Skipped Parts

by Tim Sandlin

  We walked over and looked behind the line of junk at the plowed out road twisting between dump piles. There was an incredible number of dead cars. They were everywhere. It was like an end-of-the-world movie.

  “Any misses’ll go over a pickup,” Hank said.

  “What about a dump truck?”

  “No dumps on Christmas.”

  Hank showed me how to pop out the magazine thing and load cartridges. “Butt first, see. Hard to get it wrong.”

  “Can these kill elk and moose?”

  He shook his head. “Squirrels, chiselers, beaver if you’re sixty-seventy feet in. People. Kill people dead.”

  “But not elk.”

  “Lung shot might do it, but they’d run a ways and be in pain. The harmonious man kills the animal without hurting it.”

  “Like with the rifles in your gun rack?”

  He nodded and snapped in the magazine. He pulled back the bolt, down, up, shoved it forward. “Safety here, red line means it’s off.”

  “It won’t fire with the safety on?”

  “That is why you call it a safety.”

  He handed me the rifle. I felt kind of like I did following Maurey into the bedroom the first time. Sort of. I’d fantasized women’s breasts often, but I’d never fantasized firearms. Most of my violent daydream short stories involved hand-to-hand battles, although if the other guy deserved it sometimes I’d pick up a baseball bat and pound his head. Only real fights I’d been in were nothing like movies or books—more wrestling, less pounding.

  “Shoot the bucket,” Hank said. I raised the rifle to my shoulder. The barrel end wouldn’t be still.

  “Sight down the bottom of the V.”

  I sighted and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

  “Safety’s on,” Hank said. “Remember I told you about the safety.”

  I lowered the rifle and pushed the safety button.

  “Don’t point at me,” Hank said.

  “Sorry.”

  I raised the rifle again and waited for the bucket to come into the V.

  “Squeeze the trigger instead of pulling.”

  I squeezed, the gun jumped and powed in my ear.

  A bad yelp came from behind the gully line.

  “Shit,” Hank said.

  I threw down the rifle and ran forward. Soapley’s dog, Otis, was on the road, scream-yelping and dragging himself after the truck. Soapley hit the brakes and jumped out. “He never fell off before.”

  Hank was at my side. “We shot him off.”

  “You shot my dog?”

  “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

  Everything kind of froze up on me. Hank was suddenly at the dog, bending over with his bandana out. Soapley looked at me, then he was there too. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to go back and start the day again. They worked over Otis’s back end. Soapley said “Aw, hell” once.

  After a few seconds Otis quit yelping and lay there helpless, which was even worse than the noise. I got down and held his head so he wouldn’t flounder around. His eyes couldn’t understand. They were scared and hurt and trusting and it was my fault.

  “Think he’s gone?” Soapley asked.

  Hank’s hand held fur under the right hind armpit. There was a lot of blood. “Vet might save him. Worth a try. It’ll cost a lot and you might lose him anyway.”

  Soapley looked at the head under my hand. “I’m real attached to the old guy.”

  “My grandfather’ll pay any bills it takes to save him,” I said, hating myself for saying it. “I’m real sorry.”

  Soapley’s face held what I took as disgust. I don’t know, I’d be disgusted if I was a grown-up and some snot-nosed kid shot my dog and said his grandfather would pay to fix it. I was no better than Pud doing it on purpose.

  “Let’s load him in the truck,” Soapley said.

  They held arms under Otis and lifted him careful as they could, but he was in pain, you could tell. His tongue was way out and he trembled bad. I ran ahead to open the truck door and help get him in.

  I hate it when things happen to me that really matter. I mean, it’s so easy to roll through the days, enjoying the irony of a weird mom or a school full of half-wits, exploring growing up with Maurey. The Kennedy-death thing had mattered, but from afar. This thing with Otis was right up close and my fault. I couldn’t be cool and slightly above the situation, which was awful.

  Otis lay across my lap with his head on my left thigh and his wounded hip on Hank all the way to the vet’s. Hank had made a tourniquet out of his bandana, but there was still so much blood. I could see the white bone in the hole and the back side where the bullet came out was ripped and jagged.

  But looking at the mess was better than looking at his face. His eyes hurt me. Pain without understanding is torture. Soon his eyes dulled up some and the quivering got worse. Soapley didn’t say anything. I wanted him to cuss me, or talk to Otis or something, but he just drove with his eyes forward and his right hand on Otis’s neck.

  The vet was eating Christmas dinner and I doubt if he was happy to see us. His name was Dr. Brogan, he had a widow’s peak hairline and forearms of a wrestler. He was real severe and scared the wadding out of me.

  “Who shot him?” Dr. Brogan asked as he bent over Otis in the truck.

  “I did,” I said. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “It was my fault,” Hank said.

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “You two girls can argue over who did it later. Let’s get him inside.”

  Dr. Brogan went to the house and brought back a stiff stretcherlike thing. Hank and Soapley carried Otis into the animal clinic next to the house. That left me to walk in with the vet.

  “You do this often,” he said.

  “Today’s the first time I ever fired a gun.”

  Brogan grunted. I know he hated my guts. I usually don’t mind people hating me, it’s their choice, but this guy had just cause so it felt really bad.

  They lay Otis on the table and raised his right hind leg with a line-and-pulley deal attached to the ceiling. Brogan gave him an injection in the front leg to reduce the pain, then he studied the place where I shot him.

  “What a mess. You did this with a twenty-two?”

  “Yes, sir.” Hank and Soapley were at the end of the table, holding Otis’s head and shoulders. His eyes were closed now so at least I didn’t have to face that look anymore.

  The doctor cleaned and probed and messed around a long time. He clamped off the exposed artery to stop the bleeding. It looked like a thin worm. The muscles were pink and way down in there the shoulder bone glistened white.

  Brogan turned to Soapley. “He’s lost the leg.”

  Soapley swallowed but didn’t say anything.

  Brogan went on. “See here, the bullet took out all the blood vessels and shattered the bone. I can’t believe a twenty-two could cause this much damage.”

  It all looked like gore to me. I’d never seen any real gore before, unless you count the dead kittens, which count I guess. I felt sick and wanted to go out to the truck and lie down. Christmas was wrecked.

  “Do it,” Soapley said.

  Brogan pulled out an electric razor and started shaving Otis’s leg above and below the wound. “Dogs don’t get near as traumatized losing limbs as people do. They only know what is, so there’s no dwelling on what might have been. He’ll be up chasing meter readers in three days.”

  Hank spoke. “Can the boy wait outside while we do it?”

  Brogan’s eyes were lightning harsh. “He’s going to shoot things, he needs to see the consequences.”

  I watched his fingers working over the exposed flesh. I said, “You’re right.”

  The big upshot of the deal was I never want to shoot a gun again. People can call me wimp or city whuss or whatever, but as I wat
ched all the cutting and sawing and sewing, I knew that I caused this and I didn’t want to cause anything like it from now on.

  Brogan went two inches or so up from the wound and slit the skin all the way around. He cut through the fatty layer, then the muscles and laid them back in flaps. It looked like cutting a chicken thigh off the breast. When he cut through the joint, the knife made a scraping sound.

  “You going to pass out on me?” he said without looking up.

  I glanced down at Hank and Soapley. Their faces were blank, although Soapley was sweating some. “No, sir.”

  Otis’s front paws did a digging motion, so Brogan stopped to give him another injection. Then he clamped off three blood vessels and tied them with black thread. After he made the final cut, he handed me the leg.

  “Souvenir.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Hank said.

  Brogan started sewing the muscle flaps shut. “Yes, I do.”

  “It was as much my fault as the boy’s.”

  “You two can share it.”

  Dr. Brogan wanted to keep Otis overnight. Hank and I waited outside while Soapley did a short good-bye thing, then we sat in the truck and rode back to the dump. I had the leg on my lap. It was mostly black with a large white spot near the top and a smaller one down lower. The toenails were black.

  At Hank’s truck, I wanted to tell Mr. Soapley I was sorry, but I started crying and he only stared out at the mounds of garbage. He wouldn’t look at me or say anything. Hank went over and got my rifle and unloaded it. He made me hold it on the ride into town. I went in the house with the rifle in my right hand and Otis’s leg in my left.

  11

  The day after Christmas I took to my bed with no intention of getting up again. I didn’t think, I will never get up again, I just didn’t think at all. I knew this was it. I would lie there until I rotted from the inside and mold grew across my face and armpits.

  You think you’re doing fine, zooming along through the day-to-day, more or less above the deal. I’m making out okay in school, learning all this new sexual territory with a pretty girl, going where you’re supposed to want to go, Lydia’s in a practically human phase, Hank’s a nice enough guy, then I go and blow the leg off a dog and whomp, nothing means squat anymore.

  I wanted to go backward, to before fucking and before I shot anything, back to North Carolina where I was young. Nothing mattered then either but I didn’t know it. Christmas Day in Greensboro I would have been playing basketball in Jesse Otake’s driveway. He always made me play point guard because he was an inch taller. I would have ridden my three-speed over to Bobby McHenry’s garage to watch his older brother with the cigarette pack twisted into the T-shirt sleeve break down the clutch on his ’59 Chevy.

  I sure wouldn’t have spent Christmas at the dump with an Indian. I never saw a dump in Greensboro. You put the trash on the curb Friday morning and it disappeared. Nobody cared where it went. Dogs didn’t ride on top of truck cabs. Indians stayed out of sight.

  I wanted to see the ground. How could we live in a place with no ground? And no railroad tracks, and no curb markets or McDonald’s or car washes or hotel elevators. Hell, no hotels. I woke up every morning and looked at the ceiling and saw two dead animals with giant bug-eyes and horns. That couldn’t be a healthy first sight every day for a person.

  My thing got stiff and I lay on my side with one eye open and stared at Otis’s leg on my desk next to my typewriter.

  The nurse checked on the IVs and crept soundlessly from the room. The boy’s grandfather waited anxiously in the hall.

  “Well?”

  “He says he’s fed up. He will no longer accept pain.”

  “It’s all my fault.”

  “That’s what he thinks.”

  “I should have taken him more seriously. I shouldn’t have banished him away from his friends and coaches.”

  “He says he’ll never move again until somebody loves him.”

  “Poor boy.”

  Early afternoon the need to pee overcame the need to be in a coma, so I padded barefoot across the house and came back by way of the kitchen where Lydia sat in her white nightgown, working a crossword puzzle.

  She had a blue spot on the edge of her mouth where she’d been sucking on an ink pen. She held the pen in her hand like a cigarette with her long, thin fingers pointed at the ceiling.

  “Ten-letter word for lampoon.”

  I opened the refrigerator and looked in at a stick of butter, a jar of dill pickles, a bottle of French salad dressing, and five Dr Peppers. “Satirize.”

  She counted out letters on boxes. “Too short.”

  “Lydia, would you explain to me about women.”

  She glanced up at me, then back at the puzzle. “Cold enough in here without the fridge open.”

  I took the pickles over to the table and sat across from her. I could see the puzzle upside down. Lots of answers had been written in and scribbled out so it was hard to figure what was what.

  Lydia filled in a couple of letters. “I thought I already told you about girls.”

  “I don’t mean dicks and tunnels and babies. I want to know why they do what they do.”

  “Come on, Sam. Nobody knows why anybody does anything. Give me one of those.”

  “Maurey and I perform sex and I feel something odd for her but she keeps telling me we’re just friends and nothing mushy is going on.”

  Lydia took one of my pickles. “So?”

  “Isn’t sex the definition of mushy?”

  “Four-letter word for dessert. Cake? Tart? Pies?” She tried a letter then blacked it out. “You’re lucky she’s your friend. In all probability, you’ll have a lot more lovers than friends in your life. And you’re too young for any deep emotional entanglement.” She bit the tip off the pickle. “This way you get the fun of love without the heartbreak.”

  “But what if I like her and get my heart broke anyway?”

  She looked back up at me for a second. “Then you’re a sucker.”

  “Maurey’s looking forward to going on dates.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “She thinks she can go to the movies with some guy and flirt and neck, then come back here and get in bed with me and tell me about it.”

  “Wish I had a deal like that.”

  “I think it’s bizarre, even for us.”

  “Caricature.”

  “What?”

  “Ten-letter word for lampoon—caricature.” She stuck her pen tip in her mouth.

  “Is Hank a lover or a friend?”

  “Don’t be impertinent.” She switched pen for pickle.

  “Impertinent? Lydia, we passed that six years ago when I started fetching your Gilbey’s. You can’t be a buddy when it’s convenient and a mother when it’s not.”

  “You’ve been reading too many books.”

  I sat there scarfing pickles and watching her concentrate on something other than me. Even upside down, I knew several of the answers, but I wasn’t about to help her.

  “Hank is a suitor,” Lydia said.

  “That’s awfully Southern of him.”

  “He’s kind of a Southern boy. You know he feels terrible about yesterday.”

  “When are we going back to the South, Mom?”

  Lydia crunched on her pickle and ignored me.

  ***

  New Year’s Day I went over to the Pierces’ to watch the Cotton Bowl on their TV. Buddy was home, leaned back in the recliner, sipping on a beer with a plate of Annabel’s snickerdoodles on a tray next to his hand. Maurey and I sat on the couch but she didn’t watch the game. She pulled a cushion up against the arm and sat sideways, reading a book in the old lounging position of bare feet up against my leg.

  I felt a little strange, what with her touching me in front of her dad—I’ve never done
well with other people’s dads—only he didn’t seem to care. It was hard to tell since his face was mostly hair, beard, and two black eyes like periods at the end of a sentence nobody could read. I wondered if that was an outdoorsman deal they developed to stalk game or if Buddy was the only one with marble eyes. When Hank’s face shut down, it was like a stone slid over his face and he was untouchable, but Buddy’s emotionless look was softer, more like Pushmi and Pullyu over my bed at home.

  He talked some about a mule deer that scored a 186 on the Boone and Crockette and a shed roof that caved under the snow, a weasel that had crawled into a generator to get warm and fried itself—not much conversation for the three hours I watched the game. Maurey hung on his every word.

  It was Navy against Texas for the national championship. Navy had a king-hell hot-stuff quarterback named Roger Staubach. He zipped passes all over the field, kind of the football equivalent of classical guitar. Magic fingers. Even I could spot style.

  Unfortunately, Navy’s defensive line was outweighed about thirty-five pounds a head, and by the middle of the fourth quarter Texas pretty much had a wrap.

  Petey spread a ton of Christmas toys around the floor so whenever Annabel brought in another round of food and drink she had to lift her feet and titter. She said, “Go play in your room, Petey,” in a tone of voice that wouldn’t move a rabbit off a road.

  One of Petey’s games looked like fun. It was a table soccer deal with knobs you turned to kick the ball at the goalie. I wanted to get on the floor and play it with him, only Maurey would take that as a sign of immaturity.

  The book she was reading was Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. She’d given it to me for Christmas.

  “It’s about a girl our age coming to terms with her emerging sensuality,” she told me before she borrowed it back. She told Annabel it was by the same author who wrote Peter Pan.

  My Christmas present to Maurey was a Pro-Line Frisbee. I found an ad for it in the back of the Sporting News and sent off to a place in Ohio. Could well have been the first Frisbee in northwest Wyoming, which isn’t saying much.

  “We had a boy from North Carolina in my company on Iwo Jima,” Buddy said, apropos to diddley. “Had a thick accent the guys made fun of. Lost his leg to a mine. Why don’t you have a thick accent?”