Skipped Parts: A Heartbreaking, Wild, and Raunchy Comedy (31 page)

Otis’s wink delighted Delores to no end. She couldn’t get over an ugly, three-legged dog who stared in her eyes and winked.

“Ray used to wink just like that in high school,” she said. “Especially in Mrs. Hinchman’s class, he’d leer at me across the room all hour and when I finally looked at him Ray’d wink just like that dog. I thought it was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen. Only later I found out winking is the closest Ray ever comes to foreplay.”

“You know why women fake orgasms?” Lydia asked.

Soapley went somewhat embarrassed. He wasn’t used to our little gang. We only invited him because it was Maurey’s birthday and no one else we invited over could come on account of their mothers wouldn’t let them. The Callahan house had a reputation for evil.

Soapley’s job was to help me cut wienie sticks out of willow fronds while Hank built the fire. Hank got fire duty because he was an Indian. What he did was spray a half-pint of lighter fluid on some kindling and say, “Blackfoot brave start-um heap big fire,” then he threw in a lit match.

The birthday girl was cross. “I don’t give a hoot why women fake orgasms and I think wienies and marshmallows for breakfast is stupid.” Maurey sat on a pillow on the back stoop, big as a beached whale. We were down to the last week and a half and her sense of humor had failed.

All Maurey’d done for days was piss and moan. “You did this to me, you horny little squirrel. I hope you never poke a girl again. If you ever go on a date the rest of your life, I’ll be there to tell the girl you can’t pull out before you squirt.”

“I bet I could now.”

“I’ll be dead before you get a chance to find out with me.”

“Maurey, we’re partners.”

“Yeah, right.”

Lydia leaned back in her lawn chair and blew Lark smoke in Hank’s direction. “Women fake orgasms because men fake foreplay.”

Nobody laughed—which made me miss Dot. Dot would be rolling on the ground over a joke that bad. She always made a person feel appreciated.

Soapley eyed the perfect point of his wienie stick and said, “What’s foreplay?”

The birthday party–wienie roast had been Hank’s idea after he discovered I’d never cooked over a fire with sticks.

“You never roasted marshmallows?”

“Lydia thinks marshmallows are plebeian. I’ve never even been on a picnic.”

Hank stared at Lydia. She did her shooshing-flies gesture. “Well, beat the crap out of me. I’m a terrible mother.”

Nobody disagreed and a wienie roast was planned for Maurey’s big fourteenth.

The guys cooked meat while the women sat in lawn chairs and told us we were doing it all wrong. Delores shook up a Dr Pepper and held her thumb over the end to spray my face. Hank said a cookout wasn’t American unless that happened. I don’t know, it all seemed ritualistic to me.

“Why do women brag about faking orgasms?” Delores asked.

I was watching Hank’s fingers, how slowly he moved them as he spooned relish and onions on his bun. “I do not understand women,” he said.

Lydia was automatic. “So what else is new.”

“What’s the purpose of faking an orgasm if you tell the man later that you faked an orgasm?”

I looked at Maurey and smiled. She sent a cynical prissy smile back. She’d been talking death and discomfort ever since the funeral, to the point where I was ready to get this baby deal done.

Delores talked with her mouth full of wienie. “Sometimes when I have a real orgasm I tell the guy I faked it so he won’t be so cocky. I hate a cocky guy.”

Delores had gone king-hell ape on the getup—bright red boots, tight pants, and low-cut blouse deal that showed big air between her breasts, even redder scarf around her neck, red dangly earrings, and, to make herself a piece of art, she’d dyed her hair the color of a North Carolina State home-football-game jersey. I mean
red
. Soapley wouldn’t look at her. Every time she bent down to feed Otis a marshmallow, Soapley stared at the ground between his feet and talked irrigation. “Not enough water behind the dam. I’ll be locking headgates by next week.”

Hank had amazing patience with marshmallows. His came out all golden, same tint as his skin. Mine caught fire. Maurey said she liked them black so I burned seven or eight and took them one at a time to her on the steps. She ate them off the end of my willow stick. Two bites—one for the outer charred stuff and one for the inner gooey stuff. She ate with her eyes closed.

“My baby’s going to be raised on marshmallows,” Maurey said.

Lydia lit a Lucky Strike off the butt of a Kool. Hot dogs and marshmallows were so far beneath her dignity nobody even bothered to ask if she wanted any. “I raised Sam on Dr Pepper.”

Right after we sang “Happy Birthday” I got Delores back for the spray in the face. Lydia hadn’t had time to bake a cake, naturally, so we stuck a hurricane candle on a marshmallow and had Maurey blow it out.

“Make a wish, honey,” Delores said.

“I wish I’d have this baby today,” Maurey said, and blew.

While Delores was bent forward toward the candle, I flipped an old gooey cooked marshmallow off the end of my stick into her cleavage. It stuck for a second before falling into the depths of red.

Delores did a high wail and jumped me like a red tornado. I fell over backward; Otis went into a barking frenzy.

Delores giggle-shouted, “Hank, get him.”

I fought the pair of them, but Delores sitting on my stomach bent over my face was a fantasy come true of sorts anyhow, so I didn’t mind losing. Above my head, Hank knelt with his knees on my shoulders, which pinned my arms, and his hands holding down both ears. I got into some bucking action that basically amounted to a dry hump.

Delores jumped up and down. “Hi, ho, Silver.”

Lydia’s voice was bored. “Watch it, Delores.”

Otis kept barking and Delores kept laughing. “Hold his nose, Hank. I want his mouth open.”

I started to say something rude and she stuffed a marshmallow in my mouth, then another and another. Breathing got difficult until Hank let go of my nose, but by then I couldn’t close my mouth because of the marshmallows so Delores stuffed in a few more. I tried to bite her and she went up on her knees, then slammed down on my chest, which almost blew my face into an exploding pimple joke.

“Ten’s the record,” Delores said. “How many more we got to go?”

Hank’s voice came from above my head. “Four, but we might have to use his ears for the last two.”

“Okay.” Delores was smooshing a marshmallow into my right ear when Otis suddenly stopped barking. Hank’s knees went off my shoulders. Delores kept cramming for a few seconds, then she quit too. I was shaking my head back and forth and laughing and trying to touch Delores’s magic spots, so it took awhile for the silence to sink in.

Time kind of froze up—way too quiet for good-hearted rowdiness. I looked up at Delores’s lipstick-smeared face. She was turned, looking at something on the right. I moved my head and saw white wing-tips.

No one in Wyoming would wear white wing-tips.

“Get up, Samuel,” Caspar said.

Delores moved off me. I looked over at Lydia who had gone pale. Maurey pulled herself to her feet. So did Hank. Everyone was standing except Lydia.

Caspar repeated himself. “Get up, Samuel.”

Same white suit, pencil moustache, ivory-colored hearing aid, yellow mum, and black-lined fingernails; he had the expression of a stern master addressing impertinent darkies. Or God.

I stood, pulling marshmallows out of my mouth. They kept coming like the trick where a magician draws thirty feet of scarf out of his nose.

Caspar held a navy blue jacket and pants on a hanger in his right hand. The jacket had fancy brocade and dark yellow ribbons; the pants had a dark gray stripe on the outside of each leg. Caspar carried a round hat with a bill under his left arm.

“This is your Sunday uniform at Culver Military Academy. As soon as you clean out your ear, you will put it on.”

Lydia said, “Daddy.”

“Shut up, girl. We are going home now. We will place Samuel at Culver, then proceed to Greensboro.”

I swallowed the last marshmallow. “I can’t leave, we’re having a baby.”

Caspar drew up to his full, righteous five-foot-four as he studied Maurey on the steps. Then his gaze swept around at Hank and Delores, Soapley and Otis, finally Lydia and back to me. “You two have done enough here. We are leaving today.”

“No.”

“When you attain the age of eighteen and have a job and money, you can make your own decisions. Not before.”

My eyes met Maurey’s. “Who will take care of my baby?”

“I’m sure the young lady has a mother of her own.”

Maurey spoke. “Mom’s in the nuthouse.”

“Be that as it may, you have made your bed, you must lie in it. I will not have my grandson snared by a spider, which is what you are, young lady. And if you think you will ever see a penny of the Callahan fortune, you are sadly, sadly mistaken.”

Lydia said, “Maurey is not a spider.”

“I told you to be quiet.”

She stood up. “I won’t. You can’t come in here and ruin everything. This is our home now. These people are our family.”

Caspar pointed his finger at Lydia. “A floozy, a Kiowa, and a pregnant little girl—which member of your new family will pay next month’s rent.” He turned on Hank. “Can you afford to keep my daughter in gin?”

Hank said, “Blackfoot.”

“And what does that mean?”

“I am Blackfoot, not Kiowa.”

“I understand you live in a one-room trailer. Do you think she will be happy there carrying your papooses?”

Hank’s hands were fists at his sides. I thought he might hit Caspar and wondered what would happen then. After a minute of tense silence, Lydia said, “Daddy, you are such an asshole.”

Caspar broke the stare-down with Hank and turned back on Lydia. “The day you pay your own way you can live anywhere in any disgusting fashion you see fit. Until that day, you do as I dictate.” His busy eyebrows swung to me. “Go inside and put on your uniform.”

I didn’t move. There was no way I could leave Maurey and the baby now. Even if the baby didn’t exist, Lydia was right, this was our home. We fit in GroVont, I couldn’t go back to annual visits to the carbon paper plant.

Caspar’s eyes almost softened. “Samuel, you have no choice. You cannot fight my will.”

I said, “No.”

“I’m doing this for you, Samuel. You can’t be a father at your age. You can’t even take care of yourself.”

Caspar was right. Lydia and I had built this new life for ourselves. We’d discovered we were capable of mattering in a place, we had friends, but the whole deal was based on a check coming the first of every month. We had no control over ourselves after all.

I folded the uniform over my left arm and held the hat in my right hand. Lydia wouldn’t look at me. Hank still stared at Caspar, Delores smiled weakly and I smiled back. As I passed Maurey on the steps, she said loud enough for everyone to hear, “Tell your grandfather to fuck off, Sam.”

“I can’t.”

I went through the kitchen with its sink full of dirty dishes and into the living room and stood under Les, looking up at his great nostrils. I could hear the toilet running. Lydia had told me over and over that life isn’t supposed to be fair, never to want anything and you’ll never be disappointed, but this was ridiculous. This was a gyp.

Neatly, I set the uniform on the TV and the hat on the uniform, then I walked out the front door. The Tetons were pretty, glistening over there across the valley through air so clear the mountains appeared flat. My one-speed bicycle leaned against the front wall under Lydia’s bedroom window. I wheeled it past her Oldsmobile, Delores’s Chevy, Hank’s truck, and Caspar’s Continental with the North Carolina license plate. Then I hopped on and took off.

Wild strawberries grew in the shade by the creek, and fireweed blossomed purple on the hill. Juncos flitted through the willows next to the warm spring. I knew the names of things—some things anyway, the stuff Maurey had told me about. I liked knowing what I was looking at. A year ago I wouldn’t have seen the juncos, much less known what to call them.

I leaned back with my ears under the warm water and listened to the gurgle of air bubbles entering the spring from the bottom mud. Air coming right out of the earth—it made an odd picture.

The trouble was, I wasn’t emotionally old enough to deal with being ripped from my dreams. Maybe it was a breakthrough that I knew I wasn’t emotionally old enough. Other people who are immature are so immature they don’t know it. Lydia was emotionally younger than I was, but she’d been ripped so often by life, she’d probably accept losing me. Maybe that’s all maturity is—being ripped so often you don’t care anymore. Caspar was the emotionally oldest person I knew; I wondered how he dealt with losing Me Maw. Maybe jacking around surviving loved ones is a way of dealing.

I’d come up the hill to think, but thinking wasn’t happening. The hot water was more soothing than plan-inspiring, but I guess I needed soothing more than I needed a plan. What I needed most was to be held by someone who loved me and told everything would be all right. Hot water is a weak substitute for love.

Maurey wasn’t in love with me, not in the right way. If she loved me, we could fight Caspar. We could flee into the mountains and live like a Disney movie. We could go Romeo and Juliet and die.

I closed my eyes and felt the sunshine on my face. Life was so pleasant at individual moments. Why couldn’t people cooperate with each other and give me what I wanted?

First choice: Marry Maurey. Second choice: Stay in GroVont with Lydia and raise the baby with Maurey close by. Last resort: Take Maurey and the baby to North Carolina. Culver Military Academy was completely off the list. And leaving the valley before the baby was born was past unthinkable. If Maurey wouldn’t flee with me I’d flee by myself, at least until I attained parenthood. I could live on berries.

When I sat up, water rolled off my hair and down my armpits. Two ravens flapped by, heading west. In Greensboro, I didn’t even know where west was. I liked it here, dammit. I’d never liked it anywhere else. I loved Maurey, I loved the baby, most of all I loved Lydia, and Culver meant losing her too. Who would take care of her? Who would fetch her 10:30 bottle?

Maurey wobbled across the log with her arms out.

“You’re going to fall and break your butt,” I said.

“I could cross this creek blindfolded.”

“With all that weight you’re worse than blindfolded.” I guess I’d known she would come.

She stepped from the log onto the moss around the spring.

“Your grandfather isn’t happy with that trick you pulled. He’s gone to Jackson to find a motel room.” Maurey peeled her shirt off over her head, then she reached both arms around her back to undo the bra that she needed now. Her breasts still weren’t big as Delores’s, but they were heavy and the nipples had spread into this way-wide target deal.

I pushed the water surface with my palms, causing little waves to buckle across the spring. “I’ll never put on that uniform.”

She had to lie down and arch to get out of her stretchy pants.

“Yes, you will, Sam. You and Lydia are helpless and we all know it.”

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?”