Skipped Parts

sugar and a load of cream in the coffee and sat there with Catch-22 propped open by the napkin box, staring out the window.

Not that the book wasn’t a kick. It was the first time I realized death and despair can be funny, depending on how you look at it. All comedy, from I Love Lucy to The Taming of the Shrew, would be sad if it were true. This idea would eventually grow into my philosophical outlook on life.

But snow was more important than outlooks that day. Since then, an incredible amount of my time has been spent looking at snow, playing in snow, fighting with snow. Like true love, it has caused me hordes of pleasure, pain, and anxiety. From the White Deck window, it appeared soft and harmless. Lydia might seem soft and harmless, seen through a window. Goes to show you.

Two yards either way and Sam Callahan would have missed the dying trapper. As it was, Sam heard the low moan, “Diphtheria,” just before he stumbled over a frozen lump in the blizzard.

“Diphtheria,” it said again.

Sam brushed snow crystals off the old man’s face and held the frozen body in his arms without doing anything that might be misconstrued as latent homosexuality. “What’s that, old-timer?”

The man coughed for several minutes, then spoke. “There’s diphtheria in Yellowknife.”

“I’m not afraid of sickness.”

The dying man’s eyes were frozen open so he couldn’t blink. “The serum. I have the serum in my pack. Those settlers won’t die if they get the serum.”

Sam made his decision. “I will take the serum to Yellowknife.”

“But the blizzard. No one could make it through this blizzard.”

“I’ll make it, or I’ll die trying.”

The old man’s lower lip quivered. “I did,” he whispered, then he was dead.

Maurey Pierce banged through the door followed by LaNell and LaDell Smith, the twins all giggles and flouncing curly hair. Maurey stopped when she saw me and did a narrowing-of-the-eyes number. I narrowed mine right back. Overt hostility hadn’t erupted in the first two and a half months of our relationship. I’d call it extreme wariness, at least on my part. Maurey seemed to regard me as a very large, but non-threatening bug.

She dropped into the next booth with her back to me. LaNell and LaDell made a minor scene on who had to sit on the inside. LaNell and LaDell are the kind of twins whose clothes will match their entire lives. From the back, they’re kind of cute in a narrow-shoulders, big-hips fashion, but they both squint up their eyes like they just put in new contact lenses and haven’t gotten used to them yet.

I’m afraid God only passed out one brain between them.

At first, they made a major point of ignoring me. They all ordered hamburgers with Pepsi and went into this drawn-out debate on Liz Taylor’s treatment of Eddie Fisher. Maurey defended Liz. “Maybe she and Richard are in love,” which outraged the twins no end.

They cited Debbie Reynolds and Eddie’s mother and Burton’s wife Sybil or Sydney or something. I didn’t give a hoot and I don’t think Maurey did either. Nothing that happened to anyone more than fifty miles away could possibly affect GroVont, Wyoming, so it seemed stupid to worry about Liz and Eddie.

Then the bopper waitress, whose name was Laurie, brought me a coffee heater. “Anything else?”

“I’m fine, thanks.”

I should never have spoken. Or maybe they’d exhausted Liz talk and they’d have turned on me anyway. LaNell’s voice was comparable to cutting a cardboard box with a butter knife. “Hey, Sam, don’t you know you’re too young to drink coffee.”

I gave her the mystery smile I’d been working on just in case I ever found myself in a Western poker parlor.

LaDell came in next. “Your mother should tell you not to button the top button on that kind of shirt. You look like a squirrel.” The pair stared at me with their upper lips warped so I could see watermelon-colored gums over their incisors.

I defended my button. “It’s cold outside.”

“It’s cold outside,” LaDell mimicked. “Wait’ll January.”

I wished I could see Maurey’s face. Her back hadn’t moved so at least she wasn’t laughing at me like the retard twins. Maybe she felt an empathetic connection.

LaDell continued. “Hey, Maurey, he’s reading a book on a Saturday. Trying to show off and study in public.”

“It’s not a school book. It’s literature.”

“Litter tour. Litter tour.” What makes people between the ages of eleven and fifteen such mean jerks? I’d rather be ninety-five than thirteen again.

Maurey swung her arm onto the back of the booth and turned her head to look at me. “What literature?”

I showed her the cover of Catch-22. “It’s new. This book will change the way we look at both the novel and war forever.” I stole that from a blurb off the back cover. Then, I added my own, “And sex.”

The twins oohed harmoniously. Maurey’s eyes never left the book. “What do you know about sex?”

Actually, Catch-22 had a ridiculously small amount of sex in it. “After I finish this book I’ll know a lot more about it than you.”

Bill picked up the napkin dispenser and slammed it into Oly’s temple. Oly fell sideways out of the booth, his upper plate skittered across the cafe floor and stopped under a stool. After a few moments’ disorientation, Oly made it to his knees and began to crawl after his teeth.

Us kids, even Laurie, all pretended we hadn’t seen a thing. Young people aren’t allowed to notice grown-ups conking each other.

Bill sat there with the napkin dispenser in his hand, watching his friend crawl away. He had the blankest look on his face. He blinked twice and swallowed, then he called to Oly, “Was a brookie.”

Joseph Heller knocked on the cabin door. It was opened by a weathered-looking boy of thirteen. “May I see your father?” Joseph Heller asked.

“I have no father.”

“Is this not the home of Sam Callahan?”

“I’m Sam Callahan.”

Joseph Heller stared at the boy in amazement. “Surely you can’t be the Sam Callahan who wrote White Deck Madness, the greatest American novel since Moby Dick.”

The boy smiled mysteriously. “The New York Times Book Review rated it higher.”

Joseph Heller could not believe this young man was the same writer who had wrenched his heart out and made it bleed. Yet, as he looked closer, Joseph Heller saw the sadness and depth behind the boy’s deep blue eyes.

“Yes,” Joseph Heller said. “I believe you are a novelist.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“May I have your autograph?”

5

We had A-bomb drill Friday in Mrs. Hinchman’s citizenship class. She said, “Okay, you see a bright flash, now how should you react?” and we all dived under our desks. Viewed from below, my desk was really disgusting.

Why would the Reds bomb a national park anyway?

Lunch was tuna croquettes with lima beans, and this apple crisp stuff that you never find anywhere but institutional cafeterias. I sat with Rodney Cannelioski because we were both outsiders. Rodney’s father was a recently transferred soil scientist with the Forest Service and our mutual new-kid-in-school deal fostered a certain us-against-them mentality. Or it would have if Rodney hadn’t offered to give me his witness the day we met.