by Tim Sandlin
We wandered quietly, with Evangeline’s fingers touching my arm, along a path we preferred between the hot pots and pools. As if a sign, over in the middle distance a geyser erupted to a height of ten feet or more. You could glimpse the water column when the wind blew the steam aside, like watching a beautiful sight through fluttering curtains.
“You remember what Mr. Cox said after supper,” Evangeline began.
Bill said a lot, but I didn’t ask what, on account of he only said the one thing that wounded.
“Yes, I do.”
She went on a few steps by my side. Have I ever told you of Evangeline’s physical carriage? She moved like a trained dancer. Even though she was inches shorter than me, she didn’t seem so when we walked.
“Would you rather become a father or remain as we have been?”
My stomach gave a flop. My knees buckled, and if she hadn’t been steadying my arm, I might have staggered.
“Are we discussing the planning stage or the done deal?” I asked.
“Would it matter?”
“I suppose not.” It’s funny how you can crave a thing you never even knew you wanted. At that moment, I realized I’d been wanting a child—boy or girl—for many years, at least since those nights in the trenches when I felt without connection.
“I’ve dreamed of someday being someone’s father. I lost my own.” In my mind, I saw Dad in San Francisco, the day he carried me on his shoulders while we watched the Chinese funeral. “I have resolved to do a better job of parenthood than he did.”
Evangeline continued the walk. From the relaxed musculature of her face, I could see relief. Whenever a woman breaks news of this sort, she can never assume how the man will take it.
Evangeline said, “The time has arrived for you to practice your resolution.”
We stopped, intertwined hands, and turned to gaze at one another. I knew right there on the spot that no matter how long I stayed alive, or what became of me, things would never get better than now.
I needed confirmation. “Then, it is true?”
Evangeline smiled and nodded. “Have I made you happy?”
I looked into her eyes and felt her skin against my hand. This woman was all I ever wanted and more than I deserved.
I said, “I am happy. There is no doubt.”
***
Every joke has its punch line, and I got mine.
The glee I felt over impending parenthood was impossible to suppress. The next morning, up at headquarters, Snuffy saw it all over my countenance.
“Who bit you in the butt?” he asked.
I beamed. That’s what I did. “What do you mean?”
We were walking from the motorcycle barn over to the dining hall at the Mammoth Hotel. It’s a short stroll across cut grass we walked most days I was posted at headquarters.
“You look like you swallowed a toad.”
The sky was a brilliant blue, the pine needles a rich green. Elk scat steamed. It would be hard to imagine a day more deeply itself.
I couldn’t keep the news to myself. “My bride is with child.”
He kind of chuckled and cut his eyes my way. “And you no doubt think this is a positive development.” Snuffy had seven offspring himself—five before the war and two after. He always said he joined up as an excuse to get out of the house.
“I do indeed,” I said.
“Well, to each his own.”
Inside, we ran into Bill and Shad hunched over coffee and beefsteak. Bill was dressed in his buckskin outfit, which had gone out of fashion when Wild Bill Hickok was gunned down in 1876. You don’t see no one but drug pushers and lawyers dressed like that nowdays. He’d grown the worm mustache into a looper since we last met, and I couldn’t help but count more elk ivories on that necklace of his. Oldest friend or not, if I caught the son of a bitch wasting an elk for two teeth, I would throw his tail into a small room with no windows.
Shad nodded in my direction. He ate steak with a toothpick lodged in the corner of his mouth. I’m not sure how—or why—he did that.
Bill said, “What’s with him?” meaning me. That’s how visually excited I was. Anybody in the world who saw me that day would have immediately known I was walking on air.
Snuffy grinned real big. He’d gotten to know Shad and Bill since the day Shad brought my Harley into the barn. He considered them funny folks.
“His wife has a bun in the oven.” Snuffy chortled. That’s the proper word for what he did—chortled.
Shad was okay with it. “Congratulations,” he said. “There but for the grace of God, go I.” Pregnancy brings out the card in even the most taciturn of men. Something about admitting you did what had to be done to make a woman that way and now you’re facing the consequences strikes the male gender as hilarious.
But Bill frowned. I could sense he didn’t like being proved wrong about the unloaded-gun crack. He didn’t so much as look my way while Snuffy and I proceeded across the dining hall over to our usual table.
I ordered a Salisbury steak that was tough as a baseball mitt and coffee, and as I sawed away on the meat, I watched Bill stew. He was working out a method to get back at me. I could see it plain as the cloud on his face. I regretted telling Snuffy. I regretted us coming to dinner. I regretted me coming to park headquarters. I should of stayed at the cabin and been with Evangeline. We could have locked the door, pulled the curtains, and played cards. She enjoyed a game called hearts.
When they rose to leave, Bill tossed money on the table, then he walked to the counter and dug a toothpick out of the dish there. Shad, who already had his pick, disappeared out the door. I thought they were gone and I was safe, but then Bill nodded to himself, and he turned and worked his way across the hall, coming through the mostly empty tables.
I steeled myself for whatever nasty remark he might choose to make. In my mind, I knew he couldn’t touch me. I was loved by Evangeline and on the cusp of an expanded family, and he wasn’t either one.
Bill slid up to our table and leaned in, propped on the knuckles of his right hand. Snuffy regarded him with curiosity, not knowing our history. I kept my eyes glued to the saltcellar.
“Here’s what I’d like to ask the squaw,” Bill said. “What I’m mighty interested in.” He leaned lower toward me. “Ask her which of us is the natural father of that baby.”
21
Lydia and Roger swapped duties in Santa Clarita, on the theory that a driver with a license would be better when passing through the outskirts of Los Angeles. For a boy who lived up a dirt road, the intersection of 405 with the San Fernando Valley Freeway was truly terrifying. A pickup load of teenagers flipped Roger off on the merge. He had no idea why.
Shannon saw signs to Santa Monica and wanted to go there. “We have time for a detour. I want to see a movie star.”
Oly had refused to give up the front seat or the map, which put Lydia in back with Shannon. “This isn’t a pleasure trip,” she said. “We have no time for movie stars.”
Shannon looked out the window at the sparkling city to the south. The sun had gone down, and lights streamed out across the valley and up the mountains. The brightness gave the illusion of going on for eternity. “I’ve never been to LA. It seems kind of pitiful to come this far and miss it.”
“You are in no position to curry favors. It’s because of you we are behind schedule.” Lydia was in a foul mood. She’d lavished all her charm on the gas-station attendant, and he had been impervious. Twenty years ago, he would have been panting like a hound in summer, simply begging to be graced with a smile. Hell, ten years ago, he wouldn’t have charged her for the gas. What made it so bad was that her power hadn’t dissipated slowly, a bit at a time over the years. She could have dealt with that, maybe. But she’d gone into prison as a force to be reckoned with and come out a tiny shred of the aged mass. Strangers dismissed her as irrelevant. Hatr
ed, she could fight; being dismissed was intolerable.
Lydia ground her teeth in an unladylike fashion. She said, “And don’t pretend I didn’t hear you refer to me as Grandma in front of two males.”
***
Roger thought it was around 11:30 when they reached the first Santa Barbara exit. He didn’t wear a watch and the BMW dash clock was broken, but Roger had a ranch boy’s innate body clock. He was seldom wrong by more than two minutes.
He asked Lydia, anyway, in case California had thrown off his inner timepiece.
She said, “Ten thirty. You have somewhere you need to be?”
Roger tipped the rearview mirror to look back at her. “I could have sworn it was later.”
“We’re in a new time zone,” Lydia said. “We picked up an hour back in Mesquite.”
“I forgot.” Roger hadn’t been out of his home zone in years. It felt weird that hours could jump back and forth. “Do they have Daylight Savings out here?”
Lydia said, “Everybody has Daylight Savings.”
“Arizona don’t,” Oly said.
Shannon awoke with a start. She’d been dreaming about soaking in a hot tub with Eugene, her first boyfriend from years gone by. In the dream, Eugene’s penis looked and felt like a wine cork. She held it in her hand, saying, What am I supposed to do with this? when she suddenly came to in a car.
“Where are we now?”
Roger said, “Santa Barbara. We’ve reached where we’re going.”
Shannon turned to Lydia, whose face was the color of parchment in the interstate highway lights. “Do you know how to find Loren Paul’s house?”
Lydia’s eyebrows stretched out tightly—a negative sign. “It’s too late to go knocking on a stranger’s door tonight.” Her voice took on that overly casual tone that her loved ones knew disguised prevarication. “We’ll head up the coast a ways and find a motel. Roger needs to shower before he meets his step-father tomorrow.”
“You don’t know he’s my step-father,” Roger said.
“You don’t know he’s not. We must assume he is, until proven otherwise.”
“Why?” Shannon asked. She had caught the disinformation tone. In spite of her generally droopiness of spirit, or maybe even because of it, Shannon was sensitive to mood shifts in others. After all, she is my daughter and I am a novelist. Recognizing moods is my life. “Why are we taking for granted this man was married to Roger’s mother?”
“Because we’re Goddamned optimists, that’s why,” Lydia said.
Shannon wondered if she was supposed to take that as a joke or irony, or maybe Lydia believed she was an optimist. Lydia’s self-image had always struck Shannon as a mysterious and constantly morphing blob, not unlike ectoplasm with warts.
Roger had more specific doubts. “Why should I drive up the coast? They have motels in Santa Barbara.”
Lydia touched her hair, above her ear. It was her Katharine Hepburn gesture. “It’ll be cheaper if we go north a bit. Santa Barbara is the most expensive city in America, and I’m paying for the trip. The rest of you are along for the ride.”
“We’re here so Roger can talk to Loren Paul in person,” Shannon said. “He’s the reason for the ride. I don’t see how you can say Roger is just along.”
“You know perfectly well what I mean. Don’t twist my words.” Lydia leaned forward to tap Roger on the shoulder. “Keep going. We’ll pick a town forty miles or so up the coast, somewhere between here and Santa Cruz.”
A light came on in Shannon’s brain—the moment of Aha. “Isn’t Hank up in here? I remember Dad telling me he flew into Santa Cruz when he came out to a parole hearing.”
Lydia didn’t slap herself in the forehead in amazement, but her voice jumped. “I completely forgot about that. Hank is in Lompoc. I wonder how far away we are from Lompoc.”
Oly raised his head from the map, stretching his turkey neck nearly tight. “Forty miles, and it’s where you meant to go all along.”
They dropped into mutual silence. Lydia’s eyes went to Roger’s, watching her through the rearview mirror. From his expression, she couldn’t tell how surprised he was. Mostly he showed resigned disappointment.
She said, “That statement is such an exaggeration, it falls into the category of falsehood.”
Oly hmphed, a sound that irritated Lydia no end.
Shannon said, “You mean it’s true? You dragged Roger all this way as an excuse to see Hank?”
Lydia broke the eye lock with Roger. “We drove—all this way—to find where Roger comes from and what caused him to stop talking. I only recently put it together that Hank is nearby. I think if I’m going to such trouble and risk to help Roger, the least I should be allowed is two hours for my own needs.”
“That’s a twisted way to word it,” Shannon said. She looked toward the driver’s seat, at Roger. “Did you know you were being exploited?”
Roger’s eyes went forward, checking traffic, then back at Lydia again. “Sam said there was more to the deal than Lydia was letting on. I figured she would tell us when she was ready.” He glanced over at Oly. “How did you know?”
A line of drool dripped down the corner of Oly’s face like a teardrop, only shiny instead of salty. He said, “I may be senile, but I’m not stupid.”
“I could have sworn it was the other way around,” Lydia said.
“The entire population of Haven House knows where her Indian lover is in prison. All you had to do was look at a map to divine the true call for our journey.”
No one spoke for five miles. Lydia studied her nails. Shannon worried at a loose thread in the seat cover. Roger drove with both hands on the wheel, working out whether he should feel screwed or not. Like Lydia said, he was getting what he wanted, or what she had convinced him he wanted. He wondered if seeing Hank had been the only drive in her encouraging him to seek out his history, right from the beginning, and if so, should he resent her pretending an interest in him.
He decided he had a right to feel screwed, but even so, he didn’t. Whatever Lydia’s reasons, without her needling, he probably would not have worked up the energy it takes to dive into the past. Roger considered his choices and chose not to condemn Lydia.
Shannon, however, looked at the facts from a different perspective. She said, “Shame on you, Lydia.”
Shannon expected curses, rage, and possibly even a slap. No one got away with criticizing Lydia. Lydia criticized others; she did not accept it herself.
Neither vile nor violence erupted. Lydia just sat there, twisting her wedding ring around her finger and staring at the back of the driver’s seat. A chill skipped its way up Shannon’s spinal column. Lydia’s silence was more frightening than her wrath.
Oly said, “Before the hotel, I must visit a liquor store, if you please.”
***
Lydia insisted on separate rooms for girls and boys. She said, “Do what you must after lights-out, but Maurey Pierce would rip my hide if I set her kids up to share a bed.” So Roger was stuck with Oly, who as soon as they let themselves through the Comfort Inn door, rummaged his suitcase for a plastic sandwich bag containing a child’s soft-bristled toothbrush and a travel tube of Pepsodent.
Roger sat on the end of a queen-size bed, flipping channels on the TV and listening to Oly brush his gums. Roger hadn’t known people without teeth needed to brush. It wasn’t something he’d thought about. Oly was the noisiest of brushers too. Sounded like a horse drinking from a stock pond.
Like almost everyone who prides themselves on not owning a TV, when Roger found himself someplace with television, he watched too much of it. We used to have satellite TV at the Home for Unwed Mothers, before Roger came there, because Maurey’s husband, Pud, is a satellite-system installer. That’s where they make their money. Raising horses is just a way to pour cash down a hole. Pud set us up with satellite, but the girls argued so much
about what to watch—the dish brought in over three hundred channels back then—that I pulled the plug. Believe me on this: there’s nothing more irritating than a covey of pregnant girls carping at each other. Teenagers think being with child makes their personal desires into imperatives.
The Comfort Inn TV carried thirty-two channels, but Roger didn’t find a one worth spending time on. There was a show where a man wrestled a crocodile that was okay until the first commercial. Another channel played nothing but weather reports. Roger couldn’t fathom why anyone would watch weather reports for more than two minutes, which is how long it took to find out the forecast. Two stations broadcast sports. Roger had no interest in team sports. His brother Auburn had been a jock. As a reaction against him, Roger discovered jazz and books.
He mostly flipped channels for the sake of flipping channels. The road trip so far had him too confused to settle on one show. He’d expected a case of nerves over meeting Loren Paul, who might or might not know the secrets of his past. That was intense enough, but then Shannon dropped out of the sky, and she was a big deal too. The two big deals canceled each other out. He couldn’t focus on either one.
Shannon seemed to be taking something for granted, and she assumed he was taking the same thing for granted, but he didn’t know exactly what it was. Were they going steady all of a sudden? It felt like they were, although they hadn’t talked and hadn’t touched beyond holding hands. He’d missed the courtship segment. Or was this the courtship segment? Was he supposed to marry her now, or what?
He heard a flush, and Oly came from the bathroom wearing a pair of butter-colored boxer shorts and nothing else. He carried his toothbrush and toothpaste in one hand and a motel glass in the other.
He said, “Might I bother you to open the bottle, son?”
