by Tim Sandlin
I haven’t been much for long gazes into mirrors since the self-inflicted haircut a couple months after Dad’s thing. During the shower at Lydia’s I’d kept my eyes on my feet, right where they belonged. In the Killdeer can I discovered brand-new, never-seen bones—mostly around the hips and sternum. My eyes looked like peach cross sections with the pits removed.
At fifteen I’d been regarded as the prettiest girl in the valley. Maiden aunts and horny politicians said so all the time. “Maurey, you’re the prettiest girl in the valley.” The only good to come of my downfall was to all those mothers who once said to their dogface daughters, “Just you wait. About the time you bloom she’ll be mud on a boot.” They must be dancing in the streets by now.
***
I came back to Dot sitting across the table from just what I didn’t want—a rib-eye steak, mashed potatoes and gravy, and biscuits, and a quart glass of tomato juice.
“I said I didn’t want food.”
She doubled her chubby fists around the salt and pepper shakers. “You aren’t leaving this room until that plate is clean.”
The urge was to dump it all on the floor and say “The plate’s clean,” but Dot’s round face was such a study, with her chin out and her eyes blinking. She reminded me of a mama sage hen that spread her wings and attacked my shins once on the trail to Taggart Lake. The hen hissed and spit while her babies peeped in tiny bird panic. One swing of my hiking boot and I’d have kicked that chicken to kingdom come, but bravery in the helpless always gets me, especially if the helpless is a mother. I went way back around the other side of the creek and scratched the hell out of my legs on wild rose bushes.
This time I sat down and cleaned my plate. It was really good. The steak was char rare running in blood, the mashed potatoes straight real stuff with lumps, no flakes added as a buffer. The biscuits were hot and homemade, and if they gave a Nobel Prize for gravy, which they should, Dot would have to learn Swedish.
It was the first time in ages I’d taken pleasure out of anything more wholesome than Yukon Jack and masturbation. Dot held on to those salt and pepper shakers the whole time I ate. I think she’d committed herself to violence if I didn’t cooperate, and the relief from my not calling her bluff struck her silent.
I felt softer. “Dot, what do you think I should do?”
She watched me drain the tomato juice, then she got up and went after the coffeepot. I waited like a child while she poured the refill.
“Here’s the truth, Maurey. You want the truth?”
People who ask that question generally go on to say something unpleasant. I blew coffee steam at her and nodded.
“If you stop drinking, you’ll get your baby back, and if you don’t, you won’t.”
I always knew Dot was stupid. “Look, Miss Holy Righteous Woman, I have problems. My husband is a sadistic prick, my mother’s crazy, my brother must be a pervert although I can’t figure what kind yet. Dad is dead. Drinking is a symptom of something terribly wrong. If you cure the disease, the symptoms take care of themselves.”
She studied my face a long time. “Did I ever tell you how Jimmy’s grandfather died?” Jimmy had been Dot’s husband. He’s kind of a local legend because he was the first boy from Wyoming killed in Vietnam.
“Is this going to be a pithy story illustrating a point?”
Dot went right ahead. “Jimmy’s grandfather Homer had a mean Angus bull that could jump any fence and strut over any cattle guard. Homer and that bull hated each other like lifelong enemies. One day the bull got Homer against a loading chute and stomped him to bits. Broke both his legs, destroyed his kneecaps.”
“Wasn’t Jimmy raised by his grandmother down in Bondurant?”
“Homer was Christian Scientist and said the Lord would set his legs. The Lord didn’t and they started to stink, so Jimmy’s dad went against Homer’s wishes and called Doc Heinlein. You remember Doc Heinlein, he delivered you and Petey. He was just a kid when this happened, straight out of Provo.”
“How much are you charging for this steak?”
Dot looked at my plate. “You didn’t order it, I can’t charge for something you didn’t order.”
“If it’s free, I’ll sit through this story. Otherwise Paul Harvey starts soon and I don’t want to miss the news.”
Vexation skipped across Dot’s face, but she plowed on through her anecdote. “Doc Heinlein took one look at Homer’s legs and said, ‘Homer, you’ve got a problem. Those legs are gangrene and if I don’t cut them both off, you’re going to die.’
“Homer said, ‘I’ve got a problem all right, but it ain’t my legs, it’s that blankety-blank bull.’”
I love it when Dot says “blankety-blank” instead of “mother-fucking” or whatever the people she’s quoting really said.
“Jimmy’s grandfather loaded his Winchester coyote rifle and drug himself by his arms—wouldn’t let anybody help him—drug himself into the yard and across to the feed corral, where he gut-shot that mean Angus twice. Then he lay down next to it and watched for three hours while the bull died. Jimmy’s dad and Doc Heinlein played dominoes on the porch.”
“Dominoes? What is this, Beverly Hillbillies?”
“Finally the bull expired and Homer threw back his head and laughed. He looked over at Jimmy’s dad and Doc Heinlein and he said, ‘There, I solved my problem.’” Dot smiled at me, her face pink with conviction.
I bit. “So, what’s the punch line?”
“Jimmy’s grandfather died anyway.”
“I don’t get it.”
9
I decided to bag the shower until after Paul Harvey. My only real challenge was to coerce Faith Fratelli into turning the TV off and the radio on, which would be a trick. Imagine the surprise when I walked into the Sagebrush to find her staring glumly at a blank screen.
“It’s them stupid Watergate hearings,” she said. “They’re on every channel, all day. No game shows, no soaps. I feel like crying.”
Nobody was in the lounge, unless you count Oly Pedersen. He did the wooden Indian number down the bar, the only sign of life the dull glow coming off his goiter. “Maybe the TV people think Nixon is more important than Concentration,” I said.
Faith sent me a disgusted look. “If All My Children isn’t back tomorrow, I’m zipping off a letter to the networks will make their hair curl. What are you steamed over this time?”
I hadn’t realized I was visibly steamed. Must have been the sound of gritting teeth when I sat on the bar stool. “Dot Pollard pisses me off.”
“The Dot Pollard I know? Works at the Killdeer? Wouldn’t say a bad word about a mouse?”
“She thinks just because she feeds a person she can tell them how to run their life. I’ll take a Yukon, up, and a Blue Ribbon for the old guy.”
Faith rummaged in the well and pulled out a nearly empty Yukon Jack bottle. “I can’t believe Dot gave advice without being asked to.”
I reconstructed the scene in my mind. “I guess I did ask. But that doesn’t matter, she’s still a mean bitch.”
Faith’s lips moved as she counted out the shot. “One, two, three. You asked for advice and she said something you didn’t want to hear?”
“She was mean about it.”
Faith took Oly his beer. “No wonder Maurey’s pissed, she asked for advice and got an answer.”
I swear Oly smiled. You couldn’t actually see where anything on his face moved, but there was a moment of cognizance at my expense.
What had my existence come to? I’m being ganged up on by an airhead whose quality of life is directly affected by All My Children and an upright catatonic. “Turn on the damn radio.”
***
“Stand by for news.”
I love Paul Harvey. Not for what he says. What he says is a bunch of founding-fathers, John-Birch-Society, welfare-mothers-enjoy-pregnancy, I-love-Am
erica-by-golly gush. It’s his voice. God cussed out Moses in that voice. Dad used it to break horses. Even when Paul Harvey is wrong, I believe.
Just to prove I didn’t really have to have the alcohol—I was only drinking because I wanted to, not because I needed it—I held off on Jack until “page two.” That’s the canning jar commercial. Page one is the real news, in this case more Watergate crud, page two the commercial, page three the outrageous thing the liberals did, page four another sincere commercial. Then comes the twenty-two-pound cantaloupes and lifesaving pussycats, then the daily bumper snicker and public commendations for survivors. Then another commercial followed by a punch-line story that farmers chuckle over and repeat endlessly at feed stores across America.
I was on my second shot and Paul was winding up for his big finish when the front door crashed open. A hand appeared low down on the door frame and a voice yelled, “Banzai, motherfuckers.”
Shane’s radish face appeared as he struggled with his wheels. Behind him, Lloyd the farmer did whatever you do to push a fat man in a wheelchair through a tight door into a bar. While it was a grunt, the pair seemed experienced and sure of the outcome.
Shane’s voice was a gush. “We visited your tent. It leans to port.”
Lloyd gave a shove that popped the chair into the room and across toward the quarter-slot pool table. Behind me came the pft sound of Faith opening a soda pop bottle. Lloyd said, “Give Maurey a break. There weren’t enough pegs. Can’t set a tent proper without enough pegs.”
“I wasn’t criticizing Maurey, who’s criticizing Maurey? Yo, Oly, you stud, got any yet this morning?” Shane did something with his right hand that spun the chair toward me. “Oly drives the high school chicks wild, we can’t keep ’em off him.”
I missed the end of Paul Harvey’s story. He’d been booming about a weasely little termite exterminator in Nebraska with twelve wives and a fiancée. Somebody asked one of the wives—a fifteen-year-old named Trixie who worked in the laundry room at Holiday Inn—why all these women married the weasel and not a one wanted a divorce now they’d found out about each other. Even the fiancée still planned a white wedding.
And just as Paul Harvey came to her answer, Shane started in with the Banzai clamor. That’s the kind of crap doesn’t happen when you drink at home.
I decided to deal with it. “What are you doing nosing around my camp?”
Shane reached between his legs and pulled out a bottle of Coors. He held it high like a bowling trophy. “Feast your eyes on this, little lassie.”
“Little lassie?”
“Coors beer, Rocky Mountain spring water at a dollar sixty cents a six-pack. What do you think of that?”
“Coors is cow piss in a can.”
Shane belched this hoot that passed for laughter. “Of course, except in this case it’s cow piss in a bottle. But, and this is a but to remember, I am also holding a lesson in life. Do you drink cow piss?”
Lloyd crossed between us to collect two glasses of Coca-Cola from Faith. Out of all the creeps to make fun of my tent, he’d been the one who saw why it collapsed. If only he wasn’t wearing sandals.
Shane repeated himself, only louder. “Do you drink cow piss, Maurey Talbot?”
“I’d DT first.”
The radish split into a grin. “As would any decent, God-fearing alcoholic. Thanks, buddy.” He took the Coke from Lloyd. “But, I’m here with the truth, honey, easterners will pay five bucks for this bottle right here.” He shook the Coors. “Five bucks for warm cow piss. And, little lassie, do you know why they’ll commit this atrocity?”
“They’re crazy.” Wyomingites think anyone living in the eastern time zone is nuts.
Shane slammed the bottle on the pool table. “Because Coors is illegal in the East. Everyone wants what they can’t have, even if it means drinking cow piss. They’d eat manure if the government told them not to.”
Another trouble with drinking in bars is you run into the sort of people who hang out in bars. I gave a who-are-these-jerks eyebrow roll to Faith, but she’d gone back to staring at the blank TV screen. Evidently she’d heard the Coors spiel before.
“That’s where you come in,” Lloyd said. He had worn-brown eyes with wrinkles all over hell—one of those guys who hit the wall and reacted by staring at the sun.
I put both feet on the floor. “I don’t come in. I’m sure you’re both perfectly nice ex-drunks, except maybe him’’—I motioned at Shane—“but I have no desire to continue this relationship.”
Shane did the bob-up-and-down-on-his-hands deal. “Listen to the college girl firecracker. ‘Continue this relationship.’ I’ll give you twenty dollars to see your tits, little missy.”
“In your dreams, prick face.”
Shane’s face ducked low and went sly. “What if I said I was dying and I could go peacefully if only you’d give me twenty minutes of nice?”
“I’d say your death isn’t worth twenty minutes of my time.”
Lloyd stepped toward me. “Do you have a driver’s license?”
“What are you guys, an act?”
He rubbed his right hand on his overalls leg. “We both lost ours to alcohol.”
“I could get mine back if my legs worked,” Shane said.
I said, “You shouldn’t drink if you can’t handle it.”
The ripple passed through Oly again. Faith tittered. “Ain’t it amazing, Lloyd’s sober and can’t drive because the law thinks he’s drunk, and Maurey’s a drunk but can drive because the law thinks she’s sober.”
“Irony,” Shane shouted. “Get yourself planted in a wheelchair and the world explodes with irony.”
“What’s a wheelchair got to do with it?” Faith asked.
This a-drunk taking for granted was wearing thin. Nobody said “Maurey’s drunk”; they said “Maurey’s a drunk.” I hadn’t admitted that yet, and everyone else’s unquestioned conviction of the fact showed a lack of sensitivity.
I stood up from the bar stool. “None of this relates to me, I’m going home.”
Shane hunkered down. For a man living on wheels, his head did an amazing amount of vertical action. “Where’s that?”
“What?”
“That home you’re going to? Is home the tent with the list?”
Lloyd took another step toward me. He’s one of those guys who can make his eyes go totally unguarded. “If you have a driver’s license, we can take you to North Carolina.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” I wondered if I slapped him would Lloyd blink. In the unnecessary-movement category, he was the exact opposite of Shane. “Why would I go to North Carolina?”
Shane hooted again. “Don’t play stupid with us, lassie.”
Lloyd said, “You have a daughter there you need to be with.”
“How do you—”
“And the people in charge will never return your son if you don’t get off the front lawn.”
You know that tone you imagine Jesus talked in, that’s Lloyd. I met a guy in college had deep-sizzled his brain on LSD who talked the same way. It’s like the speaker is wearing a sweatshirt that says “I am gentle. Kick me, I won’t mind.”
“Why does the whole damn state know my business and feel the right to offer an opinion?”
Faith cackled. “You’re the valley entertainment right now, Maurey. Unlucky for you it’s off-season. Middle of July nobody would’ve cared that you’ve gone nuts in public.”
“I’m not nuts.”
Lloyd still hadn’t blinked. “Nuts or drunk, you need to get out of sight and we need help hauling a load of Coors to North Carolina.”
I looked over at the pinball machine and the jukebox. The jukebox had a picture of a ferris wheel on the back with a happy couple in the top chair. Next to them was a pay phone with hundreds of numbers written on the wall. “Why North Carolina?” I asked.
Shane wheeled toward me too. I was being surrounded. “Because the cur Ashley Montagu burned Granma’s barn.”
“I knew it would be something like that.”
“And Lloyd’s looking for his wife who ran off.”
Faith spoke from the backside of the surrounding forces. “Watch out, he’ll show you her picture any minute now.”
Lloyd finally blinked with a moment of insecurity. I wondered what the picture of his wife looked like—a skinny-armed farm wife with a dust-colored face, or maybe a small-town beauty operator type. The kind who chewed gum and gabbed while they touched women on the head.
“You drive all the time,” I said. “I’ve seen you show up late for AA.”
I looked at the hair on Lloyd’s arm while he talked. I’ve always been into hair on men’s forearms. Lloyd’s arm muscles were stringy yet tough. The hair lay dark and uphill instead of inside to outside like on most people. “I can drive fine, just not legal. Mangum knows I’m clean so he lets me loose on the north end of the county, but we can’t take Moby Dick on the road without a licensed driver.”
“And one hundred cases of Coors,” Shane added.
All men want something from me, but usually it’s out-front man-on-woman stuff. These guys had dreamed up some scam or another that involved more than sex or mothering. “I’m outta here.”
“Maurey.” Lloyd used his unguarded eyes as a weapon—like a sheep dog left outside at thirty below zero.
I neatly deflected his needs. “You’ll have to save yourselves because you’re not using me.”
***
Pissed-off thunderheads piled up over Yellowstone, but the Tetons sparkled in the west, clear and real. I stood on the Sagebrush mud mat breathing fresh air and listening through the door for the word that always follows when a man wants something and a woman won’t give it.