Skipped Parts

by Tim Sandlin

  I try to always plan for every attitude.

  The place was packed but, fortunately, Hank wasn’t there. I sat at the counter between Ft. Worth and a sheepherder named Lasco. Lasco had an odor. When Dot poured his coffee, he dumped in three spoons of sugar and stirred it with his thumb.

  Talk at the counter centered on a how-cold-it-was routine. Some guy said forty-eight below at his place and others doubted it. Ft. Worth claimed it wasn’t a degree under thirty-five below zero. They all agreed it’d been a lot colder when they were my age.

  Dot set a cup in front of me and said, “You’re blue.”

  I nodded, too frozen to be cool.

  She started rubbing my cheekbones with both her hands. It was kind of odd, being touched on the face right in front of the guys and all. My eyes were six inches or so off her bra strap; my nose even closer.

  She was rough, but she created warmth and gave me the thrill of the day. “Got to get blood moving to your head. You’ll have a frostbite.”

  I nodded again.

  Ft. Worth was blatantly jealous. He said, “Kid’ll get more than frostbite from all the heat you got going.”

  “Keep your pants zipped, Jack,” Dot said. She called everyone Jack when they bothered her.

  “If I go outside and turn blue-faced will you rub me?”

  “You couldn’t handle it if I did.”

  This got a snicker rippling up the counter. Dot was the queen at sliding around flirty rednecks without doing severe damage to their king-hell egos. I never saw her lose a tip by saying no.

  Ft. Worth pointed at me with his stub finger. “His little girlfriend’s not gonna like you warming his face on your tits.”

  Girlfriend? My stomach went queasy. So the town knew about Saturday practice sessions with Maurey. My first thought was that she would stop doing it and I’d never get laid again. I’d lose her. But the second thought was, hell, I deserve some credit here. This would make my junior high reputation, for good or bad, and Maurey would quit sooner or later anyway. Girls liked a guy with know-how. They’d be lined up for orgasms. My third thought was Buddy’s going to kill me.

  Fourth, fifth, and on down the line thoughts don’t matter squat though because the whole process was based on a false assumption.

  Dot took her hands away and picked up the coffeepot. “Sam’s too good for Charlotte Morris, anyway. He needs a woman like me, someone who’ll do him better than to bite his tongue.”

  I said, “Charlotte Morris?” but the good-old-gang was laughing at Dot’s sauciness and no one heard me. Doesn’t take much to entertain guys who wear caps indoors.

  Lasco didn’t laugh. Maybe he only spoke Armenian or whatever language it is that sheepherders speak. His mouth made chewing motions even when there wasn’t anything in it, and he tilted his cup so coffee dribbled down the side and ran off the bottom into his saucer. Then he lifted the saucer and, with a disgusting sound, sucked in his coffee.

  There’s some scientific principle why when you try to pour a little liquid from a cup it dribbles off the bottom instead of the lip. I learned just enough in school to know these things had a cause, but not enough to know what it was.

  ***

  What’s strange in a small town is how you can have a rich, creative sex life with one girl for several months and keep it a secret from everyone, then you go in a closet and kiss someone you don’t give a flying hoot about, and suddenly you’re the town talk.

  I got to Stebbins’s class late, just as he was having everyone open Island of the Blue Dolphins. Stebbins’s eyebrows jumped toward each other in a stare and several guys grinned into their hands. Teddy the Chewer hummed “Here Comes the Bride.” Maurey winked at me. She’d been doing a lot of that lately. I didn’t look at Chuckette.

  Stebbins talked on about animal symbolism—wild dogs, dolphins, cormorants. I didn’t see it. The girl fought animals or ate them. Where’s the symbolism in fighting and eating?

  Stebbins walked up and down the aisles as he called on people. At one point he stopped next to my desk and stood as close to me as he could get. Florence was explaining about wild dogs in Alabama—Lord knows what it had to do with me and my life—while Stebbins hulked above, breathing on my head. I finally looked over to Chuckette and she smiled real sweet. So did LaNell Smith.

  When the hall bell rang, I made a beeline for the boy’s room and hid out in a stall full of graffiti, waiting for the next class. Wyoming kids were like the apex of innocence back then. Someone had actually taken the time and energy to carve Gol durn in the door.

  I came out of the John to find Maurey bent over the knee-high water fountain. When she stood up, her lips shone from the water and a single drop held on to the edge of her mouth. She was beautiful.

  “So you slipped it to chunky Chuckette,” she said.

  “I kissed her. Wasn’t that the point of the game—to go in the closet and kiss.”

  “Not that kind of kiss. She’s saying you got downright passionate.”

  “You taught me how to kiss. I only know one way.”

  “Sure, Sam. You just better not ever hurt her. She’s a friend of mine.”

  “How could I hurt Chuckette?”

  Maurey undid the top button on my shirt. “Didn’t your mother tell you only squirrels button it to the top? I better not talk to you in the halls anymore, Chuck wouldn’t like it. If Mom’ll let me put, I’ll come by tonight after Dick Van Dyke.”

  How, all of a sudden, could Chuckette control who talked to me in the hall? I was like the African explorer who said “Pardon me” to the chief’s daughter and suddenly found himself choosing between marriage and having his chest ripped out. We’re talking unfair situation.

  At lunch—fish sticks and congealed carrots—I sat across from Rodney Cannelioski. He stood up and left, muttering something along the lines of godless hordes. He should have been the one to choose favorite books of the Bible with her. They could have chapter-versed themselves into a fundamentalist orgy.

  A tray slid into view and I looked up to see Chuckette Morris’s face. In institutional cafeteria light, she wasn’t nearly as passable as she’d been in the closet. Her face was flat, like here’s her semi-normal head only the front part has been mushed into shape by a dinner plate and all the features kind of stuck in wherever they would fit. She had these tiny bangs about the length of fingernails.

  Her voice wasn’t so bad, maybe I could spend our time together with my eyes closed.

  “What were you talking to Maurey Pierce about?” she asked.

  I arranged my fish sticks into the shape of a baseball diamond. “When was that?”

  “Florence Talbot saw you guys talking after Stebbins’s class. You shouldn’t talk to other girls.”

  I came so close to telling her that Maurey and I had been talking about fucking our eyes out after Dick Van Dyke tonight. So close. I could have nipped several months of trouble bang in the bud.

  “She was saying how much fun she had at your party the other night. She especially liked the fondue.”

  Chuckette’s face lit up. It’s just too easy to make some people feel good. “My mom got the recipe from the back page of TV Guide.”

  “It was best with the crackers.”

  “Sharon liked it that way too. We’re doubling with Maurey and Dothan to a movie in Jackson Saturday after next. Be sure and bring enough money to pay my way and buy a Black Whip. I like Black Whips. You should know that about me since we’re going steady.”

  I had to get out of this quick. “Who says we’re going steady?”

  She looked at me suspiciously. “Everyone. They all know what you did to me at the party.”

  “Do I get some say in this deal?”

  “You wouldn’t come into GroVont and put your tongue in just any girl’s mouth, would you? Maybe that’s how they do things back East, but in Teton Cou
nty we’re moral.”

  “I thought I was supposed to kiss you in the closet.”

  “That reminds me, you’re supposed to give me your jacket.”

  Now I was riled. Thirty degrees below zero and this little moon-face wants my coat because I pity-kissed her. I said the most self-righteous thing I could come up with at the moment.

  “What?”

  “It’ll be a letter jacket in the ninth grade, but we’ll make do for right now.”

  I set down my fork. “Charlotte, there is no way I’m giving you my coat.”

  Tears leapt into her eyes. She wasn’t so pitifully helpless after all. “Ever’one’ll think you took advantage of me if you don’t give me something to seal our love. They’ll say I’m cheap.” Her lower lip went atremble.

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “Don’t you dare take the Lord’s name in vain.”

  “How about a scarf? My grandfather gave me this scarf.” Actually I shoplifted it at Sears when I found out we were moving West. “It belonged to my grandmother. Is a scarf good enough?”

  She stopped crying like turning off a faucet. “Let me see it.”

  I handed her the thing. It was green and about a yard long. I figured I could survive the walk home without it.

  Chuckette stuffed the scarf in her purse. “It’ll do, I guess. You’ll have to buy me a gold chain for our anniversary.”

  “Our anniversary?”

  Across the cafeteria, I saw Maurey carrying her tray over to a table of ninth-graders. She had on Dothan’s jacket.

  “And another thing,” Chuckette said. “All touching stays above the neck until we’re engaged.”

  ***

  When I came home, Hank’s truck was parked in the yard, which I took as a good sign. Lydia’s the kind of person who when she’s not happy she doesn’t want anyone around her happy either. She can be real uncomfortable to live with when she sets her mind on it. A bitch.

  Otis hopped across the road and dropped a red ball at my feet, then gazed up at me with those melted chocolate eyes that only a dog can pull off. Thirty below or not, I had to throw the damn thing.

  Otis was really fast, when you consider his missing part. The problem—there’s always a problem—was the ball was rubber and he’d slobbered on it and the slobber froze to my mitten, so throwing didn’t work out well. The ball had a tendency to stick for an instant, then wobble off about ten feet the wrong way. Otis would pounce on it with his front feet and drool some more before getting a good grip.

  I finally launched a fairly good throw way up and toward the house. Otis took off like a shaky shot, timing his leap so as to be most impressive. Just as he jumped, the rubber ball hit the wall and shattered into a zillion pieces.

  Made me feel like cold crap. Otis hopped around looking for his toy, actually stepping on the shards of frozen rubber. You’d think I’d destroyed his best pal. Maybe I did, hell, dogs can’t tell toys from friends.

  Inside, the toilet paper rolls were gone from Les’s nose and the door to Lydia’s room was closed, so I figured we were into a make-up scene. They really did like each other. It’s a shame when people who like each other aren’t on speaking terms. Goes against the natural order.

  I sang “Surfer Joe” which was big on KOMA that week, so they’d know the kid was home from school and to keep it down. Cute couple or not, I wasn’t in the mood for moans and screams from my own mother. I fed Alice, popped open a Dr Pepper and dug out some peanut butter cookies, and wandered into the living room.

  The thing with Chuckette bothered me, but the thing with Maurey bothered me more. This jacket deal was some kind of a localized social ritual indicating romantic commitment. An anthropologist could go to town on these northern rural types. Maybe in the early days when a warm coat was a matter of survival, giving a woman your jacket was the ultimate love gesture. Anyhow, Maurey was wearing Dothan’s tan-and-dirt letter jacket with the gv on the right breast—definitely a sign of bad news.

  She’d be coming over later to do things which the letter jacket implied were off-base, but I couldn’t very well ask her about it for fear of causing her to feel bad. Maurey might get in a bad mood and stop practice if I said something she didn’t want to hear.

  In the midst of this daydreaming, I wandered down the hall, stopped to listen at Lydia’s door, and, not hearing a sound, I went into the bathroom. Lydia and Hank were in the tub, together, naked.

  “Hi, honey bunny,” she said.

  “Hi, Lydia.” Why is it that whenever something interesting happens to my mother it so often revolves around the can? Hank was behind her with his back up against the end of the claw-legged tub and his hands on her hips. Lydia had the toes of her left foot propped on the faucet.

  “Hank got the water going,” she said. “Give me a sip.”

  I handed her the Dr Pepper. “What?”

  Hank looked embarrassed no end. I think the family weirdness had just crossed his acceptable-level line.

  “Hank crawled under the house with a torch and thawed the pipes. Wasn’t that nice of him?” Lydia’s breasts were a lot bigger than Maurey’s but not as big as the girls in Playboy. They kind of pointed down and the nipples were dark. Her stomach had creases where she was bent forward. Casual as I kept it for the purpose of not coming off squirrelly in front of Hank, I wasn’t in the habit of nude conversation.

  Lydia offered Hank a hit off the pop, but he shook his head without looking at either of us. She handed the bottle back to me. “There’s a letter from Caspar on top of the end table.”

  “What’s it say?”

  “I wouldn’t open mail from him. I may be your mother, but I respect your privacy.”

  “Right.” I took my pop and left.

  Sigmund Freud sucked deeply on the opium hookah, raised one eyebrow petulantly, then nodded toward his young friend. He spoke without exhaling. “After careful analysis, Sam Callahan, I find you the most balanced, sane person I’ve ever had the pleasure to converse with.”

  “You’re drooling, sir. Have a Kleenex.”

  “The part I cannot fathom is how someone as emotionally relaxed as yourself could have survived a chaotic background filled with mixed signals and backward relationships, not to mention Miss Neurotic America for a mother-image.”

  “Everyone must survive their mother, Sig.”

  Sigmund Freud blew an opium smoke ring into the air and turned into the Cheshire cat. “You are a colossus of will over environment, son. Want a hit of this? It will turn the world into ice cream.”

  “None for me thanks. Fresh air is plenty enough drug for me.”

  Samuel—

  The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them. Think carbon paper, Samuel.

  Caspar Callahan

  As I read the letter a second time, Lydia came from the bathroom barefoot in her white terrycloth robe. She didn’t look any older than I felt.

  “What’s dear Daddy got to say?” she asked.

  “He’s been reading again.”

  “God, I hate it when he does that.”

  13

  “Well, are you going to kiss me or not?”

  Chuckette had asked an interesting question. Whenever you can kiss a girl, you should. I knew that. I’d be a fool to pass, but on the screen a horde of girls in bathing suits were running across the sand and although I knew the movies would never let an entire tit pop all the way out, I could always imagine that might happen, and the flesh they showed was interesting—a lot more breast than I was likely to see anytime soon in real life. So it was a question of taking the tangible kiss from a drab girl who couldn’t stop playing with her retainer, or waiting on a possible visual tit that I knew would never happen.

  The picture wa
s Gidget Goes Hawaiian and I was king-hell lost because this was the first sequel I’d ever seen where the main character is somebody else. When I saw Gidget in Greensboro, she’d been Sandra Dee, now she was Deborah Walley. I had no idea movies could do that. I’d thought movie people becoming someone else was as impossible—or at least as illegal—as real people turning into someone else. Shows what I knew.

  The plot was that Gidget and Moondoggie have a fight and she flies to Hawaii with her parents where, even though she’s an outsider, Gidget instantly becomes popular on the local scene.

  “Are you?” Chuckette asked again.

  “You’ll have to take out your gum.”

  “If I can touch your tongue you can touch my gum.” It was Chicklets, three pieces. Her mouth hadn’t stopped snapping and popping since we hit Dothan’s ’59 Ford. I can’t stand girls who chew gum; never could. Makes them look stupid.

  “I’m not kissing a wad of gum.”

  “I’m sorry I came with you. You don’t give a whit about my feelings.” Which was true.

  And to make it a whole lot worse, down the end of our row, against the wall, Maurey and Dothan weren’t watching Gidget at all. He had his greasy pinhead right in her face. I could see her hand on the back of his neck.

  All the way from GroVont Maurey sat in the middle of the front seat up against Dothan. He drove with only his left hand on the wheel, which made me think he was touching her. Chuckette and I sat up against opposite doors in the backseat. I refused to speak more than a grunt. With no explanation, Maurey hadn’t come over for practice that afternoon. Left me sitting home like a goofball. I’d been looking forward to it. A boy needs some sex to relax him before a date.

  “You win,” Chuckette said, “but it’ll cost you another Black Whip.”

  “Win what?”

  She made a big deal out of taking out the Chicklet mess and finding a candy wrapper to stick it in. Then she kind of sighed, put both hands in her lap, and turned to me with her flat face tilted up like she was an Episcopalian taking communion against her will.