Skipped Parts: A Heartbreaking, Wild, and Raunchy Comedy (32 page)

“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 Digest
s—“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.

Caspar had control and he had a right to control. He took the stern-hand-on-a-naughty-child approach because Lydia and I had done nothing but screw up since before I was born. Let’s face the truth here: to a person of Caspar’s generation, knocking up a thirteen-year-old is irresponsible behavior no matter how much love is involved.

The way to be near Maurey wasn’t kicking and screaming as Caspar dragged me off to military school. The cool course was to give up what I wanted for a while so I could grow up and come back later and have it. Maybe Maurey would learn to love me if I wasn’t around. Lots of people are easier to love if you don’t actually look at them every day.

Much as adult thinking rankled, not to mention flying in the face of everything Lydia ever taught me, I decided that if Maurey came out okay and the baby came out okay and they let me hold it once, I would leave quietly with Caspar. There wasn’t any choice so I might as well go with dignity.

Dignity is a tough concept when your fourteenth birthday is almost a month away.

“Would you like some toys to play with?” the nurse asked.

“I’d rather have a Valium.”

I wish the nurse had said, ‘‘Sam Callahan, you have a daughter.” That would have been a hoot. What she said was, “Buddy, you have a granddaughter.”

He said, “Thank you, Caroline,” which meant they knew each other. Probably went to high school together, everybody else in the state did.

We left the Chinese checkers to follow Caroline the nurse down a well-lit hallway to a glass window looking in on the nursery thing. One wall had nine stethoscopes hanging from a rack and a cut-out picture of Yosemite Sam aiming two pistols at the daddies and people at the windows. Two babies lay swaddled in blue blankets in side-by-side cribs. The one I knew right away was mine had her little slit-eyes open, ears you could almost see through, and black cirrus-cloud hair. A light purple wedge ran from the bridge of her nose to the top of her forehead.

I stared at her so hard my breath fogged the glass and made her look all wispy.

Caroline went into the nursery to bring the baby over to the window and present her like a guy in New York did when Caspar ordered a bottle of wine. Even though I’d rehearsed this moment ever since we left Rock Springs, I didn’t know what to feel. I’d expected fatherly instincts to wash over like surf. Instead, I found myself trying to connect this little live person with unfocused eyes and tiny, tiny fingers to runny mayonnaise dripping off my sock. How had one led to the other? It was a big leap.

I said, “I thought blue blankets mean boys.”

“She said it’s a granddaughter.” Buddy leaned forward. “I didn’t plan it to be this way.”

“But she’s so beautiful.”

He touched the glass with two fingers. “She is beautiful.”

My butt was safe from branding after all.

I slept in my clothes in one of the ugly chairs and the room was way hot so I sweat and stuck to the plastic. Rolling over was like pulling off a giant Band-Aid. Made for bizarre dreams.

The North Carolina basketball team held Sam Callahan on the cross while his grandfather hammered nails through each hand, then fastened his ankles to the upright with barbed wire. Someone stuck a dish sponge in hot Dr Pepper and held it to Sam Callahan’s parched mouth. His grandfather moved through the crowd, giving dollar tips to smartly dressed Negroes.

Sam looked across the valley to the cool snow on the Tetons. He allowed a single tear to drop from his newly grown moustache. As blood flowed into his eyes, Sam Callahan groaned aloud. “Forgive my grandfather, for he knows not what he is about.”

The women rent themselves and tore their garments. The men wrote poetry.

I woke up to Hank standing over me holding a folded T-shirt and my second best sneakers.

“Morning, Dad.” He grinned and his shoulders went up and down in that silent laughter of his. “You are sleeping too long. Don’t you know fathers have responsibilities.”

I unstuck myself from the chair. “It’s a girl.”

“The valley is abuzzing with the news—Lydia is a grandma.”

I hadn’t thought in those terms yet. “Have you got fifteen cents, I need a Coke.”

We bought a Coke and an Orange Crush and started back down the hall to visit Maurey. An old lady slept in a wheelchair in front of the nursery window. She wore a floral pink nightgown and a matching bathrobe with drool down the collar. As Hank and I walked past, her head jerked awake and she called me Frederick.

“Frederick, don’t drive so fast, you’ll kill us all.”

“Morning, Mrs. Barton,” Hank said, but she was back asleep.

A nurse with her hair all ratted up and sprayed down like she was in a beauty pageant blocked the new mothers’ door with her hands on her hips and her tits in my face.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

I didn’t say anything on account of I figured she was talking to Hank. Grown-ups don’t ask strange kids questions.

“Maurey Pierce,” Hank said.

“You can see her, but the boy stays.” She pointed to a black-on-yellow sign with eight sides like a Stop sign.
No visitors under 16 allowed in maternity ward.

“But I’m the father.”

She looked at me through spider eyebrows. “I don’t care if you’re the Pope.”

Hank raised a hand toward her arm, but he didn’t quite touch her. “Susie, the baby is his. Bend the rules and let him in.”

“I can’t do that, Elkrunner.”

I’d had it. “Listen, lady, I’m being carted off to military school this afternoon. If you don’t let me see Maurey and the baby, I won’t see them for years.”

Her hands came off her hips and crossed her chest.

“Susie,” Hank said.

“He’s not sixteen.”

Enough adult behavior. I wasn’t leaving Wyoming without seeing my daughter. Time to revert to childish. “I’ll howl like a coyote and wake up all the sick people.”

Susie’s red lips split into a sneer. I’d of given anything for a thirty-four-ounce Louisville Slugger.

I closed my eyes and howled—
owwww
. After a few seconds, Hank joined in, only his was way louder—
OWWWW
. They must train Indians in that stuff. Behind the nurse, a baby wailed with us, and a door opened.

“What’s this?” Buddy stood there like a bear who hadn’t slept.

Her voice was a whine. “Under-sixteen-year-olds aren’t allowed in the maternity ward, Mr. Pierce. They’re germy.”

Buddy’s black eyes went from Susie to me to Hank. Hank was smiling. Howling in a hospital must have given him a charge.

“Sam is sixteen,” Buddy said.

“And I’m Gina Lollobrigida.”

“Who will you be in trouble with if you let him in?” Behind Buddy, the crying stopped as suddenly as it had started.

“Dr. Petrov will put me on report.”

“Tell Dr. Petrov that I said Sam is sixteen. He knows I would never tell a lie.” I knew what was coming next so certainly I could have said it myself. “We played football together in high school.”

Susie gave up and stalked away. Another crisis averted, I went in the room alone.

***

Maurey reached for my Coke and drained it. “They shaved me again.”

“I thought that was only for abortions.”

“Doctors must shave every time they poke around down there. I might as well start shaving myself like Mama, save them the trouble.”

Maurey looked awfully chipper, considering yesterday. Her hair was brushed shiny and her eyes glittered blue with interest at the baby stuck to her breast. The surf of love I’d expected last night rolled over me, only more for Maurey than the baby. The baby was still a little abstract.

She held out a Bic pen. “Want to sign my cast?”

Her left leg encased to the thigh hung by the same pulley-and-hook deal the vet used on Otis. Her toes were gray.

“Does it hurt?”

“Itches like king-hell, but doesn’t hurt.”

“You never said king-hell before.”

Maurey smiled, which was neat. “You’re rubbing off on me.”

“Holy moley.” I signed up her leg from Buddy—
Yer pal, Sam Callahan
.

“Is the baby eating breakfast?”

Maurey parted the hospital gown to give me a better view of the baby’s mouth clamped to her nipple. She looked asleep. “Her name is Shannon.”

“That’s pretty, I never heard it before.”

Shannon’s cheeks sucked in and out and the eye I could see opened, then closed slowly, like a tortoise.

“Can I touch her?”

Maurey looked worried for a second. “Okay, but be gentle. Babies aren’t footballs.”

“They don’t travel as far when you kick ’em.”

Maurey didn’t like my joke a bit. For a moment I thought I’d blown the chance to touch my baby. We hemmed around and I apologized and Maurey asked me when was the last time I’d had a bath, which she knew full well was the warm springs.

“That water was probably full of cooties.”

“You didn’t mind it yesterday.”

“Yesterday I was different.”

Finally, I sat on the end of the bed and touched Shannon on the back of her leg, above the plastic I.D. anklet thing. She was soft as a bubble gum bubble and, I imagined, just as delicate. I had created this. The whole deal was so neat I started hyperventilating and had to stand up.

“I hope she grows up to have my looks and Dad’s brains,” Maurey said.

“How about me?”

“She’ll have your hair.”

***

Sometimes I feel sorry for Petey. He was the only one who lived with Annabel from the abortion to the nuthouse. That period had to have an effect on the kid.

While we waited for Buddy and Hank to haul Maurey out of the woods Petey told me his mother was dead.

“My mama’s dead.”

“No, she’s not.” I poured their coffee dregs together into the same cup and took a drink.

“And Maurey’s going to be dead too. I’ll get her room.”

It was cowboy coffee and the grounds hadn’t settled all that well. “What makes you think your mother is dead?”

“Cause Daddy said she went away to the hospital. Jason’s dad said his mom went away to the hospital and she was dead. Grown-ups say went away when they mean dead.”

When Me Maw died Lydia found me under the round bed and pulled me out. She sat me in a chair and looked me right in the face and said, “Me Maw is dead. We won’t see her anymore.” None of that gone-to-a-better-place jive.

“You want to go outside and pet the horses?” I asked.

“Ever’ time somebody dies or gets a bortion or fat or anything, I have to go out and pet the horses. I hate horses. I’m tired of petting horses.”

***

Hank drove me to Jackson Drug where we bought a box of nickel cigars. He said this was part of the process, I had to give a cigar to everyone I met all day. I didn’t know if the deal was Indian or Wyoming or maybe people all over America bought cigars when they had babies. The druggist said, “Congratulations.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Hank and I each lit a cigar for the ride to GroVont. I was really tired from the excitement of Maurey breaking her leg and having a baby, and I hadn’t slept much on the sticky chair, so right off the cigar made me sick. Not so much barf sick, though nausea was a factor, as exhaustion-in-every-internal-organ sick.

Everything was over—I was a father,
yea
, I’d seen Maurey and touched the little baby, all the stuff I’d looked forward to for months had happened and I felt like I’d missed it.

Nothing was left but a long, long trip clear across the country—with the worst driver I’d ever seen.

Hank puffed and sucked and caused a cloud he could have sent signals with. As I got sicker, he started humming the song from “Bonanza.”
Bum-ba-ba-bum ba-ba-bum ba-ba-bum-bum
.

“What are you happy about?” I asked. “You’re losing a girlfriend.”

Hank took the cigar from between his lips. “Your mother has the heart of a mountain lion. The will of a buffalo.”

“Lydia?”

“She shall never be daunted by a man.”

“Until the first check doesn’t show up.”

Hank bent forward to look up through the cracked windshield at two hawks wheeling in the west. His foot came off the accelerator and we coasted down the highway while he admired, or studied, or whatever he did. They were kind of pretty.

“I got a winter job,” Hank said. “Winter jobs are rarer than girlfriends in these mountains.”

I didn’t ask what the winter job was—I didn’t care—but he told me anyway. “Buddy hired me to feed stock a couple weeks a month while he’s in town with the kids.”

I felt blue-green. “Mind stopping the truck for a second?”

As throwing up goes, this one was fairly normal—wet heaves, dry heaves, fear of death. Hank handed me a bandana and kept talking.

“We worked it out yesterday before you came screaming in the back door. I hadn’t mentioned you two being in the neighborhood, must have been a surprise for Buddy.”

“I wasn’t screaming.”

Hank blew smoke at me. “Try to miss the truck, Sam.”

I climbed back in and leaned against the door using the taped-up window as a pillow. “Life’s not all the Hardy Boys built it up to be, Hank.”

“Beats the alternative.” Hank shifted gears and moved back onto the asphalt. I’d never felt so awful.

“All I want is to go home and sleep till Halloween.”

“We have to drop by the White Deck first. You haven’t had your breakfast.”

“Food makes me puke.”

“Breakfast is important for a boy.”

“I want to go home.”

“After we eat.”

***

Caspar’s Continental was parked in the line of five or six pickups outside the White Deck.

“I can’t go in there, he’ll kidnap me.”

“Your grandfather will not kidnap you.”

“He’ll take me straight from breakfast to Culver. I won’t be allowed to tell Les good-bye. And Alice, I’m not leaving Wyoming without Alice.”

Hank dropped his butt into the near-empty Orange Crush bottle where it sent out a low hiss. “I will not let him take you without saying good-bye to Les and Alice.”

“I’m sick, Hank. Let’s go home.”

He slid toward me because his door was wired shut. “Breakfast, Sam.”

Caspar sat in one of the booths with Ft. Worth. They were both examining Ft. Worth’s finger when I slid in next to Caspar. Hank took the other side.

“Have you seen this?” Caspar nodded at the hairy fingertip. “Man has an uncanny ability to adapt. Biology is a fascinating subject.”

I looked down at my lap. Handcuffs would have been appropriate.

Ft. Worth’s voice boomed. “Congrats, Sammy. You’re going to love fatherhood. I know I do.”

“You have kids?”

Hank reached for the menu in front of Ft. Worth. “He has two sons, but he has not seen them in years or paid a cent for their upkeep. No wonder he loves being a father.”

Ft. Worth’s lower lip puckered. “I think about ’em all the time.”

“How old are they and when are their birth dates?”

Ft. Worth knew the ages, but couldn’t quite recall the births. Since I was sitting next to Caspar, I didn’t have to look at him, but I could feel the waves of disapproval and disappointment as he sketched the feed plan of a carbon coater on a napkin for Ft. Worth to admire.

“It is all a matter of tension,” Caspar said.

“Did you bring in the cigars?” Hank asked.

“I forgot.”