy,” they’ll say, or some other variation.
Mama says, “I know,” and pulls Eddie in for a hug.
Pa says, “Sometimes too smart,” and ruffles his hair.
Eddie knows he’s smart, even if he gets too bored to do homework or has trouble with math. He knows because Mama and Pa talk about it at night when they think he’s asleep.
(Sound carries real well in cars.)
“He’s a smart kid, John. Smarter than we ever were at that age. We gotta do better for him.”
“I know.”
“I know you know, but we gotta do better than know. We gotta stay out of trouble and keep him in the same place for more than a year, to start.”
“I was thinking get clean.”
“One thing at a time.”
“Don’t make excuses, Rebecca.”
“I’m not, it’s just-”
When they drop down to whispers to fight, Eddie stops listening.
He uses his library cards for fantasy books, mostly. He devours The Lord of the Rings first, then The Chronicles of Narnia , then A Wrinkle in Time , then more and more and more. Something about other worlds, about magic and science and impossibility sucks Eddie right in.
The books fill Eddie’s time on the days when he can’t go outside and the radio doesn’t have his music.
Mama and Pa never read his books, but they love when he tells them about Middle Earth and Narnia and tesseracts. He tells them like a story, like how the books are written. He’ll talk to them about the books even if they’re hungover or asleep or shaking.
Mama and Pa have their moods. They snap and fight each other one moment and hold each other the next. They forget to pay for lights sometimes, but they always make sure Eddie has his favorite cereal. They’re out of it some of the time and don’t understand most of what Eddie talks about when they’re focused.
But they never, ever tell Eddie to stop talking.
He spends his time in other worlds while his body moves back and forth between Ohio and Kentucky. His copies of each volume of The Lord of the Rings are from three different libraries and are technically stolen, just like his copy of The Hobbit from West Virginia.
Eddie keeps every library card he gets. He has eight by the time he stops state hopping.
Eddie meets Uncle Wayne for the first time when he’s ten years old.
They’re staying in an actual house this time. Sure, it’s small. And the foundation might be duct taped together. And the gutters are zip tied to the house.
But the heat works well and rent is cheap and it’s their house. Not technically, since they owe rent, but they’re the only ones living there. It’s been a few months since both Mama and Pa have gotten bad. Both of them have jobs, real jobs, and they pay like shit but it’s enough for rent and food, and it’s fine.
Pa spends a lot on six packs and Mama chainsmokes enough to turn the walls yellow, but it’s fine. They’re both here, and they’re both here, so it’s fine.
It’s Christmas, and Eddie can’t wait for his second set of holidays. Hanukkah ended a week ago. Eddie got a few pairs of socks, and he got to eat Mama’s latkes, which are the best in the whole world.
It’s just the three of them for Christmas, like always, when the doorbell rings.
It’s funny, Eddie thinks, how all of them freeze. He looks up in the middle of a bite, Pa stops in the middle of carving the chicken, and Mama’s head whips, hair flying behind her, to the door.
Eddie recovers the fastest. “I’ll get it.”
The squeak of his chair snaps Mama and Pa out of it.
“Stay here, sugar,” Mama says.
At the same time, Pa says, “I’ll get the door.”
Eddie sits back down, but he peeks behind the wall to get a glimpse of the front door. Pa blocks most of the view, but what Eddie can see is a man who looks just like him.
He’s a little older and balding, but he’s got the same craggy features and narrow eyes as Pa. He’s wearing a red plaid button down and worn britches, and he’s carrying a gift bag and a saran wrapped plate. He looks like he’s trying to get in, but Pa blocks the door. Eddie can see him from the side, and he knows by the set of his jaw that Pa is pissed.
“John, I just heard you were nearby and I wanted to say hello-”
“Okay, you’ve said hello. Get out.”
“It’s Christmas. I wanted to try-”
“Tough shit, Wayne, because I don’t.”
Mama’s head snaps toward Eddie’s at the same time his snaps toward Mama’s. She’s mentioned an “Uncle Wayne” in the cursory way of, Your father has a brother. His name is Wayne. They don’t talk much. Don’t ask.
Before Eddie can beat her to it, Mama gets up from the table and goes to the door.
“Becca!” Wayne says, and Mama laughs. “How have you been?”
“Gettin’ by,” Mama says easily. “You?”
Wayne looks at Mama like he’s studying her. After a few seconds, he says, “Glad to hear it. I quit truck driving-”
“Really?”
“Hours were too much. But I got a job working construction in Indiana, and I got a little place for myself, too.”
“That sounds great-”
“Hold on,” Pa interrupts. “Indiana ain’t nearby. How far did you drive?”
“Not that far-”
“How far, Wayne?”
“Four hours!” Wayne snaps. “Four hours to see you and Becca and my nephew who I’ve never met. I brought you a plate of cookies and him a present. It’s fucking Christmas, Johnny, and this is the first time in way too damn long that I know where the hell you are. ”
Pa looks like he’s gonna shout again or maybe take a swing, so Eddie goes to the door. He stands next to Mama, well, a little behind her, and holds her hand, though he’s ten years old and too old to be doing that.
She glances down at him, gives him a stern look that screams, Go back to the table. Let the adults handle this.
Eddie has never been good at doing what he’s told.
Or staying quiet.
“What kind of cookies?” he asks.
All the adults whip their heads to him. Pa still looks pissed, but it’s softer. Mama looks shocked. And Wayne looks like he’s trying not to laugh.
Wayne breaks the silence. “Sugar, I think. They’re shaped like snowflakes.”
“I can take those from you,” Eddie says, and Wayne places the plate into his offered hand. Eddie extends the other one and says, “Eddie Munson.”
“Nice to meet you, Eddie,” Wayne says as he shakes his hand. “Wayne Munson.”
“Nice to meet you, sir. Come on in the kitchen. We were just about to eat.”
Eddie leads everyone into the kitchen, setting the plate of cookies down on the counter before he takes a seat at the table. Soon after, Wayne and Pa take their seats across from each other, one on each side of Eddie. Mama gets an extra set of dishes and cutlery before sitting down herself.
It’s tense, with Pa and Wayne staring each other down, but Eddie tries his best to make them laugh, and Mama is always nice to everyone, so it’s not as bad as it could be.
Wayne asks Eddie about school and what he likes to do, and he sits and nods along when Eddie explains the new things he noticed on his second reread of The Return of the King. Eddie knows that his rambling can be impolite if it goes on for too long, so he asks Wayne about his life and thinks it’s awesome when Wayne tells him about his mug and hat collections. He’s got one from every state except Hawai’i, and he really wants to go to Hawai’i.
It’s a good Christmas. It might be the best one Eddie’s ever had. It’s definitely better than last Christmas, when Pa spent the night in jail for disorderly conduct (again) and Mama couldn’t cook (not that she celebrates, anyway). Eddie ended up eating Chinese takeout and watching reruns of It’s a Wonderful Life.
When it’s time for presents, Mama apologizes profusely for not getting Wayne anything.
“You couldn’t have known,” he says. He says it five more times to make her feel good enough to stop.
Pa grumbles something like, “What else do you expect?” But Eddie can’t be sure that’s what he said.
None of them got Wayne anything, and Eddie doesn’t remember any other gift of that night except for the Walkman Wayne gives him.
“Sorry I didn’t get you any tapes, but I didn’t want to get you anything you’d hate.”
Eddie barely hears him as he turns it over and over again in his hands. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”
Mama smiles right whe Wayne does, and Pa looks like he forgot he’s supposed to be angry at his brother.
Soon after, Mama goes to bed because she’s got an early shift at the convenience store. Pa takes Wayne into the kitchen, leaving Eddie on the couch in front of a TV playing How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
From where he is, Eddie can just catch “out by morning” from Pa and “won’t even stay the night” from Wayne.
That sucks. He likes Wayne a lot.
Then Pa goes to bed, and Wayne comes back to the living room, and the two of them sit and watch the staticy TV.
Eventually, Wayne says, “If you ever need somewhere to go, I live in Hawkins, Indiana.”
Eddie looks up at him, confused.
“Your parents are good right now. Hell, this might be the best I’ve ever seen them. But if they get bad again, now you know where to find me. Understand?”
“Yeah, Uncle Wayne.”
Uncle Wayne smiles and ruffles his hair. They go back to watching the movie.
Eddie isn’t sure when he falls asleep, but he wakes up on the couch the next morning. He checks outside and sees that the van Wayne drives is gone. Mama is out, and Pa is still asleep, so Eddie takes the bit of money they gave him last night and goes to the record store.
He gets a Judas Priest tape. He plays it so much that it wears out by March, around the same time Pa loses his job, and he comes home from school to find Mama passed out on the floor.
By the time he’s thirteen, Eddie has been in eight different schools.
He didn’t go to kindergarten, which isn’t unusual where he’s from, so he started in first grade with barely any idea of how to talk to kids his own age aside from playground and street hockey friends that only ever lasted a day.
If Eddie remembers correctly (and he might not, he was real small), he didn’t move much until he was around eight. He switched schools a couple times - three schools in the three years of first, second, and third grade - but they didn’t start state hopping until he was around eight. Then it was goodbye West Virginia for good. Then hello Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio, Kentucky. The order might be wrong, but that’s the idea, anyway.
Eddie never does particularly well in school. It’s hard for him to focus on the boring books his teachers assign him to read (he reads fantasy books from the nearest library instead) or the math that doesn’t quite make sense, since someone decided to add letters to it. That’s when things are good.
When things are bad, Eddie has to scrape together bail money or cook for everyone or tiptoe around the house. When things are bad, Eddie goes to the library or stays outside until the streetlights come on, making up and acting out stories in his yard or an empty lot or the edge of the woods. Those kinds of days, Eddie doesn’t ever take his work with him.
He doesn’t explain this to his teachers. Mama and Pa never told him not to say anything, but there’s been an unspoken rule in place since he could talk: what happens at home stays at home. Eddie tests a lot of rules, but he won’t test that one.
Some of his teachers don’t need explanations. His first grade teacher brushed everyone’s hair in the morning - they lived in a coal mining town that year, and a lot of the kids didn’t have parents around to do it for them. Some didn’t even have brushes. His third grade teacher always made sure Eddie had lunch - lots of people in that holler were on food stamps. Looking back, he thinks Mama and Pa didn’t know how to apply. His fourth grade teacher drove him to school and back when the weather was too bad to walk the two miles. It was either rent or a car that year, since it was one of the times when Pa swore off stealin’.
But around middle school, his teachers stopped doing that. They start telling him to sit still and pay attention and stop talking even when he physically can’t. And it’s not like he can explain why either. He doesn’t know why he can’t, and everything else is one of those things that stays at home.
And Eddie gets it. It’s hard for teachers to do those extra things when they have eight classes of thirty people and half the class is silent while the other half beats the shit out of each other. It’s hard to teach at all when the books are missing and the desks are falling apart and some of the kids just leave sometimes to help their parents work.
Eddie learns a lot from school, from being at eight different schools in as many years, even if he doesn’t learn a whole lot at school. If he had a younger sibling or someone to pass on advice to, here’s what he’d tell them:
- Make friends fast (50% success, in conjunction with the unspoken make sure it doesn’t hurt when you leave.)
- Make people laugh. People don’t want to beat up people who entertain them.
- If you can’t make them laugh, be weird enough that they won’t want to fuck around and find out.
- Just keep going. Pass your classes so you can get the hell out.
- Don’t take it seriously when Mama or Pa says they’re gonna quit.
That last one ain’t academic, but it’s the most important one. Eddie needs to remind himself of it more often.
Eddie is supposed to be asleep, but he borrowed this book called Dune from the library, and he can’t stop reading it. He’s got a flashlight and the book under the sheets with him, and he’s just getting to the plot after about a hundred pages of worldbuilding when the front door slams open.
Guess Pa’s back from the bar.
It’s not unusual for Pa to come back so late, just like how it’s not unusual for him and Mama to fight about him getting back so late.
What is unusual is Mama shouting, “Shit, John! Whose blood is that?”
“Not mine,” Pa says, uncharacteristically quiet.
“Shit,” Mama hisses.
Eddie kills his flashlight and throws Dune on his bed. Quietly, he creeps out of his room and into the hall. He can’t see them and doesn’t want to risk being caught out of bed at this hour, but he can hear them a little bit better this way.
“I don’t know if he was breathing, Rebecca.”
“You didn’t check?”
“I heard sirens and ran. Didn’t want to stick around and find out in case he wasn’t.”
“Shit.”
“You sayin’ that is not helping,” Pa snaps.
“Well, you goin’ to jail for murder ain’t helping either!”
“Don’t say that. It’ll be fine.”
Mama lowers her voice. “You’re right. It will be. You’re gonna clean yourself up, and we are both gonna forget we ever had this conversation. Plausible fuckin’ deniability, you understand?”
Eddie runs back to be when he hears the heavy thud of Pa’s boots start moving toward the hall.
He’s never heard Mama’s tone go so cold and analytical. He’s never heard Pa sound so scared and small. This isn’t like them, not at all, and Eddie convinces himself that it was a dream, or that he misheard them, by the time he falls asleep.
In the morning, Pa is there laughing and making breakfast for all of them, so it’s fine. Last night didn’t happen.
Except that Pa doesn’t pick Eddie up from school.
They don’t have a car, courtesy of Pa swearing off stealing and trying to save instead, but Pa’s come to walk Eddie home from school every day so far this year. He knows he’s too old for it, but Eddie likes to think Pa is making up for all the times he didn’t do that sort of stuff when Eddie was younger.
But Pa doesn’t come today.
Eddie waits for ten minutes, wondering what the hell is wrong and hoping it’s not what he thinks, and then Mama comes down the sidewalk.
She’s wobbling. Not much. Just enough that anyone could attribute it to her being unsteady in her high heels.
Eddie isn’t anyone. He’s seen Mama sprint from the cops in those four inch heels and not falter for a second.
Nah. Mama’s just really, really drunk.
Eddie’s heart drops to his stomach and then some.
Mama doesn’t have to tell him what he already knows: Pa isn’t coming back for a long, long, time.
And from the way Mama starts sipping from a flask right there in the middle of the street, she saw him get taken away.
It hurts to think it, but Eddie does anyway: Good think I have my go bag packed.
Eddie has spent a lot of time holding her hair back and cooking for her, and he’s called an ambulance twice before he learned how to take care of her when she got that bad, too.
But Mama has never drank in the middle of the street before, and Eddie thinks this is only the beginning of things getting a hell of a lot worse.
He’s not gonna stick around to find out if it is. Maybe that makes him a little too much like Pa.
The thing is that it’s not all bad. Far from it, actually.
Sure, some of it sucks. Constantly moving around sucks. Spending a lot of time on his own, with just library books and whatever metal tapes he can get sucks. Not knowing who’s gonna be home when sucks.
A lot of it sucks. But a lot of it doesn’t.
Listening to the radio with Mama and singing along to Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynn doesn’t suck. Walking into town - whatever town they’re in - and listening to Pa talk about baseball doesn’t suck. Hearing either one of them tell stories about how they met or where they came from doesn’t suck.
It’s not all bad. They dance in the kitchen and laugh together and make references to movies they snuck into the theater to see.
(They all really like Star Wars. “These are not the droids you’re looking for” has become a daily phrase, regardless of context.)
There’s times when Mama is laughing and bright, and there’s times when Eddie has had 911 on the other end of the line because she isn’t breathing right and it’s waking up. There’s times when Pa is around to take him walking in the woods and teach him how to cook, and there’s times when Eddie searches the house for the rainy day money they should just start calling the bail fund, since that’s what it is.
Both of them have times when they’re almost too active, when Mama and Pa are just on and they don’t stop moving and talking. And then there’s the days when they disappear or can’t get out of bed.
Sometimes those times line up. Sometimes they don’t. But there’s always someone there, physically, at least, for Eddie.
It’s not all bad. The good parts aren’t as good when Eddie knows that they won’t last, but the bad parts aren’t as bad.
Inconsistency is the only consistency.
And Eddie knows it won’t last, seeing Mama this bad, but he just doesn’t know if he can live a see-saw kind of life anymore.
So, Eddie is thirteen years old, and he runs to Uncle Wayne’s.
He grabs his bag and his shoes with $20 stuffed in the soles and takes the first Greyhound headed to Indianapolis. From there, he hitchikes his way to Hawkins, Indiana. The truck driver who picks him up, thankfully, doesn’t ask him any questions.
He gets dropped off in the middle of town, by the grocery store and the post office, because he doesn’t have anything more specific. He asks a few people on the street if they know where he could find a “Wayne Munson,” and a nice lady walking with two boys - they have really unfortunate bowl cuts, not that Eddie’s hair is much better right now - tells him that Uncle Wayne lives in a trailer park about three miles down the road. She offers to drive him, but Eddie’s off running before she can finish her sentence.
He realizes that’s kinda rude, so he shouts a quick “thank you, ma’am” over his shoulder and keeps hauling ass.
He gets to the park just before sunset and realizes that he doesn’t know which trailer is Uncle Wayne’s. He starts looking for the old van Uncle Wayne pulled up in the last time he drove down for Christmas. What was that, three years ago?
Shit. He might not have it anymore.
Eddie’s just about given up hope when he finally spots it parked next to a white trailer with a little screened in porch. He sprints for it until he remembers she should present himself a little better. He takes a few deep breaths, straightens his jacket, and knocks on the door.
He’s so screwed if Uncle Wayne doesn’t have an extra bedroom.
The door opens slowly, and there’s Uncle Wayne, clearly dressed to go out. He’s got on a hard hat and an orange vest over a plaid button down, stiff jeans, and work boots. Eddie vaguely remembers Uncle Wayne saying something about working night shifts in construction.
Like the van, he supposes that hasn’t changed.
Uncle Wayne drops his keys in surprise. “Eddie?”
“Hi, Uncle Wayne,” Eddie says, and why the hell is he speaking so fast? “If you’ve gotta go to work, I can come back later, it’s alright.”
Uncle Wayne, halfway down to pick up his keys, suddenly flings the door open so hard it crashes into the side of the trailer. The bang it makes has Eddie nearly jumping out of his sneakers.
“Come inside. I’m not going to work. The hell are you doing here?”
While Uncle Wayne picks up his keys, Eddie does as he’s told. He wipes his shoes on the little rug Uncle Wayne has by the door and realizes only after he’s toed them off that his socks have holes in them. He follows Uncle Wayne into the living room, where there’s a brown shag carpet, a couch, and a recliner. The wall is covered in baseball caps, one for every MLB and NFL team. Eddie doesn’t like sports much, but the hats make for a cool decoration. Not cool enough to be metal, but still.
He likes the trailer, from what he can see. It’s bigger than any of the apartments and nicer than the houses Eddie’s lived in. And anything is better than living out of a car, except being completely homeless.
Eddie’s been unlucky, but he’s never been that unlucky.
Uncle Wayne throws his work bag on to the recliner. “I’m gonna call out of work. Stay here.”
He goes into the kitchen, where Eddie guesses the phone is. Eddie isn’t trying to eavesdrop, but he hears “unexpected visit,” “thirteen year old nephew,” and “estranged brother” before he tunes out of that conversation.
Instead, he catalogs what really matters in this place. No burned spoons or glassware, but the wallpaper is a little yellow. There’s an ashtray and a beer can next to the recliner. Eddie reminds himself that this isn’t his house and keeps from taking a sip from the can.
If all he’s gotta worry about is cigarettes and beer, this is gonna be way easier than home.
Just then, Uncle Wayne comes back into the living room. He looks Eddie over once, really slowly, like he’s studying him. Eddie tries to see himself from Uncle Wayne’s point of view: ragged jeans, holey socks, baggy shirt and jacket, a backpack with only one working strap. He’s a little grimy all over because the water got shut off a week before he left, and none of the rest stops the Greyhound visited had showers.
He’d tried to look his best, but maybe it wasn’t enough. Maybe Uncle Wayne will give him money for a bus going the other way. Maybe he’d call Mama to come get him.
Eddie swears he will run again before either of those things happen.
“Shower or eat?”
The question snaps Eddie right out of his thoughts. “What?”
“Shower or eat?” Uncle Wayne asks again. “You gotta do both, but which do you want to do first?”
Eddie thinks about when he last ate and realizes it was lunch yesterday, when he used the last of his shoe money to buy a McDonald’s hamburger.
All at once, his adrenaline wears off, and he feels hungry and tired and gross.
“Eat,” Eddie decides.
Uncle Wayne nods and beckons Eddie to follow him into the kitchen. Like the living room, it’s small, but it’s nicer than most other kitchens Eddie’s seen.
“I ain’t much of a cook,” Uncle Wayne says, digging through his freezer, “so right now all I have is TV dinners.”
He holds two up. The outsides of the boxes are really freezer burned, but Eddie thinks one is beef and the other is chicken. Maybe.
“You got a preference?” Uncle Wayne asks.
“Do you?” Eddie asks back. He isn’t even sure if Uncle Wayne will let him stay. He isn’t choosing dinner.
Uncle Wayne finds his question-answer funny if the little laugh he lets out is evidence enough. “I like them both, kid, that's why I bought them.”
“Chicken,” Eddie says. It’s probably the cheaper one, so he’ll be able to pay Uncle Wayne back faster.
While dinner goes in the microwave, Uncle Wayne asks, “How long are you staying?”
Eddie just stares at the microwave.
How can he say “forever” and not expect Uncle Wayne to laugh and give him money for the next bus? How can he say “as long as you’ll let me” without knowing how long that is? How can he give him a solid answer, like “two months” and then keep lying when Uncle Wayne asks him if he needs to go back?
Uncle Wayne sighs, and Eddie knows he’s taken too long to answer. He opens his mouth to say something, anything, but Uncle Wayne beats him to it.
“What happened?”
“Pa got arrested.” That part’s easy to say. Eddie’s had to say it before, too many times to count.
“Disorderly conduct or theft?”
Eddie wishes it was one of the usual two. “Nah. Murder.”
“Shit,” Uncle Wayne says at the same time the microwave goes off. He takes out the dinner, and Eddie realizes then that he made Eddie’s dinner first. He hands it to Eddie, who takes it, sits at the table, and waits.
Uncle Wayne puts his own dinner in the microwave. “And your mama-”
“Not doing too well,” Eddie finishes. He really hopes he doesn’t have to say on a bender, not to Uncle Wayne, at least.
He doesn’t know him well at all, but he thinks Uncle Wayne might get it.
“Okay,” Uncle Wayne says. “You’re with me from now on, then.”
Eddie almost chokes on air. “What?”
“The hell else are you gonna go, kid?” Uncle Wayne takes his own dinner out of the microwave before it beeps, cursing as he burns his fingers on the tray. He plops down across from Eddie with a sigh, then frowns at his still-full tray.
“You don’t have to wait for me. Eat.”
Eddie does, and Uncle Wayne joins him, and for a few minutes, the only sound is the clinking of forks on trays and chewing.
When he finishes his meal, Uncle Wayne says, “You can drop your bag in the spare room. First door on the right. Is that all you have?”
Eddie remembers his backpack, still hefted on his one shoulder. It’s only half full. He nods.
“Okay. We’ll go shopping tomorrow. Get you some more clothes and some stuff to put on your walls.”
He clears the tables and throws the plastic trays out.
“I’ll get you some towels to shower with tonight. You can use my soap and things.”
Eddie nods, which is ridiculous, because Uncle Wayne’s back is to him.
“Thank you,” he says, and he means it more than anything else he’s ever meant in his whole life.
Uncle Wayne turns back to him and says, simply, “It’s gonna be okay, kid.”
And Eddie can’t help himself. After the past few days of running - years, if he really wants to start counting - he finally stops.
And he crumbles.
He starts sobbing, right there at the kitchen table after eating one of the nicest meals in his life and wondering how the hell he’s gonna pay Uncle Wayne back for everything he’s doing for him.
But then Uncle Wayne’s arms are around him and Eddie’s head is on his shoulder and he’s gasping between sobs and Uncle Wayne is rubbing his back and saying over and over:
“It’s gonna be okay.”
And for the first time in years, Eddie believes that.
The next morning arrives, and Eddie scours Wayne’s cabinets for breakfast. So far, he’s only found dishes and cups and about four open boxes of the same kind of Cheerios, for some reason.
Wayne wasn’t kidding when he said he wasn’t much of a cook.
Then, when he’s just about given up, Eddie spots a box of Bisquick on top of the fridge and feels like he’s struck gold.
It takes him three tries to jump high enough to grab it down, but Eddie gets the box without dropping it everywhere. He reads the side of it even though he’s already memorized the instructions for pancakes by now.
He hears Pa’s voice in his head: If you can’t make anything else, you can make breakfast.
Eddie ignores the lump in his throat and grabs a skillet.
Wayne doesn’t have Crisco, so Eddie greases the pan with butter and prays nothing will stick. He mixes the batter, and while it sets, thinks about grabbing some of the eggs in the fridge. He likes them scrambled, but maybe Wayne doesn’t. Or maybe Wayne was saving them for something else.
He grabs four. If Wayne doesn’t want any, well, leftovers never hurt anybody.
Eddie gets to work on the pancakes. As he pours out the batter, he remembers Mama telling him to be patient while they cook because they’ll take longer than he thinks they will, and not everyone likes barely-done pancakes.
He hopes she’s okay. That she at least has a place to live. He knows by now it’s too much to hope she’s sober, especially since she watched the cops arrest Pa.
He finishes the batch and washes the dishes while the eggs cook.
The door to Wayne’s room opens just as Eddie puts the eggs on the two plates he laid out. Wayne shuffles into the kitchen, yawning and bleary-eyed. He stops short at the sight of the two plates with scrambled eggs and a short stack on each. His face cycles through a bunch of expressions Eddie can’t decipher.
Eddie ignores the little voice in his head that’s telling him he fucked up somehow and just waits.
Finally, Wayne’s face settles on a small smile, and he says, “How’d you know scrambled are my favorite?”
“Because they’re mine, too,” Eddie says, trying not to sound too relieved. “And because they’re easier to make than sunny side up.”
Wayne laughs and takes a seat across from Eddie. They dig in, and Eddie feels pretty proud of himself that it tastes as good as it does.
“This is impressive,” Wayne says between bites.
Eddie ducks his head. “It’s just breakfast.”
“Most boys your age have never set foot in a kitchen, nevermind make anything edible,” Wayne says. “I know I couldn’t. Your pa could, though.”
The lump is back in Eddie’s throat, and if Wayne’s slightly wide eyes are anything to go by, he realizes what that mention did.
Eddie smiles, though his face threatens to cave into a frown. “He’s the one who taught me.”
“Taught you well, then.”
“Mama helped.
“And that’s why you’re better than him.”
Eddie snorts. “He said it was a useful skill, something everyone should be able to do. He said if you can make breakfast, you can feed everyone because breakfast food is for anytime.”
Wayne stares at him for a long time, until he says, “You don’t owe me.”
And all Eddie can think is, How the hell can he read my mind?
“If you want to keep making breakfast and stuff like that because you enjoy it, fine. I won’t stop you. But if you’re doing it to pay me back or some other bullshit, then don’t. I’m your family. I want to take care of you. Okay?”
He doesn’t believe that entirely. Mama’s words - Never put yourself in a position where you owe somebody. Never give anybody leverage over you. - ring in his head.
“Okay,” Eddie says.
“Okay,” Wayne says, and he clears the plates before Eddie can move to do it.
Later, they go shopping for clothes and stuff for Eddie’s room. They get him registered for school and all that other adult stuff Eddie worries about but doesn’t entirely understand.
Eddie enters Hawkins Middle School sporting Pa’s leather jacket and a buzz cut. He tells the few kids who ask about it that he got kicked out of military school, but it’s shaved because he had lice.
By the time I graduate high school, he resolves, it’s gonna be long like a rockstar’s.