Lydia

by Tim Sandlin

  “How come when he says ‘Frog,’ you jump?” Jimmy asked.

  “He’s my bud,” Shad said.

  “Nobody treats their bud like a slave.”

  “I owe him.”

  Jimmy spit in the horse trough. “If I owed a man as much as you must owe Bill, I’d shoot him in the back.”

  There must have been the temptation for Shadrach, and it says good of his character that he didn’t yield to it. Or he could of mounted his horse and rode. Gone to Texas or Bolivia or some such. But Shad stayed put, and Bill used him for all he was worth.

  Whatever was the reason Shad started sleeping in the sage, it soon saved my neck. For life was set to change yet again. Like the earthquake and boiler explosion, this change came while I was abed, unaware that when I awoke, a new chapter would be begun. I was dreaming about Mama and her fiddle. In my dream, she played a good deal better than she did in real life, but she still wasn’t smiling—even a dream couldn’t bring that—when someone tapped my foot, and I woke up to see Shadrach kneeling next to my bunk.

  He whispered, “The Millers are out there.”

  I came to right quick.

  “Ephir’s covering the front from the barn,” Shad said, “and Roy has the back door from them bushes by the outhouse. They can’t neither one see that window.” He pointed to a four-pane window on the north wall. “Gather up and meet me at the creek.”

  Then he was off to awaken Bill. I didn’t have any idea what to do except what Shad said. I didn’t even own a pistol. Bill and Shadrach did, in case they came upon a cow with broke legs, but I didn’t, ’cause I was nothing but common labor. I figured Bill would want to fight it out, but from the sound of whispers coming from his side of the room, he didn’t put up much of an argument to that effect. Bill never was one for shooting at men who could shoot back. Shad disappeared out the window as I dressed in the dark. I dug my saddlebags from under the cot and packed what few belongings I had, including a book by Rudyard Kipling, the red harmonica I couldn’t play, and a brush set sent to me by Mrs. Cox.

  Boots in one hand and saddlebags in the other, I eased out the window ahead of Bill and dropped to the earth. As I crouched along the wall there, expecting a bullet at any moment, I couldn’t help but think of the life I might have lived if only I hadn’t killed anybody and offended their kinfolk. I thought about Delphi, Greece, which is a place I always wanted to go but never did, not yet, anyway, and Delaware. And I thought about Agatha’s freckles, how sweet they made her aspect.

  Of course I didn’t get shot, or I wouldn’t be rotting in a Home for the Elderly, but thinking I might helped me to realize that Agatha mattered and crawling around in the mud at night with her brother didn’t. I made a deal with God that if he would let me survive till morning, I would ride to Billings and beg Agatha’s forgiveness for Swamp Fox.

  We crept this way and that, using whatever cover there was to avoid the Millers. Ephir wasn’t much of a problem, unless he moved, but there was a good thirty feet where being discovered by Roy was a definite possibility. A dog barked once, and I thought I heard movement from over there by the outhouse, but I was afraid to look. We snuck around back of the Crombie main house and dropped down to the meadow where Shad waited with the horses. He’d saddled mine and Bill’s, but Shad himself planned to go bareback. We led the horses downstream a quarter mile, not saying a word. Along about first light, a pair of shots rang from back at the ranch, and we mounted quick and took off. To this day, I am unaware as to whether our predicament caused the death of innocent cowboys. I was always afraid to find out.

  ***

  Shadrach led us along an animal trail down into the Big Horn Canyon, across the river, and back up the other side. I don’t think anyone not raised there could have made it—at least not in high water. Somewhere near the state line, we stopped to let the horses blow while Shad climbed a rock to check our back trail for Millers. I’d been thinking about this deal I struck with God, and I decided God wanted out. My purpose at the time was to make Agatha happy, not hurt her, and telling her about Swamp Fox was not the way to make her happy. There didn’t seem to be any call to cause my little flower pain without reason. Add to that, Agatha was not a girl to forgive, much less forget. Telling her about the whore would be tantamount to kissing my future with her good-bye, not to mention them pinking shears, which as I said earlier, I did not take as a bluff.

  No, God wanted me to keep my mouth shut. The deal may have been submitted by me, but I was certain God rejected the proposal. Which left the question of what I was planning to do instead.

  Shad came off the rock and said, “Nobody’s behind us. At least, nobody in a hurry.”

  “They’re probably scared to follow,” Bill said.

  I didn’t say squat to that. Those Millers weren’t scared of us, and if they weren’t following now, they soon would be.

  “Where we going from here?” Shad asked.

  I said, “France.”

  The both of them looked at me like I’d swallowed cactus buttons. I said, “The Millers won’t follow us into a war.”

  “That’s using your brain,” Bill said. “We’ll go to Canada and sign up and be on the battlefield in no time flat.”

  A battlefield in France didn’t sound a whole bunch safer than getting chased all over the West by Millers, but anything beat waiting around to get shot. In France, at least we wouldn’t have to wait.

  “How far away is France?” Shad asked.

  I said, “’Bout halfway between Chicago and China. You don’t have to go if you’d rather not.”

  “Like hell,” Bill said. “Shad goes where I tell him.”

  I said, “Not this time. Going to war has to be done of free will.”

  Shad looked up canyon, where an osprey was hovering over the river, waiting for fish to surface. A squirrel took the opportunity to chew us out. The Millers weren’t after Shad, not that we knew of, anyway. He could of pulled out right then and gone about his business.

  “Who would we be fighting?” he asked.

  I looked to Bill for an answer. He’d read up on it more than me. He said, “Germans, and Turks. Maybe Bulgarians.”

  Shad mounted his horse and looked down on us. He said, “I got nothing better to do.”

  ***

  I got a room in the Cattle Baron Hotel, which was the name of the old Shamrock after it was rebuilt. They offered me the very room we were in when Mama was killed and Dad ruined, but I said No. I had no interest in that sort of thing. We were only staying in Billings the one night, to sell the horses and make our farewells to the Coxes. The next morning we planned to board a sleeper for Williston, North Dakota, at which point we could catch another train to Calgary, where most of the Montana boys went to sign up. Bill told me there was a whole troop of us—Americans in Canadian uniforms. He said after the war the Americans who stayed home would be ashamed that we protected them from the Kaiser while they was too weak chinned to protect themselves. I think most of the Montana boys just wanted to fight; they weren’t particular who they fought against. Or like us, they was running from a fight somewheres else.

  Me and Agatha took our supper in the hotel dining room. She wore a blue dress with a pattern of white clover on it. Her golden hair was pulled back in a tortoise-shell clasp. She was so beautiful I couldn’t pay attention to my beefsteak and potatoes, and afterward I had no recollection of the taste. We walked up Twenty-eighth past the Polytechnic to the Great Northern tracks and back. We walked by my old shack, which had been rebuilt with railroad ties and packing crates and was housing a family of boys from Norway.

  Agatha’s emotions wavered from loving to angry to sad and back again.

  “I wouldn’t have picked you if I’d known you are so inconsistent,” she said.

  I said, “You can choose somebody else if I’ve disappointed you.” I felt I had to say that to be honorable, but I su
rely hoped she wouldn’t take me up on the offer. I was straight crazy about the girl and had no desire to lose her.

  “Maybe we should get married tonight,” she said. “If you are set on getting killed, we can at least say were married first.”

  Why didn’t I marry Agatha Ann that night? We could of run off to Huntley and woke up a judge and forced him to marry us, but we never did. Near as I can see it, the long and short is neither of us had the impetus needed to commit such a rash act. Her father would have thrown a hissy fit. I might be dead soon, and she would be looked on by other men as tainted goods. I don’t know. There were lots of excuses, but not a good reason. If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never know for sure why we didn’t or if it would have made a difference if we had.

  Instead we ended up back at my room in the hotel. Agatha laid on the bed and cried a little, not much, and I laid beside her to give comfort. I could of took her that night; she wanted me to, I know, and some days I regret not doing so. Other days I know I would have regretted it if I had. There’s situations you find yourself in where you know damn well you’re going to live to regret whatever you do.

  ***

  We lay on the bed all night, embracing, not sleeping, not talking. We each felt what the other was feeling till the sadness grew so thick if the night had lasted another hour, I think we’d of both stopped movement forever. The next morning we drank coffee but didn’t eat breakfast. She walked to the depot with me, where we met Bill and Shad and Mr. and Mrs. Cox. Mr. Cox’s eyes went funny when he saw us together, hand in hand, but he didn’t ask questions. Maybe those came later. Shad was wearing a new shirt. Bill had his boots shined so they glittered when he stepped up into the train. Mrs. Cox cried, but Agatha did not. She kissed me and walked off before the train pulled out. Then the good-bye was over. We were on a train heading toward a war.

  12

  Immediately after Eden Rae rejected her child, Roger Pierce took the Madonnaville van without my permission. He drove up the GroVont Highway, past the Dairy Queen and the town triangle, and on to Lydia’s house. The house where I spent the impressionable years from thirteen to seventeen. The house where Maurey Pierce and I practiced our rites of passage. He parked on the front yard, clomped up the steps, and knocked on the door.

  No answer.

  He knocked again, and as people will, he looked up and down the street for clues. Lydia’s antique BMW was nowhere in sight, which meant she had probably driven off in spite of legal ramifications. The catty-corner neighbor’s vertical blinds twitched. Lydia claimed an agoraphobic peeping Tom lived over there, glued to her binoculars and police band radio. According to Lydia, the woman no one ever saw knew more of what happened in GroVont than the postmaster. Roger waved to the blinds, then he turned and opened the door. GroVont is a modern Western town. That means people lock cars and trucks, but not houses.

  Roger called, “Anyone home?”

  “I’m in the kitchen.” It was Shannon, not Lydia. Roger started back out in hopes she hadn’t recognized the voice. But then he saw the flash of blue terry-cloth bathrobe crossing left to right in the gap of a half-open kitchen door. He caught a glimpse of auburn hair hanging down in a loose ponytail, and his feet stopped functioning.

  Shannon said, “What?”

  “I’m looking for Mrs. Callahan.”

  “Gilia’s up at Madonnaville, far as I know.”

  “The other Mrs. Callahan. Sam’s mom.”

  The kitchen door opened farther, and Shannon appeared, rubber spatula in one hand, coffee mug in the other. The mug had an artist’s rendition of Funshine the Care Bear on the side. A spot of whole-wheat flour dusted Shannon’s right ear, above the dangling turquoise earring.

  “I never think of Grandma when people say Mrs. Callahan,” Shannon said. “I guess the fear of Lydia’s wrath has me by the short and curlies.”

  Roger looked quickly at the pine flooring in the living room, trying his best not to imagine Shannon’s short and curlies.

  “I’m making pecan pancakes,” Shannon said. “There’s plenty enough for two.”

  “I’d better go find Lydia.”

  “Don’t make me eat them all. I’ll gain five pounds and wind up blaming you. We wouldn’t want that.”

  Roger remembered he hadn’t eaten yet today and he was starving. “We wouldn’t want that,” he repeated, then he mentally kicked himself in the butt for sounding like a moron. He tried to come up with something pithy or at least intelligent to say. He said, “No, we wouldn’t. Or I wouldn’t. Nobody would. I mean, five pounds wouldn’t change you any, so probably you’re the one who would. Wouldn’t.”

  Shannon nodded, looking at him, processing the rap. She said, “You sound like a man could use coffee.”

  Roger liked it that she had called him a man. It was a positive start.

  ***

  Roger sat at the breakfast nook, cradling coffee and watching Shannon move to the stove, to the refrigerator, to the sink full of dirty dishes. Above the sink, legal pad–colored sunlight swept through the curtainless window and flowed across the kitchen to create tiny explosions in Shannon’s hair. Roger pretended he could smell the auburn sparkles. In times of spiritual stress, Callahan women may put on weight, but they never fall so low as to be seen with dirty hair.

  Shannon was rattling. “Lydia said I can live with her until I collect my wits, which got scattered all to hell and back down in Carolina. In Greensboro, my loose strings got tied up all at once, so there was no call to stay put. No job, no boyfriend—although those were intertwined. Somewhat.”

  She turned toward Roger and did this thing with her eyebrows where they draw down over the lids, as if calling her own bluff. Roger had seen the same look on Maurey.

  “The strings didn’t tie up so much as they got snipped. All of a sudden there was no reason to get out of bed. I’m the sort of person who if there’s no reason to get up, I won’t. I’m not that enthusiastic about shopping.”

  Roger was willing to say whatever it took to keep her talking. “Do you have a reason to get up here?”

  Shannon balanced six pecan pancakes on a spatula. “Lydia kicks my butt out of bed. She forces me to brush my teeth at sunrise, because in prison they make the inmates rise and shine at something like 6:30, and she hasn’t gotten out of the habit. From what Dad says, before she went to the pen Lydia never rolled out of the sack in her life earlier than she had to pee.”

  When Shannon brought the pancakes to Roger, she leaned toward his plate, and her bathrobe slipped open. Roger saw cleavage. Just the smallest of swells, like an ocean wave on a nice day. His girls had always been in late-stage pregnancy, which meant Roger was accustomed to swollen breasts laced by blue veins and mauve splotches. He’d never seen a normal breast with smooth skin tone. Roger sat stunned.

  “You mind taking off the handkerchief thing while we eat.”

  Roger touched the tie-dye bandanna. He’d had it on so long he usually forgot it was there. “Sure.” He took it off and, leaning forward, stuffed it in his back pocket.

  “I’d rather look at you than your hippie colors.” Shannon two-finger nudged the plate toward Roger. “Eat ’em up, Tiger.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Dig in.”

  Roger pushed his fork through a stack of pecan chunks floating in sourdough. “Why call me Tiger?”

  Shannon laughed as she turned to her plate, which held the same number of cakes as Roger’s. “It’s a Southernism. I fall back on the Southern belle deal when I’m not in the South. I would never call a boy Tiger in Carolina.”

  Inwardly, Roger groaned. He’d gone from man to boy in her eyes in less than a minute. “I don’t mind. It’s okay, only nobody ever called me Tiger before, to my face. I thought maybe you’d heard something I hadn’t.”

  The butter was real, from a stick, as opposed to the tub of yellow gunk they had at the Home t
hat was supposed to be good for your heart. Shannon seemed to have a system for slathering that involved measuring out the same-sized pat between each two cakes.

  She said, “In Greensboro Day School, kids’ nicknames were the opposite of who they were. The star halfback was called Sleepy. The prom queen was Beer Bottle Betty.”

  “So Tiger is?”

  Shannon glanced from her melting butter to Roger. “I couldn’t very well call you pussycat.”

  He chewed and swallowed, thinking this over. “So you see me as a pussycat?”

  Shannon administered syrup. “You’re sweet.”

  Roger thought, I’m dead. I wish I was dead. I wish I was in a coma. I should never have started talking.

  What he said was, “The only nickname I ever had was Auburn used to call me shit-for-balls.”

  Shannon cocked her head in the smallest of tilts. “I don’t see the metaphor.”

  “He didn’t mean it as a metaphor.”

  When Shannon bit off her first piece, she closed her eyes. Roger stared, waiting for her to swallow so he could see the movement in her throat.

  It was worth the wait. “I can’t believe that big ox is my half brother,” Shannon said. “Auburn has no imagination. No sense of humor. I’ll bet a hundred dollars he grows up to be a Republican.”

  Shannon opened her eyes and caught Roger staring at her. They sank into an eye lock.

  “You’re a half brother too, in some way.”

  “Your mother sort of adopted me.”

  “Sort of?”

  “It’s more spiritual than legal.”

  Shannon nodded and looked down at her cakes to cut another bite. “Then we aren’t really half brother and sister, except by spiritual adoption.”

  “I guess that sums it up.”

  She raised her eyes again and smiled. “I’m glad.”