Skipped Parts

by Tim Sandlin

  “Ouch.”

  “Are you gonna do your job?”

  Maurey put the kitten on her chest and rubbed her with her check. After a bit, the kitten settled into a steady purr which Maurey tried to match but couldn’t.

  “I wonder when was the last time Mom and Dad did this? They must have once or twice. I’m not adopted.”

  “I can’t picture Buddy with his tongue out.”

  “Higher up. You’re still too hole-oriented.”

  “You feel plenty wet to me.”

  “Don’t stop. I like this part better than the rest.”

  “My jaw hurts. I’m coming up.”

  “Don’t disturb Alice.”

  “Maybe your mom and dad still have sex.”

  “Sure. Tell me another one.”

  ***

  I feel like I’m the only kid in America who never believed in Santa Claus. Lydia didn’t bring up the subject. I heard things in kindergarten—“What’s he bringing you?” “I saw him at the Belk store Saturday”—then they brought one in the morning of our party and made us sit on his lap. He smelled like Caspar’s closet.

  He asked me what I wanted and I didn’t know what to say. I looked at everything but him.

  When I asked Lydia, she told me Santa Claus was a personification of free stuff, a childish picture of God, and he didn’t exist, but I wasn’t permitted to tell the other kids.

  “People who don’t believe in God have an obligation to keep their mouths shut,” she said.

  Whole thing zinged right over my head. All I could see was the kids who believed in Santa got paid better than I did.

  ***

  Christmas morning I stumbled and scratched out of my room to find no Lydia on the couch. I said, “Jeeze, on Christmas even. She’s gonna warp me yet,” then I headed down her hall and ran into Hank Elkrunner coming out of the bathroom.

  He smiled kind of shyly, which I took for an Indian thing because I hadn’t seen much shy goodwill in my life. “Happy Christmas, Sam,” he said.

  “Happy Christmas.”

  Hank glanced at the closed door to Lydia’s room. He had on a pair of white boxers and a leather thong thing around his ankle. More Indian stuff, I guess.

  I said, “She went into her room.”

  Hank nodded. “Your mother is something else.”

  “What else?”

  I shouldn’t have done that, made him uncomfortable. He seemed somewhat good for Lydia—got her off the couch anyway—and most of her boyfriends hadn’t been good for her. They led her astray. Or she led them astray, depending on whose version you bought.

  But I’m always a little odd on the boyfriend deal. On the one hand, I get used to me-and-Mom-against-the-world, and that’s comfortable, but then I’m always on the scam for a short-term father figure. Not that any of her boyfriends came close. They mostly either patted me on the head or gave me money to disappear. I can’t stand being patted on the head.

  Hank would never pat me on the head. I shouldn’t have razzed him, but your mom is your mom. You can’t go buddy up with every joker pops her in the sack.

  “I have something,” Hank said. He opened Lydia’s door, went in, and closed it behind him. I heard her voice from the bed.

  I did the toilet trip—pee, brush teeth, check for zits and facial hair. Since Maurey and I had started our whatever we were doing, my piss had been weird. It came in two streams, a main branch and a little arc of a trickle off to the left. I couldn’t decide what that meant. Maybe a Maurey hair had gotten stuck up there and was dividing the flow.

  Whatever caused it, there was no way in hell to hit the pot with both streams at once and it was probably the major problem of my life that Christmas. I had to pee sitting down like a little boy or mop the floor with toilet paper after every whiz.

  After my mop job, I left the John just as Hank came from Lydia’s room. We stopped again, smiling and not looking at each other. “It’s in the truck,” he said.

  “What’s in the truck?”

  “The thing I have.”

  I hit the kitchen to make coffee and juice. Lydia taught me how to make coffee before she taught me how to tie shoelaces. I think. This may be an exaggeration, only I can’t remember a time when I didn’t make the morning coffee. As a kid, I remember standing on a chair to spoon in the grounds. I didn’t drink it back then.

  Panic mews came from the kitchen closet. When I let Alice out, she freaked, mewing and jumping right to wherever I was about to step. After two nights of her sucking on me so much I never slept, I’d taken to locking her and her box in the closet. A kid’s got to get his rest.

  I poured a little half-and-half in a cereal bowl and she went at it like I’d starved her for a week. Lydia padded barefoot and robed into the kitchen. She yawned and pushed at her hair. “Should have let the mangy dog eat her.”

  “Merry Christmas, Mom.”

  She gave me the look, but for a change didn’t pursue the mom deal. “Hank says Happy Christmas and Merry New Year instead of the normal way. Do you think that’s a Blackfoot trait or is he trying to irritate me?”

  Her bathrobe was this white terrycloth thing that came down about midthigh and tied with a blue cord, real sexy-looking, even on her.

  “Are you still claiming your dry spell?”

  She smiled and came over to warm her hands against the coffeepot. “No, honey bunny, the drought is broken.”

  “Please don’t call me that in front of him.”

  “The drought is flooded. The drought has been blown into the Atlantic Ocean.”

  “Are we going to keep him?”

  Even though the pot wasn’t through perking, Lydia poured herself a weak cup. She never did have any patience with coffeepots. “Don’t be ridiculous. He’s not a kitten or a sweater.”

  “I never said he was.”

  “Besides we won’t be here that long.”

  Hank walked into the kitchen carrying a rifle. For one horrible moment I flashed on a Wyoming ritual I hadn’t known before. Sleep with a woman, then shoot her son. Hank two-handed the rifle to me.

  “Happy Christmas.”

  “What is it?”

  “Ruger. Twenty-two caliber. Good first gun for a young man.”

  Lydia went into a frown. “I’m not sure I approve of firearms for children.” I wasn’t sure either.

  “Sam’s not a child.”

  I was glad to hear that. Hank’s face was interesting as I took the gun from him. His eyebrows came closer together and his mouth was thinner. Maybe giving a kid his first gun was a big deal to him.

  “Is it loaded?”

  “No, but always pretend it is. Don’t point it at anything you are unwilling to kill.”

  Lydia blew across her coffee. “That’s the only purpose for a gun, to kill things, right?”

  Hank kept his eyes on me. “Protection, security, dignity, procurement of meat.”

  Lydia went on, “And killing is unethical.”

  I’d never held a gun before. Caspar wasn’t into guns. It was heavier than I’d imagined from Gunsmoke or The Rebel. Those guys tossed rifles around like sticks. I couldn’t see where it gave me dignity, but it felt neat. Let’s see Dothan Talbot crap at me. I’d take out his kneecaps.

  Hank said, “Can’t be a real local if you don’t have a gun.”

  Lydia set her cup down with a click. “We have no intention of being real locals.”

  Lydia kept up the bitching clear through breakfast, but you could tell her heart wasn’t in it. Sometimes she’d lose control and smile, and once I saw her brush her hand against Hank’s. Since it was Christmas, I made French toast—put some flour and old Kahlua in the batter for flavor. One thing about growing up with a mom who won’t cook or do laundry, you won’t hit fourteen helpless and woman-needy.

  After breakfast, L
ydia poured Kahlua in her coffee refill and we trooped out to the living room to open more presents.

  I sat in the center of the couch with them on both sides. It was kind of homey if you’re into homey. The presents were lined up on the coffee table. A new radio sat on top of a box from Caspar.

  “I didn’t have time to wrap it,” Lydia said, which I thought was interesting since, technically, she didn’t do anything.

  “It’s neat,” I said.

  “I figured if the TV is useless, we might as well have some music around here.”

  The big box from Caspar was a white suit straight out of Faulkner. It was an exact duplicate of the one he wore like a uniform, summer and winter. It was like he had a duty to wear that suit to set an example for Lord knows who. Mine even came with a yellow bow tie.

  “I’ll look like a goose.”

  Lydia touched the material with her index finger. “Great costume for sipping mint juleps and putting darkies in their place.”

  “I don’t know a darkie.”

  “Perhaps I could qualify,” Hank said.

  Lydia did a smirk. “I’m the one to put you in your place.” She reached along the couch and pulled on Hank’s ear. He blushed and I like to barfed. There’s something putrid about your mother being nice to someone.

  Caspar had sent Lydia a twenty-volume set, Dictionary of American Biography. Postage alone could have fed GroVont for two days. “Oh, good, a table,” Lydia said. She stacked them up next to the arm on her end of the couch and set her coffee cup on Werdin to Zunser.

  I’d gotten her a harmonica. One thing you have to admire about Lydia, she’s honest. If she doesn’t like something, she doesn’t spare anybody’s feelings.

  “Oh,” she said. “How interesting.” She blew one squawk note and put it next to her coffee cup. I didn’t feel bad. Lydia is impossible to buy things for and I’d gotten over the personal-rejection crush years earlier when I hand-made and varnished a jewelry box out of Popsicle sticks and she accidentally stepped on it.

  Since then, I’d been buying her things I wanted.

  Hank was new to the deal though. I felt kind of sorry for him when she sniffed at his Indian bead earrings. They were real pretty.

  “They’re real pretty,” she said in a tone like they weren’t. Maybe she thought they were. Whenever Lydia says something sincere it comes out sounding like irony. She saves her truth tone for lies to Caspar.

  ***

  Living around Caspar and Lydia was always tense, but Christmas things got even more tense than usual. Christmas is like an intensifier—good things are real good and bad things are worse; and things at the manor house never were king-hell neat to start with.

  Or maybe it was on account of Me Maw being dead. Christmas is the season for missing dead people.

  Whatever it was, Caspar got crabbier and Lydia bitchier and I mostly stayed in my room and played with whatever game they’d sprung for that year. Caspar was big on educational stuff—chemistry sets, butterfly nets. When I was young Lydia bought stuff for old kids and when I got older she bought stuff for toddlers.

  The year before our banishment, she got me an Etch A Sketch that said right on the package, “For children 4 through 9.”

  It was a weird Christmas too. Caspar’s hearing aid wasn’t working—that or he had it turned off—so whenever I thanked him for a gift, he said “What’s that?” and I had to thank him over and over.

  My main present was a toy construction company. “Build your first plant,” Caspar said. “Commerce.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, looking at all the plastic bricks with lock-in nubs on top, and the girders and wheels and stuff. Gave me the same feeling as a snake—I had no desire in the world to touch any of it.

  “Commerce,” Caspar grunted again. He stood over me with his arms folded and his little yellow mum and bow tie giving him a smug Captain Kangaroo-type glow. I guess him buying me my first industrial plant to build was like Hank giving me a rifle, a tradition deal. I’m not big on tradition deals.

  Just as Caspar said “Commerce” the second time, Lydia wandered into the parlor barefoot in a shortie nightie. She liked to go skimpy around the Carolina house because it made Caspar nervous. All that skin flashing ended when we moved to Wyoming.

  She walked over by the fake Christmas tree and lit a cigarette. Her legs were knobby. “Talk sentences in front of Sam, Daddy. He’ll grow up thinking men snort instead of using speech.”

  Caspar glared at her. “If you were a union I’d break you in half.”

  Lydia blew smoke out her nostrils. “I’m not a union, I’m a daughter.”

  “Nothing but Communists in the unions. I loathe Communists.”

  The cook, who was Negro and named Flossie Mae, brought me a waffle and a glass of grapefruit juice.

  “Paw Paw can’t hear today,” I said.

  He rocked back on his heels and muttered, “Honor sinks where commerce long prevails.”

  Lydia took my grapefruit juice and drank it. “He can hear when it’s convenient. Daddy, I need some money.”

  Caspar said, “Commerce is America and America is bound together by carbon paper. Without carbon paper there are no records and without records all is chaos and deprivation.”

  Lydia smiled at Caspar. “Daddy, have you seen my diaphragm? I’ll be needing it at the cotillion this afternoon.”

  Caspar turned and left. Lydia watched while I buttered and syruped the waffle, then she took it away from me. “He can hear fine,” she said.

  I sat on the floor surrounded by construction blocks and watched her eat the waffle, wondering what diaphragm meant.

  Koreans poured off the hill like sweat off a fat man’s forehead. Lead flowed freely as champagne after the seventh game of the World Series. Men died easily as cornflakes turn soggy in milk.

  The lieutenant grabbed his throat, gurgled once, and fell. The men turned to Sergeant Callahan.

  “What do we do now?” they asked.

  “We become the vengeful fist of God.” Callahan snarled.

  Tommy gun at his hip, Callahan stepped from the bunker and began spraying the hillside with the fire of death. Koreans splattered themselves amongst the rocks. Out of ammo, Callahan threw down the tommy gun and picked up a bazooka. Still firing from the hip, he began marching up the ridge, murdering masses of human beings with each stride.

  ***

  “Want to learn to shoot?” Hank asked.

  “Will I have to kill stuff?”

  We left Lydia to do whatever Lydia does and drove over to the dump in Hank’s truck. The truck was pretty cool, a ’47 Dodge panel deal with electrical tape for a passenger window and a mountain of tools and animal horns and tires and stuff piled in the back so whenever he hit the brakes, the whole mess slid whump against the cab.

  “How old were you when you first fired a rifle?” I asked Hank.

  “Four-and-a-half.”

  “Gee.”

  “My little brother taught me.”

  I wasted ten minutes trying to figure if he was kidding. It was stupid. If you don’t know anything about people how can you tell when they’re exaggerating? With Lydia, her face stays straight but she moves her hands when she lies. You couldn’t tell squat from studying Hank.

  “What do you do when you aren’t at our house?”

  Hank slowed down to pass a hawk tearing at a dead lump of fur. I couldn’t tell what the fur used to be. “I get by. Unemployment now, peel logs in the spring, fight fires some summers. My family is on the Kiowa roles so a government check comes every few months.”

  “Lydia said you’re a Blackfoot.”

  He nodded. “No money in Blackfoot blood. My grandfather was wise, he traded a bottle of moonshine to get listed as Kiowa. Wish he’d done the trade with a Navajo. Navajo’s the best-paid minority in the West. Get all the girls
too.”

  “Maybe I can be Navajo.”

  He glanced at me. “You’re short enough.”

  At the dump, we walked around awhile, looking at the neat stuff. It was like mostly garbage with a second-hand store scattered around. Hank told me that people who dumped something usable would set it away from the muck so other folks could take it home. I saw a lamp I could have used, but dump stuff seemed a little weird at the time. It might have had germs or something. There was a perfectly good Christmas tree.

  “Why would someone dump a Christmas tree right before Christmas?” I asked.

  Hank shrugged. Sometimes Hank talked like a regular person, then all of a sudden he’d catch himself and go back to Ugh and placid facial expressions. I think he saw too many cowboy and Indian movies; he thought people expected inscrutability. That would be a big plus in Lydia’s eyes. She could babble away without interruption.

  The day was way clear, but below zero, which is cold no matter what anyone tells you about humidity and wind chill and all that kind of crap. I had on six layers and a sock hat and I was still cold. Hank wore a jeans jacket over two wool shirts. He kept his hands in his pockets and made me carry the Ruger.

  “Where do you live?” I asked.

  He pulled a hand from a pocket and pointed north, up the Dubois road.

  “In a tipi?”

  Hank’s shoulders moved up and down in that silent laugh of his. “Twelve-foot Kozy Kamper. Freeze your butt off in a tipi in winter.”

  “Have you ever lived in a tipi?”

  “Slept in a Cheyenne lodge at the Sun Dance couple years ago. Guy owned it got drunk and knocked down a flap pole, filled it with smoke. I crawled out the side and slept on the ground. That won’t happen in a Kozy Kamper.”

  “Do Blackfeet get drunk a lot?”

  Hank didn’t answer. He stepped across some partly burnt mattresses and picked up a blackened bucket. He carried it to a pile of trash down in a gullylike place and set it on a dead washing machine. “Big target. You won’t miss.”

  “What if somebody comes along?”

  “No law against shooting buckets.”

  “The dump road’s back there.”