haircut—racy compared to the other guys’ burrs and crewcuts—and his mouth was skewed in a lewd smirk, as if he had recently laid the photographer’s sister. Lydia would go for that smirk. I studied his eyes, then my own in the mirror. Mine were wider, but so were Lydia’s. You couldn’t tell the color in the picture, but they were darker than the other white guys.
The Negro halfback in what looked like a gray sweatshirt and a dull, leather helmet was shorter than the others—great. A short daddy would be a lot harder to handle than black blood— and he was the only one smiling. Short, fast, and happy. None of those were particularly alluring to Lydia, yet I couldn’t just rule him out and go back to the leering quarterback. His blackness alone would cause no end of shame to Caspar, and Caspar’s shame was all the allure Lydia needed. There’d been a time when Lydia would have cut off her fingers if Caspar told her not to.
This child shrink Caspar slapped on me made a big deal over the Unknown Father. Her name was Dr. Eleanor and I never knew if that was a first name or last. She wore orange fingernail polish.
“Don’t you ever wonder about your father, Sam?”
“Lydia’s dad’s enough for anyone.”
“You aren’t intrigued? What if he’s rich or famous or a wanted outlaw?”
“What if he’s dead?”
“How would you feel if your father were dead?”
“About the way I feel now.”
“Where do you think a person goes when he dies, Sam?”
“France.” Why are people always asking me that question?
“What would you say to your father if you met him this afternoon?”
I thought about that one awhile, torn between my natural smartassness and a sudden urge to be cooperative. I was only ten when Caspar decided Lydia and I had an unhealthy relationship and we should both be dissected. My particular case was kicked off after I hid myself in the back of Lydia’s closet under a pile of her dirty clothes for two days and a night. Smelled nice and warm in there. Police combed the neighborhood while I played out the symbolic womb situation.
“I’d ask him if he can hit a curve ball.”
Dr. Eleanor took this as smartassness, but I’d meant it straight. She looked at me with her lips all prim, which made me feel mean to her, so I tried to explain.
“Lydia can do anything a real father can except teach me how to hit a curve. I can’t hit a curve worth crap.”
Caspar made Lydia go to a shrink too, but she seduced hers and they took off to Atlanta for a week.
Someone pulled into the yard and revved their engine right up to the limit. I took off down the hall into Lydia’s room and stuffed the photos back under the panty pile. I wonder if there’s a psychological term for a person who owns sixty pairs of panties.
Lydia kicked snow through the front door as I came out of her room. She pulled off her coat, humming a song I’d never heard in my life. “You eat yet?”
She didn’t seem to wonder what I’d been up to in her room. I said, “I waited for you.” Lydia lit a cigarette. I don’t think she noticed the clean ashtrays either. Lydia never was much for noticing changes. She figured stuff just happened without anyone making it happen. “We had a steak in Dubois.”
What’s this
“Ft. Worth and his friend Hank Elkrunner drove me over to Dubois this afternoon. Hank’s part Indian, Blackfoot or Black-feet, something about feet. He knows all this neat stuff about the forest. We found a badger track.”
“You went into the forest? There’s snow, and cold.”
“They had snowshoes. It was a hoot, Sam. I tried something new.”
“What did you try new?”
“Don’t look at me like that, honey bunny. I told you— snowshoeing. It was wholesome.” She kicked off her shoes and padded barefoot into the kitchen, then came back with a glass of water, which was really weird. The only time Lydia ever touched water was to wash down pills.
This time she drained the whole glass. “I thought I would never do anything new again the rest of my life, but now I did. How about that?”
“How about that.”
She came over and gave me a little motherly hug. “Don’t be such a grump, Sam. We’re in this place. Hell hole or not, we might as well admit it and see what there is to see.” I’d been giving her that rap for a month now, but you’d think Lydia was the first person in history to realize it’s more satisfying to live where you are than where you aren’t.
“Did you hear about President Kennedy?” I asked.
She broke the hug and went over to pat Les on the side of the head. “Isn’t it a shame.” Lydia stared off into space and I thought she was dwelling on the pitifulness of a national tragedy. Wrong again. “Did you know coyotes and badgers sometimes run together so they can eat whatever the other one kills?”
“Ft. Worth told you all this nature stuff?”
“Hank. He’s interesting. His great-grandfather was one of only four Cheyennes killed at Little Big Horn. That’s in Montana. Custer bought it there.”
“I know about Custer.”
“Hank says he had it coming.”
“This guy sounds like a mountain of folklore.”
“You know that bucking bronco and cowboy on everyone’s license plate?”
“The ones you think are so stupid?”
“They have names, Steamboat and Stub Farlow. Steamboat is the horse.”
This was too much strangeness all in one day. “Do any of these little items relate to us?”
She snuffed out the cigarette before it was half smoked.
“Sammy, information can be interesting even if it doesn’t affect me personally.”
“That’s not how I was raised.”
I headed for the kitchen to boil mac and cheese water, but something bothered me about the setup. “Did those guys come over here and say ‘Let’s go for a ride’?”
Lydia smiled at me. “I met them at the White Deck. Ft. Worth has a hairy fingertip.”
“You went to the White Deck alone?”
“You don’t expect me to stay in this living room forever, do you?”
“I thought you expected to.”
“Honey bunny, there’s a difference between time out and death. Ask Les, he’s the one told me to get my head off the wall.”
I looked up at Les, wondering if Lydia meant that symbolically or literally. A lot of weird things can happen on
