Copyright
Copyright © 1991 by Tim Sandlin
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Cover design by Jessie Sayward Bright
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sandlin, Tim.
Skipped parts / Tim Sandlin.
p. cm.
1. Teenage boys—Fiction. 2. Divorced mothers—Fiction. 3. Mothers and sons—Fiction. 4. Teenage girls— Fiction. 5. Teenagers—Sexual behavior—Fiction. 6. Adolescence—Fiction. 7. Maturation (Psychology)—Fiction. 8. City and town life—Wyoming—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3569.A517S55 2010
813’.54—dc22
2010020944
For Carol and Kyle,
Marian, my editor and friend,
and Sally, my sister
I couldn’t live the way I do without a lot of humoring from the people of Jackson, Wyoming, especially Michael Sellett who owns the
Although I never met them, Ed Abbey and John Nichols showed me there is no excuse for not living where you want to live or doing what you want to do—a good lesson to learn while you’re still young.
SKIPPED PARTS
We were as twinned lambs that did frisk i’ the sun And bleat the one at the other. What we changed Was innocence for innocence.
The two grey kits,
And the grey kits’ mother
All went over
The bridge together
The bridge broke down
They all fell in
May the rats go with you
Says Tom Bolin.
I remember being way out in right field and my nose hurt. Hurt like king-hell, as if my sinuses were full of chlorine. Now I know that when anyone moves from the South to Wyoming, their nose always hurts like king-hell for two weeks. Has something to do with the humidity, I guess, or the altitude.
But at the time, standing out there in right field pretending to spit in my glove so I could hide my right hand as it pinched my nostrils, I thought Lydia and I were the first Southerners ever lost in Wyoming. I also thought the nose pain meant I had leukemia and would die soon.
Back then I often had recurring daydreams of people being sorry when I died.
Out in right field, I was keenly aware that people were watching me. Where they watched from, I wasn’t certain, but I always know when I’m being watched. It makes my butt itch. I have a feeling this deal goes back to the second grade when Lydia told me not to scratch in public because someone was always watching. Lydia’s the kind of mother who would do that to a kid.
Since I couldn’t scratch where it itched and my nose hurt like king-hell, I stood out there in right field kind of