“Well, move Alice.”
Maurey leaned forward and picked up Alice who took a chunk of me with her.
“Ouch.”
“Are you gonna do your job?”
Maurey put the kitten on her chest and rubbed her with her check. After a bit, the kitten settled into a steady purr which Maurey tried to match but couldn’t.
“I wonder when was the last time Mom and Dad did this? They must have once or twice. I’m not adopted.”
“I can’t picture Buddy with his tongue out.”
“Higher up. You’re still too hole-oriented.”
“You feel plenty wet to me.”
“Don’t stop. I like this part better than the rest.”
“My jaw hurts. I’m coming up.”
“Don’t disturb Alice.”
“Maybe your mom and dad still have sex.”
“Sure. Tell me another one.”
I feel like I’m the only kid in America who never believed in Santa Claus. Lydia didn’t bring up the subject. I heard things in kindergarten—“What’s he bringing you?” “I saw him at the Belk store Saturday”—then they brought one in the morning of our party and made us sit on his lap. He smelled like Caspar’s closet.
He asked me what I wanted and I didn’t know what to say. I looked at everything but him.
When I asked Lydia, she told me Santa Claus was a personification of free stuff, a childish picture of God, and he didn’t exist, but I wasn’t permitted to tell the other kids.
“People who don’t believe in God have an obligation to keep their mouths shut,” she said.
Whole thing zinged right over my head. All I could see was the kids who believed in Santa got paid better than I did.
Christmas morning I stumbled and scratched out of my room to find no Lydia on the couch. I said, “Jeeze, on Christmas even. She’s gonna warp me yet,” then I headed down her hall and ran into Hank Elkrunner coming out of the bathroom.
He smiled kind of shyly, which I took for an Indian thing because I hadn’t seen much shy goodwill in my life. “Happy Christmas, Sam,” he said.
“Happy Christmas.”
Hank glanced at the closed door to Lydia’s room. He had on a pair of white boxers and a leather thong thing around his ankle. More Indian stuff, I guess.
I said, “She went into her room.”
Hank nodded. “Your mother is something else.”
“What else?”
I shouldn’t have done that, made him uncomfortable. He seemed somewhat good for Lydia—got her off the couch anyway—and most of her boyfriends hadn’t been good for her. They led her astray. Or she led them astray, depending on whose version you bought.
But I’m always a little odd on the boyfriend deal. On the one hand, I get used to me-and-Mom-against-the- world, and that’s comfortable, but then I’m always on the scam for a short-term father figure. Not that any of her boyfriends came close. They mostly either patted me on the head or gave me money to disappear. I can’t stand being patted on the head.
Hank would never pat me on the head. I shouldn’t have razzed him, but your mom is your mom. You can’t go buddy up with every joker pops her in the sack.
“I have something,” Hank said. He opened Lydia’s door, went in, and closed it behind him. I heard her voice from the bed.
I did the toilet trip—pee, brush teeth, check for zits and facial hair. Since Maurey and I had started our whatever we were doing, my piss had been weird. It came in two streams, a main branch and a little arc of a trickle off to the left. I couldn’t decide what that meant. Maybe a Maurey hair had gotten stuck up there and was dividing the flow.
Whatever caused it, there was no way in hell to hit the pot with both streams at once and it was probably the major problem of my life that Christmas. I had to pee sitting down like a little boy or mop the floor with toilet paper after every whiz.
After my mop job, I left the John just as Hank came from Lydia’s room. We stopped again, smiling and not looking at each other. “It’s in the truck,” he said.
“What’s in the truck?”
“The thing I have.”
I hit the kitchen to make coffee and juice. Lydia taught me how to make coffee before she taught me how to tie shoelaces. I think. This may be an exaggeration, only I can’t remember a time when I didn’t make the morning coffee. As a kid, I remember standing on a chair to spoon in the grounds. I didn’t drink it back then.
Panic mews came from the kitchen closet. When I let Alice out, she freaked, mewing and jumping right to wherever I was about to step. After two nights of her sucking on me so much I never slept, I’d taken to locking her and her box in the closet. A kid’s got to get his rest.
I poured a little half-and-half in a cereal bowl and she went at it like I’d starved her for a week. Lydia padded barefoot and robed into the kitchen. She yawned and pushed at her hair. “Should have let the mangy dog eat her.”
“Merry Christmas, Mom.”
She gave me the look, but for a change didn’t pursue the mom deal. “Hank says Happy Christmas and Merry New Year instead of the normal way. Do you think that’s a Blackfoot trait or is he trying to irritate me?”
Her bathrobe was this white terrycloth thing that came down about midthigh and tied with a blue cord, real sexy-looking, even on her.
“Are you still claiming your dry spell?”
She smiled and came over to warm her hands against the coffeepot. “No, honey bunny, the drought is broken.”
“Please don’t call me that in front of him.”
“The drought is flooded. The drought has been blown into the Atlantic Ocean.”
“Are we going to keep him?”
Even though the pot wasn’t through perking, Lydia poured herself a weak cup. She never did have any patience with coffeepots. “Don’t be ridiculous. He’s not a kitten or a sweater.”
“I never said he was.”
“Besides we won’t be here that long.”
Hank walked into the kitchen carrying a rifle. For one horrible moment I flashed on a Wyoming ritual I hadn’t known before. Sleep with a woman, then shoot her son. Hank two-handed the rifle to me.
“Happy Christmas.”
“What is it?”
“Ruger. Twenty-two caliber. Good first gun for a young man.”
Lydia went into a frown. “I’m not sure I approve of firearms for children.” I wasn’t sure either.
“Sam’s not a child.”
I was glad to hear that. Hank’s face was interesting as I took the gun from him. His eyebrows came closer together and his mouth was thinner. Maybe giving a kid his first gun was a big deal to him.
“Is it loaded?”
“No, but always pretend it is. Don’t point it at anything you are unwilling to kill.”
Lydia blew across her coffee. “That’s the only purpose for a gun, to kill things, right?”
Hank kept his eyes on me. “Protection, security, dignity, procurement of meat.”
Lydia went on, “And killing is unethical.”
I’d never held a gun before. Caspar wasn’t into guns. It was heavier than I’d imagined from
