Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy

For Holly and Missy, two of my cousin-sisters,

because you know how much of this is true.

I love you both very much

The day my mother exploded a copperhead snake with an elephant gun, I decided I was genetically destined to become a felon or a big-game hunter. That was good, since I had tried being a ballerina, poet, artist, and musician, and I sucked at all of those.

Mom cleaned out a third of the water from our backyard pond with the snake shot, but that wasn't the best part. “You flew backward up the hill seven whole feet.” I prodded her hip with my toe. “That was special. You should try out for the circus.”

The air smelled like spring flowers and gunpowder. Mom grunted and said something like “crouton,” and something else that sounded like a swear word. She was probably trying to tell me to burn the snake's carcass, because that's what she did with all the snakes she killed.

“We don't have to burn the snake,” I told her. “Nothing left of this one.”

Mom's red hair splayed across the pine needles under her head, and her pretzel-shaped barrettes glittered in the sunlight. I couldn't stand those barrettes. They looked like something little kids wore. A bruise was spreading across Mom's shoulder and chest. The elephant gun lay in the holly bushes across the yard. Wicked. I couldn't believe it flew that far. My BB gun, Louise, punched like a scared little sister when I fired her. Dad's big rifle had to kick like a rhinoceros.

I was carrying Louise because Peavine and his sister, Angel, were on their way over so we could go searching for two kids who went missing after a fire, but I figured I should keep Louise out of Mom's line of sight. I set her down behind me, careful to keep my hand on her barrel so I didn't drop her in the grass. After that kickback, one look at a BB gun might send Mom straight into a screaming fit.

Mom had on green eye shadow that matched her shirt and sandals and her brand-new bruise. The sandals had green sparklies, too, the same color as her eyes, which I couldn't see because she kept squeezing them shut. “Dad's gonna be ticked that you pried open his gun case,” I said.

“Crouton,” Mom mumbled. And then I realized she was trying to say, “Call your father,” except she couldn't open her mouth all the way.

“It's okay,” I told her. “I hear sirens. They might be after you, but Captain Armstrong's charging up and down the main road in his running clothes and hollering ‘INCOMING,' so maybe it's him they want.”

“Fontana. Call. Your father.”

“Fiiiine.”
She just
had
to use my proper name.
Blech.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and speed-dialed Dad while I asked her, “Aren't you glad he won the fight about getting me a phone?”

Mom didn't answer.

The phone rang twice before Dad picked up with, “Honey, you know I'm busy.”

I could hear people talking in the background because he worked as a dispatch officer in Bugtussle, Mississippi's 9-1-1 call center. It was an important job, and a good one to have, with Mom as his wife and me as his daughter.

“Mom shot a copperhead with your old Nitro Express rifle,” I told him. “We'll be picking snake guts off the roof for a year.”

It got so quiet on Dad's end that I could almost make out what the other operators were saying. A lot of those calls were probably about the blast that just came from Sixty Erlanger Lane, because canon fire was unusual in our neighborhood. We lived on a nice cul-de-sac, in a big house with a basement that backed up to a pond in front of some woods. In Mississippi, all water had snakes, especially if it was muddy. Snakes
didn't care what kind of neighborhood you lived in.

Mom groaned and shifted on the ground. A piece of mangled copperhead blopped off a nearby pine branch, which would have grossed me out if I had been a normal girl, but I was so far from normal, it wasn't even funny—except, of course, when it was.

“I'll be right home,” Dad said. I waited for it, and a second later it came. “I'm sorry, Footer. I know this has got to stop.”

The History of Bugtussle, Mississippi

Footer Davis

5th Period

Ms. Perry

Bugtussle, Mississippi, got a name with “bug” in it because it has way too many doodlebugs.

Doodlebugs are a type of wood louse. They are also called pill bugs, and roly-polies. When they get upset, they roll into balls. Lizards like to eat them, but then the lizards get poisoned. Doodlebugs must be good at revenge. Some people who keep spiders for pets also keep doodlebugs, to eat spider poop and mold.

1. Spiders poop.

2. My town is named after a wood louse.

3. Whoever named our town was probably weird, because only a weirdo names a town after lice.

Ambulance driver:
Your shoulder may be broken, Ms. Davis. I'd like you to come with me.

Mom:
My shoulder is fine, and no. I don't like ambulances and hospitals.

Captain Armstrong:
Adele, they don't mean you any harm. I know it's hard, but let them look.

Dad:
Please, honey. Let's just get your arm checked.

Mom:
I said it's fine. I didn't mean to pick the wrong gun, but snakes need to die. Besides, Peavine and Angel came over to play.

Captain Armstrong
: I'll watch the kids.

Mom:
No.

Ambulance driver:
I'll do whatever you want, Mr. Davis.

Dad:
Footer, why don't you and your friends head on over to wherever you're going? Just be back before dark.

When life gets too weird, my brain cuts everything down to freeze-frames.
Click.
Dad was there.
Click.
Captain Armstrong was there.
Click.
The ambulance pulled up.
Click.
All the neighbors came out to stare. I so didn't want to stay around and get gawked at. So, Peavine, Angel, and I headed for the woods. They didn't say anything about the neighbors and ambulance circus. They were too used to it, like me.

Everybody in Bugtussle knew about my mother.

Adele Davis, she's a pretty thing, but she ain't right, bless her heart.

That's what people said behind my back, and to my face. People who don't live in Mississippi think “bless your heart” means something nice, but it really means they think you're too stupid to bother trying to explain things to you, or that you're too crazy to help. People never say what they mean, except for Peavine, which is why he's my best friend, and why I'd rather think about him than my mom, whether her heart got blessed or not.