I stopped in my yard to watch a one-legged robin hop around the grass. She seemed as stable as the next robin—didn’t tilt to one side or wobble or anything. Reminded me of a three-legged dog a neighbor of ours owned back in GroVont. Next to my pecan tree, the robin pulled a worm out of the ground. It was a long wienie and it didn’t want to give up its grasp on the earth, but the robin kept pulling and hopping back on her one leg until the worm popped free. Then she flew off, south.
Since the World Series when Wanda left, I hadn’t been seeing past myself. I hadn’t noticed how the maple leaves across the street were a deep Mogen David wine color, and the air smelled like refrigeration. The neighbor’s black cat lay curled on the hood of their Lincoln Town Car. I saw the girl Gilia in my mind and wondered where she might be swimming, so I could go there and watch. In Wyoming this was swimming temperature, but I figured the country club pool was drained by now. Maybe she was one of those people who takes swimming seriously, as opposed to a social tanning session. She had interesting eyes.
Inside the garage, a Vicksburg golf cart hummed into the plug in the ceiling recharger. Five other models named after Civil War battles were lined up, facing the double doors. I sat on a bucket of pool-cleaning chemicals and stared at the gardening tools mounted on fiberboard on the back wall. Each hoe and hammer sat in brackets and fit into an outline of itself drawn in yellow paint on the board—like the outlines they draw around murder victims found on the sidewalk.
I had no reason for being in the garage, other than I was tired of people. Inside the house, another complicated relationship no doubt waited to be dealt with. Gus, probably, or Shannon demanding information on her grandfathers.
The truth is, meeting never-before-met parents takes a lot of emotion. Less than halfway through the process and I felt drained. Fried. Since then I’ve learned large cities have support groups for people who thought they knew who they were, then one afternoon a stranger knocks on the door and says
I found Gus dribbling used coffee grounds into the garbage disposal. The moment she saw me, her index finger crossed her lips in the international sign for
“San Francisco by fourteen,” she said. “Bet on it.”
“I don’t know any bookies.”
“Your loss.”
I opened the refrigerator for a Dr Pepper. Dr Pepper is my one remaining degenerative addiction. “Gus, I’ve read everything I can find on mystic, ju-ju bwana fortune-telling methods, and no legitimate psychic in the country reads the future in coffee grounds put down the garbage disposal.”
She shut one thick eyelid and cocked her head over the drain. “My mama taught me, her mama taught her. The spirit ear goes way back to Africa.”
“How many generations in your family owned garbage disposals?”
Gus didn’t care to answer that one. “Going to be war,” she said.
“Me and Wanda?”
Her closed eye popped open. “United States of America.”
“I have enough problems this week without a war.”
Both eyes closed as Gus concentrated. “Against black people. The brothers and sisters going to fight men disguised as plants.”
She obviously meant camouflage suits and I was supposed to go “Wow,” but I was too worn out to pretend amazement. So I sat at the kitchen table and drank my Dr Pepper.
“You’re just like my friend Hank Elkrunner,” I said. “He thinks because he’s Blackfeet he has to say
Gus straightened and turned off the disposal. She glared down at me from on high, doing something with her eyes that increased the intimidation factor beyond the normal housekeeper-boss relationship.
“Shannon tells me pretty soon you be listening to Elmore James yourself.”
“You think I might really be black like you, Gus?”
“Not like me. I been black all my life.”
Throughout my junior high and high school years a rumor floated around GroVont that my father had been black. I don’t know how the rumor got started. It may have been because in 1963 I was the only person in northwest Wyoming who used the term
I must admit, I didn’t deny the rumor. At times—around girls—I even hinted that it might be true. This was partly to pique curiosity, but more than mere seduction, I’d seen the photos in Lydia’s panty box and I liked the idea of Sam Callahan: outsider.
I would be the wandering poet, scorned by black and white, shunned by all, except certain women of both races who are drawn to danger like a moth to flame.
“You’re in trouble,” Gus said.
“The disposal picked a football game, predicted a war, and said I’m in trouble? What brand of coffee are we drinking?”
“The phone call say you’re in trouble. Man says get your ass over to Starmount Country Club. He says now.”
“He say his name?”
“Was a horse’s name—Scout.”
“Skip.”
“How do you know? I’m the one talked to him.”
I hate being ordered around by men. Women, I can live with. A woman says
“I hope my father is the black halfback,” I said. “These white guys are turning out dips.”
“All white guys turn out dips.”
“Except me.”
She blew air out her nose. “You got no room to brag.”
I fixed myself an avocado-and-cream-cheese sandwich because it was well after noon and Gus wouldn’t make lunch for anyone who wasn’t home at noon on the dot. She was strict with mealtimes—breakfast at eight- thirty, lunch at noon, and supper at six—and I was careless when it came to clocks, so I often had to fix my own meals while my cook stood in the kitchen and glared at me.
Growing up in the Manor House, we had a succession of fifteen or so cooks who represented the vast spectrum of female domestic help. Young, old, and indeterminate, white, black, and mixed vintage, the only thing they had in common was not one got along with Caspar and Lydia. A few managed hatred. The only cook I recall as standing out from the group was a red-haired Irish girl who bathed me when the other grown-ups weren’t home.
“Where’s Shannon?” I asked.
Gus sat across from me, reading the
“Her and Eugene drove up the Blue Ridges to buy a pumpkin.”
“Long way to go for vegetables.”
“What difference it make to them. They’re young.”
I can remember being young enough to drive 130 miles, one way, for an ice-cream cone. Maurey and I did
