Skipped Parts: A Heartbreaking, Wild, and Raunchy Comedy (12 page)

Buddy stood up and turned around. He was really big—not like a giant or a fat person—his presence took up a lot of room. Even in the suit, he was the kind of man when he stood up everyone paid attention. If you were ever in a room with Maurey’s father you’d always know right where he was. If you said anything, you’d wonder what he thought about it.

He told a story about Bill saving his father’s life when a tree twisted and fell wrong. The log lay across Buddy’s father’s legs in such a way one wrong shift would roll it across his body onto his head. Bill had to chainsaw with the steadiness of a doctor cutting with a scalpel. It was a nice story, even though the avalanche got Buddy’s father four years later anyway.

As Buddy told it, he looked straight ahead, and his hands didn’t twitch a bit. His beard was the blackest bush I’d ever seen. You could hardly see a mouth in there. I looked at Maurey and could tell she was real proud.

She whispered, “I’ve heard that story a dozen times. Daddy loves it.”

***

At the cemetery, somebody had built a big fire to unfreeze the ground enough to dig a hole. They’d had to use shovels because they couldn’t get a backhoe through the snow. The shovels were leaning against other markers.

Maurey and I stood back by a cottonwood tree. She said, “He had a tumor in his head.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Dr. Petrov did an autopsy. He told Daddy a tumor the size of a split pea was why Bill had been hitting Oly the last few months and growling at people. Bill didn’t have control over those things he did.”

“That ought to make Oly feel better.”

“Why?”

The day was all blue and sparkly white. Whoever planned the cemetery put it where family and friends could stand and contemplate an amazing view of the Tetons and the mountains off to the south. The trees behind us practically buzzed with joy at being trees, and a raven circled up by the sun. The only man-made thing in sight was the rodeo grounds, and the stands weren’t painted or anything so they looked natural as trees.

I guess it’s great being buried in a breathtaking spot, but the contrast between looking at the casket and looking around at the world must confuse mourners. It made me feel funny.

Three older guys in uniforms stood in a line and fired a shot into the air. When the gray-suit guy said a prayer I looked around and saw Buddy Pierce had his eyes open in an unfocused gaze toward Yellowstone. Then his eyes shifted and looked at me. I looked down at my feet.

***

Sam Callahan lay in the plain pine coffin with his hands folded over his sternum, his blood drained away, replaced by a liquid chemical.

One by one, his family and friends walked past his dead form—his mother and grandfather, his coaches and teachers. Each girl placed a single red rose upon his chest. Charlotte Morris, the Smith twins, Hayley Mills, his baby-sitter from Greensboro, the receptionist at Dr. Petrov’s in Jackson. Maurey Pierce came last and her rose was white as snow on the Tetons.

Maurey touched his still hand and said, “You were too young to die, Sam Callahan. We all feel a loss.”

Then two funeral directors lowered the coffin lid and Sam’s face was touched by light for the last time forever.

Oly stood with his hands at his sides, tiny and cracked and completely disoriented in his suit and hat. The entire marriage and funeral system is set up to make men who work hard feel foolish. I mean, not only was Oly’s lifelong sidekick going in the dirt, but now he had to dress like a monkey and deal with the hordes.

Poor guy looked like he’d been hit between the eyes with a mallet. He had the slowest blink I’ve ever seen. After the ceremony, he didn’t move, just kept looking into the hole. Buddy stayed right next to him, like a bear protecting a skinny bird.

“I’m not in the mood to go back to the VFW and eat,” Maurey said.

“Is that the plan?”

“Why do women always think food helps?”

She went to tell her mom we were walking back to town and she’d be home later. Annabel was over by the cars and trucks talking to Howard Stebbins. While Maurey explained the deal, Stebbins stared at me meanlike. I guess he didn’t approve of the friendship, though I couldn’t see how it made crap to him. He probably thought of me as the slimy outsider come to stain local girlhood.

I asked Maurey about this as we followed the county service road the half-mile or so into town.

“Is there a gossip line on us yet?”

Maurey was wearing a dark blue dress and black stockings and new snow boots. Though it was a nice day, I think she was cold. “We’re children to these people.”

“When they see you coming out of Lydia’s cabin they don’t suspect ugliness?”

“If we were a couple years older they’d be vicious, we’re beyond their fantasies so far. Stebbins thinks your mom might offer me a cigarette—be a bad influence.”

“Lydia would never do that.”

“Mom’s afraid I’ll go down to the White Deck and be exposed to french fries. She has this idea that grease is only one step from decadence.” Maurey raised her arms out wide and turned around to walk backward. “I don’t like winter.”

“What’s that got to do with gossip?”

“We are no longer discussing gossip. We’re thinking how nice it will be at the TM Ranch riding horses with Dad this summer.”

“I wasn’t thinking about that.”

“The TM is up that canyon.” She pointed to a crack in the hills. “When the snow melts I can ride my bike up in an hour. I have a horse named Frostbite. He’s trained for vaulting but he can run barrels like you wouldn’t believe.”

The terminology was past my grasp. “Vaulting?”

“Tricks, you know, back mounts, reverse croupers, split-kick dismounts; like a gymnast on a vaulting horse, only our horse gallops. It’s fun.”

“Sounds like a good way to break your neck.”

“Frostbite wouldn’t do that to me. He’s my baby.” Her blue eyes had an in-love misty look.

“What color is he?”

Maurey turned back around to go forward again. She did a little dance step that came out klutzy on account of her boots. “He’s a skewbald gelding, five years old but he thinks he’s a colt.”

“Skewbald?”

She turned on me. “You’re the most naïve kid I ever met.”

Which is one hell of an attitude if you asked me. I guess naïve is someone who doesn’t know what you know. Maurey had never seen a live Negro, so in North Carolina she would be naïve. Neither one of us carried a gun, so in New York we’d both have been naïve. I think. At least I knew that naïve is only a matter of place. Maurey still thought there was a standard.

She stopped walking for a second. “Whenever I try to think about how being dead feels I end up wanting to have more sex. Isn’t that odd.”

“So let’s go to my house.”

“I want a Fudgsicle first.”

***

On the edge of town Maurey showed me how to cut between the Highway Department plow sheds into an alley, that ran behind the triangle stores. When we came through the Talbot Taxidermy backyard this little snot of a kid was teasing a snot of a dog with a kitten.

The kid held the kitten up over his head while the dog jumped and howled to get at it.

Maurey screamed, “
Pud
.”

The kid looked over at us with no expression. He had burned bacon-colored hair and a holey nylon coat that seemed stuffed with mattress filler. His jeans were all bloodstained, his shoes spotted by pink cat guts. A kitten head lay on the snow under the prancing dog. Other kitten parts were strewn about the yard. I almost threw up.

Maurey started toward Pud and he lowered the kitten to the very top of the dog’s jump. “I’ll feed Stonewall.”

Maurey froze, her fists closed tight, the veins on her neck gone rope. I drifted off toward the porch to get a better angle at the snot.

“Tell your boyfriend to quit sneaking.”

Maurey’s lips barely moved when she spoke. “You kill that kitten you’re gonna wish you hadn’t been born.”

Pud studied Maurey out of one eye. The dog was going nuts, barking, leaping, drooling blood from the other kittens. Ugly dog, no tail, box of a body, snubby head—everything repugnant in an animal.

The kitten put out a tiny
mew
. I eased in closer.

“Mom told me to kill the kittens.”

“Did she tell you to feed them to Stonewall?”

Pud shrugged. “She said drown ’em. What’s the difference?”

“Give the kitten to me. That way you won’t have to kill it.”

“I want to kill it.”

“You do and I’ll hurt you real bad.”

“My kitten. I can kill it if I want.”

With each comeback, their voices went louder and more frantic. I kept easing forward like it was a game of red light/green light and not some king-hell jackshit torturing kittens. The kitten head on the ground had been gray. Its eyes were open.

Pud saw me and stepped back. “Don’t.”

Maurey put her hands on her hips. “Give us the kitten. That way we won’t hurt you.”

Pud looked from her to me. He glanced back at the taxidermy and made a decision. “
Mama
.”

I jumped as he dropped the kitten and Stonewall snapped.

I came down on the dog’s back with my left hand on his throat and my right hand on his lower jaw. As we rolled through the cat guts he bit the holy heck out of my thumb and index finger. Maurey and Pud were yelling their brains out. The dog and I rolled all the way over; I pulled my hand out of his mouth and got him by the ear. My face was in fur so I bit hard as I could. The dog screamed.

Finally we broke loose and he ran over to Pud, turned and faced me, growling. I spit fur at him. Pud and the dog both had the same crappy expressions on their faces—a mixture of surprise, pain, and mean hate. Their lips quivered.

“He’s okay,” Maurey said.

“I’m not okay. The jerk bit me.”

“The kitten is okay.”

Maurey held him to her chest with both hands. The kitten chewed on a button of her coat.

Pud reverted to the whiney brat he was. “I’m gonna tell my brother. He’ll kick your butt.”

That was a possibility. I pulled myself up and held my bleeding hand over the snow. “They’ll kill Stonewall to test him for rabies.”

Pud’s hand went to the dog’s back. “Got no rabies.”

“He bit me. They’ll have to test and the only way to test is to kill him.”

Pud had the ugliest complexion, like peed-on snow. “You bit him too.”

“You don’t tell Dothan or anyone and I won’t tell anyone and your dippy dog won’t have to die.”

Pud didn’t say anything so Maurey and I left with the kitten.

“This doesn’t mean we’re going steady.”

“Sure.”

“Move your tongue higher. Right there. Now side-to-side.”

I adjusted.

“That’s not side-to-side. That’s up and down. Do it right.”

I adjusted again.

“I mean, we’re not even dating. Don’t think this is dating or anything. Sometimes you act like we are when we’re not. This’ll never work if you get the wrong idea. Jesus.”

“I wonder if Peter Pan and Wendy did it this way?”

“Don’t talk. Work.”

“It’s not supposed to be work. And move Alice. She’s digging in.”

“She wasn’t weaned. She was way too young to give away.”

“Nobody gave her away. Are you wet yet?”

“Don’t talk. Lick.”

“Well, move Alice.”

Maurey leaned forward and picked up Alice who took a chunk of me with her.

“Ouch.”

“Are you gonna do your job?”

Maurey put the kitten on her chest and rubbed her with her check. After a bit, the kitten settled into a steady purr which Maurey tried to match but couldn’t.

“I wonder when was the last time Mom and Dad did this? They must have once or twice. I’m not adopted.”

“I can’t picture Buddy with his tongue out.”

“Higher up. You’re still too hole-oriented.”

“You feel plenty wet to me.”

“Don’t stop. I like this part better than the rest.”

“My jaw hurts. I’m coming up.”

“Don’t disturb Alice.”

“Maybe your mom and dad still have sex.”

“Sure. Tell me another one.”

***

I feel like I’m the only kid in America who never believed in Santa Claus. Lydia didn’t bring up the subject. I heard things in kindergarten—“What’s he bringing you?” “I saw him at the Belk store Saturday”—then they brought one in the morning of our party and made us sit on his lap. He smelled like Caspar’s closet.

He asked me what I wanted and I didn’t know what to say. I looked at everything but him.

When I asked Lydia, she told me Santa Claus was a personification of free stuff, a childish picture of God, and he didn’t exist, but I wasn’t permitted to tell the other kids.

“People who don’t believe in God have an obligation to keep their mouths shut,” she said.

Whole thing zinged right over my head. All I could see was the kids who believed in Santa got paid better than I did.

***

Christmas morning I stumbled and scratched out of my room to find no Lydia on the couch. I said, “Jeeze, on Christmas even. She’s gonna warp me yet,” then I headed down her hall and ran into Hank Elkrunner coming out of the bathroom.

He smiled kind of shyly, which I took for an Indian thing because I hadn’t seen much shy goodwill in my life. “Happy Christmas, Sam,” he said.

“Happy Christmas.”

Hank glanced at the closed door to Lydia’s room. He had on a pair of white boxers and a leather thong thing around his ankle. More Indian stuff, I guess.

I said, “She went into her room.”

Hank nodded. “Your mother is something else.”

“What else?”

I shouldn’t have done that, made him uncomfortable. He seemed somewhat good for Lydia—got her off the couch anyway—and most of her boyfriends hadn’t been good for her. They led her astray. Or she led them astray, depending on whose version you bought.

But I’m always a little odd on the boyfriend deal. On the one hand, I get used to me-and-Mom-against-the-world, and that’s comfortable, but then I’m always on the scam for a short-term father figure. Not that any of her boyfriends came close. They mostly either patted me on the head or gave me money to disappear. I can’t stand being patted on the head.

Hank would never pat me on the head. I shouldn’t have razzed him, but your mom is your mom. You can’t go buddy up with every joker pops her in the sack.

“I have something,” Hank said. He opened Lydia’s door, went in, and closed it behind him. I heard her voice from the bed.

I did the toilet trip—pee, brush teeth, check for zits and facial hair. Since Maurey and I had started our whatever we were doing, my piss had been weird. It came in two streams, a main branch and a little arc of a trickle off to the left. I couldn’t decide what that meant. Maybe a Maurey hair had gotten stuck up there and was dividing the flow.

Whatever caused it, there was no way in hell to hit the pot with both streams at once and it was probably the major problem of my life that Christmas. I had to pee sitting down like a little boy or mop the floor with toilet paper after every whiz.

After my mop job, I left the John just as Hank came from Lydia’s room. We stopped again, smiling and not looking at each other. “It’s in the truck,” he said.

“What’s in the truck?”

“The thing I have.”

I hit the kitchen to make coffee and juice. Lydia taught me how to make coffee before she taught me how to tie shoelaces. I think. This may be an exaggeration, only I can’t remember a time when I didn’t make the morning coffee. As a kid, I remember standing on a chair to spoon in the grounds. I didn’t drink it back then.

Panic mews came from the kitchen closet. When I let Alice out, she freaked, mewing and jumping right to wherever I was about to step. After two nights of her sucking on me so much I never slept, I’d taken to locking her and her box in the closet. A kid’s got to get his rest.

I poured a little half-and-half in a cereal bowl and she went at it like I’d starved her for a week. Lydia padded barefoot and robed into the kitchen. She yawned and pushed at her hair. “Should have let the mangy dog eat her.”

“Merry Christmas, Mom.”

She gave me the look, but for a change didn’t pursue the mom deal. “Hank says Happy Christmas and Merry New Year instead of the normal way. Do you think that’s a Blackfoot trait or is he trying to irritate me?”

Her bathrobe was this white terrycloth thing that came down about midthigh and tied with a blue cord, real sexy-looking, even on her.

“Are you still claiming your dry spell?”

She smiled and came over to warm her hands against the coffeepot. “No, honey bunny, the drought is broken.”

“Please don’t call me that in front of him.”

“The drought is flooded. The drought has been blown into the Atlantic Ocean.”

“Are we going to keep him?”

Even though the pot wasn’t through perking, Lydia poured herself a weak cup. She never did have any patience with coffeepots. “Don’t be ridiculous. He’s not a kitten or a sweater.”

“I never said he was.”

“Besides we won’t be here that long.”

Hank walked into the kitchen carrying a rifle. For one horrible moment I flashed on a Wyoming ritual I hadn’t known before. Sleep with a woman, then shoot her son. Hank two-handed the rifle to me.

“Happy Christmas.”

“What is it?”

“Ruger. Twenty-two caliber. Good first gun for a young man.”

Lydia went into a frown. “I’m not sure I approve of firearms for children.” I wasn’t sure either.

“Sam’s not a child.”

I was glad to hear that. Hank’s face was interesting as I took the gun from him. His eyebrows came closer together and his mouth was thinner. Maybe giving a kid his first gun was a big deal to him.

“Is it loaded?”

“No, but always pretend it is. Don’t point it at anything you are unwilling to kill.”

Lydia blew across her coffee. “That’s the only purpose for a gun, to kill things, right?”

Hank kept his eyes on me. “Protection, security, dignity, procurement of meat.”

Lydia went on, “And killing is unethical.”

I’d never held a gun before. Caspar wasn’t into guns. It was heavier than I’d imagined from
Gunsmoke
or
The Rebel
. Those guys tossed rifles around like sticks. I couldn’t see where it gave me dignity, but it felt neat. Let’s see Dothan Talbot crap at me. I’d take out his kneecaps.

Hank said, “Can’t be a real local if you don’t have a gun.”

Lydia set her cup down with a click. “We have no intention of being real locals.”

Lydia kept up the bitching clear through breakfast, but you could tell her heart wasn’t in it. Sometimes she’d lose control and smile, and once I saw her brush her hand against Hank’s. Since it was Christmas, I made French toast—put some flour and old Kahlua in the batter for flavor. One thing about growing up with a mom who won’t cook or do laundry, you won’t hit fourteen helpless and woman-needy.

After breakfast, Lydia poured Kahlua in her coffee refill and we trooped out to the living room to open more presents.

I sat in the center of the couch with them on both sides. It was kind of homey if you’re into homey. The presents were lined up on the coffee table. A new radio sat on top of a box from Caspar.

“I didn’t have time to wrap it,” Lydia said, which I thought was interesting since, technically, she didn’t do anything.

“It’s neat,” I said.

“I figured if the TV is useless, we might as well have some music around here.”

The big box from Caspar was a white suit straight out of Faulkner. It was an exact duplicate of the one he wore like a uniform, summer and winter. It was like he had a duty to wear that suit to set an example for Lord knows who. Mine even came with a yellow bow tie.

“I’ll look like a goose.”

Lydia touched the material with her index finger. “Great costume for sipping mint juleps and putting darkies in their place.”

“I don’t know a darkie.”

“Perhaps I could qualify,” Hank said.

Lydia did a smirk. “I’m the one to put you in your place.” She reached along the couch and pulled on Hank’s ear. He blushed and I like to barfed. There’s something putrid about your mother being nice to someone.

Caspar had sent Lydia a twenty-volume set,
Dictionary of American Biography
. Postage alone could have fed GroVont for two days. “Oh, good, a table,” Lydia said. She stacked them up next to the arm on her end of the couch and set her coffee cup on
Werdin to Zunser
.

I’d gotten her a harmonica. One thing you have to admire about Lydia, she’s honest. If she doesn’t like something, she doesn’t spare anybody’s feelings.

“Oh,” she said. “How interesting.” She blew one squawk note and put it next to her coffee cup. I didn’t feel bad. Lydia is impossible to buy things for and I’d gotten over the personal-rejection crush years earlier when I hand-made and varnished a jewelry box out of Popsicle sticks and she accidentally stepped on it.

Since then, I’d been buying her things I wanted.

Hank was new to the deal though. I felt kind of sorry for him when she sniffed at his Indian bead earrings. They were real pretty.

“They’re real pretty,” she said in a tone like they weren’t. Maybe she thought they were. Whenever Lydia says something sincere it comes out sounding like irony. She saves her truth tone for lies to Caspar.

***

Living around Caspar and Lydia was always tense, but Christmas things got even more tense than usual. Christmas is like an intensifier—good things are real good and bad things are worse; and things at the manor house never were king-hell neat to start with.

Or maybe it was on account of Me Maw being dead. Christmas is the season for missing dead people.

Whatever it was, Caspar got crabbier and Lydia bitchier and I mostly stayed in my room and played with whatever game they’d sprung for that year. Caspar was big on educational stuff—chemistry sets, butterfly nets. When I was young Lydia bought stuff for old kids and when I got older she bought stuff for toddlers.

The year before our banishment, she got me an Etch A Sketch that said right on the package, “For children 4 through 9.”

It was a weird Christmas too. Caspar’s hearing aid wasn’t working—that or he had it turned off—so whenever I thanked him for a gift, he said “What’s that?” and I had to thank him over and over.

My main present was a toy construction company. “Build your first plant,” Caspar said. “Commerce.”

“What’s that?” I asked, looking at all the plastic bricks with lock-in nubs on top, and the girders and wheels and stuff. Gave me the same feeling as a snake—I had no desire in the world to touch any of it.

“Commerce,” Caspar grunted again. He stood over me with his arms folded and his little yellow mum and bow tie giving him a smug Captain Kangaroo-type glow. I guess him buying me my first industrial plant to build was like Hank giving me a rifle, a tradition deal. I’m not big on tradition deals.

Just as Caspar said “Commerce” the second time, Lydia wandered into the parlor barefoot in a shortie nightie. She liked to go skimpy around the Carolina house because it made Caspar nervous. All that skin flashing ended when we moved to Wyoming.

She walked over by the fake Christmas tree and lit a cigarette. Her legs were knobby. “Talk sentences in front of Sam, Daddy. He’ll grow up thinking men snort instead of using speech.”

Caspar glared at her. “If you were a union I’d break you in half.”

Lydia blew smoke out her nostrils. “I’m not a union, I’m a daughter.”

“Nothing but Communists in the unions. I loathe Communists.”

The cook, who was Negro and named Flossie Mae, brought me a waffle and a glass of grapefruit juice.

“Paw Paw can’t hear today,” I said.

He rocked back on his heels and muttered, “Honor sinks where commerce long prevails.”

Lydia took my grapefruit juice and drank it. “He can hear when it’s convenient. Daddy, I need some money.”

Caspar said, “Commerce is America and America is bound together by carbon paper. Without carbon paper there are no records and without records all is chaos and deprivation.”

Lydia smiled at Caspar. “Daddy, have you seen my diaphragm? I’ll be needing it at the cotillion this afternoon.”

Caspar turned and left. Lydia watched while I buttered and syruped the waffle, then she took it away from me. “He can hear fine,” she said.

I sat on the floor surrounded by construction blocks and watched her eat the waffle, wondering what diaphragm meant.

Koreans poured off the hill like sweat off a fat man’s forehead. Lead flowed freely as champagne after the seventh game of the World Series. Men died easily as cornflakes turn soggy in milk.

The lieutenant grabbed his throat, gurgled once, and fell. The men turned to Sergeant Callahan.