Skipped Parts

by Tim Sandlin

  “I’m in trouble now,” she said. “Daddy’ll make me ask God for forgiveness.”

  “We didn’t do anything.”

  “I had an impure thought.”

  “I didn’t.”

  I got back to the Ford to find Dothan and Maurey’s faces in a lock. I hopped in the front seat next to them.

  “Fun night,” I said.

  Dothan looked over Maurey’s shoulder. “She bite your tongue again?”

  Dothan pulled up beside Hank’s truck and turned off the engine. We all three sat in silence, staring at the cabin.

  “Good night, Sam,” Dothan said.

  I opened the door, but didn’t move. I looked at Maurey. “You coming in?”

  “In a minute.”

  “I can wait. The lock is kind of tricky and we’d be less likely to wake up Lydia if we go in together.” Which were lies; the door wasn’t locked, and Lydia was either awake and getting laid, or she was already asleep and nothing short of a fire would affect her.

  “She’ll be in when she comes in,” Dothan said.

  “I can wait if you guys want to say good night.”

  “Get out of the car, Sam,” Dothan said.

  I looked at Maurey. She reached over and patted my hand. “I’ll be in in a minute.”

  “I don’t mind waiting.”

  Dothan said, “Sam.”

  ***

  In the bathroom, I did the introspective mirror deal for a while. I stuck out my tongue to check the white moldy stuff that sometimes grows there. I wondered if Lydia really connected to herself by touching her tongue in the mirror. Seemed kind of stupid, but I guess you do whatever it takes to feel like you and the person in your body are related. I brushed my teeth with Maurey’s blue toothbrush, then I shook it as dry as possible and hung it back next to my red one. Maybe the basic way people connect is through the mouth; that would explain the French kiss.

  Because the dryer was broken, Lydia had clothes draped all over Les’s horns. I tried to picture Les as a noble beast surviving the wilderness, then carried the deal onto some religion where awareness stays with the body after it dies and he was up on the wall knowing full well that a neurotic woman had hung bras and hose around his horns and stuck a Gilbey’s label over each eye. What indignities would fall on my body after I died?

  I sat at the kitchen table, staring down at one of Lydia’s ever-present half-finished crossword puzzles, drinking a Dr Pepper, and chewing on some of Hank’s jerky, which also came from a noble beast of the wilderness. More indignities.

  I figured if sex was poker, the order of the winning hands went like this: mouth to mouth, fingers to tits, mouth to tits, fingers to crotch, mouth to crotch, crotch to crotch; although mouth to tits and fingers to crotch might be reversed or equal. Subheads would include fingers to tits through shirt and bra, through bra only, or directly on nipple. Then there was tongue in ear.

  Dothan and Maurey would be about stage two by now— fingers to tits, probably below shirt and above bra. Her right tit was a little bigger than the left one. The tip end stuck out farther.

  They wouldn’t fuck in my driveway, would they? Get sweaty and wet, blow come right in the Ford? There was nothing in the world to stop them. I could flash the porch light like Chuckette’s father did, only our porch light was burnt out. That would only piss Maurey off anyway.

  Alice jumped on the table and sat on the crossword, mewing. I didn’t care what went across or down anyway. I poured a little Dr Pepper in a saucer and watched as she lapped it up. Would he undress her completely or just pull her skirt up? Dothan was the kind of jerk who would expect a blow job and give nothing in return.

  I stood in the dark in the living room and peeked through a crack in the curtain. The half-moon gave the snow a dull nickel look and Soapley’s trailer could have been a spaceship or a bloated pill. Dothan’s car was too steamed to see into, but I imagined movement; I imagined her mouth around his penis and his fingers tangled in her hair.

  The Oriental gentleman slid the evil device around Sam Callahan’s finger and over his neck, across the soles of his feet to the twin hooks embedded in his testicles.

  “The ancients called it the self-starting torture kit,” he grinned. “If you ignore it, the pain is small, but if you think about it, if you worry it, if it makes you sad, it will gradually rip your nerves to shreds and tear your balls out. Eh, eh.”

  Sam Callahan checked the fit. “Sounds like my kind of deal. I’ll take one.”

  ***

  As an act of rebellion, I put on the paisley pajamas and sat at my typewriter, pretending to read Being and Nothingness. I heard Maurey at the front door and in the bathroom. The water heater knocked when she ran hot water. Nobody would ever sneak around and use hot water in my house.

  She came in the bedroom and shrugged out of the blue shirt and pulled the white dickie off. I couldn’t see any marks on her body.

  “You used my toothbrush,” she said.

  “I deny it.”

  She slid the white nightie on over her head, then sat on the bed to pull off her shoes and skirt. No panty shot tonight. “We saw you spying at the window.”

  “Maurey, I do not enjoy these double dates.”

  Maurey picked up her hairbrush. “You’d rather I go out with him alone while you sit here and wonder?”

  “I’d rather you not go out with him.”

  “Not an option.” She talked as she brushed. “If it makes you unhappy, I’ll move out. I’m not here to make you unhappy.”

  “I don’t want you to move out. Living with you is neat.”

  “What do you want then?”

  “Within the options?”

  “Within the options.”

  She held her head down to brush up from the back of her neck. The truth of our baby floating around in this little girl zipped in and out of my grasp. I’d never even looked at a baby up close before. Alice hopped in my lap and I sat, petting her and wishing I could touch Maurey and tell her I loved her, but knowing that would be squirrelly. I wished I had a father.

  “I want a Fudgsicle. How about you?”

  She looked at me and smiled. “Okay.”

  ***

  I made pecan pancakes while Hank walked to Kimball’s Food Market and back for the Rocky Mountain News. The women padded around in their nightgowns, looking rumpled and beautiful as they waited for the coffee to kick in and the day to start.

  Maurey wore my red slippers. Her hair had that clumped-to-one-side look women get when they sleep.

  “Sam slept in paisley jammies again last night,” she said.

  Lydia lit a cigarette. “What a chump; your mother and I should exchange children. Annabel would love a child in paisley pajamas.”

  “She could iron them every afternoon.”

  A tiny row of bubbles appeared around the edge of each pancake. I eased the flipper under a corner and checked for golden brownness. On the one hand it was really nice and homey sitting around the kitchen like this, contentedly feeling the night fuzz drop from my brain. I’d always wanted a family.

  But on the other hand two women could be lots more than twice as scornful as one. My life might become nothing but the object of snappy banter. I was glad when Hank showed up with the paper.

  “Dibs on the funnies,” Maurey said.

  Lydia affixed herself in Hank’s arms and gave him an open-mouthed kiss that lasted like three minutes.

  “Ish,” I said.

  Maurey rolled her eyes up under her eyelids. “I’ll never act like that in front of my children.”

  “Me, either.”

  Lydia broke off the kiss and went all smug. “You’ll never have a sexual technician like mine.”

  Hank looked more embarrassed than pleased, but I could tell he was somewhat pleased. Not many good lays get public appreciation. I
flipped a pancake wrong and batter glomped all over the griddle.

  Lydia ate like a hog. Her appetite must be connected by direct wire to her crotch—one orgasm and she turns into Johnny the Lumberjack.

  Maurey didn’t eat any.

  Hank and Lydia got into a fight that just about snuffed the afterglow. Lydia tore a comic page down the middle. “Red Ryder and Little Beaver are ethnic perverts.”

  “Don’t make fun of Little Beaver,” Hank said.

  “Look at this yellow headband. He’s an embarrassment to beavers everywhere.”

  Hank looked. “I have a headband that color.”

  “Ethnic pervert.”

  The sports page was all Boston Celtics and Winter Olympics. Skiing just wasn’t my gig.

  I was making a second pot of coffee when someone knocked on the door.

  Maurey’s face went happy. “That’ll be Dad.”

  Hank and I traded a quick guilt glance. Males must be born with a fear of fathers at the door.

  I said, “Buddy?”

  Maurey set down her mug. “I figured he’d be down from the TM this weekend. Thanks for letting me stay here.”

  Lydia said, “You’re welcome.”

  Throughout the whole deal, Maurey and Lydia always knew what was going on and they never told me. I didn’t find out Maurey was moving in until she was in, and now the same thing was happening on the move out.

  The knock came again. As she walked barefoot into the living room, Lydia said, “I’ve been waiting to meet the fabulous Buddy Pierce.”

  I looked at Maurey’s eyes. “Are we splitting up?”

  She was still smiling on account of her dad. “Oh, Sam, we were never together. I’ll still be over every couple of days.”

  “What about the baby?”

  She glanced behind me to see if Buddy was in earshot. “We’ll name him after he comes.”

  “Where will she live?”

  “We’ll know when it happens, no need to worry about stuff like that until he’s here.” I knew she was lying. I’d bet anything that Maurey and Lydia both knew what sex, what name, where it would live, and what sports it would go out for. In their little brains they’d already planned its life; they just weren’t telling me.

  Lydia’s voice came from the living room. “Would you care for some coffee?”

  “No, thanks, I’ll pick up my daughter and be gone.”

  Then they were in the kitchen and everyone was shuffling around being awkward on the deal.

  “Hank,” Buddy said.

  “Buddy,” Hank said.

  I guess Buddy felt odd about working out a family crisis in front of people he didn’t know. “Get your things,” he said to Maurey.

  “I’m already packed.”

  Buddy stood next to me, which made me nervous and itchy. I mean, how far had Annabel filled in the details? She couldn’t very well say, “Sam fucked our baby,” without spilling the disgusting details of Howard Stebbins and Rock Springs. Any hint of truth would disorder the dickens out of her order. But then, the very term “make a clean breast” might appeal to Annabel.

  I risked a look up, but he was so close all I could see was a plaid shirt, an unzipped red parka, and that black bush of a beard. He stayed put while Maurey went off to our room to gather up her suitcase and bear. When had she packed anyway? Had to be while I was in the shower, but you’d think I would have noticed when I got dressed.

  “Get an elk this year, Hank?” Buddy asked.

  “Yes. You?”

  “Killed a cow up on Goosewing.”

  “Goosewing has always been a good location.”

  Both men were trying to out-stoic the other. Lydia took the pot from my hand and ran water. “Maurey tells us you went to art school at Stanford.”

  Buddy’s beard nodded.

  “What kind of art interested you?”

  “Bronze.”

  “I love bronze, don’t you, Sam?”

  “It’s my favorite metal.”

  After that no one said anything until Maurey came in and stood next to her father. He put a hand on her shoulder. “Thanks for taking care of my daughter. I hope she wasn’t trouble.”

  Lydia smiled at Maurey. “No trouble. You have a fine little girl, Mr. Pierce.”

  The beard nodded again.

  “See you in school, Sam,” Maurey said.

  Then they were gone and, at thirteen years and six months, I discovered the pain in the ass of a woman walking out the door.

  21

  Battle Creek, Mich. (UPI)—The C. W. Post Cereal Company today announced the Grand Prize winner in its “Most Ambitious Boy” contest. Sam Callahan of GroVont, Wyo., was chosen over 2 million other entrants because Sam wants to grow up to lead the Chicago Cubs to victory in the World Series.

  “More boys become president than win a baseball championship in Chicago,” Sam Callahan said.

  The Grand Prize was a lifetime supply of Post Toasties, which Sam Callahan regretfully declined.

  My loved ones and I survived to baseball season. Praise the Lord.

  I discovered that if I tipped the radio onto its left side and held my thumb on the speaker I could pick up about every other word of the Dodger games on KFI Los Angeles. The games didn’t start till 9:00 and the signal drifted every twenty minutes, but I never missed a one, even though Sandy Koufax pulled a muscle in his pitching arm and the Dodgers dropped ten of their first eleven. It’s not who wins or loses in baseball, it’s how clean you feel when you play it. Or listen to it.

  My hero object went from Don Drysdale, who actually played the games, to Vince Skully, who announced them. Vince knew more facts about more subjects than anyone else on earth. I counted—he averaged eight facts between each pitch, and when you figure 250 pitches a game, that’s 2,000 facts in nine innings. Even if he repeated one every few weeks, you spread 2,000 facts a game over a 162-game season and you’ve got a hell of a lot of information.

  I don’t impress easily, but Vince Skully blew me away.

  “Listen to this guy,” I said to Lydia.

  “I liked you better when you read two books at a time.”

  “Tell Caspar to forget carbon paper, I’m going on the radio. This guy is a genius.”

  “You want facts, read the encyclopedia. Saying this clown is a genius because he knows facts is like saying the phone book is a great novel because it has a lot of characters.”

  I tried to explain to her how baseball is the metaphor for life, but she said life isn’t even a metaphor for life.

  “Snow is the metaphor for life,” Lydia said. “You fall, you freeze, you melt, you disappear.”

  I wouldn’t have bet on the snow-disappearing part. The days grew warmer, we never went below zero at night anymore, but the gray-as-far-as-the-eye-can-see deal seemed the same. Maurey told me spring was on the way, and I said, “How can you tell?”

  She said, “Open your eyes and look.”

  So I made an effort, I started paying attention to what I was looking at, and, sure enough, the never-ending drabness was moving. One day I couldn’t see the bottom of Soapley’s windows and the next day I could. A rake handle popped up next to the driveway. The highway seemed to widen an inch or so. The snow layer was contracting into itself.

  Back in late November, I stood on the back porch one night and wrote my name in the snow in pee—San. Ran out of power halfway through the m. In mid-April I went out on the porch to pick up the mountain of returnable Dr Pepper bottles we’d thrown out the back door all winter, and there it was on what yesterday had been virgin white—San.

  “Hey, Lydia.”

  Lydia wasn’t impressed. “If my proudest accomplishment of the year was misspelling my name in pee, I’d hang myself right now.”

  “You can’t write your name in the snow.”

  “
A fact that I thank God for each and every day.”

  I told Maurey I would give all my future prospects to see dirt.

  “What’s the big deal about dirt?” We were standing in front of the White Deck, trying to decide between going in or walking up to the Tastee Freeze. Neither one of us was hungry, so it didn’t much matter. It was one of those Sunday afternoons when nothing you do or don’t do much matters.

  “I was used to seeing the ground in Greensboro. By now all the dogwoods and pear trees and magnolias are blooming. The grass is green.”

  “You want grass or you want dirt?”

  “I don’t care so long as I touch something that isn’t snow.”

  Maurey seemed to be considering the situation as Ft. Worth and a couple of loggers came out of the White Deck. Ft. Worth faked a right hook in my direction and told me not to do anything he wouldn’t do. I said he’d do anything, which was the correct response. A conversation with Ft. Worth had all the spontaneity of calisthenics. Dot leaned over a booth next to the window and waved. She was gaining weight at the same rate as Maurey. To me—and to any of the group who knew what was what—Maurey was edging into obvious, although, so far anyway, no gossip had reached Dot, and Dot said that if she didn’t hear it, it wasn’t there.

  “I don’t see the big deal, but you want dirt, I’ll show you dirt,” Maurey said.

  “Hank says if we lose contact with the Mother Earth our souls will wither like the chokecherry in autumn.”

  “Hank talks that way because he thinks he has to. The man couldn’t survive without TV dinners.”

  Maurey led me over to the Forest Service headquarters, which had a big scenic deck on the back. You could see all the way to Yellowstone. We slid under the deck and onto real, honest-to-God dirt—or mud, depending on where you sat. I went into king-hell hog heaven—dug my fingernails into the cool earth, touched it with my cheek.

  Maurey sat with her legs out and her back leaning against a support beam. “There’ll be mud all over the valley in a few weeks. You better not embarrass me with this discovery-of-dirt stuff in the schoolyard.”