by Tim Sandlin
“Now!” Carol roared. She could be fierce when the time called for fierceness. It never occurred to me to disobey her.
I bent down to untie one shoe. “Are you trying to seduce me?”
Carol already had her blouse off and was tugging at her skirt. “I’m fucking you.”
I paused before untying the other shoe. “I should probably tell you, Carol. I’ve never been, uh, done this before.”
“There’s a first time for everything, kid.”
Carol stood at the table, naked, hands on her hips, and watched while I undressed. I turned around to face the dish machine while I pulled off my shorts. It was an ancient, round Jackson Sterilizer with a twenty-second rinse cycle, a lousy machine.
“What do I do now?” I asked.
“You stop shaking.”
“That may be difficult, Carol. I’m not used to being naked.”
She pointed. “Climb up on that table and lay on your back. I’ll do the rest.”
The table was cold. I arched my back and stared at the swirls in the ceiling.
Carol held my penis in her left hand. “This is the only part of you that’s not stiff as a board.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’ll have to do.” Carol crawled onto the table and straddled me with a knee on each side of my hips. “Relax, dammit.”
“I can’t.”
She leaned down and nuzzled my right ear, then started rubbing back and forth across my body. One of her boobs hit me in the eye. I tried to picture Carol’s nipples on Red Sonja.
“That’s better,” she said. “You’re getting hard now.”
“I am?”
“I knew you could do it. We’ll show Blackie who gets the last laugh, won’t we? There you go, nice and hard. Now, stick it in here.”
“Where?”
She moved her hands between my legs. “Here, right in the old slot.”
“I can’t see where you want me—”
“That’s it.” Carol eased herself down on me. I didn’t move. She could have been sitting on a tent peg in the ground for all the erotic motion Carol got out of me.
She rocked back and forth with her eyes closed, oohing and aahing some. “What happens now?” I asked.
A key rattled in the lock and Blackie was there, pulling Carol off me. “Bitch!” he screamed.
“Bastard!” she yelled right back. “I saw you and that whore.”
“So you couldn’t wait to screw the first man you found.”
“You bet, buddy. You fuck one and I’ll fuck two.”
They stood next to the table, Carol naked with her boobs hanging down, Blackie red in the face, screaming at each other. I didn’t move a muscle. I figured Blackie might not notice me if I played dead.
He hit her, an open palm across the left ear. Carol grabbed his thumb and bit it, so Blackie hit her with the other hand.
“Oh my God,” I moaned. I’d never come before. I had no idea what it felt like or looked like. I thought Carol had hurt something in me and I was hemorrhaging. I gasped, “I’m dying.”
Blackie and Carol turned and watched me spurt all over my stomach.
***
I tried for three years to do it again—hours spent in my room, holding a Playboy foldout above me with my left hand and jerking on myself with the right. I rubbed myself raw, and my right wrist is still stronger than the left. I guess it took sixteen years to build up that first shot and three more to reload.
Finally did, though. The summer I turned nineteen, I got the trick down. Wasted half July and all August yanking on myself.
I didn’t get laid again until Julie.
***
My brain still hadn’t swollen by Wednesday, so the doctor gave me a prescription for Tylenol and codeine and turned me loose. Cora Ann came by around ten to drive me out to the bug. She talked all the way.
“The hang glider isn’t as bad as I first thought,” she said. “It might be possible to fix it.”
“Colette came by the hospital yesterday. I think I’ve got her.”
Cora Ann glanced at me. “You’re never going to get that little bitch,” she said. “Forget her.”
“What have you got against Colette?”
“What have you got for her?”
She dropped me off at the bug and I drove slowly into town, trying to figure out why Cora Ann said the things she said. Cora Ann and Lizbeth were the only friends I had; they thought I was a good person, which, Lord knows, I appreciated. That good people thought I was good made a difference; but both of those women hated what I was doing with Colette. Which didn’t make much sense. You’d think friends would encourage friends to pursue their heart’s desire, no matter what the cost. Maybe Cora Ann and Lizbeth were jealous because I wouldn’t marry them. Although that didn’t seem likely.
Alice was waiting on the front porch when I got home. “Hi, kitty, kitty,” I said. “I had an adventure while I was out.” Alice flipped over on her back and said, “Meow.” I reached down to rub her stomach. Alice dug into my wrist with all four sets of claws and bit the holy hell out of my middle finger.
***
I owned a puppy once when I was young—seven or eight years old. He was a beautiful little red setter. I named him Snoofy, an obvious attempt to steal Snoopy without being like everyone else. Snoofy followed wherever I walked and slept on the pillow next to me.
One warm evening in August, my friend and I were playing in the backyard, catching fireflies and putting them in jars for lanterns. Snoofy romped around, digging the dirt, licking his paws, being a puppy.
A great horned owl swooped down without a sound and scooped Snoofy up. I saw it. One second Snoofy was playing in the grass, the next he was being carried into the sky.
I reached my hand toward the owl. “Snoofy.”
Haven’t had a dog since.
***
Lizbeth is a Southern sorority sister name, I think, but Lizbeth doesn’t look sorority-sister at all. If I had to choose an ethnic origin for her, I’d guess California Jewish. She’s older than I am, but not by much. I’ve been talking to her for two years now and I still don’t know her. I don’t think you’re supposed to know your therapist’s personal habits.
The cat bite was the final indignity on my way into manic depression with schizoid overtones. Even the proposed meeting with Colette didn’t cheer up the fact that I was wrapped in tape, hundreds of dollars in debt, and no closer to Perfect Peace or whatever the hell I wanted than I had ever been. I arrived at our session that afternoon wallowing in a wave of self-pity and despair.
“What did you hope to achieve by hang gliding onto the Broken Hart Ranch?” Lizbeth asked, staring me down.
I looked at both thumbs. “I don’t know.”
“You must have had some objective in mind.”
“I don’t know.”
She paused. “How do you feel?”
Hanging my head so low the back of my neck hurt, I said, “I wish I hadn’t been born.”
Kindness crept into her voice. “But you were. It’s time to accept that you’re alive.”
I looked at Lizbeth. “I almost wasn’t.”
“Weren’t what, Kelly?”
“Born. I almost wasn’t born. Mom didn’t want me so I was almost aborted.”
“How do you know this?”
I leaned forward, holding my hands together. “Mom was ten, twelve weeks pregnant when she decided a kid would hold her down—stifle her creative freedom. Mom’s real big on creative freedom.”
“How do you know she wanted an abortion?”
“She told me, lots of times. Arrangements were made and Mom drove to an abortionist in Idaho Falls. Abortion was real illegal back then.”
Lizbeth crossed her legs, left over right, the sign that she didn’t believe me.
“Mom sat in the abortionist’s office about an hour. Just as they were ready for us, the receptionist asked her for four hundred fifty dollars. Mom started to write a check and the receptionist said, ‘You can’t pay with a check. Cash only.’ Legally, abortionists were in the same category as hit men in 1950. They wouldn’t take checks.”
“What happened then?”
“Mom took it as a sign from God that she should have the baby. She did and here I am. That’s why she told me the story so often, it was a God moves in mysterious ways lesson.”
Lizbeth still looked dubious. “What do you think it means?”
I shrugged. “She should have flipped a coin.”
***
If I’m going to blame my own peculiarities on Mom, it’s only fair to see where she came by hers. I never knew Grandma—she fell off a cliff when I was four—but Grandpa Hawken was a wiry, craggy little man who lived up the end of Bull’s Head Mountain Road with an old, hairless dog and thirty or forty cats.
As with all old people who live in the woods alone, half the town thought he was crazy and dangerous and the other half saw him as the Wise Old Man of the Mountains—an Idaho guru. I fit in the guru section.
Along about my seventeenth birthday, I went through my sensitive period. I sat around the backyard, musing on the tragedy of life and reading syrupy poetry—Emily Dickinson and Rod McKuen. I bought posters of sunsets and pure women and Happy Faces. In my pimply search for Truth, I decided any old man who lived alone in the woods for years must have found the answer. One afternoon after school, I hopped on my Western Auto one-speed bike and pedaled up the mountain to find Grandfather.
Grandfather Hawken was short, not much over five feet tall, but he had the forearms of a college wrestler. Whenever I think of the old man, I see those thick, hairy forearms and the tiny black eyes that skittered across his face.
He was sitting on a buck-and-rail fence in front of his shack, staring west, into the sun. I picked my way through the cats and sat down beside him.
“Who’re you?” he demanded.
“I’m your grandson Kelly. Mavine’s boy.”
He nodded a couple of times. “Yeah, I remember. Mavine only had one. I see you’re still a shrimp.”
I caught him up on all the news about Mom and Aunt Vera. He didn’t seem too interested. Then I got down to business.
“Grandfather Hawken,” I said, “you’ve been around a long time. What have you learned in this life?”
He kept staring at the Big Hole Mountains in the west. His mouth moved, like he was chewing the words before he spit them out. “I can mend a fence and fix windmills. Know how to shoe a horse, tan a cow, and stick a pig. Can roll a real tight Bugle cigarette. Used to be able to drive a car, but can’t anymore.”
I thought about this. It wasn’t the answer I had in mind. “But what’s important, Grandpa? What are the priorities of your value system?”
“Value system?”
“What matters?”
The little bent man squirmed around on the fence, waving his head from side to side. He lifted himself up on his hands, then lowered himself again. He seemed angry. He shook one finger at the sun. “Do you see that?” he said urgently. “Do you see what’s going on over there?”
“The sun’s going down.”
His wiry fingers clamped hard on my wrist. “The sun is going down,” he shouted. “That’s a fucking miracle, boy. A miracle. It’ll be an even bigger miracle if it comes back up tomorrow. You ain’t never going to see anything more amazing than a sunset.” He released my wrist.
Grandpa shook so hard, he almost fell off the fence.
“Now look at this,” he demanded. “Look at it,” Grandpa held his penis in both hands. It was a giant of penises, a leathery rattlesnake crawling from between his legs; even the head was snakelike. “This is for sex! Use it every chance you get. Never, ever, pass up a chance to stick this in a woman. This”—he shook the snake—“and sunsets are all there is. There ain’t nothing else.”
“By that do you mean appreciation of nature and romantic love?”
His eyes shook and popped. “You idiot,” Grandpa thundered. “I mean sex and sunsets. You take in some of each every day, and you’ll never go crazy.”
“Are you crazy, Grandfather?” I asked.
“Of course not,” he said, stroking the great coil.
***
Grandpa Hawken was the only member of my family Julie ever liked—including me. It used to make me jealous, the way each knew what the other was thinking. I never could understand either one of them, but he told me once that Julie was just like Grandma Hawken only taller and with bigger tits.
***
I make it sound like Mom’s family was the sole contributor to my particular form of oddness. That isn’t exactly true. The Palamino clan also coughed up its share of loose screws.
Back in the late sixties, a Boise doctor installed a pacemaker in my Uncle Homer’s chest. He farmed and drank and drove his truck without missing a tick for years before some cowboy told him that a microwave oven could short-circuit his pacemaker and drop him dead on the spot.
After that, Homer quit eating in restaurants, then going to people’s houses. Then he stopped going out at all. He stayed in his cabin way off in a field, defending himself against microwaves.
A well-meaning friend drove out to the cabin and told Uncle Homer that a microwave wasn’t any more likely to short his pacemaker than a CB radio. This didn’t comfort Homer. Almost every truck in Teewinot County sports a CB antenna.
Homer took to sitting in an old straight-backed rocker all day, holding hands with himself and waiting to die. After a few weeks, the fear of sudden death got so much worse than the dying itself that Uncle Homer loaded his antique derringer and blew his pacemaker into the kitchen drapes.
I found the body and the gun.
***
Colette checked out clear with the Davenport police department—no arrests, no outstanding warrants, they’d never even heard of her. Most of the yearbooks I’d ordered never arrived. They don’t normally print extra copies, I guess. Colette wasn’t in any of the seven I did receive, so I still didn’t know if she’d been a homecoming queen or student-council representative. It didn’t much matter. I loved her either way.
I called Thursday around noon, but no one answered. Suspecting another code, I tried various combinations of two rings, hang up and call back, three rings, wait, one ring, wait, then seven rings and hang up. At one o’clock she answered.
“Where have you been?” I asked.
“Having lunch with Doris. Is this Kelly?”
“Of course it’s Kelly. Who’s Doris?”
“Danny’s mother.”
I waited. Colette was breathing kind of heavy like she had run to answer the phone. “Did you run to answer the phone?”
“I heard it ringing when I unlocked the door, and I was afraid whoever was calling might hang up before I reached the phone.”
“Then you did run to answer my call?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
I waited a while longer. “When can you meet me?” I asked.
“What?”
“When can you meet me? You said you’d meet me.”
“I said I might meet you.”
My glasses slid down my nose. I pushed them back up. “Are you or not?”
“Am I or not what?”
“Going to meet me.”
“I don’t know.”
The alarm clock in my bedroom started ringing. “Excuse me,” I said. I walked into the bedroom and turned off the alarm, then carried it back to the phone.
“What was that?” Colette asked.
“My alarm clock.”
“Was it ringing?”
“Yes.”
“At one in the a
fternoon?” The answer seemed obvious, so I didn’t say it. “Why did you set your alarm for one o’clock?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sometimes I set mine for nine in the morning and it goes off at nine at night, but I’ve never set an alarm clock for one, day or night.”
Propping the phone between my shoulder and ear, I wound the clock. “What are you doing this afternoon?” I asked.
“I’m supposed to exercise Dixie.”
“Why does Dixie need help to exercise?”
“She’s a horse. Danny’s father gave me a horse for a wedding present. She’s beautiful.”
“I’d like to meet her.”
“Who?”
“Your horse. I’d like to meet her. Bring her with you this afternoon.”
“Where?”
I thought. Taggart Creek ran a couple of miles north of the Broken Hart. “Do you know where Taggart Creek is?” I asked.
“It’s in the park,” she said. “First creek up from here.”
“That’s the one.”
“There’ll be tourists all over the place.”
“There’s a bridge on the main trail. Right before the bridge, an old jeep trail goes up the hill. About a half-mile up is a real small dam and reservoir. Meet me there.”
Long pause. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t know what?”
“I haven’t said I’ll meet you at all yet.”
The conversation seemed to be circling itself. “Will you or won’t you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You aren’t too quick on decisions, are you?”
“I guess not.”
I set the alarm clock on the smiling elk skull. “Listen, I’ll be at the dam at three. You come tell me what you decided.”
“What if I decide not to see you?”
Time for a threat. “I’ll come there.”
“Jesus, don’t do that.”
“Okay, see you at three.”
“Maybe.”
After Colette hung up, I listened to the phone, waiting to see if she would pick it up again. Then I took a shower.
***
Colette was right about the tourists. Jackson was built to hold five thousand rural people. That’s all the room there is. An average summer we’ll move over four million tourists through town in twelve weeks. Makes for a manic city and a neurotic populace. Once a year we suffer the culture shock of moving from small town to frantic city. Then every fall it happens again in reverse. No wonder so many of the natives drink.