Nobody Knows Your Secret

11

Kyle Winthrop grew up on welfare and prescription pain pills. 

He was small for his age and prone to fights. He didn't do well in school. Kids picked on him. His ears stuck out. 

The biggest thing about him was his feet, and when the kids found out his toes were webbed, poor Kyle was the butt of every joke and prank for years.

 As a small boy, Kyle was starved for attention. Good or bad attention. It didn't matter to the child. Adrenaline was Kyle's first high. He would do any crazy stunt, no matter how dangerous, just to have eyeballs focused on him.

His mother, Claire, always had prescription bottles lying around the house after the accident. Kyle stole his first pills from her at age nine.

 How could he not help but get into trouble? Virgie brooded.

How different Virgie's life might have been if Cleve hadn't been dead set they go to that dang amusement park! 

But that was so long ago. 

***

It was Claire's 15th birthday. 

Virgie noted her daughter, like so many children of the Appalachians, had outgrown that stick-skinny, poor-white-trash look that so many of the children reared on too little food seemed to have. Claire was blossoming into a fine girl. 

She was going to be a looker, Virgie could tell. Cleve called in sick from the mine that day.

"You'll lose your job, Cleve" Virgie had warned. "They ain't gonna put up with your work brickle ways. You call out at the drop of a hat. Loafin' here at home more 'n you are at the mine."

"You hush your yap," Cleve yelled. 

It was barely nine, and Cleve was already on his fourth beer. 

"That coal will be there waiting for me to blast it out tomorrow. Today's my little girl's birthday. We gonna celebrate, and we gonna do it up right."

Virgie already knew what Cleve had in mind. 

MEGAMountainFunlandPark. 

It was all Cleve talked about for the last several days. Claire was not enthusiastic to go. Virgie and she had planned to spend the day baking her birthday cake, but because Cleve would not let the idea drop, Virgie had bought her a plain, small store-bought cake at Pixies.

"Come on, Virgie," Cleve said. "You drive. I got me a nice, cold brew I wanna nurse on the way over."

"Claire!" Virgie yelled out the back door. "Put your hand to the plow! Your daddy's raring to go!"

Claire came running up from the barn. She had a sick calf penned in a stall.

"I'm coming, Mama," Claire said.

"Run a brush through your hair, hon. Get the straw out. We don't want them to think we ain't never been no wheres."

"Yes, ma'am."

They all packed into the rusty old station wagon. Virgie cranked the car. The belts whined, but the motor turned over. Cleve let out a big belch and nursed his beer.

"We gonna have us a fine time, baby girl," he said, wearing the stupid grin he always wore when he was on a bender.

At least, Virgie thought, Cleve's a happy drunk at the moment. 

Virgie drove slowly, carefully. This was her first time out to the amusement park. In fact, although the park had been opened for a while, it was the first time any of her family had ever been.