“Who is this?”
“Sam Callahan. I was at your house the Saturday before last during the Washington-Detroit game. You might be my father.”
“I remember.”
“I need to know what happened the night I was conceived.”
He hesitated a moment, then said, “A bunch of us screwed your mother.”
“I was hoping for details.”
“Let me think.” The black guy came close to the pay phone and I put a finger in my ear to cover the
“I was at Skip Prescott’s house listening to colored music on the record player,” Babe said, “and a friend of his sister telephoned and asked us to a party.”
“Yes.”
“Your mom was mad at her daddy about something, so she screwed us.”
I inhaled deeply. “Whose idea was it?”
“Was what?”
“Having sex. The five of you having sex with Lydia.”
“Hell, we were such young punks none of us even knew what hole to go in.”
“So the sex was her idea?”
“She paid us money to do her.”
Everything that had happened in my life up to that point suddenly became void. I closed my eyes to block the nausea and leaned my head against the wall next to the phone.
Babe’s voice was hesitant. “After you left the other day, I got to thinking, and I don’t believe I was quite honest while you were here.”
“You lied?”
“Didn’t lie so much as forgot the whole truth. You can ask Didi, that’s not like me.”
“What’s the truth?”
“I’m probably not your father after all.”
I didn’t say anything. I was beyond the ability to react.
“The truth is I squirted so quick I don’t think I ever got far enough in to make her pregnant.”
“Oh.”
“She cussed me out for messing on her belly.”
I walked all night. It must have been raining, but I don’t remember. I don’t remember feeling anything, inside or out. The police stopped me down by the interstate. I must have answered enough questions not to be taken in as a drunk, but I don’t see how.
Dawn found me lying on Atalanta Williams’ couch with my head in her lap, sobbing. Fingers ran through my hair. Her other hand rested on my shoulder.
She said, “I knew all along my Jake couldn’t have done what your mama said.”
Her bathrobe smelled like flowers. I could easily have stayed on that couch for years. Another day at home —waking up, looking out at the weather, deciding what to wear—was more than I could face. Going on was too much responsibility.
“I wish you were my mother,” I said.
Atalanta gave me a squeeze on the shoulder and said, “So do I.”
Part Two
WYOMING
Rule Number One of Being Sam Callahan: In times of torment, fly to Maurey. The evening after Halloween, All Souls’ Night itself, I landed in the Jackson Hole Airport during the first real snowstorm of the year. Because the flight attendant thought I was handicapped, she helped me down the airplane steps and across the runway to the terminal where Hank Elkrunner awaited. I did feel arthritic, especially in the knees and feet. The world looked the way I imagine it would if you’d just survived a plane crash where other people were killed. Objects appeared brand new; I couldn’t come up with the word that went along with the thing.
Hank said, “Welcome home.”
I said, “Oh.”
He drove to the ranch through blowing snow and no heat in his pickup. On the radio, Jimmy Buffett sang “Peanut Butter Conspiracy”—a song glorifying shoplifting. At the ranch, Hank led me to my private cell in the barracks he and Pud built years ago for Maurey’s recovering legions. Without undressing, I crawled between the sheets of a twin bed and lay on my back, neither awake nor asleep. The plywood ceiling had knot whorls in the wood grain that stared down at me like eyes. Pissed-off, judgmental eyes. Female eyes.
Maurey came through the door. She felt my forehead and took off my shoes. “You look like a wreck,” she said.
“I am a wreck.”
“You’re in the right place, I’m a tow truck.”
I closed my eyes, too tired for metaphors.
Every now and then I got up to pee, which meant going outside in the snow and around the building. Twice each day a pregnant teenager who told me her name was Toinette brought food. You can take it as a gauge of how far into my hole I’d sunk that I felt no curiosity as to how and when Toinette became pregnant.
On the third day, Maurey showed up at my bedside, straddling a chair backward, like a cowboy.
She said, “My brother is dying, his lover is losing a lover. I’ve got a pregnant girl disowned by her family and a little boy so traumatized he can’t speak.”
I pulled the sheet over my mouth; she reached across and yanked it back down.
“And you,” she said, “are the only person on the ranch who feels sorry for yourself.”
“Auburn can’t talk?”
“Auburn’s fine.” She knocked wood on the chair. “Roger can’t talk.”
“Who’s Roger?”
“Long story. Are you going to get up or waste away?”
“What about the recovering junkie?” I asked.
“What?”
“When we talked on the phone you had a recovering junkie.”
“He stopped recovering and left.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Win some, lose some. The deal is, you’re the lone refugee out here not pulling your weight in the cheerfulness department.”
“Are you cheerful?” She looked worn out. The veins showed in her arms and her eyes crinkled like she’d been outside too much without sunglasses.
“Fuck, no, I’m not cheerful. Helping family die is hard work, but I’m faking it like a champ, and I can’t do this unless you fake it too.”
