by Tim Sandlin
“How do you address the girls out at the sanitarium, or whatever Sam is calling it this week?”
“Generally, I say You.”
“You?”
“‘You need anything from town?’ ‘How are you this fine day?’ We don’t get personal enough for names.”
Lydia kind of smirked. Roger had a flash that she and everyone in Wyoming knew the story.
“No doubt that causes tingles to run up and down their spines. ‘Hey, you!’ Okay, other boys your age—what do they call girls?”
Roger’s mind went back to high school. It was the year before last, but it felt like nostalgia. “They call the girls Babe.”
“That’s fine then. Call me Babe.”
Roger tried to hide the recoil in his eyes, but he wasn’t quick enough.
Her voice was quieter than before, more menacing. “I’m too old to be a babe?”
“No, ma’am.” Mistake. “I mean, you’re a fox, for your age. But I never called anyone Babe. That was the other guys. I thought the word wasn’t polite.”
“What did you call your female friends?”
“I didn’t have female friends.”
“Are you trying to piss me off?”
He shook his head No. It seemed like the time not to say anything aloud.
“What did you call your male friends?”
He didn’t have many of those either, but Roger knew better than to say so. He thought about what Auburn’s gang of jocks called each other. “Last names. Most guys used last names.”
“Thusly, you would call me Callahan.”
“I guess so. Thusly.”
“Try it.”
“Yo, Callahan.”
“Use it in a sentence.”
“Hey, Callahan, you ready to ride or what?”
“Yes, I am.” Lydia picked up her purse and waited for him to gather the taping equipment. “See how easy it is when you do things right?”
***
She stood by the passenger door while he set the equipment in the backseat. Roger got in, then got back out and walked around to open Lydia’s door.
She said, “Thank you,” and slid into the car.
Roger had trouble finding reverse, but Lydia didn’t comment. She sat quietly while he ground the gears. She waited until they were on the GroVont Road before starting the conversation.
“Has my son been filling you with gobbledygook about the purpose of life?”
He sneaked a peek at her face; she was wearing Vuarnet sunglasses. “Now and then. It’s something he likes to talk about.”
“Talking about the purpose of life is the single biggest waste of time in human society. It’s worse than television.”
“I suppose so.”
“I know so. I’d rather Sam watch the Miss America Pageant than talk about the purpose of life.”
Roger wasn’t sure what they were discussing. “Maurey and Pud have a satellite dish, but Gilia won’t allow TV at the Home.”
“You call your parents Maurey and Pud?”
“They’ve only been my parents since I was thirteen or so. I never got used to saying Mom and Pop.”
Lydia sat in silence until he turned onto the South Highway and headed toward Jackson. As they passed the elk refuge, a small group of silver males moved toward the river. The leader had velvet stumps growing to replace last year’s horns.
“What does Sam claim is the purpose of life?”
“It changes. Last week he said life is a Saturday-morning cartoon meant to entertain a God who tends to sleep late.” He glanced over at the sunglasses. There was no reaction from the visible parts of her face. “I think what he meant was God generally misses the show, but we have to put it on anyway.”
Lydia said, “Have you ever wondered who you are?”
Roger took that four different ways, then gave it up. “What?”
“Who your other parents are? The ones before Maurey and Pud, before you came to Wyoming?”
Roger knew this wasn’t a woman he could lie to like a pregnant teenager. “Sure, I wonder.”
“If I had the power to tell you, would you want to hear, even if it isn’t pretty?”
“I always figured it couldn’t be pretty.”
“Because you were struck dumb when you arrived at the ranch?”
“Because I wasn’t raised with my normal family.” He turned right again, toward Haven House. “You know who I am?”
“I have an idea. Of course, I can’t say for certain; it’s more a theory than an actual fact, but the important thing here isn’t who you are and where you come from.”
“It’s not?”
“It’s do you want to know the truth.”
He stopped the BMW between the fake Greek columns that framed the Haven House door. “Do you?” Lydia asked.
Roger stared at his hands on the steering wheel. She probably didn’t know. Hell, she’d been underground or in prison for years, how could she know something Maurey and Pud didn’t?
“I’ll think about it.”
“You do that. Go for a drive, or whatever it is you do when you think, then pick me up back here in two hours.”
He got out and opened Lydia’s car door. She looped her purse under her left arm and gathered the taping equipment. He opened the Haven House door and waited while she walked in, then he closed the door behind her. Roger got back into the BMW and started the engine, but he didn’t drive away. For a moment, he was sorry he had started talking again.
Mary Beth spent the next week in a trance of waiting. Whenever she dropped Jazmine or Meadow off at day care, she hugged them to her chest and said good-bye as if this was the last time. She wrote Lonnie a nine-page letter on pink paper, then hid it in her hope chest where he would look only after she was gone. She glided through her days, thinking, I may never see this Payless shoe store again. She stopped flossing. There didn’t seem to be any point.
The other boot fell Tuesday morning. Mary Beth slipped out of bed at five thirty and went downstairs to watch her exercise class on TV. After seeing Leroy, she’d stopped actually exercising with the sparkly PBS babes who bounced on rubber mats on a beach in Hawaii, or maybe Malibu, but Mary Beth still watched. She liked being up before everyone else. It was the one time of day no one wanted a piece of her.
She flipped on the TV and padded barefoot into the kitchen for her carrot-and-artichoke-heart energy soda, and at the kitchen table sat Leroy—no shirt, no shoes, baggy canvas shorts held up by clothesline cord—his cracked hands folded around a mug of coffee.
They stared at each other. Mary Beth saw Leroy’d lost his teeth. His face collapsed in on itself. He had that homeless tan so different from the tan you get at a tanning salon or a beach or even working outdoors. His skin shone like wet denim.
She said, “You better hope Lonnie doesn’t wake up and come down here.”
Leroy cocked his head, as if listening. The aerobics teacher chirped from the living room. “Tuck in your tailbone, align those shoulders, and kick on the four count—left foot first!” Carly Simon burst forth, singing a song about anticipation.
“You’re the one better hope Lonnie doesn’t wake up and come down here,” Leroy said. Mary Beth shuddered. Leroy said, “Have some coffee.” It wasn’t a question.
Mary Beth poured herself a cup from the Mr. Coffee. Leroy’d made it stronger than she liked. She looked into the refrigerator for an open can of condensed milk, but when she poured the milk into her coffee, her hand shook. She looked up to see if Leroy noticed.
He said, “Sit here.” He patted the chair beside his. Leroy had moved Meadow’s booster seat to the floor.
Mary Beth looked from Leroy to the lime green refrigerator, where the girls’ Crayola drawings of stick people and dragons were held on by magnets shaped like Navajo talismen. She wondered what Meadow a
nd Jazmine would grow up to be like without her. Lonnie ate beef and didn’t buy into crystal therapy. She didn’t doubt for a moment that he would sell her collection of love poems.
“Critter, sit,” Leroy said.
Mary Beth sat. “No one’s called me Critter since I left Oklahoma,” she said.
Leroy glared at her. He was too close. His fish-gone-bad breath took the place of space around her. His black-rimmed fingernails looked magnified.
“Where’s the boy?” he said.
Mary Beth blinked. It wasn’t what she’d expected. “I’m afraid I don’t follow you,” she said.
“You’re not as stupid as you pretend to be,” Leroy said.
“Do you mean that in a good way?”
“Where’s my boy?”
There was some chance Mary Beth might swoon from the fumes. She wondered if that would be a negative. He might carry her off before Lonnie or the girls came down. She’d given up on herself. All she could do now was protect her family.
“Norwood and Timmy said they brought him to you,” Leroy said. “Those two jizz-for-brains don’t have the balls to lie to me.”
“Are you talking about the little boy we kidnapped?”
Leroy backhanded Mary Beth, knocking her to the floor, against the dish-machine vent. “My boy. The boy taken from me by his cunt of a mother.”
Mary Beth flattened her palms against the linoleum and looked up at Leroy. His eyes had that stallion-in-a-burning-barn wildness she remembered from the old days, right before he was set to explode on someone. She knew better than to argue with Leroy about the past, but she’d been there when he grabbed the boy. She drove the van. It was the one experience from the bad years that still gave her night sweats. That day was the reason she and Lonnie slept in the same room as the girls.
“Get off the floor,” Leroy said. “We know each other too well for you to play victim.”
Mary Beth made it to her feet, slowly, but she didn’t move any closer to Leroy.
He stared into his coffee mug. Then he cleared his throat with a sound that came out something like a sigh. “No more games, Critter. Where’s the boy?”
She brought her hands together, intertwining the fingers, chest level. “He’s not here.”
“I can see that. I’m not an idiot.” Leroy’s eyes violated her. “Did you raise him up?”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t. I didn’t have any money.”
“Who had him then?”
Mary Beth didn’t answer.
“I’ll make this easy for you. You can give up the boy, or you can give up those pretty little girls.”
“You wouldn’t hurt my daughters?”
Leroy waited while Mary Beth supplied the answer to her question.
“I thought you were here to claim me,” she said.
Leroy snorted. “Look at yourself. You’re elderly. I got no interest in you.”
The relief made Mary Beth dizzy, but it was followed by a hint of a letdown. All these years, she’d thought he would return like a vengeful demon to carry her away—that, or kill her—when the truth was, her existence didn’t matter.
“You want me to go upstairs?” he said.
“I took the boy to Wyoming.”
“Where in Wyoming?”
“I heard about a woman with a ranch where people could go when they were in trouble. I drove the boy up there and left him. That was ten years ago.”
Leroy leaned down, snaked his hand up the right leg of his canvas shorts, and scratched his scrotum. It was a purely natural act. He said, “Address.”
Mary Beth said, “I don’t understand you.”
“Give me the damn address.”
She dropped her hands. “How’m I supposed to remember that, after all this time?”
Leroy pulled his hand out of his shorts. He swiveled in the chair to face her directly. “I’m losing patience here, Critter. You don’t want me to lose patience.”
“The address was a box number in GroVont, Wyoming. I would need time to look for it, but the place where I left him is up the river there a few miles. The TM Ranch. You should be able to find it.”
“You best pray I do.” Leroy drained his coffee, tipping the cup to get every drop. His Adam’s apple rose and fell like a rat in a snake.
Mary Beth watched in wonder that she could have ever been romantically involved with this carnivore. He wasn’t even human. Had he been human when they met? It didn’t seem possible. She was seventeen then, a Georgia runaway in a halter top, looking for shelter disguised as adventure. Kids that age often mistake meanness for charisma. Mary Beth swore her girls would never grow up to be like her, even if she had to chain them to their beds.
“The boy is a grown-up by now,” Mary Beth said. “What’re you going to do when you find him?”
“Nature’s balance is undone because that woman spoiled my peace of mind. She owed me a life, and killing herself moved the debt to the boy.”
“But that child is innocent. He never did a thing to you.”
Leroy stood quickly. Mary Beth winced. He said, “I aim to kill the bastard.”
Mary Beth’s breath caught in her chest. “Why would you do that?”
Leroy’s eyes did the crazy snap thing. He appeared to be grinding his gums. “Earth cannot continue spinning properly until I’ve hurt that dirty slit more than I did when we took the boy. I don’t care if she is past the grave.”
“You can’t hurt a person more than what we did,” Mary Beth said.
Leroy smiled. Without teeth, it came off as a grotesque mockery of a smile. He said, “Watch me.”
7
Dad sent a telegram to Granddad Wiggins back in Dover, but we never heard nothing from that side of the family. I guess they forgot Mom soon as she left Delaware. There wasn’t any point in going anywheres else, so Dad bought us a thirty-dollar shack back of the train depot, and we moved on in. On account of the explosion, there was a stiff competition amongst the Lutherans, the Congregationalists, and the Presbyterians for who could best take care of us. Believe me when I tell you this—Congregationalist women cook circles around Lutherans. Lutherans are fine with greens, but they fry the hell out of everything else. The Presbyterian folks give us a wooden table with legs that didn’t set proper and one chair but not two. They were fixing to come across with a second chair, only Dad nodded off while cutting the pastor’s hair and sliced his neck and it became apparent to one and all that Dad was an addict. After that, the Christian element pretty much wrote us off. Dad picked up some work dipping outhouses, but he didn’t do no real labor the rest of his life.
I could have pulled us through the summer, but come winter, I imagine Dad and me would have starved if Mr. Cox hadn’t taken an active interest in my welfare. He brought us flour and side meat to get by, then, soon as my leg healed, he hired me to clean up his various establishments, including the bank and the Bluebeard Cafe. He gave me his son’s cast-off clothing and a red harmonica I still have. Nobody said more about me and school. My formal education came to a close at thirteen.
I know you may wonder why Mr. Cox showed such kindness as to give me clothes and a job when there was plenty of others equally poor as myself. I have had a long while to think about this, and I have come up with superstition as the answer. Mr. Cox was a forward-looking man with no fondness for the nineteenth century–folks in those days didn’t think the past was superior to the future. That’s a new thing—yet he played poker two nights a week, and thusly he had become deeply superstitious. I think he saw me flying through the air and landing smack on his porch as a sign. Mr. Cox viewed his role as that of dynasty patriarch; his son wasn’t living up to expectations, then I dropped from the heavens into his lap. I was the draw he got to fill an inside straight. So to speak.
In later years, Bill claimed Mr. Cox took me as the cheapest labor to be fo
und and took advantage, but I pointed out his acts of charity began even before I could be of any use to him—such as the Fourth of July. Fourth of July I’d only been without crutches a week and still couldn’t walk any distance, and Dad was sick like usual, so the Coxes came around and gave me a ride to the carnival grounds in Mr. Cox’s new Maxwell. On account of the picnic food, I had to ride on this platform strapped off the back end, but that was okay. I felt good anyway.
Fourth of July was the biggest of holidays back then in Montana. All others came in the cold part of the year, when about the best you could hope for was a dance. Fourth of July was an all-day outdoor event with potato-sack and three-legged races, a rodeo, and a baseball game. Carnies set up booths where you could throw hoops at milk bottles or shoot little targets with a .30-.30 that had a crooked barrel. There was a booth where men threw balls at a bull’s-eye, and if they hit it, this mechanical chair dumped a fancy woman backwards off her perch far enough so if you looked quick, you got a peek at her drawers. Imagine now-days a gang of men spending their money and effort to glimpse a woman’s undergarments.
We ate dinner under a pretty little grove of cottonwoods, and there was hot dogs, fried chicken, ham hock, cold potatoes and onions, lemonade, and chocolate cake. Afterward, Mr. Cox treated me and Agatha to blue cotton candy. I got sick and haven’t eaten nothing blue ever since.
***
Just after dark, I had to see a man about a dog. I did my privy business and was coming back to the tree where Mrs. Cox had a quilt spread, walking along the row between the booths there, when the first firework exploded smack in the sky over my head. Orange spires shot off every which way like a dandelion gone to seed in the wind, then at the tip end of each spire a white flash popped. I stopped dead in my tracks to look up at the effect, and somebody walked into my backside, knocking me forward and sending a pain up my bad leg.
A voice yelled, “Look out, you stupid oaf!”
I turned to face a cowboy, not much older than me, in one of them little Butch Cassidy hats and Spanish spurs. He had black, water-slicked hair and a scrawny mustache no thicker than his eyebrows. I hadn’t been in a fight since Mama died and my leg broke, and I guess I was spoiling for one. Whatever caused my hackle to rise, I took one look at the cowboy and decided to knock his block off.
