winter.”
“What’s that got to do with gossip?”
“We are no longer discussing gossip. We’re thinking how nice it will be at the TM Ranch riding horses with Dad this summer.”
“I wasn’t thinking about that.”
“The TM is up that canyon.” She pointed to a crack in the hills. “When the snow melts I can ride my bike up in an hour. I have a horse named Frostbite. He’s trained for vaulting but he can run barrels like you wouldn’t believe.”
The terminology was past my grasp. “Vaulting?”
“Tricks, you know, back mounts, reverse croupers, split-kick dismounts; like a gymnast on a vaulting horse, only our horse gallops. It’s fun.”
“Sounds like a good way to break your neck.”
“Frostbite wouldn’t do that to me. He’s my baby.” Her blue eyes had an in-love misty look.
“What color is he?”
Maurey turned back around to go forward again. She did a little dance step that came out klutzy on account of her boots. “He’s a skewbald gelding, five years old but he thinks he’s a colt.”
“Skewbald?”
She turned on me. “You’re the most naive kid I ever met.”
Which is one hell of an attitude if you asked me. I guess naive is someone who doesn’t know what you know. Maurey had never seen a live Negro, so in North Carolina she would be naive. Neither one of us carried a gun, so in New York we’d both have been naive. I think. At least I knew that naive is only a matter of place. Maurey still thought there was a standard.
She stopped walking for a second. “Whenever I try to think about how being dead feels I end up wanting to have more sex. Isn’t that odd.”
“So let’s go to my house.”
“I want a Fudgsicle first.”
On the edge of town Maurey showed me how to cut between the Highway Department plow sheds into an alley, that ran behind the triangle stores. When we came through the Talbot Taxidermy backyard this little snot of a kid was teasing a snot of a dog with a kitten.
The kid held the kitten up over his head while the dog jumped and howled to get at it.
Maurey screamed, “
The kid looked over at us with no expression. He had burned bacon-colored hair and a holey nylon coat that seemed stuffed with mattress filler. His jeans were all bloodstained, his shoes spotted by pink cat guts. A kitten head lay on the snow under the prancing dog. Other kitten parts were strewn about the yard. I almost threw up.
Maurey started toward Pud and he lowered the kitten to the very top of the dog’s jump. “I’ll feed Stonewall.”
Maurey froze, her fists closed tight, the veins on her neck gone rope. I drifted off toward the porch to get a better angle at the snot.
“Tell your boyfriend to quit sneaking.”
Maurey’s lips barely moved when she spoke. “You kill that kitten you’re gonna wish you hadn’t been born.”
Pud studied Maurey out of one eye. The dog was going nuts, barking, leaping, drooling blood from the other kittens. Ugly dog, no tail, box of a body, snubby head—everything repugnant in an animal.
The kitten put out a tiny
“Mom told me to kill the kittens.”
“Did she tell you to feed them to Stonewall?”
Pud shrugged. “She said drown ’em. What’s the difference?”
“Give the kitten to me. That way you won’t have to kill it.”
“I want to kill it.”
“You do and I’ll hurt you real bad.”
“My kitten. I can kill it if I want.”
With each comeback, their voices went louder and more frantic. I kept easing forward like it was a game of red light/green light and not some king-hell jackshit torturing kittens. The kitten head on the ground had been gray. Its eyes were open.
Pud saw me and stepped back. “Don’t.”
Maurey put her hands on her hips. “Give us the kitten. That way we won’t hurt you.”
Pud looked from her to me. He glanced back at the taxidermy and made a decision. “
I jumped as he dropped the kitten and Stonewall snapped.
I came down on the dog’s back with my left hand on his throat and my right hand on his lower jaw. As we rolled through the cat guts he bit the holy heck out of my thumb and index finger. Maurey and Pud were yelling their brains out. The dog and I rolled all the way over; I pulled my hand out of his mouth and got him by the ear. My face was in fur so I bit hard as I could. The dog screamed.
Finally we broke loose and he ran over to Pud, turned and faced me, growling. I spit fur at him. Pud and the dog both had the same crappy expressions on their faces—a mixture of surprise, pain, and mean hate. Their lips quivered.
“He’s okay,” Maurey said.
“I’m not okay. The jerk bit me.”
“The kitten is okay.”
Maurey held him to her chest with both hands. The kitten chewed on a button of her coat.
Pud reverted to the whiney brat he was. “I’m gonna tell my brother. He’ll kick your butt.”
That was a possibility. I pulled myself up and held my bleeding hand over the snow. “They’ll kill Stonewall to test him for rabies.”
Pud’s hand went to the dog’s back. “Got no rabies.”
“He bit me. They’ll have to test and the only way to test is to kill him.”
Pud had the ugliest complexion, like peed-on snow. “You bit him too.”
“You don’t tell Dothan or anyone and I won’t tell anyone and your dippy dog won’t have to die.”
Pud didn’t say anything so Maurey and I left with the kitten.
“This doesn’t mean we’re going steady.”
“Sure.”
“Move your tongue higher. Right there. Now side-to-side.”
I adjusted.
“That’s not side-to-side. That’s up and down. Do it right.”
I adjusted again.
“I mean, we’re not even dating. Don’t think this is dating or anything. Sometimes you act like we are when we’re not. This’ll never work if you get the wrong idea. Jesus.”
“I wonder if Peter Pan and Wendy did it this way?”
“Don’t talk. Work.”
“It’s not supposed to be work. And move Alice. She’s digging in.”
“She wasn’t weaned. She was way too young to give away.”
“Nobody gave her away. Are you wet yet?”
“Don’t talk. Lick.”
