for everyone to hear, “Tell your grandfather to fuck off, Sam.”
“I can’t.”
I went through the kitchen with its sink full of dirty dishes and into the living room and stood under Les, looking up at his great nostrils. I could hear the toilet running. Lydia had told me over and over that life isn’t supposed to be fair, never to want anything and you’ll never be disappointed, but this was ridiculous. This was a gyp.
Neatly, I set the uniform on the TV and the hat on the uniform, then I walked out the front door. The Tetons were pretty, glistening over there across the valley through air so clear the mountains appeared flat. My one-speed bicycle leaned against the front wall under Lydia’s bedroom window. I wheeled it past her Oldsmobile, Delores’s Chevy, Hank’s truck, and Caspar’s Continental with the North Carolina license plate. Then I hopped on and took off.
Wild strawberries grew in the shade by the creek, and fireweed blossomed purple on the hill. Juncos flitted through the willows next to the warm spring. I knew the names of things—some things anyway, the stuff Maurey had told me about. I liked knowing what I was looking at. A year ago I wouldn’t have seen the juncos, much less known what to call them.
I leaned back with my ears under the warm water and listened to the gurgle of air bubbles entering the spring from the bottom mud. Air coming right out of the earth—it made an odd picture.
The trouble was, I wasn’t emotionally old enough to deal with being ripped from my dreams. Maybe it was a breakthrough that I knew I wasn’t emotionally old enough. Other people who are immature are so immature they don’t know it. Lydia was emotionally younger than I was, but she’d been ripped so often by life, she’d probably accept losing me. Maybe that’s all maturity is—being ripped so often you don’t care anymore. Caspar was the emotionally oldest person I knew; I wondered how he dealt with losing Me Maw. Maybe jacking around surviving loved ones is a way of dealing.
I’d come up the hill to think, but thinking wasn’t happening. The hot water was more soothing than plan- inspiring, but I guess I needed soothing more than I needed a plan. What I needed most was to be held by someone who loved me and told everything would be all right. Hot water is a weak substitute for love.
Maurey wasn’t in love with me, not in the right way. If she loved me, we could fight Caspar. We could flee into the mountains and live like a Disney movie. We could go Romeo and Juliet and die.
I closed my eyes and felt the sunshine on my face. Life was so pleasant at individual moments. Why couldn’t people cooperate with each other and give me what I wanted?
First choice: Marry Maurey. Second choice: Stay in GroVont with Lydia and raise the baby with Maurey close by. Last resort: Take Maurey and the baby to North Carolina. Culver Military Academy was completely off the list. And leaving the valley before the baby was born was past unthinkable. If Maurey wouldn’t flee with me I’d flee by myself, at least until I attained parenthood. I could live on berries.
When I sat up, water rolled off my hair and down my armpits. Two ravens flapped by, heading west. In Greensboro, I didn’t even know where west was. I liked it here, dammit. I’d never liked it anywhere else. I loved Maurey, I loved the baby, most of all I loved Lydia, and Culver meant losing her too. Who would take care of her? Who would fetch her 10:30 bottle?
Maurey wobbled across the log with her arms out.
“You’re going to fall and break your butt,” I said.
“I could cross this creek blindfolded.”
“With all that weight you’re worse than blindfolded.” I guess I’d known she would come.
She stepped from the log onto the moss around the spring.
“Your grandfather isn’t happy with that trick you pulled. He’s gone to Jackson to find a motel room.” Maurey peeled her shirt off over her head, then she reached both arms around her back to undo the bra that she needed now. Her breasts still weren’t big as Delores’s, but they were heavy and the nipples had spread into this way-wide target deal.
I pushed the water surface with my palms, causing little waves to buckle across the spring. “I’ll never put on that uniform.”
She had to lie down and arch to get out of her stretchy pants.
“Yes, you will, Sam. You and Lydia are helpless and we all know it.”
I watched as Maurey waded into the spring and sat down. She was so big in the middle and so young on both ends. Her hair was longer, but her eyes just as blue and her cheekbones just as childlike as they had been the first day she called me Ex-Lax. “How did you get up the hill?”
She leaned back on her hands. Even in the warm springs, she didn’t look that comfortable. “Hank. He’s over at the ranch, talking to Dad.”
“Buddy washed his hands of you.”
Maurey’s face looked sad. “Something’s got to happen. Farlow is coming whether Dad’s here or you and Lydia are here or anybody’s here. The reality is me and the kid can’t live alone.”
“You’ll live with me.”
“Yeah, sure, Sam.” She stretched her legs straight so the soles of her feet came up against mine. That was our favorite talking-in-the-warm-springs position. “It’s either Dad come to town for the winter, me and the baby move in with Aunt Isadora, or we go to Mom’s parents’ retirement villa in Phoenix. Petey has to live somewhere too, Mom won’t be out for a while.”
“Aunt Isadora?”
“Delores’s mother. She thinks I’m a whore and a cunt. Can you see Delores’s mother with any room to gossip?”
Maurey was writing me off the possibility list. Like zip, let’s get practical here. Sam’s a goner.
I couldn’t accept being a goner. “Maurey, none of that will happen, I’ll take care of you and the baby.”
A scowl ran across her eyes. “Sam, you’ve spent the last six months bragging, ‘I’m a daddy, I’m a daddy.’ Have you done any research?”
“Research?”
“Can you change a diaper?”
“Well—”
“Do you even know where to buy diapers? GroVont isn’t exactly a shopping center.”
I guessed. “Kimball’s Food Market.”
“Wrong, kid. Zion’s Own Hardware.”
“Why would a hardware store sell diapers?”
“There’ll be days I’m at cheerleading practice or on a date with Dothan and won’t be able to breast feed. Can you sterilize bottles and make formula?”
She hadn’t mentioned dates with Dothan since Jimmy’s funeral. I’d hoped she’d forgotten. “No, I can’t make formula”—I had no idea what formula was—“but I can learn.”
“This whole pregnancy is theoretical to you. ‘Gee, won’t it be nice to love someone who can’t criticize me.’ A real human is showing up, probably next week. Theories don’t shit and cry, they don’t die if you screw up.”
“Love someone who can’t criticize me?”
“I know what you think of me and Lydia.”
I tried sarcasm. “When did you grow up all of a sudden?”
“Next week, pal.”
I ran out of anything to say. I hated being young. I hated needing. Why would God give sperm to a person too young to be a father? I tried to picture myself at Culver next week, signing up for lacrosse, being yelled at for dull shoes, taking showers around boys. Yech. Boys smell bad when they’re wet. After seeing something that mattered—love, parenthood, Wyoming—I couldn’t go off to a place where people took shoeshines seriously.
Maurey splashed water on my chest. “Don’t be sad. No matter how awful everything is, you and I will have a baby. Eighteen is only a little over four years, then you can come back.”
