Skipped Parts

by Tim Sandlin

  ***

  There was a letter from Caspar in the box:

  Dear Samuel,

  We have before us the fiendishness of business competition and the World War, passion and wrongdoing, antagonism between classes and moral depravity within them, economic tyranny above and the slave spirit below.

  Prepare to take your rightful position. The Black Horse Troop awaits.

  Your Mentor,

  Caspar Callahan

  “What’s all this?” Maurey asked.

  “He steals quotes from books and we’re supposed to think it’s off-the-cuff wisdom. The Black Horse Troop is a bad sign, means Culver Military Academy.”

  “Economic tyranny above?”

  “That’s him if us slave spirits below get out of line.”

  “Is unwed pregnancy out of line?”

  That was the crucial question. “He didn’t like it when Lydia got knocked up.”

  “Do you think he knows about me and my baby?”

  I didn’t care to dwell on it. Of course Caspar knew. He knew all. And the lack of comment or action had been weird. Lydia and I could make future plans to our ears, but Caspar controlled the cash flow. Like God.

  “What will he do?” Maurey asked.

  “You want TV dinners for supper or pancakes?”

  “Pancakes.”

  ***

  Way middle of the night, like 3:30 a.m., Maurey shook me awake. “Farlow’s up against my bladder and I have to pee.”

  I hoped this wasn’t headed to another night on the floor. “So pee.”

  “Listen.”

  From the other side of the house came giggles, grunts, and sloshes. “Lydia and Hank in the tub?”

  Maurey nodded. “And it’s really squirrelly.”

  “What’s squirrelly? Lydia likes doing it in water.”

  “They have the moose in there with them.”

  I sat up in bed. “Les is in the tub?”

  Maurey nodded again, wide-eyed. I found her a quart mason jar to pee in, then we turned on the light and sat on the edge of the bed, imagining where a moose head fit into dicks and tunnels.

  The possibilities were endless.

  27

  Otis’s wink delighted Delores to no end. She couldn’t get over an ugly, three-legged dog who stared in her eyes and winked.

  “Ray used to wink just like that in high school,” she said. “Especially in Mrs. Hinchman’s class, he’d leer at me across the room all hour and when I finally looked at him Ray’d wink just like that dog. I thought it was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen. Only later I found out winking is the closest Ray ever comes to foreplay.”

  “You know why women fake orgasms?” Lydia asked.

  Soapley went somewhat embarrassed. He wasn’t used to our little gang. We only invited him because it was Maurey’s birthday and no one else we invited over could come on account of their mothers wouldn’t let them. The Callahan house had a reputation for evil.

  Soapley’s job was to help me cut wienie sticks out of willow fronds while Hank built the fire. Hank got fire duty because he was an Indian. What he did was spray a half-pint of lighter fluid on some kindling and say, “Blackfoot brave start-um heap big fire,” then he threw in a lit match.

  The birthday girl was cross. “I don’t give a hoot why women fake orgasms and I think wienies and marshmallows for breakfast is stupid.” Maurey sat on a pillow on the back stoop, big as a beached whale. We were down to the last week and a half and her sense of humor had failed.

  All Maurey’d done for days was piss and moan. “You did this to me, you horny little squirrel. I hope you never poke a girl again. If you ever go on a date the rest of your life, I’ll be there to tell the girl you can’t pull out before you squirt.”

  “I bet I could now.”

  “I’ll be dead before you get a chance to find out with me.”

  “Maurey, we’re partners.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Lydia leaned back in her lawn chair and blew Lark smoke in Hank’s direction. “Women fake orgasms because men fake foreplay.”

  Nobody laughed—which made me miss Dot. Dot would be rolling on the ground over a joke that bad. She always made a person feel appreciated.

  Soapley eyed the perfect point of his wienie stick and said, “What’s foreplay?”

  The birthday party–wienie roast had been Hank’s idea after he discovered I’d never cooked over a fire with sticks.

  “You never roasted marshmallows?”

  “Lydia thinks marshmallows are plebeian. I’ve never even been on a picnic.”

  Hank stared at Lydia. She did her shooshing-flies gesture. “Well, beat the crap out of me. I’m a terrible mother.”

  Nobody disagreed and a wienie roast was planned for Maurey’s big fourteenth.

  The guys cooked meat while the women sat in lawn chairs and told us we were doing it all wrong. Delores shook up a Dr Pepper and held her thumb over the end to spray my face. Hank said a cookout wasn’t American unless that happened. I don’t know, it all seemed ritualistic to me.

  “Why do women brag about faking orgasms?” Delores asked.

  I was watching Hank’s fingers, how slowly he moved them as he spooned relish and onions on his bun. “I do not understand women,” he said.

  Lydia was automatic. “So what else is new.”

  “What’s the purpose of faking an orgasm if you tell the man later that you faked an orgasm?”

  I looked at Maurey and smiled. She sent a cynical prissy smile back. She’d been talking death and discomfort ever since the funeral, to the point where I was ready to get this baby deal done.

  Delores talked with her mouth full of wienie. “Sometimes when I have a real orgasm I tell the guy I faked it so he won’t be so cocky. I hate a cocky guy.”

  Delores had gone king-hell ape on the getup—bright red boots, tight pants, and low-cut blouse deal that showed big air between her breasts, even redder scarf around her neck, red dangly earrings, and, to make herself a piece of art, she’d dyed her hair the color of a North Carolina State home-football-game jersey. I mean red. Soapley wouldn’t look at her. Every time she bent down to feed Otis a marshmallow, Soapley stared at the ground between his feet and talked irrigation. “Not enough water behind the dam. I’ll be locking headgates by next week.”

  Hank had amazing patience with marshmallows. His came out all golden, same tint as his skin. Mine caught fire. Maurey said she liked them black so I burned seven or eight and took them one at a time to her on the steps. She ate them off the end of my willow stick. Two bites—one for the outer charred stuff and one for the inner gooey stuff. She ate with her eyes closed.

  “My baby’s going to be raised on marshmallows,” Maurey said.

  Lydia lit a Lucky Strike off the butt of a Kool. Hot dogs and marshmallows were so far beneath her dignity nobody even bothered to ask if she wanted any. “I raised Sam on Dr Pepper.”

  Right after we sang “Happy Birthday” I got Delores back for the spray in the face. Lydia hadn’t had time to bake a cake, naturally, so we stuck a hurricane candle on a marshmallow and had Maurey blow it out.

  “Make a wish, honey,” Delores said.

  “I wish I’d have this baby today,” Maurey said, and blew.

  While Delores was bent forward toward the candle, I flipped an old gooey cooked marshmallow off the end of my stick into her cleavage. It stuck for a second before falling into the depths of red.

  Delores did a high wail and jumped me like a red tornado. I fell over backward; Otis went into a barking frenzy.

  Delores giggle-shouted, “Hank, get him.”

  I fought the pair of them, but Delores sitting on my stomach bent over my face was a fantasy come true of sorts anyhow, so I didn’t mind losing. Above my head, Hank knelt with his knees on my shoulders, which pin
ned my arms, and his hands holding down both ears. I got into some bucking action that basically amounted to a dry hump.

  Delores jumped up and down. “Hi, ho, Silver.”

  Lydia’s voice was bored. “Watch it, Delores.”

  Otis kept barking and Delores kept laughing. “Hold his nose, Hank. I want his mouth open.”

  I started to say something rude and she stuffed a marshmallow in my mouth, then another and another. Breathing got difficult until Hank let go of my nose, but by then I couldn’t close my mouth because of the marshmallows so Delores stuffed in a few more. I tried to bite her and she went up on her knees, then slammed down on my chest, which almost blew my face into an exploding pimple joke.

  “Ten’s the record,” Delores said. “How many more we got to go?”

  Hank’s voice came from above my head. “Four, but we might have to use his ears for the last two.”

  “Okay.” Delores was smooshing a marshmallow into my right ear when Otis suddenly stopped barking. Hank’s knees went off my shoulders. Delores kept cramming for a few seconds, then she quit too. I was shaking my head back and forth and laughing and trying to touch Delores’s magic spots, so it took awhile for the silence to sink in.

  Time kind of froze up—way too quiet for good-hearted rowdiness. I looked up at Delores’s lipstick-smeared face. She was turned, looking at something on the right. I moved my head and saw white wing-tips.

  No one in Wyoming would wear white wing-tips.

  “Get up, Samuel,” Caspar said.

  Delores moved off me. I looked over at Lydia who had gone pale. Maurey pulled herself to her feet. So did Hank. Everyone was standing except Lydia.

  Caspar repeated himself. “Get up, Samuel.”

  Same white suit, pencil moustache, ivory-colored hearing aid, yellow mum, and black-lined fingernails; he had the expression of a stern master addressing impertinent darkies. Or God.

  I stood, pulling marshmallows out of my mouth. They kept coming like the trick where a magician draws thirty feet of scarf out of his nose.

  Caspar held a navy blue jacket and pants on a hanger in his right hand. The jacket had fancy brocade and dark yellow ribbons; the pants had a dark gray stripe on the outside of each leg. Caspar carried a round hat with a bill under his left arm.

  “This is your Sunday uniform at Culver Military Academy. As soon as you clean out your ear, you will put it on.”

  Lydia said, “Daddy.”

  “Shut up, girl. We are going home now. We will place Samuel at Culver, then proceed to Greensboro.”

  I swallowed the last marshmallow. “I can’t leave, we’re having a baby.”

  Caspar drew up to his full, righteous five-foot-four as he studied Maurey on the steps. Then his gaze swept around at Hank and Delores, Soapley and Otis, finally Lydia and back to me. “You two have done enough here. We are leaving today.”

  “No.”

  “When you attain the age of eighteen and have a job and money, you can make your own decisions. Not before.”

  My eyes met Maurey’s. “Who will take care of my baby?”

  “I’m sure the young lady has a mother of her own.”

  Maurey spoke. “Mom’s in the nuthouse.”

  “Be that as it may, you have made your bed, you must lie in it. I will not have my grandson snared by a spider, which is what you are, young lady. And if you think you will ever see a penny of the Callahan fortune, you are sadly, sadly mistaken.”

  Lydia said, “Maurey is not a spider.”

  “I told you to be quiet.”

  She stood up. “I won’t. You can’t come in here and ruin everything. This is our home now. These people are our family.”

  Caspar pointed his finger at Lydia. “A floozy, a Kiowa, and a pregnant little girl—which member of your new family will pay next month’s rent.” He turned on Hank. “Can you afford to keep my daughter in gin?”

  Hank said, “Blackfoot.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “I am Blackfoot, not Kiowa.”

  “I understand you live in a one-room trailer. Do you think she will be happy there carrying your papooses?”

  Hank’s hands were fists at his sides. I thought he might hit Caspar and wondered what would happen then. After a minute of tense silence, Lydia said, “Daddy, you are such an asshole.”

  Caspar broke the stare-down with Hank and turned back on Lydia. “The day you pay your own way you can live anywhere in any disgusting fashion you see fit. Until that day, you do as I dictate.” His busy eyebrows swung to me. “Go inside and put on your uniform.”

  I didn’t move. There was no way I could leave Maurey and the baby now. Even if the baby didn’t exist, Lydia was right, this was our home. We fit in GroVont, I couldn’t go back to annual visits to the carbon paper plant.

  Caspar’s eyes almost softened. “Samuel, you have no choice. You cannot fight my will.”

  I said, “No.”

  “I’m doing this for you, Samuel. You can’t be a father at your age. You can’t even take care of yourself.”

  Caspar was right. Lydia and I had built this new life for ourselves. We’d discovered we were capable of mattering in a place, we had friends, but the whole deal was based on a check coming the first of every month. We had no control over ourselves after all.

  I folded the uniform over my left arm and held the hat in my right hand. Lydia wouldn’t look at me. Hank still stared at Caspar, Delores smiled weakly and I smiled back. As I passed Maurey on the steps, she said loud enough for everyone to hear, “Tell your grandfather to fuck off, Sam.”

  “I can’t.”

  I went through the kitchen with its sink full of dirty dishes and into the living room and stood under Les, looking up at his great nostrils. I could hear the toilet running. Lydia had told me over and over that life isn’t supposed to be fair, never to want anything and you’ll never be disappointed, but this was ridiculous. This was a gyp.

  Neatly, I set the uniform on the TV and the hat on the uniform, then I walked out the front door. The Tetons were pretty, glistening over there across the valley through air so clear the mountains appeared flat. My one-speed bicycle leaned against the front wall under Lydia’s bedroom window. I wheeled it past her Oldsmobile, Delores’s Chevy, Hank’s truck, and Caspar’s Continental with the North Carolina license plate. Then I hopped on and took off.

  28

  Wild strawberries grew in the shade by the creek, and fireweed blossomed purple on the hill. Juncos flitted through the willows next to the warm spring. I knew the names of things—some things anyway, the stuff Maurey had told me about. I liked knowing what I was looking at. A year ago I wouldn’t have seen the juncos, much less known what to call them.

  I leaned back with my ears under the warm water and listened to the gurgle of air bubbles entering the spring from the bottom mud. Air coming right out of the earth—it made an odd picture.

  The trouble was, I wasn’t emotionally old enough to deal with being ripped from my dreams. Maybe it was a breakthrough that I knew I wasn’t emotionally old enough. Other people who are immature are so immature they don’t know it. Lydia was emotionally younger than I was, but she’d been ripped so often by life, she’d probably accept losing me. Maybe that’s all maturity is—being ripped so often you don’t care anymore. Caspar was the emotionally oldest person I knew; I wondered how he dealt with losing Me Maw. Maybe jacking around surviving loved ones is a way of dealing.

  I’d come up the hill to think, but thinking wasn’t happening. The hot water was more soothing than plan-inspiring, but I guess I needed soothing more than I needed a plan. What I needed most was to be held by someone who loved me and told everything would be all right. Hot water is a weak substitute for love.

  Maurey wasn’t in love with me, not in the right way. If she loved me, we could fight Caspar. We could flee into t
he mountains and live like a Disney movie. We could go Romeo and Juliet and die.

  I closed my eyes and felt the sunshine on my face. Life was so pleasant at individual moments. Why couldn’t people cooperate with each other and give me what I wanted?

  First choice: Marry Maurey. Second choice: Stay in GroVont with Lydia and raise the baby with Maurey close by. Last resort: Take Maurey and the baby to North Carolina. Culver Military Academy was completely off the list. And leaving the valley before the baby was born was past unthinkable. If Maurey wouldn’t flee with me I’d flee by myself, at least until I attained parenthood. I could live on berries.

  When I sat up, water rolled off my hair and down my armpits. Two ravens flapped by, heading west. In Greensboro, I didn’t even know where west was. I liked it here, dammit. I’d never liked it anywhere else. I loved Maurey, I loved the baby, most of all I loved Lydia, and Culver meant losing her too. Who would take care of her? Who would fetch her 10:30 bottle?

  Maurey wobbled across the log with her arms out.

  “You’re going to fall and break your butt,” I said.

  “I could cross this creek blindfolded.”

  “With all that weight you’re worse than blindfolded.” I guess I’d known she would come.

  She stepped from the log onto the moss around the spring.

  “Your grandfather isn’t happy with that trick you pulled. He’s gone to Jackson to find a motel room.” Maurey peeled her shirt off over her head, then she reached both arms around her back to undo the bra that she needed now. Her breasts still weren’t big as Delores’s, but they were heavy and the nipples had spread into this way-wide target deal.

  I pushed the water surface with my palms, causing little waves to buckle across the spring. “I’ll never put on that uniform.”

  She had to lie down and arch to get out of her stretchy pants.

  “Yes, you will, Sam. You and Lydia are helpless and we all know it.”