Tim Sandlin: Social Blunders

“I wish you’d told me that before I salted my French fries,” I said.

Dot polished the lid with her apron. “He must have a salt deficiency. Why else would anyone go around licking salt shakers?”

I snuck a look at Maurey to see if she was still angry, and she was. A dime-size red circle burned under each cheekbone. Her eyes had drifted far away. I said, “I could have sworn Oly Pedersen was the oldest man in the valley when we moved here twenty years ago.”

“He turned ninety last summer,” Dot said. “He’s holding out for a hundred so Paul Harvey will say his name on the radio. I don’t think he’ll make it with a salt deficiency.”

“Oly’s going to outlive us all,” Maurey said with some bitterness.

“I guess I don’t mind so much.” Dot screwed the more or less clean top back on the salt. “This way I don’t have to fill the shakers half as often as I used to.”

“Every cloud has a silver lining,” Chet said. I noticed he was falling into the habit of dry irony. That’s not a habit you want to fall into permanently.

Dot went on. “Lydia says he’s doing a public service. The collective blood pressure of the county is going down from lack of salt.”

“I thought we weren’t talking about Lydia,” I said.

“Why aren’t we talking about Lydia?” Lydia hovered, the other side of Dot. I kept my head down. No one answered her question, so she went right on.

“Sam. Son of mine. The county plowed in my car last week and now it’s almost buried. I’d like you to come by and shovel my car out. Are you willing to cooperate?”

The secret was to study details. Count my remaining fries. Quantify the slaw. The white gravy next to my last chicken strip had congealed. The surface shone like a bald head.

“I’ll do it,” Chet said.

Lydia made a click sound in her throat. “Thank you, no. Shoveling out a car is a son’s duty.”

I compared the ketchup glint to the gravy glisten. The ketchup shone brighter. By moving my spoon an inch, I could reflect the fluorescent ceiling tube into the ketchup gleam.

Lydia said, “Hey, big shot, I’m talking to you.”

I said, “I am not prepared to deal with you at this time.”

She used her ugly voice. “I am not prepared to deal with you at this time.”

I risked a glance at Maurey and Chet. They’d opted for false deafness. “Lydia,” I said. “I will never be able to compete with you at sarcastic banter. I doubt if anyone can be as verbally cruel as you, so I choose to shut up.”

She slammed her fists on the table. Both Dot and my plate jumped an inch. “I’ll show you verbal cruelty, you little in-grate. Look at me when I’m talking to you.”

I slowly turned my head. She wore tight jeans and a blouse that had been popular back in the fifties. She carried a leather purse shaped like a Western saddle. Because of my low angle and her eye makeup, she came off as fierce and forthright—the proud holder of righteous indignation.

I said, “I destroyed three families and a boy tried to kill himself.”

“And that’s my fault?” The vein in her forehead bulged out, pulsating in an almost sexual manner.

“Yes.”

“Sam, you’re thirty-three years old. You haven’t lived at home since you were eighteen.”

“Seventeen.”

“It’s time to stop blaming me every time you wet the bed.”

“What?”

“My not breast-feeding you had nothing to do with that boy resorting to suicide.”

Breast-feeding? The woman’s self-delusions floored me. “You said my fathers raped you when it was you who paid them two dollars each.”

“So I forgot some details.”

I studied Lydia’s face. As she’d aged, her neck got stringier, and a network of lines came off her mouth, but the eyes were the same. Did she not know what that lie had done to me? Did she honestly feel no remorse? “Mom, those details affect the way I see men. Women. Myself. Because of the rape story, I don’t think I’m capable of love. And I’m afraid it’s too late to change.”

She stared at me for a two-count, then she snapped open her purse and pulled out a Kleenex. “Here. Cry on something that cares.”

By early afternoon the bunkhouse twenty-gallon water heater had recovered from the morning rush and it was my turn to shower. I like showers. Generally, they make me feel renewed, as if a clean body equals a clean slate, but TM Ranch bunkhouse showers leave a lot to be desired. That’s because the stall has rusted seams that turn the water brown as it passes over your feet, and after you dry off you have to go back outside and circle around to your room. Nobody much minds in summer when all it takes is flip-flops and boxer shorts, but winter means completely redressing, boots included.

During the rinse cycle I went into a daydream where Shannon wins the first Nobel Prize in Anthropology. The Swedish government flies both of us to Stockholm and puts us up in the finest hotel in Europe, one of those places where the maid turns down your bed at night so you don’t have to fluff your own pillow. At the ceremony, Shannon, vibrant and beautiful as she is, stands before the hall of intellectuals and gives me all the credit.

“I never would have discovered the lost civilization of Borneo if not for the continued love and support of my dad,” Shannon says, “and I am here to announce that I have named the era that these people flourished as the Samcallahantic Period.”

Then Shannon kisses me on both cheeks and my stomach goes soppy nauseous. The nausea-from-love stomach part actually happened in the shower. Just thinking about my daughter could do that to me.

When I turned off the water the pipes made a painful shuddering sound. I stepped from the stall to find Hank standing between me and my towel, holding a chain saw.

He said, “The boys and I are going after a Christmas tree.”

I don’t do well when I’m naked and other people aren’t. “Won’t a Christmas tree be kind of maudlin, what with Pete dying and all?”

“Maurey decided Auburn and Roger deserve a Christmas. There hasn’t been much cheer the last few months. She gave orders no one is to be depressed from after the funeral through New Year’s.”

I shifted to slide past him to my towel on the nail on the wall, but Hank didn’t take the hint. Instead, he averted his eyes the way Blackfeet are supposed to when they have something serious to say.

“Your mother cried this morning,” he said.

“Lydia hasn’t cried since the day she was born, and that was only a rumor.”

He nodded. “After the two of you shouted at one another in Dot’s, I drove her home and she cried in the truck.”

I considered what this might mean. “Regret or manipulation?”

“It appeared as regret.”

“How would you know with Lydia?”

“She feels badly about what she did.”

“Then why doesn’t she say so?”

The outside door opened and Chet entered. He said, “It’s getting cold out there.”

Hank said, “Should be zero tonight.”

Great. Now I’m naked in front of a Blackfoot with a chain saw and a known homosexual. Chet sat on the changing bench and lit a cigarette, cool and calm as if he were waiting for a bus. I have this recurring dream where I’m in a crowd of well-dressed people and I’m nude but no one seems to notice. Must be a primal fear thing because the dream shrivels my penis.

“How’s Pete’s eulogy coming along?” Chet asked.

“What?”

“We truly appreciate you taking care of it. I know you and Pete didn’t always see eye to eye, but he respected your creative drive. Even though he never read one, I heard him say more than once that your novels are an achievement.”