by Tim Sandlin
Lydia flounced. “I’ve got better things to do than driving into Jackson once a week to put on a dog-and-pony show for you.”
Brandy wiped a crumb from the edge of her lower lip. “I’ve got better things to do than watch your dog-and-pony show, Mrs. Elkrunner.”
“The name is Callahan.” Which wasn’t always true. Lydia went by whichever name was convenient at the moment.
“I don’t care what you call yourself,” Brandy said, “but weekly contact is my job and part of your sentence.”
“Why can’t we ignore the unpleasant? I won’t tell if you won’t.”
“Can’t be done. I have to document your five hundred hours of community service.”
“You’re not going to hold me to that?”
“It’s a condition of the parole.”
Terry and Little Jim had disappeared. One moment they were flanking Lydia, and the next they were gone. Hank used to pull that stunt all the time, which led me to think it’s an Indian skill.
Lydia twisted the GMC driver’s side mirror to look at herself. She bared her teeth, checking for bits between her incisors. “I’d hoped the community service was only a formality,” she said. “Couldn’t you write down that I was available to give advice for five hundred hours?”
Brandy finally went for the icing.
Lydia said, “If you want true community service, you’ll help me get my press back in operation.”
If there is one thing I delight in, it’s watching women deal with each other. Any women are interesting, but the levels of complexity between heterosexual women go on forever. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in subtext, I miss the conversation.
“I have found something I think you’ll enjoy,” Brandy said.
“Not if the word service is involved.”
“Oly Pedersen turns one hundred this August. The county library asked me to have someone make an oral history of his life and adventures. That sounds right up your alley.”
A picture of Oly formed in my mind—huge Adam’s apple, visible thyroid gland, spots on his forehead, hands you could see the veins through. He’d been ancient thirty years ago.
“I could have sworn Oly died,” Lydia said.
“Nope.” Brandy shoveled in the icing. “They’re planning Oly Pedersen Day. He presents the town fathers the oral history, and they give him the key to GroVont. There’ll be an old-timers’ rodeo and fireworks.”
Lydia sighed. “Don’t you admire the Eskimo ritual of leaving their elderly behind on an ice flow. I always thought that was so poignant.”
Brandy swallowed the last of her icing. “Did you bake this cake yourself?”
***
There aren’t many advantages to traveling with three pregnant women and a baby, but one of them is you can beg out of social situations early, before cleanup. As the sun turned pink and dipped into Death Canyon, I said our good-byes, while Gilia rounded up the infanticipating charges.
I found Shannon talking to the white kid with Rastafarian hair. He called himself Chuck-O, had a spider tattoo crawling on his neck, and was one of those boys who shake hands with everyone they meet. He called me sir and said it was quite a thrill to meet me, because when he was little, he read all my novels. “You’re the best, man. I used to model myself after Bucky Brooks.”
I said, “I hate Bucky Brooks.” The Rastafarian thought I was kidding.
“Chuck-O is going to teach me snowboarding this winter,” Shannon said.
Lydia was explaining the federal prison system to three women from the Southern Baptist Golden Rule Club. They’d come out to invite Lydia to join the club but, after seeing her in person, changed their mind.
Lydia clamped a hand on my wrist and led me out of Golden Rule earshot. “Do you think Maurey was right?”
“Of course,” I said. “About what?”
“That prison softened me. What if I’ve lost my anger, Sam?”
“Your anger is you, Lydia.”
“I have always defined my self-image by my fire.”
I could tell she was thinking about something. “What’s the matter, Mom? You’re home, out of prison. You should relax for a few days.”
“I can’t relax. That silly twit accused me of baking a cake.”
“She’s a parole officer. They’re trained to deal with hard cases.”
Lydia released my wrist and brushed the bangs off her forehead. “Maybe she’s blind. Some blind people hide it real well.”
“I don’t think so.”
“My greatest fear is I might lose my anger.”
“I think you’re safe on that one.”
“Thank you, Sam.”
***
I got into the van and buckled my seat belt. As Gilia shifted gears, she looked over at me and said, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Lydia said thank you.”
Gilia put the van back in neutral. She turned to stare through the twilight at Lydia, who was teaching Roger the proper way to clean a spit. She had him stretched out over the cold coals with a sponge and wet rag.
Gilia looked back at me and smiled. “Don’t worry. She didn’t mean it.”
4
My writing career started in the field of Young Adult Sports Fiction. Mountain-climbing books. Not that I ever climbed a mountain myself, but no one expected Agatha Christie to murder people, I don’t see why they would expect an author of mountain-climbing fiction to climb mountains.
I created the Bucky Brooks series—Bucky Climbs the Matterhorn, Bucky on Half Dome. You’ve probably heard of them. Bucky and his sidekick, Samantha Lindell, fight evil and wrong thinking while conquering the major peaks of the world. Only, I found Samantha more interesting than Bucky, so I finished the sixth book in the series by throwing Bucky off Mount Rainier. My editor wouldn’t let me kill Bucky. She said it would traumatize introverted young adults, so I let Bucky go into a long, unrecorded career in wheelchair racing.
I left Young Adult Sports Fiction and moved on to a romance subgenre, technically known as Plucky Women in Jeopardy. I took on the pen name of Patrice Longfellow. Samantha and I had fun zipping her in and out of tight spots without breaking the primary rule of PWJ, which is the heroine has to save herself. No rescues by Prince Charming or any other male. The Patrice book wasn’t very successful. My editor said I fudged on the sex scenes—cut straight from foreplay to breakfast. You can’t do that in romance, even in the subgenres. Harlequins don’t skip parts.
At the urging of my agent, I left Plucky Women for the Moral Private Eye. This is the man or woman with an amazingly strict personal code who never compromises an inch, no matter how vile the consequences. My private eye was RC Nash. Slimeball land developers cheated his family out of their Nevada ranch, driving his father to suicide and his mother to California. RC hitchhiked into Las Vegas and started wasting real estate agents—always in self-defense. After the first book—Craps Is for Killers—RC opened his own private investigator business, specializing in helping tourists swindled out of their nest eggs.
RC lived in a one-room trailer on the edge of the desert. He was a vegetarian and a chess master, and his girlfriend worked at a legal prostitution ranch thirty miles out toward the nuclear test range. Her name was Samantha Lindell. Whenever a mystery stumped RC, he drove his ’57 Willys Jeep to the Spruce Goose Ranch and asked the hookers’ advice. Because hookers are in touch with the dark underbelly of America, they almost always gave RC an insight that helped him solve the case.
That’s the part that steamed Lydia.
“You’re nothing but a man,” she said.
“I resent that.”
“You men writers all make up the same hookers—nice girls who just happen to turn tricks. The male idea of a whore is Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.”
“She seemed okay to me.”
“Have you ever b
een with a real whore?”
“Mom.”
“Have you had a single conversation with a real whore?”
“Maybe. I wasn’t sure what she was.”
“Your whores sit around the parlor discussing life like they’re at an existential Tupperware party. Prison is full of real whores, and they don’t quote Hegel.”
“Only one of my whores quotes Hegel.”
“The hooker’s heart of gold is a male fantasy. Ninety-five percent of all whores think men are scum.”
“My stories are entertainment. They aren’t supposed to reflect reality.”
“Why write them then?”
I was carrying a plaster bust of Flannery O’Connor from my old room, through the living room, and out to the Madonnaville van. Lydia had telephoned at 7:30 that morning.
“I’m hauling this junk to the dump. If you want any of it, you better hurry.”
“My good stuff?”
“I don’t see anything worth holding a garage sale over.”
So I jumped in the van and drove down to GroVont to save my prize possessions. Lydia stood in the living room, delivering comments on the quality of the goods.
“Gilia has appalling tastes,” Lydia said. “Are you certain you want to be associated with her?” She said this while glaring at a Cannery Row movie poster—Debra Winger playing a hooker with a heart of gold.
“This is the stuff she wouldn’t let me keep at home,” I said.
“So you turned my house into a storage unit for the ugly?”
“I used the house as my in-town office. I wrote here.”
“You wrote those books in my home?”
Which led to her literary criticism of the RC Nash legacy and male authors’ shoddy treatment of prostitutes.
She said, “Not one woman on that ranch of yours is a lesbian or drug addict. The prototypical prostitute in your books is an art student from the Netherlands earning an honest living while exploring her creative potential.”
The part of the discussion that floored me was that Lydia had actually read the RC Nash books. “I can’t believe you read me,” I said.
“I read a lot in prison—every book written by anyone even vaguely connected to Jackson Hole, and after I exhausted the rest, I ended up on you. There wasn’t that much else to do except pump iron and watch network television. Does Maurey still have that dumb boy at the ranch?”
The question went right over my head. “What?”
“The boy her friend Mary Beth dumped on her? She had an ex-husband or something named Freedom who got killed and his friends left the kid with her and she passed him along to Maurey.”
“Roger?”
“I knew his story, but I forgot his name.”
“Roger was at your coming-home party the other day. Remember the kid mopping the pig. Sleeveless cowboy shirt. Tie-dye bandanna he seems to sleep in.”
Lydia didn’t remember anyone mopping a pig at her party.
“Roger started talking again,” I said. “Years ago.”
Lydia’s fingers kind of fluttered, as if brushing away a fly. “That’s nice.”
“Why are you asking about Roger?”
“I was just wondering what happened to him.”
“Roger is okay. Maurey raised him. He works for me now, at the Home.”
“I read a book about a traumatized child, and I couldn’t help but wonder why I came out okay and so many others didn’t.”
“Maybe because you weren’t traumatized.”
Lydia’s eyes focused somewhere else. “I thought I was, until I met the prostitutes in prison.”
***
Lydia—in a powder blue jogging suit and red tennis shoes—drove to Haven House, where Teton County’s oldest pioneer lives. Haven House is one of those new deals for senior citizens that’s part apartment complex and part nursing home. Their stationery says Independent living in a controlled environment. There’s a central cafeteria and rec room and a van that ferries the old-timers to the drugstore and post office, but they each have their own studio apartment where they can hang pictures on the wall and feel self-sufficient. It’s like a college dorm without the keg.
Lydia found Ellis Gill standing on a chair in his office, pulling the clear plastic insulation sheets off the windows. Ellis wears socks that match his ties—in this case, green stripes—which you wouldn’t normally notice unless you caught him standing on a chair.
“Spring is upon us,” he said in explanation of his actions.
“Where’s the old fossil?” Lydia asked.
Ellis’s face went cloudy underneath his conspicuous whirlpool comb-over. “We cannot approach our residents with that attitude, Mrs. Elkrunner. They can sense condescension, like dogs and children.”
“First, it’s not Mrs. Elkrunner. Marriage didn’t change me.”
Ellis came down off his chair and retreated behind his desk. Most bureaucrats feel a need to keep furniture between themselves and Lydia.
“Second,” Lydia went on, “I’m here by court order, and I don’t give one hoot whether Oly Pedersen senses condescension or not. As a matter of fact, I feel condescension and it would be less than honest to hide my true feelings.”
Ellis stood awhile, as if adapting to something unpleasant. Then he reached over and pushed an intercom button. “Eden, come in here.”
Yes, it was my Eden. The Madonnaville girls are urged to find jobs in the personal-service industry while they await labor. It acclimatizes them to the idea of putting someone else’s comfort above their own.
Eden stuck her head in the door and looked from Ellis Gill to Lydia. She smiled at Lydia.
Lydia said, “You must be one of Sam’s.”
“I met you at the coming-home party.”
“Has my son taught you that pregnancy is political? You think your condition is empowerment, but little do you know, it is the exact opposite.”
Eden said, “I’ve never cared enough to vote.”
Ellis averted a lengthy yet standard lecture by jumping into the conversation. “Eden, have you seen Oly since luncheon?”
Eden looked back at Ellis, no doubt wondering what kind of putz calls lunch luncheon. “He’s playing Yahtzee with the Crone Patrol.”
Now Ellis was concerned. Ellis’s self-image is that of a man who puts out fires. “Didn’t I make myself clear when it came to the subject of Yahtzee?’
Ellis charged out from behind the desk, past Eden, and through the door. Lydia followed, then Eden herself.
“He promised he wouldn’t gamble,” Eden said to Ellis’s back.
Ellis turned on Lydia. “The loved ones have been complaining. Oly is hustling the other residents out of their spending money. Winnie Crawford’s daughter complained quite bitterly. Said Winnie stole money from her purse to cover her Yahtzee losses.”
“Oly promised he wouldn’t gamble,” Eden said again.
Ellis made a sound like tut, tut and headed down the hall. Just before they reached the rec room, he stopped for Lydia to catch up.
“Do you have your recording instruments with you?” he asked.
Lydia patted her leather purse, which was shaped like a woman’s old-time sidesaddle.
“Mr. Pedersen tires easily,” Gill said. “I’d appreciate it if you limit your interviews to an hour apiece.”
“You think this will take more than an hour?” Lydia asked.
“He has ninety-nine years to cover.”
“I know for a fact he hasn’t done a thing the last thirty.”
***
Oly sat at a card table, buck naked except for his tennis shoes. He stared at five dice—three twos, a six, and a five—and a Yahtzee sheet. The woman across from him was fully clothed, but the two at his sides were down to bras and panties. One of them wore an adult safety diaper. We’re talking ei
ghty, if they were a day.
Eden Rae said, “Yuck.”
Ellis Gill said, “Mr. Pedersen.”
“Oly’s not near as good at strip Yahtzee as he was when we played for money,” the dressed woman said in a New Orleans accent. Even seated, it was clear the woman was exceptionally short. “I wonder why that is?” Beside her on the floor, she had neatly stacked four or five sweaters, a couple of vests, and a pile of jewelry. She had come to the game prepared.
“Mr. Pedersen, you go too far.” Ellis moved to cover the two women in bras and panties. The one wearing a diaper giggled, and the other looked sad.
“I wanted to age with dignity,” the sad one said.
“Oh, Winnie, why?” the giggler said. “Elder dignity is just some idea young people made up so we’d stay quiet and out of the way.”
Winnie pleaded with Ellis. “Don’t tell my daughter-in-law. She’ll send me to the nursing home in Pinedale.” She looked more depressed than ever. “They don’t have cable in Pinedale.”
Throughout all this, Lydia stared at Oly, who, in turn, stared at the dice. At first, she thought he was catatonic. Lydia claims to be repulsed by flesh in general, but Oly was beyond repulsive. Except for some liver-colored discs on his face and the backs of his hands, he was the color of a filthy commode. Loose skin hung from odd places, not just under his arms and chin. It was as if his skeleton had shrunk and left the skin to fend for itself.
A deep purple scar, like an implanted rope, snaked down his right thigh from crotch to knee. Another scar, this one black and thatched, ran across his left shoulder. He wore thick glasses and a hearing aid and there was a blue tattoo of a columbine on one hip. The balls had no hair, but thankfully, his penis had retreated from sight. Lydia had the sensation of standing before a skinned lizard.
Oly’s eyelids blinked slowly behind the lenses of his glasses, and he turned his head to stare at Lydia. He said, “You’re wearing my shoes.”
Lydia looked down in horror. Oly was wearing red tennis shoes with untied laces, exactly like hers.
The clothed woman clamped a hand around Lydia’s wrist.
“He’s mine,” the old lady whispered loudly. Hissed might better describe it. “Don’t you get any notions.”