Tim Sandlin: Social Blunders

I heard hoofbeats; the buffalo snorted and blew steam and red foam from his nostrils; the horse screamed as its back was broken. The wall framing the painting thrummed with the low breathing of a sleeping beast. Hallucinations can be cool, or they can scare the living bejesus out of a person.

Women’s faces swooped at me—Lydia, Maurey, Shannon, Gus. Then bodies—beautiful bodies with elbows, shoulder blades, the backs of knees, necks, feet, and fingers—all the parts that I love. Like bats, crotches began swooping out of the buffalo’s head, straight at my own. Here came the wispy blond tufts of Leigh, the stiff-as-a-hairbrush bush of Janey, Wanda’s crotch shaved smooth like a volleyball. Darlene, Karlene, and Charlene. Sweet Maria. Linda the raw oyster.

Before Wanda, I was rarely able to hold a woman longer than two menstrual periods. Rejection came soon after copulation, but there for a while copulation came with rapid-fire regularity. Call it the conquest-and-loss syndrome. It was nothing I did or deserved. Any non-jerk who is young, fairly well off, and single—and has a beautiful daughter—can find short-term romance. Plus Maurey taught me how to get the girls off every time. That helps.

I leaned forward with my eyes closed, sweat dribbling off my chin onto the handlebars, concentrating on the parade of crotches. I could taste each woman’s juice on my tongue and the back of my mouth. A sound came like water on concrete, and I opened my eyes. The Indians had been replaced by five men who stood in a circle with their penises out, aimed at the buffalo, who had turned into a woman I couldn’t recognize. She lay on the floor with her dress torn and her back bare and bleeding while the men urinated on her.

“I found every last one of them,” Shannon said as she blew into the kitchen the next morning. She was wearing white shorts and a teenage wench top that reminded me of Paw Paw Callahan’s undershirts. A boy followed several paces behind, assuming the demeanor of a well-trained spaniel.

“This is Eugene,” Shannon said. “Eugene, my dad.”

The boy stepped around Shannon to shake my hand. I stayed seated in front of the red beans and biscuits Gus insists I eat every morning of my put-upon life.

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” Eugene said. His hand was the texture of deep-fried tofu. In my day, we didn’t go around touching the fathers of girls we boffed.

I looked past him. “Where were you last night, little lady?”

Shannon ignored my question as she poured herself and Eugene mugs of coffee. Eugene had that classic psych major look—receding hairline, dribbly chin, canvas shoes. Shannon put Sweet’n Low in his coffee without asking. She wrinkled her nose flirtatiously at him, then turned to me and said, “It only took four hours at the library. You could have done it years ago.”

“Forms must be maintained,” I said. “If you’re going to stay out all night I demand the courtesy of being lied to.”

Shannon reached in her day pack and pulled out a nightgown. I scowled at Eugene, who hung his head and grinned. If he said “Aw, shucks,” I meant to plaster the kid—red beans right up the snout. Beneath the nightgown, Shannon found what she was looking for—a letter-size envelope and a larger manila envelope.

She came over and dropped them on the table next to my Greensboro News . “Names and addresses of all your fathers.”

“What?”

“Greensboro only had three high schools in 1949. All we had to do was find the yearbooks.”

“Your black father took the longest,” Eugene said.

I lifted the letter envelope and four photographs fell out. “Where did you get these?”

Shannon opened the refrigerator and peered inside. “Don’t be dramatic, Daddy. Where do you think I got them? You were moping around like a wounded bear over Wanda the witch, so Eugene and I decided you needed something to do. And anyway, I deserve to know who my grandfather is.”

I stared at her with all the anger I could pull off, but since her head was in the refrigerator, my anger was neatly deflected. “You and Eugene decided I need something to do?”

Eugene smiled and nodded his head. “I said you should transfer your obsession to a suitable substitute other than your abject failure as a husband, and Shannon told me about the football players who group raped your mother and made her pregnant. That must have been a tremendous burden on your ego during the formative years—to know your very being is based on humiliation.”

“So I opened the safe and borrowed the pictures,” Shannon said. “Now, it’s your turn.”

I stared at the four photos. Five football players. Numbers 72, 56, 81, 11, and 20. Seventy-two and fifty-six were in the same picture. Big boys with burr haircuts and square heads. Eighty-one was thin and wore glasses. Eleven had the confident smirk of a high school quarterback. Twenty was black. He was noticeably shorter than the others and the only one grinning at the camera.

“What do you expect me to do?” I asked.

Shannon brought out the remains of a strawberry pie. “Those men violated Lydia. As her son it’s your duty to wreak vengeance. Destroy their wives, ravish their daughters, shame their sons, drag them publicly in front of the media and show the world what scumbags they are.”

Eugene smiled and nodded again.

“That was thirty-three years ago, Shannon. They were just boys then.”

Shannon focused on me with the fierceness of her mother. “They raped Lydia, for Godsake. They stood in a circle and pissed on her torn body. You can’t just pretend it didn’t happen.”

“I can’t?”

Shannon, with Eugene in her wake, left for wherever women in the prime of their youth go in the morning. By eleven she had a Saturday lab class at UNC-G, where she was majoring in anthropology. I have no idea why she chose anthropology; maybe nobody knows their kids.

I stared at the manila envelope a while, then walked to my room to fetch the Grape-Nuts I kept hidden for times when Gus fixed breakfast and disappeared into her rich personal life that I know nothing about. She’s been with us ten years, and she still won’t tell me if she’s married or has children of her own or anything. Shannon probably knows.

Back in the kitchen, I poured two-percent milk over the Grape-Nuts and ate without looking in the bowl. Two-percent milk is another of those decisions the women had made for me. When you don’t have money, you think people who do have money can do anything they like. Don’t believe it.

Finally I stood and washed the cereal bowl and spoon, but not the beans plate or pan—the subterfuges we have to scheme through in our own home—and walked back to the table. The envelope held one sheet of paper from a yellow legal pad.

William Gaines

147 N. Glenwood

Skip Prescott

14 Corner Creek Drive

Cameron Saunders

16 Corner Creek Drive

Babe Carnisek

1212 W. 23rd

Jake Williams

2182 Bronson

The father thing has caused me a lot of discomfort late at night when thoughts range out of control. As a kid, I used to make up scenes where my real father was a famous baseball player or a CIA spy or something—anything, so long as he had an excuse to deny me up until the point of my daydream.

“I was being chased by the Mafia, son, and if anyone found out I had a boy, you would have been in the gravest danger.”

“I understand, Dad.”

In school when I should have been studying geography, I drew pictures of Dad. Mostly he looked like Moose Skowron who played first base for the New York Yankees. Sometimes he looked like John Kennedy.