Skipped Parts

“Or you can come with us.”

“I’m not leaving Wyoming, you think I’m crazy.”

This line of thought gave me a creepy feeling. I was still holding out hope that Buddy would make Maurey marry me. I mean, there were laws that said you had to marry a girl if you got her pregnant. All the time I heard people say, “They had to get married.” Had doesn’t leave a choice. I’d just never figured where Dothan would fit in.

***

The Forest Service also provided the only spring baseball diamond in the form of its plowed parking lot. On weekends, when the cars were gone, we’d choose sides and play these thirty-two-inning games that practically always ended in beanball fights. Choosing up sides may be the single most devastating element in the formation of bad self-images in America. In every neighborhood one poor little bugger is always the last chosen, which in our case was that born loser, Rodney Cannelioski. If he hadn’t been a loser, people would have called him Rod.

For Rodney the Religious, it was even worse than your average teenage humiliation because we always shipped him off to baseball no-man’s land—right field—and since the Forest Service parking lot was only big enough for the diamond, outfielders stood in knee-deep snow. Cut down on mobility. Balls hit out there stuck like Brer Rabbit’s fist in the tar baby.

Add to which, standing in snow is cold and it’s no wonder Rodney didn’t enjoy himself on weekends.

One Saturday we played from noon till almost dark. I had six home runs and a triple, and Kim Schmidt and I turned a nifty double play on Dothan and somebody’s cousin from Dubois. My next time at bat, Dothan threw four fastballs at my head.

“Easier than letting you hit a home run to Rodney,” he called as I trotted down to first.

“Right,” I said.

I stole second, then when Teddy hit a hard grounder to the shortstop, instead of charging for third, I fielded the ball barehanded and nailed Dothan in the back. Thock. What a wonderful sound.

Results were predictable.

On the walk home I held my head forward and low so the blood would still be flowing enough to freak out Lydia. She can be a tough mom to get a response out of.

“There’s gravel stuck in your ear,” Kim said.

“You know, I’m starting to feel like a local.”

“Starting to act like one too.”

“Think I’ll have a black eye?”

Kim studied my face. “Only thing dark is from asphalt.”

“Maybe if I don’t wash, it’ll look like a black eye.” Bruises would impress Maurey; Chuckette might even let me touch her below the neck. I know that goes against what I said earlier about Chuckette, but a tit’s a tit and should always be touched, regardless of how ugly the head it goes with.

Soapley and Otis stood by one of the dead GMCs, looking somewhat mournfully over at my place. We walked over so I could show off my blood and Kim could get in his throwing-up-dog imitation.

“The three-legged cowdog,” Kim said, then he went into the ack, ack, morph routine. Otis wagged his little tail. I was kind of impressed, which shows how long I’d been away from wholesome entertainment.

The left strap of Soapley’s overalls was broken. He gummed his toothpick around so it pointed at a Volkswagen bug parked in my front yard next to Lydia’s Oldsmobile. “I seen two of them last summer. They had one at the Fina and the little bitty engine was in back. Alcott made a fool of himself looking for it to check the oil.”

“Seems like the wind would blow it off the road,” Kim said.

Soapley didn’t have his teeth in, which was odd for me because I’d never known they came out. His face caved in when he spoke. “One hit a frost heave up by Cooke City and the bubble come right off the wheels, killed a college boy.”

“I wonder who’s at your house,” Kim said.

“Somebody with a Volkswagen,” I said. Unknown visitors were not a good sign. In all the years of my short life with Lydia, not a single surprise visitor had turned into a pleasant experience. Scenes ranged from king-hell boring to ugly three-way tensions between Caspar, Lydia, and the visitor, but however it went, the surprise was never pleasant.

“I better go in,” I said.

“Better hurry or you’ll stop bleeding.”

***

“Sam’s hurt,” Delores gushed, then she rushed and I backed against the door. She was so short, with such huge breasts and a tiny waist, it was like being rushed by an ostrich. Or maybe the ostrich feeling came from her pink getup. Every time I saw Delores she was dressed completely in one color—white, silver, turquoise—all the way down to her boots and up to her cowboy hat. Today she was a flash of pink.

A pink fake-silk handkerchief came from somewhere and I found my right ear pinned to one of the monster tits while she jammed blood back up my nose. “He’s wounded, Lydie.”

‘‘Wounded means shot. Sam looks more punched out.” Through the pink haze, I saw Lydia on the couch next to Dougie Dupree. He had on loafers, slacks, and a madras shirt. Lydia was barefoot, as usual, in jeans and a sweatshirt that said Duke. A half-full bottle sat on the stack of Dictionary of American Biography and chunks of lemon were scattered on the coffee table and floor. Obviously, we were chest-deep in an alcohol session.

Dougie spoke through a lemon wedge. “There is one more example of an event that would not occur in New York City.”

“They’d slit your throat for a cigarette, but they wouldn’t punch you out. Why did someone hit you, Sammy?” Lydia’s face held the danger smile, the one that sets off little smoke alarms in my head. Even bent over with my ear up against God’s own tit, I knew trouble was courting the Callahan household.

I decided to lie. “A fella said my mom was a tramp so I hit him and he hit me back.”

“How noble.” Delores clamped me even tighter to her breast. She smelled of Johnson & Johnson’s talcum powder and I wanted to turn my mouth more into her, only I was afraid I’d bleed down her pink ruffly blouse.

“Sam’s a regular prince,” Lydia said. She knew I was lying. Lydia can always tell, somehow, and I can always tell when she’s lying, but in spite of this mutual curse we both go on lying to each other on a daily basis.

“You must admit Marlon Brando is the dominant tragedian of our time,” Dougie said, I guess resuming something I’d interrupted. Dougie blew my theory that tall men are never full of crap.

“Brando’s eyeballs are upside down,” Lydia said. “He’s like one of those drawings you turn over and they go from happy to sad.”

Delores sighed, which made her breast heave into my face. “I’d let Marlon Brando turn me over. Dougie, did you ever do it from the back? Ray won’t do it that way, says it’s perverse.”

I muffle-mumbled. “I can’t breathe.”

“I bet Sammy likes doing it from the backside. He wouldn’t call it perverse.”

Lydia looked at me and threw down a shot. “Delores, you relate all subjects to your organs.”

“I can’t breathe.”

When Delores let up, the oxygen rush made me dizzy. “I better clean up.”

“Don’t dribble on the floor.”

Dougie was cutting lemons for another round. “The New York–trained actors are so superior to those who matriculate in Hollywood, there is no comparison whatsoever.”

I went to the bathroom to wash off blood, then back to my room to change clothes and look up matriculate. As I passed through the living room, Delores was sitting up close to Dougie with her legs crossed so her pink skirt didn’t cover much of anything. She touched his elbow when she talked. “Life magazine says Picasso caught gonorrhea from an orgy with colored women.”

Back in my room, I left the door cracked and sat at my desk listening to the grown-ups kill off their fifth of tequila. Dougie was explaining why Andy Warhol was a cheater when Lydia said, “I want to dance.”

“Dance?”

“In Greensboro I used to enjoy dancing.”