Lydia (7 page)

“What can I do to help?” Roger asked.

“Hold me.”

Roger stayed awake, holding Amelia all night while she slept with the innocence of a child. His arm was dead as day-old hamburger by morning, but Roger didn’t care. He’d had sex with a girl before; he’d never seen one sleep.

Tammy Lynn was eight months along and had a secret horseback fetish. When Tammy Lynn yelled, “
Heigh-ho, Silver!
”
Roger fell off the back of Debra Winger, who stampeded across the field with the naked Tammy Lynn hanging on and laughing like a hysteria patient at a state mental institution.

Roger didn’t mind the girls sneaking into his cabin in the middle of the night. He looked forward to it. The girls who came after him were experienced, yet young and nimble. Since they were already pregnant and had been tested for disease, there were none of the usual fears that go with teen coupling. Roger was in the unique position—sex without consequences.

***

In May, Roger decided he needed even more privacy, so he built an outhouse down the hill from his cabin, away from the creek. The outhouse itself was no problem for a man with tools and know-how, but the outhouse hole was a different matter. It doesn’t take know-how to dig a hole on the upper Gros Ventre; it takes a strong fool with time on his hands. The site Roger chose was three inches of red dirt over a mountain of cobbled rocks put in place by glaciers and packed down by a million years of gravity.

Ten hours of pouring sweat in the high-altitude sun got Roger blisters on both hands and a four-foot hole in the ground, which was nowhere near deep enough for an outhouse. The next day he found an iron bar—called a pig sticker—in the toolshed and proceeded to smash the rocks rather than dig around them. At five feet, a salamander popped out of the hard-pack wall and fell down the back of Roger’s jeans. That brought him out of the hole in a hurry. He danced on the slag pile as the salamander slid down his leg and out the bottom where Roger stomped it.

The stomp came before thought, and Roger immediately regretted his action. He stood, hands on hips, unblinking, staring down at the squashed salamander. It had happened so quickly. Roger didn’t even remember jumping out of the pit. One moment he had a squirming
thing
in his jeans, and the next it was dead in the dirt. Roger’s boot print was impressed on the ground around the salamander with a little moon of waffle track on the head. The body looked plump and alive, but the head was flat as corrugated cardboard.

Roger picked up a baseball-sized rock and threw it hard as he could into the hole in disgust. He sat on the dirt pile, his hands now fists. The problem wasn’t so much that he killed the salamander—he hated killing animals, but you don’t grow up on a ranch without knowing how. The revulsion came from how quickly he’d killed. He’d had no time to choose. No premeditation. The deed had been beyond his control.

***

I found Roger sitting in the same spot on the dirt pile, only by the time I arrived, he’d buried the salamander and set up a cross made from chinking slats held together by a leather shoelace cord. Roger’s lips were moving, and as I leaned closer, I heard him whispering the poem that starts, “
Now I lay me down to sleep.
”

“Odd choice of funeral prayer,” I said.

“
Amen.
” He glanced my way. “It’s the only prayer I know. Maurey taught it to me, back years ago when I used to have bedtime terrors.”

“You still have bedtime terrors.”

He nodded, more to himself than me. “I never like the ‘If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take’ part. Seems against the point of calming the child down to remind him every night that he might die in his sleep.”

I knelt to inspect how he’d tied the cord around the knot. A Boy Scout couldn’t have done better, but Roger had never been social enough to join Boy Scouts. “What was it?” I asked.

Twin tear tracks ran from the corners of Roger’s eyes, leaving worm-like trails in the dust on his face. “Salamander. Did you know they live underground? No light, no tunnel, I can’t figure out how he came to be where he was.”

“Did he have a name?”

Roger gave me a look to see if I was teasing. Of course I wasn’t. I don’t tease. “Not that I know of. He only lived a couple seconds after I freed him.”

“Then tell me this. Why are you so upset over the death of a salamander? Random animal empathy is fine, but if taken to extremes, it makes trivial the emotion you might need later when something personally tragic happens.”

Roger blinked twice and leaned over to pick up the shovel he’d used in the burial. “I killed it before I thought about killing it.” He paused, deciding how far he could go with frankness. “What if I’m built for violence? I don’t know my birth parents. They could be serial killers. God knows that would explain a lot.”

“Such as not talking, and the nightmares.”

“And killing helpless animals.”

***

We observed a minute of silence. Roger had always been somber, fairly detached, but he’d never come across as sad. He struck me as more consciously flat. A kid who played bass guitar alone. I knew there was something I should be saying—“You’re not bred to kill” or “Let a smile be your umbrella.” Everything I could think of came across as fatuous nonsense. He was right. A kid doesn’t stop speaking without a violent reason. The odds were high that he had been spawned from a bad seed. That didn’t mean he was doomed to badness. Where would I be if I bought the heredity-forms-us line?

So I said what I’d walked up the hill to say in the first place. “You know my mother, Lydia?”

Roger’s tore his eyes from the salamander grave. It turned out I’d said the right words to get him to move on. For most terrible thoughts, distraction beats introspection every time.

“We haven’t been introduced exactly. At the barbecue, she told me I was cooking with a dirty bandanna on my head, that I should show more pride in my appearance.”

“That’s Lydia.”

I stood and dusted dirt off my hands. “Lydia got pulled over Friday for not having brake lights.”

“That’s happened to me twice.”

“She refuses to get them fixed because it would be giving other drivers too much information.”

Roger said, “My fuse went out.”

“Yeah, well, Lydia’s driver’s license expired six years ago.”

“Isn’t she on parole?”

I leaned over to check the outhouse hole. It needed more depth. “Now she can’t drive, and she’s supposed to go down to Haven House this afternoon to record the oral history of this old-timer. He’s turning a hundred in August, and everyone expects him to die right after that, so they’re in a hurry.”

“Your mother should apply for a new license.”

“That’s what I said. In the meantime, she wants you to drive her to the interview.”

Roger looked over. “Why me?”

“You’ll get along better with Lydia if you don’t use the word
why
.”

“But she said my name? She said, ‘Get Roger’?”

I nodded again. “Sort of. I offered to come give her a ride, and she said to send the boy Maurey took in, the one who couldn’t talk when she lived here before.”

“I’ll have to clean up first. You want to finish my hole?”

I said, “The Earth will fill it back up in a few thousand years. I can’t see the point in digging a hole just to have it filled in again.”

Roger said, “It’s for my crap.”

***

Roger owned a ’79 Datsun pickup truck he paid thirty-five dollars for, even though it wasn’t worth that much. He called the truck Cindy and Cindy should have been ranch-bound. She wasn’t the sort you would take on asphalt if you had a choice. Lydia answered the door, barefoot, with her head cocked to the side as she slid a silver hoop into her right ear.

She saw Cindy out by the mailbox and said, “We’ll take my car.” Her BMW was actually older than Cindy and had more miles, but so far as Roger knew, it had steering, lights, and brakes. “You know how to drive a standard?” Lydia turned and walked back into the living room.

“Yes, ma’am.

Lydia stopped before a five-yard lineup of shoes—boots, sandals, slippers, running shoes, hiking shoes, lick-me heels, and pumps. Ever since she’d worn the same shoes as Oly, Lydia had been obsessed with footwear.

“Didn’t my son ever tell you what happens when people call me
ma’am
?”

“No, ma—”

Her voice rose into a scream. “
I fly off the handle!
”

Other than being loud enough to shake the windows, she didn’t look off the handle to Roger. She seemed calm, balanced on her left leg, slipping her right foot into a squared-off, black high heel with straps that went well with her black tights and blood red cowboy shirt.

“How do you address the girls out at the sanitarium, or whatever Sam is calling it this week?”

“Generally, I say
You
.”

“You?”

“‘You need anything from town?’ ‘How are you this fine day?’ We don’t get personal enough for names.”

Lydia kind of smirked. Roger had a flash that she and everyone in Wyoming knew the story.

“No doubt that causes tingles to run up and down their spines.
‘Hey, you!’
Okay, other boys your age—what do they call girls?”

Roger’s mind went back to high school. It was the year before last, but it felt like nostalgia. “They call the girls
Babe
.”

“That’s fine then. Call me Babe.”

Roger tried to hide the recoil in his eyes, but he wasn’t quick enough.

Her voice was quieter than before, more menacing. “I’m too old to be a babe?”

“No, ma’am.” Mistake. “I mean, you’re a fox, for your age. But I never called anyone Babe. That was the other guys. I thought the word wasn’t polite.”

“What did you call your female friends?”

“I didn’t have female friends.”

“Are you trying to piss me off?”

He shook his head No. It seemed like the time not to say anything aloud.

“What did you call your male friends?”

He didn’t have many of those either, but Roger knew better than to say so. He thought about what Auburn’s gang of jocks called each other. “Last names. Most guys used last names.”

“Thusly, you would call me Callahan.”

“I guess so. Thusly.”

“Try it.”

“Yo, Callahan.”

“Use it in a sentence.”

“Hey, Callahan, you ready to ride or what?”

“Yes, I am.” Lydia picked up her purse and waited for him to gather the taping equipment. “See how easy it is when you do things right?”

***

She stood by the passenger door while he set the equipment in the backseat. Roger got in, then got back out and walked around to open Lydia’s door.

She said, “Thank you,” and slid into the car.

Roger had trouble finding reverse, but Lydia didn’t comment. She sat quietly while he ground the gears. She waited until they were on the GroVont Road before starting the conversation.

“Has my son been filling you with gobbledygook about the purpose of life?”

He sneaked a peek at her face; she was wearing Vuarnet sunglasses. “Now and then. It’s something he likes to talk about.”

“Talking about the purpose of life is the single biggest waste of time in human society. It’s worse than television.”

“I suppose so.”

“I know so. I’d rather Sam watch the Miss America Pageant than talk about the purpose of life.”

Roger wasn’t sure what they were discussing. “Maurey and Pud have a satellite dish, but Gilia won’t allow TV at the Home.”

“You call your parents Maurey and Pud?”

“They’ve only been my parents since I was thirteen or so. I never got used to saying
Mom
and
Pop
.”

Lydia sat in silence until he turned onto the South Highway and headed toward Jackson. As they passed the elk refuge, a small group of silver males moved toward the river. The leader had velvet stumps growing to replace last year’s horns.

“What does Sam claim is the purpose of life?”

“It changes. Last week he said life is a Saturday-morning cartoon meant to entertain a God who tends to sleep late.” He glanced over at the sunglasses. There was no reaction from the visible parts of her face. “I think what he meant was God generally misses the show, but we have to put it on anyway.”

Lydia said, “Have you ever wondered who you are?”

Roger took that four different ways, then gave it up. “What?”

“Who your other parents are? The ones before Maurey and Pud, before you came to Wyoming?”

Roger knew this wasn’t a woman he could lie to like a pregnant teenager. “Sure, I wonder.”

“If I had the power to tell you, would you want to hear, even if it isn’t pretty?”

“I always figured it couldn’t be pretty.”

“Because you were struck dumb when you arrived at the ranch?”

“Because I wasn’t raised with my normal family.” He turned right again, toward Haven House. “You know who I am?”

“I have an idea. Of course, I can’t say for certain; it’s more a theory than an actual fact, but the important thing here isn’t who you are and where you come from.”

“It’s not?”

“It’s do you want to know the truth.”

He stopped the BMW between the fake Greek columns that framed the Haven House door. “Do you?” Lydia asked.

Roger stared at his hands on the steering wheel. She probably didn’t know. Hell, she’d been underground or in prison for years, how could she know something Maurey and Pud didn’t?

“I’ll think about it.”

“You do that. Go for a drive, or whatever it is you do when you think, then pick me up back here in two hours.”

He got out and opened Lydia’s car door. She looped her purse under her left arm and gathered the taping equipment. He opened the Haven House door and waited while she walked in, then he closed the door behind her. Roger got back into the BMW and started the engine, but he didn’t drive away. For a moment, he was sorry he had started talking again.

Mary Beth spent the next week in a trance of waiting. Whenever she dropped Jazmine or Meadow off at day care, she hugged them to her chest and said good-bye as if this was the last time. She wrote Lonnie a nine-page letter on pink paper, then hid it in her hope chest where he would look only after she was gone. She glided through her days, thinking,
I may never see this Payless shoe store again.
She stopped flossing. There didn’t seem to be any point.

The other boot fell Tuesday morning. Mary Beth slipped out of bed at five thirty and went downstairs to watch her exercise class on TV. After seeing Leroy, she’d stopped actually exercising with the sparkly PBS babes who bounced on rubber mats on a beach in Hawaii, or maybe Malibu, but Mary Beth still watched. She liked being up before everyone else. It was the one time of day no one wanted a piece of her.

She flipped on the TV and padded barefoot into the kitchen for her carrot-and-artichoke-heart energy soda, and at the kitchen table sat Leroy—no shirt, no shoes, baggy canvas shorts held up by clothesline cord—his cracked hands folded around a mug of coffee.

They stared at each other. Mary Beth saw Leroy’d lost his teeth. His face collapsed in on itself. He had that homeless tan so different from the tan you get at a tanning salon or a beach or even working outdoors. His skin shone like wet denim.

She said, “You better hope Lonnie doesn’t wake up and come down here.”

Leroy cocked his head, as if listening. The aerobics teacher chirped from the living room. “Tuck in your tailbone, align those shoulders, and kick on the four count—left foot first!” Carly Simon burst forth, singing a song about anticipation.

“You’re the one better hope Lonnie doesn’t wake up and come down here,” Leroy said. Mary Beth shuddered. Leroy said, “Have some coffee.” It wasn’t a question.

Mary Beth poured herself a cup from the Mr. Coffee. Leroy’d made it stronger than she liked. She looked into the refrigerator for an open can of condensed milk, but when she poured the milk into her coffee, her hand shook. She looked up to see if Leroy noticed.

He said, “Sit here.” He patted the chair beside his. Leroy had moved Meadow’s booster seat to the floor.

Mary Beth looked from Leroy to the lime green refrigerator, where the girls’ Crayola drawings of stick people and dragons were held on by magnets shaped like Navajo talismen. She wondered what Meadow and Jazmine would grow up to be like without her. Lonnie ate beef and didn’t buy into crystal therapy. She didn’t doubt for a moment that he would sell her collection of love poems.

“Critter, sit,” Leroy said.

Mary Beth sat. “No one’s called me Critter since I left Oklahoma,” she said.

Leroy glared at her. He was too close. His fish-gone-bad breath took the place of space around her. His black-rimmed fingernails looked magnified.

“Where’s the boy?” he said.

Mary Beth blinked. It wasn’t what she’d expected. “I’m afraid I don’t follow you,” she said.

“You’re not as stupid as you pretend to be,” Leroy said.

“Do you mean that in a good way?”

“Where’s my boy?”

There was some chance Mary Beth might swoon from the fumes. She wondered if that would be a negative. He might carry her off before Lonnie or the girls came down. She’d given up on herself. All she could do now was protect her family.

“Norwood and Timmy said they brought him to you,” Leroy said. “Those two jizz-for-brains don’t have the balls to lie to me.”

“Are you talking about the little boy we kidnapped?”

Leroy backhanded Mary Beth, knocking her to the floor, against the dish-machine vent. “My boy. The boy taken from me by his cunt of a mother.”

Mary Beth flattened her palms against the linoleum and looked up at Leroy. His eyes had that stallion-in-a-burning-barn wildness she remembered from the old days, right before he was set to explode on someone. She knew better than to argue with Leroy about the past, but she’d been there when he grabbed the boy. She drove the van. It was the one experience from the bad years that still gave her night sweats. That day was the reason she and Lonnie slept in the same room as the girls.

“Get off the floor,” Leroy said. “We know each other too well for you to play victim.”

Mary Beth made it to her feet, slowly, but she didn’t move any closer to Leroy.

He stared into his coffee mug. Then he cleared his throat with a sound that came out something like a sigh. “No more games, Critter. Where’s the boy?”

She brought her hands together, intertwining the fingers, chest level. “He’s not here.”

“I can see that. I’m not an idiot.” Leroy’s eyes violated her. “Did you raise him up?”

She shook her head. “I couldn’t. I didn’t have any money.”

“Who had him then?”

Mary Beth didn’t answer.

“I’ll make this easy for you. You can give up the boy, or you can give up those pretty little girls.”

“You wouldn’t hurt my daughters?”

Leroy waited while Mary Beth supplied the answer to her question.

“I thought you were here to claim me,” she said.

Leroy snorted. “Look at yourself. You’re elderly. I got no interest in you.”

The relief made Mary Beth dizzy, but it was followed by a hint of a letdown. All these years, she’d thought he would return like a vengeful demon to carry her away—that, or kill her—when the truth was, her existence didn’t matter.

“You want me to go upstairs?” he said.

“I took the boy to Wyoming.”

“Where in Wyoming?”

“I heard about a woman with a ranch where people could go when they were in trouble. I drove the boy up there and left him. That was ten years ago.”

Leroy leaned down, snaked his hand up the right leg of his canvas shorts, and scratched his scrotum. It was a purely natural act. He said, “Address.”

Mary Beth said, “I don’t understand you.”

“Give me the damn address.”

She dropped her hands. “How’m I supposed to remember that, after all this time?”

Leroy pulled his hand out of his shorts. He swiveled in the chair to face her directly. “I’m losing patience here, Critter. You don’t want me to lose patience.”

“The address was a box number in GroVont, Wyoming. I would need time to look for it, but the place where I left him is up the river there a few miles. The TM Ranch. You should be able to find it.”

“You best pray I do.” Leroy drained his coffee, tipping the cup to get every drop. His Adam’s apple rose and fell like a rat in a snake.

Mary Beth watched in wonder that she could have ever been romantically involved with this carnivore.
He wasn’t even human. Had he been human when they met? It didn’t seem possible. She was seventeen then, a Georgia runaway in a halter top, looking for shelter disguised as adventure. Kids that age often mistake meanness for charisma. Mary Beth swore her girls would never grow up to be like her, even if she had to chain them to their beds.

“The boy is a grown-up by now,” Mary Beth said. “What’re you going to do when you find him?”

“Nature’s balance is undone because that woman spoiled my peace of mind. She owed me a life, and killing herself moved the debt to the boy.”

“But that child is innocent. He never did a thing to you.”

Leroy stood quickly. Mary Beth winced. He said, “I aim to kill the bastard.”

Mary Beth’s breath caught in her chest. “Why would you do that?”

Leroy’s eyes did the crazy snap thing. He appeared to be grinding his gums. “Earth cannot continue spinning properly until I’ve hurt that dirty slit more than I did when we took the boy. I don’t care if she is past the grave.”

“You can’t hurt a person more than what we did,” Mary Beth said.

Leroy smiled. Without teeth, it came off as a grotesque mockery of a smile. He said, “Watch me.”