by Tim Sandlin
I tried to imagine Maurey’s tit cold and dead, but I’d only learned what it felt like warm and alive four days ago, so dead was beyond me. With my hand cupped over her chest, you couldn’t even tell Maurey had a breast.
Maurey said, “People sure die easily in books. It’s not that casual in real life.”
“The easiest place to die is in the movies.”
Maurey bit her lower lip and turned to look at me. “I think about being dead all the time. I’ve read every book in the library I can find about girls dying and I can’t figure it out.”
I moved my hand off her breast and touched her cheek. “It’s not like sex, Maurey. The people who write books don’t know any more about being dead than we do.”
***
Bill hadn’t looked comfortable dead. He fell with one leg doubled under his body and his head at an off-angle. His belt was cinched up on his belly so he looked cramped. His eyes were closed, which surprised me. I thought people died with their eyes open.
Nobody in the White Deck went hysterical or anything. The Park Service guys flipped him over and tried what passed for artificial respiration back then—a push on the back, pull on the elbows useless maneuver. Lydia went and sat next to Oly, but he didn’t seem to notice. He just stared at the lump on the floor that used to be his friend. Once, he said it again. “Bill’s dead.”
Dot called Jackson for an ambulance while Hank felt Bill’s neck for a pulse, but anyone could see he was king-hell dead.
Max the owner came out of the kitchen to watch. I’d never seen him in person before. He had hardly any hair and a purple tattoo of a bird and he wore a sleeveless T-shirt. He didn’t talk.
Maurey leaned over me to look, then she sat back and held my hand. It took so long for the ambulance that we tried to play hangman awhile, but neither one of us could concentrate on the letters.
He’d died between the jukebox and their private booth, which meant anyone going to the bathroom had to step over the body, which I wasn’t about to do. That’s what I remember most about my first look at immediate death—having to pee like crazy and not being able to.
***
GroVont has a Mormon church that from the outside looks like a Pizza Hut. And, over by the Tetons, the Episcopal chapel in Moose is more in the way of a tourist trap than a real church. It’s not open in the winter. Baptists and Catholics go to Jackson to be buried.
Bill’s funeral took place in the VFW. I went because Maurey asked me to, and she went because the Pierces and Bill and Oly were connected in some way to do with World War I. Her grandfather served with them in Belgium and, later, when he died in an avalanche, Bill and Oly did the like-a-father gig for Maurey’s dad.
Everyone in the valley is either literally related or spiritually attached. One reason Maurey chose me for the sex practice was because, with me, she knew for certain there would be no hint of incest.
“Besides, I like your hair,” she said.
“I thought it was my Eastern casual demeanor.”
“Fat chance.”
I wish someone would do the like-a-father gig for me.
Lydia wouldn’t come with us. “I don’t do death,” she said. “Les is the only formerly animate object I commune with.”
“It’ll be interesting. Maurey says all the women in town bake things.”
“There was enough competitive cooking after Mama’s funeral. And the phone company man is coming. Those people don’t take excuses.”
So I found myself sitting in a folding chair in a VFW hall with Maurey, Petey, and Annabel. Coach Stebbins and his wife filled out our row.
Annabel had on white gloves, if you can buy that, and this little hat shaped like an Alka-Seltzer with a net over the front. She looked fairly disconcerted, as if a cake had fallen unexpectedly. Petey kicked the chair in front of him the whole service.
Maurey’s father, Buddy, sat up front next to poor Oly. I found myself looking at the back of Buddy’s head, wondering what a guy who spends most of his time alone thinks about death. He had on a brown cowboy hat and a suit I imagined was worn only to this sort of thing. I wondered if he’d be pissed to know I was sticking my thing in his daughter.
The rest of the place was full of old people who go to each other’s funerals, and loggers and a few cowboy types, not too many kids. Rodney Cannelioski was there as a representative of God. Dot smiled at me when I walked in. I’d never seen her out of uniform. She was pretty. Each chair had a number on the back in what looked like red nail polish.
“Trade places with me,” Maurey said.
“I don’t want to sit next to your brother.”
“I can’t see the body. Trade places.”
After we traded she leaned out in the aisle to stare at Bill. “He looks smaller, and almost healthier.”
“That’s the makeup.”
“Wouldn’t Bill be embarrassed if he knew he was going to eternity in Max Factor powder base and rouge.”
Coach Stebbins said, “Shh,” which I thought was rude. Petey gave Annabel a running commentary of the deal and nobody shhed him. The brat.
A woman with large breasts and a print dress stood up and sang “Amazing Grace” in a beautiful voice. I was moved. It was nice to think one thing about Bill’s death wasn’t bland. Maurey told me the woman, Irene Innsbruck, sings at most funerals and weddings in GroVont. She’s the town talent.
Then a man in a gray suit went up front and read Bill’s war record. It’s funny, but when you’re young and you see a really old person, you never think of them as having done all kinds of various, creative things when they were young themselves. Bill sat in his booth and nodded over coffee. That’s all I ever thought of him if I thought anything at all, but he’d done a lot of stuff in the war and afterward. He saved some Englishmen from a machine gunner once and got a medal. And he traveled across Russia back when the Communists were killing everyone in sight. Later, he came home and started a lumber company with Oly. All that, I thought, just to fall against a jukebox and die.
Buddy stood up and turned around. He was really big—not like a giant or a fat person—his presence took up a lot of room. Even in the suit, he was the kind of man when he stood up everyone paid attention. If you were ever in a room with Maurey’s father you’d always know right where he was. If you said anything, you’d wonder what he thought about it.
He told a story about Bill saving his father’s life when a tree twisted and fell wrong. The log lay across Buddy’s father’s legs in such a way one wrong shift would roll it across his body onto his head. Bill had to chainsaw with the steadiness of a doctor cutting with a scalpel. It was a nice story, even though the avalanche got Buddy’s father four years later anyway.
As Buddy told it, he looked straight ahead, and his hands didn’t twitch a bit. His beard was the blackest bush I’d ever seen. You could hardly see a mouth in there. I looked at Maurey and could tell she was real proud.
She whispered, “I’ve heard that story a dozen times. Daddy loves it.”
***
At the cemetery, somebody had built a big fire to unfreeze the ground enough to dig a hole. They’d had to use shovels because they couldn’t get a backhoe through the snow. The shovels were leaning against other markers.
Maurey and I stood back by a cottonwood tree. She said, “He had a tumor in his head.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Dr. Petrov did an autopsy. He told Daddy a tumor the size of a split pea was why Bill had been hitting Oly the last few months and growling at people. Bill didn’t have control over those things he did.”
“That ought to make Oly feel better.”
“Why?”
The day was all blue and sparkly white. Whoever planned the cemetery put it where family and friends could stand and contemplate an amazing view of the Tetons and the mountains off to the south. The trees behi
nd us practically buzzed with joy at being trees, and a raven circled up by the sun. The only man-made thing in sight was the rodeo grounds, and the stands weren’t painted or anything so they looked natural as trees.
I guess it’s great being buried in a breathtaking spot, but the contrast between looking at the casket and looking around at the world must confuse mourners. It made me feel funny.
Three older guys in uniforms stood in a line and fired a shot into the air. When the gray-suit guy said a prayer I looked around and saw Buddy Pierce had his eyes open in an unfocused gaze toward Yellowstone. Then his eyes shifted and looked at me. I looked down at my feet.
***
Sam Callahan lay in the plain pine coffin with his hands folded over his sternum, his blood drained away, replaced by a liquid chemical.
One by one, his family and friends walked past his dead form—his mother and grandfather, his coaches and teachers. Each girl placed a single red rose upon his chest. Charlotte Morris, the Smith twins, Hayley Mills, his baby-sitter from Greensboro, the receptionist at Dr. Petrov’s in Jackson. Maurey Pierce came last and her rose was white as snow on the Tetons.
Maurey touched his still hand and said, “You were too young to die, Sam Callahan. We all feel a loss.”
Then two funeral directors lowered the coffin lid and Sam’s face was touched by light for the last time forever.
Oly stood with his hands at his sides, tiny and cracked and completely disoriented in his suit and hat. The entire marriage and funeral system is set up to make men who work hard feel foolish. I mean, not only was Oly’s lifelong sidekick going in the dirt, but now he had to dress like a monkey and deal with the hordes.
Poor guy looked like he’d been hit between the eyes with a mallet. He had the slowest blink I’ve ever seen. After the ceremony, he didn’t move, just kept looking into the hole. Buddy stayed right next to him, like a bear protecting a skinny bird.
“I’m not in the mood to go back to the VFW and eat,” Maurey said.
“Is that the plan?”
“Why do women always think food helps?”
She went to tell her mom we were walking back to town and she’d be home later. Annabel was over by the cars and trucks talking to Howard Stebbins. While Maurey explained the deal, Stebbins stared at me meanlike. I guess he didn’t approve of the friendship, though I couldn’t see how it made crap to him. He probably thought of me as the slimy outsider come to stain local girlhood.
I asked Maurey about this as we followed the county service road the half-mile or so into town.
“Is there a gossip line on us yet?”
Maurey was wearing a dark blue dress and black stockings and new snow boots. Though it was a nice day, I think she was cold. “We’re children to these people.”
“When they see you coming out of Lydia’s cabin they don’t suspect ugliness?”
“If we were a couple years older they’d be vicious, we’re beyond their fantasies so far. Stebbins thinks your mom might offer me a cigarette—be a bad influence.”
“Lydia would never do that.”
“Mom’s afraid I’ll go down to the White Deck and be exposed to french fries. She has this idea that grease is only one step from decadence.” Maurey raised her arms out wide and turned around to walk backward. “I don’t like winter.”
“What’s that got to do with gossip?”
“We are no longer discussing gossip. We’re thinking how nice it will be at the TM Ranch riding horses with Dad this summer.”
“I wasn’t thinking about that.”
“The TM is up that canyon.” She pointed to a crack in the hills. “When the snow melts I can ride my bike up in an hour. I have a horse named Frostbite. He’s trained for vaulting but he can run barrels like you wouldn’t believe.”
The terminology was past my grasp. “Vaulting?”
“Tricks, you know, back mounts, reverse croupers, split-kick dismounts; like a gymnast on a vaulting horse, only our horse gallops. It’s fun.”
“Sounds like a good way to break your neck.”
“Frostbite wouldn’t do that to me. He’s my baby.” Her blue eyes had an in-love misty look.
“What color is he?”
Maurey turned back around to go forward again. She did a little dance step that came out klutzy on account of her boots. “He’s a skewbald gelding, five years old but he thinks he’s a colt.”
“Skewbald?”
She turned on me. “You’re the most naïve kid I ever met.”
Which is one hell of an attitude if you asked me. I guess naïve is someone who doesn’t know what you know. Maurey had never seen a live Negro, so in North Carolina she would be naïve. Neither one of us carried a gun, so in New York we’d both have been naïve. I think. At least I knew that naïve is only a matter of place. Maurey still thought there was a standard.
She stopped walking for a second. “Whenever I try to think about how being dead feels I end up wanting to have more sex. Isn’t that odd.”
“So let’s go to my house.”
“I want a Fudgsicle first.”
***
On the edge of town Maurey showed me how to cut between the Highway Department plow sheds into an alley, that ran behind the triangle stores. When we came through the Talbot Taxidermy backyard this little snot of a kid was teasing a snot of a dog with a kitten.
The kid held the kitten up over his head while the dog jumped and howled to get at it.
Maurey screamed, “Pud.”
The kid looked over at us with no expression. He had burned bacon-colored hair and a holey nylon coat that seemed stuffed with mattress filler. His jeans were all bloodstained, his shoes spotted by pink cat guts. A kitten head lay on the snow under the prancing dog. Other kitten parts were strewn about the yard. I almost threw up.
Maurey started toward Pud and he lowered the kitten to the very top of the dog’s jump. “I’ll feed Stonewall.”
Maurey froze, her fists closed tight, the veins on her neck gone rope. I drifted off toward the porch to get a better angle at the snot.
“Tell your boyfriend to quit sneaking.”
Maurey’s lips barely moved when she spoke. “You kill that kitten you’re gonna wish you hadn’t been born.”
Pud studied Maurey out of one eye. The dog was going nuts, barking, leaping, drooling blood from the other kittens. Ugly dog, no tail, box of a body, snubby head—everything repugnant in an animal.
The kitten put out a tiny mew. I eased in closer.
“Mom told me to kill the kittens.”
“Did she tell you to feed them to Stonewall?”
Pud shrugged. “She said drown ’em. What’s the difference?”
“Give the kitten to me. That way you won’t have to kill it.”
“I want to kill it.”
“You do and I’ll hurt you real bad.”
“My kitten. I can kill it if I want.”
With each comeback, their voices went louder and more frantic. I kept easing forward like it was a game of red light/green light and not some king-hell jackshit torturing kittens. The kitten head on the ground had been gray. Its eyes were open.
Pud saw me and stepped back. “Don’t.”
Maurey put her hands on her hips. “Give us the kitten. That way we won’t hurt you.”
Pud looked from her to me. He glanced back at the taxidermy and made a decision. “Mama.”
I jumped as he dropped the kitten and Stonewall snapped.
I came down on the dog’s back with my left hand on his throat and my right hand on his lower jaw. As we rolled through the cat guts he bit the holy heck out of my thumb and index finger. Maurey and Pud were yelling their brains out. The dog and I rolled all the way over; I pulled my hand out of his mouth and got him by the ear. My face was in fur so I bit hard as I could. The dog screamed.
Finally we broke loose and he ran over to Pud, turned and faced me, growling. I spit fur at him. Pud and the dog both had the same crappy expressions on their faces—a mixture of surprise, pain, and mean hate. Their lips quivered.
“He’s okay,” Maurey said.
“I’m not okay. The jerk bit me.”
“The kitten is okay.”
Maurey held him to her chest with both hands. The kitten chewed on a button of her coat.
Pud reverted to the whiney brat he was. “I’m gonna tell my brother. He’ll kick your butt.”
That was a possibility. I pulled myself up and held my bleeding hand over the snow. “They’ll kill Stonewall to test him for rabies.”
Pud’s hand went to the dog’s back. “Got no rabies.”
“He bit me. They’ll have to test and the only way to test is to kill him.”
Pud had the ugliest complexion, like peed-on snow. “You bit him too.”
“You don’t tell Dothan or anyone and I won’t tell anyone and your dippy dog won’t have to die.”
Pud didn’t say anything so Maurey and I left with the kitten.
10
“This doesn’t mean we’re going steady.”
“Sure.”
“Move your tongue higher. Right there. Now side-to-side.”
I adjusted.
“That’s not side-to-side. That’s up and down. Do it right.”
I adjusted again.
“I mean, we’re not even dating. Don’t think this is dating or anything. Sometimes you act like we are when we’re not. This’ll never work if you get the wrong idea. Jesus.”
“I wonder if Peter Pan and Wendy did it this way?”
“Don’t talk. Work.”
“It’s not supposed to be work. And move Alice. She’s digging in.”
“She wasn’t weaned. She was way too young to give away.”
“Nobody gave her away. Are you wet yet?”
“Don’t talk. Lick.”
“Well, move Alice.”
Maurey leaned forward and picked up Alice who took a chunk of me with her.
