Another time I caught Maurey and Lydia comparing my toddler pictures to the five football players. A photographer had set up his camera in J. C. Penney’s and Lydia dressed me in this stupid sailor suit with a flat- topped hat with two ribbons off the back. In every picture, I looked embarrassed about to death.
“He’s definitely a Negro,” Maurey said.
“I think he looks more like Billy-Butch. See that weak chin.”
That was the night Maurey kicked me out of bed for sleeping. Three in the morning, she bit my thumb.
“My God, you bit me.”
“Wake up.”
“Why did you bite me?”
“I can’t sleep and if I can’t sleep I’ll be damned if you will.”
“Look, tooth marks on my thumb.”
“This is your fault. ‘I won’t squirt,’ you said. ‘No mush,’ you said.” Maurey did the line attributed to me in a falsetto. “All you wanted was in my pants. You’d have said anything to screw me.”
“That’s true.”
“And now I’ll never sleep again.” I swear, she started to cry.
“I could get you a Valium.”
“Valium’s bad for the baby. I can’t take Valium.”
“Lydia ate lots of Valium when she was pregnant with me.”
“Yeah, and look at you.” She sniffled a few minutes and wiped her nose on my pajama collar. “You have to sleep on the floor tonight, Sam. I need the whole bed.”
“How about if I take the couch in the living room?”
She clutched my shoulder. “I don’t want you that far away. I may need you and I want you next to me—on the floor.”
“You may need me?”
She pushed me gently off the bed. “God, I wish Dad was here.”
I didn’t see Buddy all summer, and, so far as I know, neither did Maurey. I guess he stayed up on the TM, delousing and moving water, whatever it is you do for horse maintenance. Whether because of shame or hard work, I don’t know, but he didn’t come into GroVont. I can’t picture Buddy avoiding anything because of shame.
One day in late June we bumped into Annabel in the checkout line at Zion’s Own Hardware. I’d found plans in
He stared down his eagle nose at her and ignored everything I said, the usual treatment, but he found our stuff.
Annabel stood in line second from the cash register and we were fifth. Third and fourth—March and his fat wife—shuffled and scratched their faces before she realized they’d forgotten wood-stove polish and they disappeared back into the hardware aisles.
“Hi,” Annabel said. Her face and stringy neck looked like she’d lost more weight than Maurey had gained. I couldn’t see the rest of her. Even though it was about seventy-five degrees outside, Annabel had herself wrapped in this puffy blue parka.
“Hi, Mom,” Maurey said.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Pierce,” I said. I don’t think she saw me.
“Did you brush your teeth today?” Annabel asked.
Maurey nodded.
“And flossed?”
“Yes, I definitely flossed today.”
The customer in front of her paid and walked away, but Annabel didn’t move. She looked down at her hands which held a box of Hoover vacuum cleaner bags—size F. “Well, I guess you’re doing okay then.”
“Yes, Mom, I’m okay. How’s Dad?”
“He’s okay.”
“And Petey?”
“He’s okay too.”
The man at the cash register said “Next.” He waited a moment, then he reached across the counter and grabbed Annabel’s package. She didn’t want to let go at first, but he gradually eased the box of bags away from her. Annabel’s empty hand fluttered around her neck area. “I clean your room every day.”
Maurey said, “I know.”
We ran into Annabel one other time on the mountain road. Lydia had dropped us off at a spot right below the TM fence line where we could play with Maurey’s horse awhile, then cut across to the warm spring without being seen. Maurey said the spring calmed the baby and made her body bearable. I liked it because seeing Maurey’s wet belly was neat. She was just a little girl, still playing kick the can and four square, not even old enough for zits, and yet here was this shiny bowling ball stomach with a pooched-out navel—impossible to deny when she was naked.
I wanted to say “We’re having a child together” over and over until we believed it, but when I started Maurey dunked her head underwater so she couldn’t hear.
“Not listening doesn’t make it go away,” I said.
“Talking about it twenty-four hours a day won’t make it more real.”
Afterward, we hung out by the road waiting for Lydia, who was late, as always. Maurey goo-gooed over Frostbite while I walked the top pole of the buck-and-rail fence. Weird how it was no sweat walking a fence pole when the log over the rushing creek caused anxiety. Whenever a car came along we hid in the dry irrigation ditch, but somehow the Chevelle snuck up on us.
What happened was we heard a truck and hid, only it was Hank going to town. He had a cowboy shirt and a new straw hat. The driver’s door was tied shut with wire, which meant, unless he’d fixed the other side, Hank had crawled in through the window.
After he drove by, I stood up and stared after him, wishing I hadn’t hid—Dougie was passable, but barely, and I missed Hank—and while I was wishing, Annabel came down the hill and caught us in the open.
Maurey said, “Oops.”
Annabel eased to a stop and rolled down her window. Petey leaned over from the backseat to stare at Maurey. He screamed right in Annabel’s ear, “
Annabel ignored him. “You need a ride?” She looked thinner than she had in the hardware store. Her eye sockets kind of rose up off her face, and her body was being swallowed whole by the parka.
“No, thanks,” Maurey said.
Annabel glanced down at Maurey’s body. “She’s been eating french fries.”
Annabel rolled up the window and drove on down the hill.
Lydia met Buddy once at the liquor store in Jackson. She and Dougie were buying tequila.
“What was Dad buying?” Maurey asked later in our kitchen.
“Looked like a pint of Jack Daniel’s and a six-pack of Coke. I hope he isn’t planning to mix them.”
