Wire Mesh Mothers Read Free Page A

most of the time, watching for speeders. The Hot Heads rarely talked to anybody else, and if, while pumping gas or pocketing candy at the Exxon, someone actually demanded to know why they weren't in school, the gang just said they were homeschoolers. Worked every time. Homeschoolers were good, Christian kids.
    Tony squinted and kept up with the rails on the side of the road. Fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty, sixty-one, sixty-two, sixty-three. Boredom and rage burned her spine with a furious heat.
    The need to teach that bitch Martin a lesson clawed the tendons in her neck.
    "Buddy, Buddy, stop," said DeeWee . "Gotta pee."
    Tony peered over the seat and grimaced. DeeWee was holding himself through his pants, pulling and tugging like he was manning a fire hose. Buddy pulled the car to the side of the road. The cotton field next to the road was flat and broad with a small barn squatting in the corner. The barn was a pretty cool place in the summer because you could have damn good parties once you scraped the spiders from their hiding places. One time, a couple months ago, the Hot Heads had caught two middle schoolers making out in one of the barn's stalls. The Hot Heads had made the two strip naked and run barefoot across the stubbly pasture to wherever, anywhere but the Hot Heads' barn.
    Tony had kicked the girl just outside the barn door and the girl had come down in the sharp cotton stalks on her pretty little made up face with its fucking pink lipstick and blue eye shadow. Stalks, right in her face and in her hands, making her bleed, kinda like Jesus after Pilot got through with him. It was beautiful. Tony had then stomped the girl on the neck, hard - stomp stomp stomp ! Oh, it felt wonderful ! - until Leroy pulled her off, then the girl had choked, gagged, then scrambled up and ran, stumbling, after her white-assed boyfriend. It had been good for a laugh, then it was into Tony's mama's beer and the doughnut sticks.
    It took DeeWee a full eighty-three seconds to whiz, zip, and get back into the car. He smelled like pee. He had probably leaked on himself. The car pulled back onto the road. They drove another quarter mile, past the strobing fence posts along a small cattle farm.
    Forty-three, forty-four, forty-five, forty-six.
    Tony couldn’t stand it anymore. "Stop the car.”
    “ Nuh -uh, ain’t stoppin ’,” said Buddy. “You shoulda peed when DeeWee peed.”
    “Stop the goddamn car, Buddy.”
    Leroy hawked, rolled the window down and spit. Most of it caught the rear window like a clear streak of bird shit.
    “You ain’t my boss,” said Buddy, but his foot came up a bit on the accelerator, and the car slowed a fraction. He glanced at Leroy. “Tony ain’t boss,” he complained. Leroy shook his head but said nothing. When Tony used the tone , he paid attention. He knew he’d better.
    “Gotta pee, gotta pee, Tony gotta wee wee !” sang DeeWee .
    “Gotta shut your mouth hole, DeeWee .” Tony leaned over the back of the seat and put her teeth at Buddy’s ear. She said slowly, “Stop…the…fucking…car.”   
    “Back off, Tony,” said Leroy. But then he said, “Pull it over, Buddy.”
    Buddy cursed and pulled the car over. It bit the gravel and then a baby rabbit that didn’t move fast enough into the poison ivy by the fencing. The car engine died.
    Leroy turned and his knee came up on the seat, ramming into DeeWee’s side. DeeWee squawked. "What the hell’s wrong with you, Tony?" Tony could see his nose twitching. That was good. He was nervous. Tony liked it when he was nervous like that.
    “I had enough of this shit,” she said.
    “What shit?”   
    “Us. You see us? You know what you’re seeing? Don’t you want to just puke when you see us?”
    Whitey sneezed.
    “What you talking about?” said Leroy.  
    “Just what I said. We’re shit. We’re fucking babies, all this baby trash we do.”
    Leroy’s eye hitched, but he held his ground. “What trash you talking about? Think