by Tim Sandlin
I watched as Maurey waded into the spring and sat down. She was so big in the middle and so young on both ends. Her hair was longer, but her eyes just as blue and her cheekbones just as childlike as they had been the first day she called me Ex-Lax. “How did you get up the hill?”
She leaned back on her hands. Even in the warm springs, she didn’t look that comfortable. “Hank. He’s over at the ranch, talking to Dad.”
“Buddy washed his hands of you.”
Maurey’s face looked sad. “Something’s got to happen. Farlow is coming whether Dad’s here or you and Lydia are here or anybody’s here. The reality is me and the kid can’t live alone.”
“You’ll live with me.”
“Yeah, sure, Sam.” She stretched her legs straight so the soles of her feet came up against mine. That was our favorite talking-in-the-warm-springs position. “It’s either Dad come to town for the winter, me and the baby move in with Aunt Isadora, or we go to Mom’s parents’ retirement villa in Phoenix. Petey has to live somewhere too, Mom won’t be out for a while.”
“Aunt Isadora?”
“Delores’s mother. She thinks I’m a whore and a cunt. Can you see Delores’s mother with any room to gossip?”
Maurey was writing me off the possibility list. Like zip, let’s get practical here. Sam’s a goner.
I couldn’t accept being a goner. “Maurey, none of that will happen, I’ll take care of you and the baby.”
A scowl ran across her eyes. “Sam, you’ve spent the last six months bragging, ‘I’m a daddy, I’m a daddy.’ Have you done any research?”
“Research?”
“Can you change a diaper?”
“Well—”
“Do you even know where to buy diapers? GroVont isn’t exactly a shopping center.”
I guessed. “Kimball’s Food Market.”
“Wrong, kid. Zion’s Own Hardware.”
“Why would a hardware store sell diapers?”
“There’ll be days I’m at cheerleading practice or on a date with Dothan and won’t be able to breast feed. Can you sterilize bottles and make formula?”
She hadn’t mentioned dates with Dothan since Jimmy’s funeral. I’d hoped she’d forgotten. “No, I can’t make formula”—I had no idea what formula was—“but I can learn.”
“This whole pregnancy is theoretical to you. ‘Gee, won’t it be nice to love someone who can’t criticize me.’ A real human is showing up, probably next week. Theories don’t shit and cry, they don’t die if you screw up.”
“Love someone who can’t criticize me?”
“I know what you think of me and Lydia.”
I tried sarcasm. “When did you grow up all of a sudden?”
“Next week, pal.”
I ran out of anything to say. I hated being young. I hated needing. Why would God give sperm to a person too young to be a father? I tried to picture myself at Culver next week, signing up for lacrosse, being yelled at for dull shoes, taking showers around boys. Yech. Boys smell bad when they’re wet. After seeing something that mattered—love, parenthood, Wyoming—I couldn’t go off to a place where people took shoeshines seriously.
Maurey splashed water on my chest. “Don’t be sad. No matter how awful everything is, you and I will have a baby. Eighteen is only a little over four years, then you can come back.”
Four years was almost half my life. I couldn’t conceive of four years.
She flipped warm water into my face. “Wake up. You know who the rat was? Soapley.”
“What rat?”
“The rat who’s been on the phone to your grandfather once a week since the day you and Lydia hit town. Caspar wrote him a check after you ran off. Soapley apologized to Lydia and she whapped him with a wienie stick.”
“Lydia whapped him?”
“Said Otis is an ugly dog and she’d shoot his other hind leg off if she caught him peeing on her property.”
I wish I’d seen that. I splashed Maurey back in the breasts area. “Why did Caspar wait so long to fetch us home?”
“The plant won a big order from American Express. He couldn’t leave till they shipped.”
Water games escalated. Maurey slapped the surface and got me good. I kicked with my legs, churning up a king-hell froth. She was too big to churn so she tried to kick me in the balls, but I twisted and took it in the thigh.
We were kids again in no time.
When Maurey stood, her belly glistened like a huge wet cue ball. Tiny drops of water winked from her regrown crotch hair. “I better go see if Hank talked sense into Dad.”
“Hank’s not one to talk sense into anybody, but I’ve only seen him with Lydia and she doesn’t let him talk much.”
“He’s taking the she’s-an-immoral-slut-fuckup-but-after-all-she’s-your-daughter approach. I doubt it’ll work. I talked on the phone to Dad when he put Mom in the hospital and he didn’t like me any more than ever.”
“Maybe Hank can shame Buddy into caring for you.”
“I bet Dad forgot it’s my birthday.” Maurey bent down with difficulty and reached into the warm spring. I couldn’t see her face when she spoke. “You coming up to the house or you going to hide out all night?”
“Think Buddy will hit me?”
Her hand came up with a fistful of mud which she glopped onto my chin. “Sam, you’re too little to hit.”
***
As we sat on the moss, dressing, a bug nothing more than a red dot moved up Maurey’s belly to a lump under her ribs.
“What’s that?” I touched the lump.
Maurey hooked hair behind one ear and looked down at the spot. “A knee, I think. Maybe his head. He moves around and I can never tell where what is. Feel this.”
Her lower abdomen was hard as marble, couldn’t have been comfortable for her or the baby. I knocked on it like she was wood and I needed good luck. “Think he’s trying to crawl out when he moves?”
“More like rolling over to find a new position. Or dreaming.” Maurey pulled her pants over the big belly and stood up to fiddle with the bra. I tried to picture what a womb-baby dreams of—baseball glory, blue skies, food? Unless you believe in reincarnation or preexistence or some other odd religion, a baby’s dream would have to be pretty abstract.
“You think he knows he’s coming out?”
“Of course, silly. He’s not about to spend his whole life floating in fluid.”
“But does he know that?”
She spoke through her shirt as it came over her head. “My baby knows everything.”
When Maurey stood up, she put her hand on top of my head. “Hot water makes me dizzy these days. It never did that before I brought you here.”
“You weren’t pregnant before you brought me here.”
Real friendlylike, she popped the top of my head with her palm. “Next time I get the urge to learn new skills, I’m picking a kid with a brain.”
I leaned over to tie my right shoe. Hank taught me to always tie the right shoe before I put on the left sock. Has something to do with luck. “Let’s talk about that, Maurey. I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I think after the baby is born we ought to start practice again.”
Maurey laughed at my preposterousness, then she stepped onto the log. I was holding my left sock to my nose to see if it stunk, when a sound made me look up. Maurey’s arm jerked, she leaned right, then fell forward across the log and dropped from sight. The sound when she hit was awful—part splash, part crack, a gasp.
I tore down the bank, fell myself, and landed on my hands and knees in the creek. When I scrambled across to her, she lay crumpled on her back in shallow running water with her left leg at an impossible angle, cussing like king-hell shit.
Mostly it revolved around Jesus and fuck. “Christ, it hurts. How did that happen? I can’t fall.”
“Don’t move.”
“Something’s broke, Sam. Fuck.” Her face twisted up with her eyes closed and her teeth showing. I lifted her head and back out of the creek, but when I touched her leg, Maurey screamed. “God-fuck, what are you doing?”
“I need to see this.” I turned her sideways so her body was leaning on the steep bank, but her lower legs were still in the water, which was probably for the best. My own feet, especially the bare one, stung for maybe ten seconds before going numb.
When I pulled her pants leg up, she screamed again, only not so loud. There was blood, not a gross amount, but enough. When I bent to check the inside of her leg, a white shin splinter poked through the skin. Reminded me of Otis.
“Your leg’s broke, Maurey.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” She suddenly went white as the bone and gasped. Her eyes concentrated hard on something I couldn’t see, then the spasm passed and she was back.
“Something’s bad in my guts,” Maurey said.
“Around the baby?”
“God, I hope this isn’t a miscarriage. I read about miscarriages.” She yanked her pants down from the back. Between her legs was running with water and a trickle of blood.
“Is that creek water?”
She touched the rivulet. “It’s coming from me. God, I hurt.” She bit her lower lip and the tears came. “Crap. I’m going to die before I have the baby.”
“Which hurts most, your leg or your belly?”
My stupid question brought her around. “Jesus, Sam, I can’t pick between pains.”
I took off my shirt and wrapped it around the blood flow from her leg, but when I touched near the bone, she clenched up. Then she breathed real hard and held her belly. After a few seconds, she gradually calmed down.
“What was that?” I asked.
“I’m either losing the baby or having it. I wish I knew the difference. Nobody ever told me shit. Mama’s in the nuthouse when I need her, Daddy hates me. My hair’s all wet.”
That last one scared me. “I’m going after Buddy.”
Maurey grabbed my arm hard. “Don’t leave me here, Sam. I don’t feel good.”
“I have to find help, we don’t know what to do.”
The tears streamed without a crying sound. “But Dad doesn’t like me.”
“Maurey, I have to get help. There’s no choice.”
She pushed me away. “Go ahead and leave when I need you. I’ll lay here and die alone.”
“You won’t die. I promise.”
“You promised you wouldn’t squirt. You promised you wouldn’t fall in love. You promised you wouldn’t go back to North Carolina. When was the last time you kept a promise?”
“I promise you won’t die.” After that she stopped talking. I waded into the creek and found a rock to prop her right leg on, but I figured the left one should stay in the water. She probably couldn’t feel it by now anyway. Then I checked the flow in her crotch. The water coming from her was bad, but the blood scared me. I couldn’t tell if the flow was slowing down or getting worse.
“You comfortable enough?”
She didn’t say anything. I changed my mind and decided to pull the broken leg out of the creek after all. She might lose it from freezing.
“If it gets to hurting too much, put it back in the water.”
Maurey nodded.
I touched her shoulder, then scrambled up the steep bank. Maurey’s voice came small and frightened. “Sam?”
“What, hon?”
“Thanks.”
***
It would have been faster if I’d gone back up the far bank for my left shoe. By the time I reached the ranch, my foot bled like Maurey’s leg. The cowdog Simon chased me the last thirty feet up to the ranch house, so knocking on the door was out.
I blew into a room with Buddy and Hank squared off at a linoleum table, both cradling cups of coffee. Petey shoved trucks off kindling next to the wood stove.
“Maurey fell, she’s hurt.” I bent over and held my knees.
Hank recovered first. “Where?”
“Up the creek, a quarter mile, a half mile, I don’t know. Her leg’s broke and her crotch is bleeding.”
Buddy was on his feet and moving, gathering rope, sheets, his knife, something from under the sink. Hank ran to his truck and brought back a hatchet. If you ever have an emergency, have it around cowboys.
“Exactly where is she?” Buddy asked.
“She fell off a log over the creek, past the third beaver dam.”
“The warm springs?”
I nodded. “Maurey said you didn’t know about it.”
“How bad’s the bleeding?”
“Not much blood, but lots of clear stuff.”
Hank glanced at Buddy. “She broke her water.”
Buddy’s bushy head went up and down. “Sounds like a tear in the placenta. Watch Petey while we’re gone.” He threw some towels in a day pack and they left.
***
Lydia did thirty-nine hours of labor before I was born. “It was Nazi torture,” she told me. “Ninety-seven degrees and Deep South humidity. Contractions for days. The nurses hated me for being young and rich. I turned into a cat, spitting on them whenever they touched me.”
“Nurses are supposed to be compassionate.”
Lydia made a forceful “Huh” sound. “These dykes laughed at me, said I was a sissy little girl. I called one an evil iron-cunt and she said I was an unwed bitch who didn’t deserve painkillers, that I wouldn’t be so quick to seduce Southern boys again if I was punished.”
“Sounds like a confrontation.”
“I screamed for eight hours. They tied my arms down but I bit the iron-cunt in the shoulder blade. The Negro orderly slapped me till I let go.”
Lydia said the doctor gassed her about three centimeters too soon just to shut her up, then he and Caspar went out for barbecue and one of the nurses delivered me.
“That slimey-balled doctor charged full price for delivery and he wasn’t even there. He was off licking his fingers with Daddy.”
“But after all that agony, look what you have now,” I said.
“What?”
“Me, aren’t I worth it?”
“Sam, nobody is worth giving birth.”
***
Shannon was born at 1:45 the next morning. I’ll never figure where Maurey came up with the name Shannon, but it’s pretty and Shannon herself is beautiful as sunshine.
Buddy and I sat on bruised peach-colored plastic chairs in the waiting room playing Chinese checkers. The nurses hadn’t known exactly what stance to take where I was concerned. Little girls had had babies in the Jackson hospital before, only not with little-boy fathers doing the pace thing outside with the little girl’s father, especially little-boy fathers wearing no shirt and only one shoe. Someone found an orderly smock-looking shirt small enough to more or less fit, but I ended up taking off my right shoe and sock so my feet would match. The left foot was a cut and bruised mess that no one offered to fix. I guess if you aren’t a patient they don’t worry with you.
About midnight, one of the nurses brought out a box of toys they kept for kids getting their tonsils out. I’d read both lobby Reader’s Digests—“I am Joe’s Thyroid”—and concentration had flown off.
The interesting thing about Chinese checkers was watching Buddy handle the marbles. He was so big, and his fingers were even bigger and rougher proportionally than Buddy, it was hard to picture him being concerned with something small as a marble. The man needed large concepts—stallions, freedom, wilderness—not trivialities. Although he did play a mean Chinese checkers. Once I explained the rules, the man was unstoppable.
At first, Buddy hadn’t wanted me at the hospital. He and Hank carried Maurey into the ranch house with her leg in a splint and a wad of towels between her
thighs. She was drained white, silent, smiling weakly when she looked at me but not looking at me much.
The plan was for Hank to take Petey to Aunt What’s-Her-Name’s while Buddy drove Maurey to Jackson in the Chevelle. Good thing Annabel was in the nuthouse or they’d of had to cram Maurey into a truck cab.
After they fit her in the backseat, I hopped in to hold her steady on the dirt road.
Buddy said, “You go to town with Hank.”
“I’m staying.”
He stared at me for about five seconds, which made me jumpy, so I tucked a Hudson Bay blanket around Maurey’s waist and good leg and pretended it was a done deal and staring at me with black-bead eyes didn’t matter.
Finally, he said, “Okay.” Maurey didn’t indicate what she wanted from me. She was going into shock.
Halfway between GroVont and Jackson, moving eighty miles an hour, Buddy said, “When I was your age I wouldn’t have passed it up either.”
I glanced at his beard in the rearview mirror. “I love her, Mr. Pierce.”
He swallowed. “I had to be a father; it was my job.”
“She understands.”
Maurey’s hand squeezed mine real hard as another spasm came on. Sweat trickled from her hairline, down her face, and disappeared behind her neck. Her blue eyes stared up at the ceiling. I tried to count between blinks, but gave up at forty-five.
***
The first twenty minutes at the hospital were frenzied with efficient people running in and out of the emergency room. A man hooked Maurey up to a bag of blood while a woman gave her a pain shot in the rear. When it came time to set her leg, the doctor kicked me out. I said, “No, Maurey needs me,” but the doctor growled like a big dog so I left.
After that, we’re talking seven hours of vacuum time, waiting on the outside, climbing walls on the inside. Buddy talked to me some. He told me about the army and art school and Annabel crying every minute of the drive to the hospital in Salt Lake.
“I can’t comprehend anyone that I love,” Buddy said.
“I know what you mean.”
It’s amazing what people will say in crises—even cowboys.
Sitting in that stupid puke-colored chair, staring at “Humor in Uniform” for an hour without getting any of the jokes, I made a conscious effort to think like a person who doesn’t put himself at the head of the universe.