by Tim Sandlin
“Here.” He held out the green scarf.
“She can keep it,” I said.
“There’ll be no gifts from your kind in a Christian household.”
Chuckette stood behind him and to the right with her head down and her shoulders slumped.
“I’m really sorry, Chuckette,” I said. “I didn’t plan for this to happen.”
Her eyes came up to mine in the saddest, most beseeching deal you ever saw. “You loving me was the only good thing that will ever happen in my life.”
“I know.”
“At least I can say I was happy once.”
Her father flinched. “Charlotte, go to the car.”
We both watched as she dragged herself, like a defeated animal, across the yard and into their station wagon. I felt sad for her, but I didn’t know what to do. You can’t marry everybody who bases their happiness on you.
Her father turned back to me. “You think this is funny, don’t you.”
“No, sir, I feel bad.”
“Don’t lie to me. You never for a moment took my daughter seriously.”
Wasn’t much I could say to that one.
His little nose kind of trembled. “Boy, I may not look mean, but I’ve got the power of the Lord and a thirty-thirty with a scope, and I’ll do what it takes to protect my family.”
“I respect that, sir.”
***
I told Maurey what Chuckette said about me loving her was the only good thing that would ever happen to her, and how I realized that was probably true.
“Oh, bull, Sam. She was going to dump you before church camp this summer anyway. She likes Rodney Cannelioski only she’s afraid he won’t like her because she’s soiled on account of you.”
“That’s a lie.”
“She told half the school today that you’re a bad kisser and she only went steady with you because you’re so unpopular and she felt sorry for you and thought it was her Christian duty.”
“I’m a good kisser.”
Maurey shrugged and bit pizza. “She says you slobber.”
This didn’t make sense. We were ostracized at school, how would Maurey know what Chuckette said to anyone. “Who told you all this?”
“Sam, I’m pregnant, not deaf.”
“But no one spoke to me today.”
“Maybe Chuckette’s right.”
***
After pizza and Chuckette’s father, Maurey and I sat on the front step to watch the sun set behind the Tetons. Another thing about GroVont that’s different from Greensboro—at one time of year the sun goes down at 9:30, when just a few months ago it disappeared by 4:30. That’s a big difference in day length. It disorients everything.
“Nobody up here has a decent porch,” I said.
Maurey’s hair was in barrettes and her face glowed like Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story, as if the setting sun moved a piece of itself into her skin. She leaned forward on the step. “What’s Soapley up to?”
Otis yip-barked while Soapley bent over the bed of his truck, shoving something back toward the tailgate.
“Even the poorest family in North Carolina has a porch big enough for two chairs and a swing. Nobody here takes the time to sit and watch.”
“Usually too cold,” Maurey said. “Anyhow, you’re talking about a mud room. There’s no call for nostalgia over a mud room.”
“A porch is not a mud room.”
“Is when there’s mud.”
“Does Buddy plan to brand my butt?”
Spires of sunset bent around the peaks and flowed down the canyons. The mountains still had snow, so they came off a soft white, gold, and rose. One thing Wyoming has is nice stuff to look at.
“What makes you think Dad might brand your butt?”
“Dot said he would. She said he’d calf-tie me and sear a red TM in my ass, and if I really pissed him off he’d delouse, dehorn, and castrate me.”
“She was kidding; a person can’t be dehorned.”
Soapley shoved what looked like a fat, limp body off the back of his truck. Otis jumped back and forth across the body, having a fit.
“Bear,” Maurey said.
“Maybe I deserve to be branded. Impregnating girls is immoral and deserves punishment.”
“Soapley killed a bear.”
As we crossed the street, Maurey explained Buddy’s policy on teen sex. “Dad thinks a boy gets laid whenever possible regardless of the consequences. He says the boy will trick his way into a girl’s jeans any way he can and that’s fair, you can’t blame the boy any more than you can blame a coyote for stealing a chicken.”
“That’s a good attitude.”
“Not that he wouldn’t shoot any coyote caught in the act.”
“This is a real bear?”
“It’s the girl’s responsibility not to get laid. She has a choice the boy doesn’t have.”
“What’s it mean?”
“You’re a coyote and I’m a slut.”
***
“Right between the eyes.” Soapley pointed with his knife, a wicked-looking blade in a new-moon curved shape.
“Where’d you get him?” Maurey asked.
“He was feeding on a dead horse up Cache Creek.”
On his back, the bear looked small and pitiful. He was a reddish brown, darker on his belly, with a black nose and scummed-over eyes. His fur was patchy and one ear torn into two strips. I’d never seen a real bear before; this was somewhat of a disappointment.
I knelt to touch the pad on one of his back feet. “Why was there a dead horse up Cache Creek?”
Soapley stuck the knife into the bear’s tunnel and moved his hand down one leg like the bear had a zipper. “Because I shot a horse up Cache Creek. Why’d you think? Horses don’t just die where you need bear bait.”
“Wasn’t Red, was it?” Maurey asked.
Soapley looked at her and nodded. “He was old, not worth much anymore.”
Soapley proceeded to skin the bear. I don’t know where the guts were, back with old Red, I guess. Under his skin the bear was waxy like a melted candle.
Maurey knelt next to me. “Red sure was a good horse.”
“Best I ever had,” Soapley said.
Otis bit into the good ear, stiffened all three legs, and tried to pull the bear away. When Soapley backhanded his nose, Otis growled as if this was a tug of war for life. Soapley slapped again and Otis let go long enough to bite him. Where bears are concerned, loyalty among horses, dogs, and men doesn’t mean much.
As the sky gradually darkened, Maurey and I stood by the tailgate, watching Soapley work. He did a real efficient job, pausing only now and then to kick Otis off whatever limb he was working on next. Skinned, the bear looked exactly like a hunch-backed boy about my age who’d been dipped in Crisco. The fingers were unnerving—each joint so human you couldn’t tell the difference between my hands and the bear’s. Soapley cut off the head, leaving it one piece with the hide.
He grinned at me. “Liver’s in the truck if you want a taste.”
“Raw?”
Maurey nodded. “Animals get scared and shoot adrenaline into themselves right before they die. It goes to the liver so when you eat it your head buzzes. Indians thought eating raw liver gave them the animal’s spirit.”
“This is way out of my background.”
***
In bed, Maurey snuggled against my ribs with both hands under her chin and her bear down by Alice at our knees. “I’m glad we’re just friends. I wouldn’t want to be alone tonight.”
All afternoon I’d been working on a question, so now I asked it. “Why was Dothan friendly at lunch?”
Her eyes were on my shoulder where I couldn’t see them, but I could feel the lashes when she blinked. “I screwed with him last night.”
; “I knew it.”
“I told him we could keep it up so long as he’s nice to you.”
I sat up. “Dammit, Maurey, I’d lots rather him beat me up than screw you.”
She rolled onto her back with an arm over her head. “I would have pretty soon anyway, I guess. He’s my boyfriend.”
“A person doesn’t screw her boyfriend to protect her best friend. That’s not how it works.” I was all upset. For months I’d imagined them doing it—him on top, her sucking his thing, him licking hers. It about drove me nuts, but now I knew for sure and for some bizarre reason it was my fault.
“Did you have an orgasm?”
She scooted back and sat up next to me. “It was his first time. He squirted quicker than you ever did.” We were quiet awhile, each thinking something, hell, I don’t know what. I’m finally back in bed with my true love, the mother of my child, and she’s been screwing the king-hell creep of North America. His mayonnaise was probably up there right this second, touching my baby.
Maurey seemed to talk to herself. “I like him in the right way and I was looking forward to doing it for the right reason, you know, love, but since I did it for the wrong reason it wasn’t any better than doing it with you.”
Not exactly what I wanted to hear.
“At least with you I got off. With Dothan all I got was muddy.”
This was awful. ‘‘Maurey, don’t ever fuck with someone to protect me.”
She touched my arm above the elbow. “I didn’t do it for you. I did it for me. I’m scared and Dad doesn’t love me anymore.”
She had on her white nightie. I loved her more than I ever had before, I guess because she said she was scared.
She poked her index finger into my stomach. “Look—here’s me. Here’s my father, here’s my boyfriend, and here’s my best friend.” She was on the belly button with me on the left rib, Dothan on the right rib, and her father at the top of my pubic hair.
“I’ve lost Dad and I don’t want to lose either of you. If Dothan hates you, I’d have to choose between you guys and I’d be down to only one. I don’t think I could have this baby with only one connection.”
“Which would you choose?”
“Him, I guess. Except then there’d be nowhere to live. Dothan’s parents are grotesque.”
At least she couldn’t say that about Lydia. “You screwed Dothan so you could live with me?”
“I guess. No. I don’t know, Sam. I wish Dad still loved me, then I wouldn’t need either of you and I could live at home.” On my stomach, she traced the connection between her and Buddy.
“I need you.”
Maurey fell back into a lying-down position. “I know, Sam. That just makes everything even weirder.”
I picked up Maurey’s bear and put it on her chest. “I’m sorry.”
She rubbed the bear’s head against her cheek. “Being a grown-up is too complicated.”
25
1971—Abner and Willoughby Rex play in the cool black dirt under Abner’s daddy’s house in Carbon Hill, Alabama.
Willoughby Rex’s voice is somewhat whiny. “Come on, I give you Frank Howard for Mickey Mantle.”
“Grow up,” Abner says.
“How about Willie Mays and my uncle M.L.’s gallstone?”
“I like my Mickey Mantle.”
Willoughby Rex furrows his brow and makes a last offer. “Okay, my Sam Callahan card for your Mickey Mantle and your Roger Maris.”
“Throw in Sam Callahan’s last novel and you got a deal.”
In Jackson Hole, one sort of athletically inclined boy goes rabid for mountain climbing—“The cafeteria wall is a five-point-five with a forty-foot exposure”—and the other sort of athletically inclined boy defines himself by rodeo—bullriding if he’s short and self-destructive. That doesn’t leave much pickings for Little League. The baseball players are mostly kids who would rather waste the summer drinking Kool-Aid and hassling little girls, only their fathers make them do something, and baseball is less stress than climbing mountains or riding bulls.
Skipper O’Brien’s dad volunteered to coach the team. He was on workman’s disability from falling off the dam and messing up his inner ear, so he didn’t have a regular job or anything interesting to do. The first day of practice Mr. O’Brien sent the whole team to the outfield for fungo-catching. He took off his windbreaker, picked up a bat, threw a ball in the air and whiffed. Missed by a foot.
Right then I told Kim Schmidt we were in for a long summer.
Mr. O’Brien was also the kind of coach who prides himself on not giving his own son special attention, which meant that every day we had to stand there and listen to him yell at Skipper.
“You’re a sick excuse for a ballplayer. You can’t run, you can’t catch, you can’t hit. You throw like a girl.”
Typical junior high-coach child psychology. Made me glad I didn’t have a father.
We opened against Jackson East and lost 17-3. Kim and I scored all three runs. Jackson West shut us out 21-zip.
Most nights I listened to the Dodger game on the radio, then crawled into bed next to Maurey and told her the frustrations of my day, just like we were a real couple. “Rodney Cannelioski is disabled, I swear the kid puts his jock strap on backwards. You know what he did at the plate this afternoon?”
“Sam, I don’t give a rat’s ass what happened at baseball practice today.” She would slap her growing belly. “I’m uncomfortable. I miss my horse. For the first summer since I can remember I’m not riding every day. Little League baseball means nothing to me. Do you understand, Sam. Nothing.”
“How can baseball mean nothing?”
Sometimes this launched another round of foul-mouthed tirade—Maurey’s language went downhill after that day she said fuck in class—or other times she’d lie there silently seething. The seething was hard to deal with.
“You’re just jealous cause you’re too fat to barrel race.”
That one got me Alice across the neck.
***
Every now and then Maurey was king-hell happy. One afternoon I came in from practice to find her, Dot, and Lydia in total hysterics over baby clothes. Maurey was holding a mint green sunsuit over her head and dancing while Dot slid clear off the couch and onto the floor from laughing so hard, and Lydia smoked two cigarettes at once. I didn’t see anything funny about dancing with baby clothes and said so and that set them off all over again. When she tried to get up, Dot hit her head on the coffee table.
Another time I caught Maurey and Lydia comparing my toddler pictures to the five football players. A photographer had set up his camera in J. C. Penney’s and Lydia dressed me in this stupid sailor suit with a flat-topped hat with two ribbons off the back. In every picture, I looked embarrassed about to death.
“He’s definitely a Negro,” Maurey said.
“I think he looks more like Billy-Butch. See that weak chin.”
***
That was the night Maurey kicked me out of bed for sleeping. Three in the morning, she bit my thumb.
“My God, you bit me.”
“Wake up.”
“Why did you bite me?”
“I can’t sleep and if I can’t sleep I’ll be damned if you will.”
“Look, tooth marks on my thumb.”
“This is your fault. ‘I won’t squirt,’ you said. ‘No mush,’ you said.” Maurey did the line attributed to me in a falsetto. “All you wanted was in my pants. You’d have said anything to screw me.”
“That’s true.”
“And now I’ll never sleep again.” I swear, she started to cry.
“I could get you a Valium.”
“Valium’s bad for the baby. I can’t take Valium.”
“Lydia ate lots of Valium when she was pregnant with me.”
“Yeah, and look at you.” She
sniffled a few minutes and wiped her nose on my pajama collar. “You have to sleep on the floor tonight, Sam. I need the whole bed.”
“How about if I take the couch in the living room?”
She clutched my shoulder. “I don’t want you that far away. I may need you and I want you next to me—on the floor.”
“You may need me?”
She pushed me gently off the bed. “God, I wish Dad was here.”
***
I didn’t see Buddy all summer, and, so far as I know, neither did Maurey. I guess he stayed up on the TM, delousing and moving water, whatever it is you do for horse maintenance. Whether because of shame or hard work, I don’t know, but he didn’t come into GroVont. I can’t picture Buddy avoiding anything because of shame.
One day in late June we bumped into Annabel in the checkout line at Zion’s Own Hardware. I’d found plans in Boy’s Life for a self-loading goat feeder that I knew could be adapted into a cradle. Maurey made a list of all the boards, nails, and brackets we’d need and gave it to the man at the lumber counter.
He stared down his eagle nose at her and ignored everything I said, the usual treatment, but he found our stuff.
Annabel stood in line second from the cash register and we were fifth. Third and fourth—March and his fat wife—shuffled and scratched their faces before she realized they’d forgotten wood-stove polish and they disappeared back into the hardware aisles.
“Hi,” Annabel said. Her face and stringy neck looked like she’d lost more weight than Maurey had gained. I couldn’t see the rest of her. Even though it was about seventy-five degrees outside, Annabel had herself wrapped in this puffy blue parka.
“Hi, Mom,” Maurey said.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Pierce,” I said. I don’t think she saw me.
“Did you brush your teeth today?” Annabel asked.
Maurey nodded.
“And flossed?”
“Yes, I definitely flossed today.”
The customer in front of her paid and walked away, but Annabel didn’t move. She looked down at her hands which held a box of Hoover vacuum cleaner bags—size F. “Well, I guess you’re doing okay then.”