Skipped Parts

involved.

The way to be near Maurey wasn’t kicking and screaming as Caspar dragged me off to military school. The cool course was to give up what I wanted for a while so I could grow up and come back later and have it. Maybe Maurey would learn to love me if I wasn’t around. Lots of people are easier to love if you don’t actually look at them every day.

Much as adult thinking rankled, not to mention flying in the face of everything Lydia ever taught me, I decided that if Maurey came out okay and the baby came out okay and they let me hold it once, I would leave quietly with Caspar. There wasn’t any choice so I might as well go with dignity.

Dignity is a tough concept when your fourteenth birthday is almost a month away.

“Would you like some toys to play with?” the nurse asked.

“I’d rather have a Valium.”

29

I wish the nurse had said, ‘‘Sam Callahan, you have a daughter.” That would have been a hoot. What she said was, “Buddy, you have a granddaughter.”

He said, “Thank you, Caroline,” which meant they knew each other. Probably went to high school together, everybody else in the state did.

We left the Chinese checkers to follow Caroline the nurse down a well-lit hallway to a glass window looking in on the nursery thing. One wall had nine stethoscopes hanging from a rack and a cut-out picture of Yosemite Sam aiming two pistols at the daddies and people at the windows. Two babies lay swaddled in blue blankets in side-by- side cribs. The one I knew right away was mine had her little slit-eyes open, ears you could almost see through, and black cirrus-cloud hair. A light purple wedge ran from the bridge of her nose to the top of her forehead.

I stared at her so hard my breath fogged the glass and made her look all wispy.

Caroline went into the nursery to bring the baby over to the window and present her like a guy in New York did when Caspar ordered a bottle of wine. Even though I’d rehearsed this moment ever since we left Rock Springs, I didn’t know what to feel. I’d expected fatherly instincts to wash over like surf. Instead, I found myself trying to connect this little live person with unfocused eyes and tiny, tiny fingers to runny mayonnaise dripping off my sock. How had one led to the other? It was a big leap.

I said, “I thought blue blankets mean boys.”

“She said it’s a granddaughter.” Buddy leaned forward. “I didn’t plan it to be this way.”

“But she’s so beautiful.”

He touched the glass with two fingers. “She is beautiful.”

My butt was safe from branding after all.

I slept in my clothes in one of the ugly chairs and the room was way hot so I sweat and stuck to the plastic. Rolling over was like pulling off a giant Band-Aid. Made for bizarre dreams.

The North Carolina basketball team held Sam Callahan on the cross while his grandfather hammered nails through each hand, then fastened his ankles to the upright with barbed wire. Someone stuck a dish sponge in hot Dr Pepper and held it to Sam Callahan’s parched mouth. His grandfather moved through the crowd, giving dollar tips to smartly dressed Negroes.

Sam looked across the valley to the cool snow on the Tetons. He allowed a single tear to drop from his newly grown moustache. As blood flowed into his eyes, Sam Callahan groaned aloud. “Forgive my grandfather, for he knows not what he is about.”

The women rent themselves and tore their garments. The men wrote poetry.

I woke up to Hank standing over me holding a folded T-shirt and my second best sneakers.

“Morning, Dad.” He grinned and his shoulders went up and down in that silent laughter of his. “You are sleeping too long. Don’t you know fathers have responsibilities.”

I unstuck myself from the chair. “It’s a girl.”

“The valley is abuzzing with the news—Lydia is a grandma.”

I hadn’t thought in those terms yet. “Have you got fifteen cents, I need a Coke.”

We bought a Coke and an Orange Crush and started back down the hall to visit Maurey. An old lady slept in a wheelchair in front of the nursery window. She wore a floral pink nightgown and a matching bathrobe with drool down the collar. As Hank and I walked past, her head jerked awake and she called me Frederick.

“Frederick, don’t drive so fast, you’ll kill us all.”

“Morning, Mrs. Barton,” Hank said, but she was back asleep.

A nurse with her hair all ratted up and sprayed down like she was in a beauty pageant blocked the new mothers’ door with her hands on her hips and her tits in my face.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

I didn’t say anything on account of I figured she was talking to Hank. Grown-ups don’t ask strange kids questions.

“Maurey Pierce,” Hank said.

“You can see her, but the boy stays.” She pointed to a black-on-yellow sign with eight sides like a Stop sign. No visitors under 16 allowed in maternity ward.

“But I’m the father.”

She looked at me through spider eyebrows. “I don’t care if you’re the Pope.”

Hank raised a hand toward her arm, but he didn’t quite touch her. “Susie, the baby is his. Bend the rules and let him in.”

“I can’t do that, Elkrunner.”

I’d had it. “Listen, lady, I’m being carted off to military school this afternoon. If you don’t let me see Maurey and the baby, I won’t see them for years.”

Her hands came off her hips and crossed her chest.

“Susie,” Hank said.

“He’s not sixteen.”

Enough adult behavior. I wasn’t leaving Wyoming without seeing my daughter. Time to revert to childish. “I’ll howl like a coyote and wake up all the sick people.”

Susie’s red lips split into a sneer. I’d of given anything for a thirty-four-ounce Louisville Slugger.

I closed my eyes and howled—owwww. After a few seconds, Hank joined in, only his was way louder—OWWWW. They must train Indians in that stuff. Behind the nurse, a baby wailed with us, and a door opened.

“What’s this?” Buddy stood there like a bear who hadn’t slept.

Her voice was a whine. “Under-sixteen-year-olds aren’t allowed in the maternity ward, Mr. Pierce. They’re germy.”

Buddy’s black eyes went from Susie to me to Hank. Hank was smiling. Howling in a hospital must have given him a charge.

“Sam is sixteen,” Buddy said.

“And I’m Gina Lollobrigida.”

“Who will you be in trouble with if you let him in?” Behind Buddy, the crying stopped as suddenly as it had started.

“Dr. Petrov will put me on report.”

“Tell Dr. Petrov that I said Sam is sixteen. He knows I would never tell a lie.” I knew what was coming next so certainly I could have said it myself. “We played football together in high school.”

Susie gave up and stalked away. Another crisis averted, I went in the room alone.

***

Maurey reached for my Coke and drained it. “They shaved me again.”

“I thought that was only for abortions.”

“Doctors must shave every time they poke around down there. I might as well start shaving myself like Mama, save them the trouble.”