Skipped Parts Page 3

  ***

  The Marine washout made a good story, but Howard Stebbins wasn’t nearly that interesting. Nobody is as interesting as the stories I give them. In real life, he was a local boy who’d been a valley sports hero back in the mid-fifties. Still owned county records in the 440- and 880-yard runs. He’d captained the only GroVont basketball team to ever make the state finals.

  Then old Howard went off to the University of Wyoming and kind of got lost. He kicked around a few years, doing what it took to get a teacher’s certificate and filling the third or fourth space on depth charts over at the athletic department. He came back home where he was still somebody, married a local girl, and settled into the life.

  The high school coach had exactly the same story only he was ten years older.

  Howard told me most of this—and I made up the rest—while I stood quietly next to his cluttered desk, wondering if it had any significance. In a varnished walnut frame next to a gift pencil box, I spotted a woman with ratted and sprayed blonde-white hair and glasses behind two miniature versions of Howard. Same hedge-cutter haircuts. The littlest one had glasses with lenses thick as my thumb.

  There were three other photos in the room, up above the chalkboard. Abraham Lincoln, Albert Schweitzer, and Kurt Gowdy.

  Stebbins leaned back with his hands behind his head and his feet propped up on an open desk drawer. “You watch out for the Pierce girl.”

  “I don’t know a Pierce girl.”

  “Maurey Pierce, the one you riled this morning.”

  I fell back on false bravado. “She better watch out for me.”

  “She can ride a horse standing on its bare back.”

  “Is that a reason to watch out for her?”

  Stebbins touched himself on the top of his nose, then along the hairline. “GroVont’s too small to make enemies.”

  He was afraid of her. It was my first experience of a grown-up afraid of a kid. Now I think it’s fairly common, some grown-ups are afraid of all kids, but up until then I looked at the world as an us-and-them situation, with Lydia kind of straddling the line.

  I wondered if Maurey was running a bluff on everyone. She didn’t seem that mean. She was pretty in a 1939 movie-vamp way. I’d seen her smile early in the volleyball game. Real earth-eating bitches—such as my mother—don’t have fun during sports. They don’t really enjoy anything.

  Stebbins looked down at something really interesting on the back of his hands. “I saw that catch you made yesterday.”

  I shrugged, not sure if I was supposed to affect modesty over the catch or contrition about the net deal.

  “You’ve got some athleticism, Sam. Ever play on a team?”

  Bing, my bullshit bell sounded. He wanted something from me. My auto response when someone wants something is to politely lie. “No, sir. I never had time, what with my studies and all.”

  “We’ve got a pretty decent little football team here at GroVont Junior High.”

  Football is my least favorite sport to play, as opposed to watch, right down there with soccer and checkers. I like games where you stay upright. I can fake basketball pretty well—no kid comes out of North Carolina who can’t—but baseball is where my rocks come off.

  When I didn’t react, Stebbins stopped the beat-around-the-bush. “I want you at practice tomorrow.”

  “Gee, I’d like to, sir. But we just moved to town and my mother needs me at home.”

  He frowned and continued inspecting each knuckle of each finger, starting at the left and working his way across. “It takes twenty-two players to practice and I’ve only got twenty-one and half of them still suck their mama’s tit at night.”

  “I no longer nurse, sir.”

  He looked me straight in the eye. “Callahan, I need to explain how I grade in my classes. You know the difference between an A and an F in English?”

  Truth is a pain in the butt to face. “Me coming out for football?”

  Stebbins slapped me on the shoulder. “See you tomorrow at four.”

  Lydia was right. All men are fuckers. As I slumped out the door, the king-jerk broke into a whistle—“Ragtime Cowboy Joe”—then he stopped. “Hey, Callahan.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did Mark Twain really hate Jews?”

  ***

  I had my heart set on making it home without any more incidents—that’s one thing I hate, the uncontrolled incident, the completely unplanned demand on my coping abilities—but cities are the place to turn invisible. In GroVont, everyone thinks they have a perfect right to horn in on everybody else’s life.

  Anyway, I was walking down Alpine, almost to the dirt spot we were supposed to call a yard, when this voice said, “Son, come over here.”

  Son? There was an instant of taking the thing literally until I saw the guy who’d called. Looked like Khrushchev in overalls. He stood across the street in front of one of those loaf-shaped Airstream trailers, only instead of shiny silver, this one had been painted toe-jam black using a cheap brush so every stroke showed. Sagebrush grew up through two ’54 GMC three-quarter-ton trucks, the kind with the oval rear windows, and a king-hell ugly dog stood atop the cab of another ’54 GMC three-quarter-ton with an oval window. My guess was the two dead trucks provided parts transplants for the runner. Fairly easy enough guess to make.

  “Son,” the guy said again. “Come here. See this.” He didn’t have a shirt on under the overalls so you could see all this wired-out body hair, and he had on huge black rubber boots that came up to his knees. The truck had a plastic stick-on sign that read County Water Warden.

  “What’s a water warden?” I asked.

  The man spit. “Don’t talk down to me, son. My granddad homesteaded this valley, and if it wasn’t for him you wouldn’t be living here so free and easy.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t follow the line at all, but when people don’t make sense I’ve found it better to grunt and not make any eye contact.

  “Don’t tell me there’s no water wardens where you come from.”

  I looked at the dog. He had black-and-white spots and was shaped like a banana—had a little bitty stub tail. “Does he always ride on top the cab?” I asked.

  “Otis likes the wind.”

  “Otis?”

  “He’s Otis, I’m Soapley.” Soapley was one of those men who have a three-day growth of beard every day.

  “Sam Callahan,” I said. “Pleased to meet you. How does he ride up there without falling off?”

  “Water warden opens the headgates. Makes sure ranches get what they’re supposed to and no more. Comes a drought, I run the county.”

  “Oh.”

  “In winter I plow the road. I’m important then too. I can say who gets out and who don’t.”

  “I don’t think we have headgates or road plows in Greensboro.”

  “Don’t talk down to me. I won’t be talked down to.” Soapley shifted his weight from one foot to the other—had a stance like he was in the on-deck circle, waiting for his turn at bat. Back and forth, his thumbs kind of twitching.

  “I’m not talking down, I just wonder how he stands on the cab while you’re driving without falling off.”

  “Otis.”

  “That’s your dog’s name.”

  “Otis’s smart, smarter than you. That’s why I invited you over.”

  “You invited me over?”

  “Look at his face and pretend you’re a pretty girl.”

  I looked at his bullet-shaped head. He had a good resemblance to Soapley, especially the forehead part. “I can’t pretend I’m a pretty girl.”

  “Just do it for God’s sake.”

  So I pretended I was Maurey Pierce for a minute, which is a good exercise for a short-story writer.

  “Hi, I’m Maurey Pierce.”

  “The hell you are.”

 
I pretended I hated Sam Callahan and sat down to pee.

  The ugly dog’s right eye closed and opened.

  “He winked at me.”

  Soapley hit it big with pride. “Smartest dog in Teton County.”

  “Oh.”

  ***

  Back in my own cabin, I found Mom on the couch. “Lydia, this dog across the street rides on top the truck cab and winks.”

  She stared at me across her long fingers, through the blue haze of cigarette smoke. “You expect me to show an interest in this?”

  “Not especially.”

  “Then don’t muddle the air with details. I don’t want any details whatsoever about goings on in this state.”

  ***

  As neither one of us still knew how to light the stove, Lydia and I ate in the White Deck Cafe that night. Lydia never was much for cooking anyway.

  For food, there was the White Deck Cafe between a barbershop and an art gallery on the town triangle—as opposed to other towns that have a square—and the Tastee Freeze out on the highway by the Forest Service headquarters; except on Sunday nights when the VFW had all the wienies and beans you can eat for a buck.

  Anyone celebrating an anniversary or whatever would drive the twenty miles into Jackson where the restaurants had soupspoons and the cash register wasn’t a Dutch Masters box.

  The only reason for going to the White Deck was to eat.

  After we slid into the booth I started flipping the jukebox wheel while Lydia cleaned silverware with the hem of her shirt. For being a total slob at home, Lydia had remarkably high standards for cleanliness in others.

  The waitress called, “Keep your pants zipped, Jack, I’ll be there when I get there,” as she swept by with three dinner plates on her left arm and one in her right hand. She was in her early thirties, maybe ten pounds overweight, and on the back of her belt in white, square letters, I read the word dot.

  “Her name is Dot,” I said to Lydia.

  Lydia looked at her teeth reflected in the butter knife. “What kind of woman would name a child Dot. I’d rather be blind than saddled with a name like Dot.”

  Dot brought the plastic-wrapped menus and two waters all in one hand. “Max told me you’re the folks in Doc Wardell’s place. The guys paid me a dollar each to find out if you’re single.”

  There were four other booths of customers, four men each in three of the booths, all with their sleeves rolled up, and two ancient geezers looking dead in the corner. Lydia was the only woman, besides Dot, and I was the only kid. No one used the tables or the stools along the counter.

  Lydia inspected the water glasses for spots. “Who’s Max?”

  “He owns the place. Max said Doc Wardell rented his house to your father or grandfather or somebody—”

  “Tell them I have five husbands,” Lydia said, loud enough for the men to hear for themselves. “Every one of them rich, mean, and jealous. I’ll be rotating them through on a weekly basis.”

  Dot broke up. I love people who laugh so hard they break up. I’ve never broken up in my life. She went on for a good minute while the men shifted in their booths, suddenly developing a need for salt or mustard, anything to keep their hands moving. One skinny fart with a king-hell Adam’s apple stared right at Lydia, like she was in a zoo. I took him for a preacher.

  Dot draped her hand across my shoulder and I didn’t mind. “That line’ll be all over the valley by sundown,” she said. “Thirty years from now your name’ll come up in conversation and they’ll say, ‘Did you hear about her first night at the White Deck?’”

  Lydia opened her menu. “Just tell them I own a rifle.”

  I looked up at Dot and she smiled at me.

  ***

  One thing I’ve always wondered is whether or not men found Lydia good-looking. It’s so hard to be objective on your own mother. Most people tend to look at their own mom as beautiful until you hit seven or so, then you ignore her for a while, then you decide she’s an old hag.

  I had just turned thirteen then, which would put Lydia at twenty-eight, not all that over the hill, even for a mom. And, as we hung out together most of the time, we’d developed kind of a bitchy husband-and-wife deal. I don’t mean Oedipal or anything disgusting like that. When or if she kissed me good night, I always screamed “Ooooh yech,” and she screamed right back “Ooooh yech.” I just mean I took care of Lydia as much as she took care of me, and we hung around each other a lot, so I felt like we were orphans together, sort of.

  She hadn’t told me to go to bed or pick something off the floor in eight years—if she told me then.

  But back to pretty. Nine men out of ten took one look at Lydia and were afraid of her; the other one was willing to give up wife, job, and reputation to fuck her on the spot. But this effect wasn’t from looks. I’d call the deal demeanor. Lydia had demeanor. And a fairly decent set of knockers.

  “So what happened in the seventh grade today?” Lydia held her cheeseburger in one hand, peering at it suspiciously.

  “Do you really want to hear?”

  She turned the cheeseburger around to inspect the other side. Lord knows what she was afraid of. “Of course I want to hear. It’s my job. If I don’t want to hear, Caspar will take you to Culver Military Academy. We wouldn’t want that now, would we?”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  Lydia gave me a sharp glance. “Neither would I. Now tell me what happened in school today.”

  “I think I fell in love.”

  Lydia was back inspecting the burger. Maybe she expected something to crawl out before the first bite. “That’s nice,” she said. “How can you tell you’re in love?”

  “Because there’s this girl in class and I can’t stand her.”

  “That’s always a good start.”

  I was eating the Tuesday blue plate—pounded steak with mashed potatoes and brown gravy. “She hates my guts, called me Ex-Lax yesterday.”

  “Sounds like love to me.” Lydia finally took a bite, chewing very slowly. When she swallowed, twelve men in the room exhaled.

  The pounded steak desperately cried for ketchup but, for some reason I never understood, Lydia considered ketchup plebeian. If I used a dribble, we’d go into twenty minutes on the sort of people who put ketchup on food—the sort who eat pounded steak in the White Deck if you asked me—and I’d rather try to understand conflicting emotionalism.

  “I don’t like any of the kids at school because they’re all idiots, only I don’t like her the most and she’s not an idiot. Not liking the others is like not liking grits—big deal. But not liking her is like not liking a water moccasin. When she looks at me it’s like I have the flu. My stomach aches.” It’s hard to explain love at thirteen.

  Lydia looked at me with interest. “Better eat fast. That gravy is turning to axle grease.”

  Maurey said to Sam, “Let us walk through the oak forest along the stream.”

  He stood and together they strolled up the dirt path. Birds flittered over their heads, deer watched quizzically from the shadows. The forest had no underbrush. Everything was clean. It was a scene from Bambi.

  Maurey took Sam’s hand in her own. Their fingers entwined, not like shaking hands with a stranger, every pore of her hand touched every pore of his.

  At the stream they found a small waterfall tumbling over moss-covered rocks into a deep pool where trout jumped lazily for mayflies.

  “Let us sit,” Sam said.

  “Whatever you want,” she murmured, taking off her sneakers.

  They kissed, faces pressed together, arms around one another’s backs. Maurey smiled at him. “You know why I like you more than the other boys?”

  “Because we’re the only two in seventh grade who can read?”

  She laughed and shook her head no.

  “Because I’m a suave big-city Easterner who’s been to New Y
ork and seen a baseball game at Yankee Stadium?”

  “No, silly.” She leaned her head on Sam’s shoulder. “Because you’re so tall.”

  There was a crash. I lay in the dark, eyes open, hoping it was a one-time deal. Lydia and I’d had contact after 10:30 before and it never was good luck. Something heavy slid across the floor and there was another, smaller crash. What would Beaver Cleaver do if June was so drunk she trashed the living room?

  He’d go help her to bed.

  As I pulled myself out from between the sheets, a big crash came, followed by Lydia’s raised voice. “Cheers. You’re dead, Les, and I’m not.”

  The TV lay on the floor sideways. The big crash had been a couple of book boxes going over—science fiction and Westerns. Lydia stood with her back to me, her head up toward the moose.

  “Mom?”

  She turned. “Honey bunny?”

  “What’s up?”

  Lydia waved her shot glass in the direction of the moose head. “Les and I were toasting our new relationship.”

  I looked at the big head mounted on the wall. “Les?”

  “Short for Less Like Drinking Alone. That’s his name. We’re buddies.”

  I pointed to the television on the floor. “You made a social blunder.”

  Lydia tried to follow the direction of my point and almost fell. She caught herself with one hand on the end of the couch. “Social blunder, my ass. I knocked over the goddamn TV.”

  I moved into the room to catch her if she went down. “Any chance of you going to sleep?”

  “You’re joking your mama, aren’t you, sweet prince.” Lydia closed one eye to focus on me. Her skin seemed paler than usual and her hair needed washing. Her posture wasn’t worth a poop. Her mouth opened and shut before she spoke. “I had you too young.”

  “Are you sorry about that?”

  She took a step back and fell into a sitting position on the couch. Took her a second to recover. “I don’t think in those terms.”

  “You’re sending me mixed messages, Lydia. Caspar’s shrink said you shouldn’t send me mixed messages.”

  “Oh my God.” She slapped her hand over her mouth and spoke through her fingers. “I’m sending my baby mixed fucking messages.”