Tim Sandlin - Skipped Parts

“Merry Christmas, Mom.”

She gave me the look, but for a change didn’t pursue the mom deal. “Hank says Happy Christmas and Merry New Year instead of the normal way. Do you think that’s a Blackfoot trait or is he trying to irritate me?”

Her bathrobe was this white terrycloth thing that came down about midthigh and tied with a blue cord, real sexy-looking, even on her.

“Are you still claiming your dry spell?”

She smiled and came over to warm her hands against the coffeepot. “No, honey bunny, the drought is broken.”

“Please don’t call me that in front of him.”

“The drought is flooded. The drought has been blown into the Atlantic Ocean.”

“Are we going to keep him?”

Even though the pot wasn’t through perking, Lydia poured herself a weak cup. She never did have any patience with coffeepots. “Don’t be ridiculous. He’s not a kitten or a sweater.”

“I never said he was.”

“Besides we won’t be here that long.”

Hank walked into the kitchen carrying a rifle. For one horrible moment I flashed on a Wyoming ritual I hadn’t known before. Sleep with a woman, then shoot her son. Hank two-handed the rifle to me.

“Happy Christmas.”

“What is it?”

“Ruger. Twenty-two caliber. Good first gun for a young man.”

Lydia went into a frown. “I’m not sure I approve of firearms for children.” I wasn’t sure either.

“Sam’s not a child.”

I was glad to hear that. Hank’s face was interesting as I took the gun from him. His eyebrows came closer together and his mouth was thinner. Maybe giving a kid his first gun was a big deal to him.

“Is it loaded?”

“No, but always pretend it is. Don’t point it at anything you are unwilling to kill.”

Lydia blew across her coffee. “That’s the only purpose for a gun, to kill things, right?”

Hank kept his eyes on me. “Protection, security, dignity, procurement of meat.”

Lydia went on, “And killing is unethical.”

I’d never held a gun before. Caspar wasn’t into guns. It was heavier than I’d imagined from Gunsmoke or The Rebel . Those guys tossed rifles around like sticks. I couldn’t see where it gave me dignity, but it felt neat. Let’s see Dothan Talbot crap at me. I’d take out his kneecaps.

Hank said, “Can’t be a real local if you don’t have a gun.”

Lydia set her cup down with a click. “We have no intention of being real locals.”

Lydia kept up the bitching clear through breakfast, but you could tell her heart wasn’t in it. Sometimes she’d lose control and smile, and once I saw her brush her hand against Hank’s. Since it was Christmas, I made French toast—put some flour and old Kahlua in the batter for flavor. One thing about growing up with a mom who won’t cook or do laundry, you won’t hit fourteen helpless and woman-needy.

After breakfast, Lydia poured Kahlua in her coffee refill and we trooped out to the living room to open more presents.

I sat in the center of the couch with them on both sides. It was kind of homey if you’re into homey. The presents were lined up on the coffee table. A new radio sat on top of a box from Caspar.

“I didn’t have time to wrap it,” Lydia said, which I thought was interesting since, technically, she didn’t do anything.

“It’s neat,” I said.

“I figured if the TV is useless, we might as well have some music around here.”

The big box from Caspar was a white suit straight out of Faulkner. It was an exact duplicate of the one he wore like a uniform, summer and winter. It was like he had a duty to wear that suit to set an example for Lord knows who. Mine even came with a yellow bow tie.

“I’ll look like a goose.”

Lydia touched the material with her index finger. “Great costume for sipping mint juleps and putting darkies in their place.”

“I don’t know a darkie.”

“Perhaps I could qualify,” Hank said.

Lydia did a smirk. “I’m the one to put you in your place.” She reached along the couch and pulled on Hank’s ear. He blushed and I like to barfed. There’s something putrid about your mother being nice to someone.

Caspar had sent Lydia a twenty-volume set, Dictionary of American Biography . Postage alone could have fed GroVont for two days. “Oh, good, a table,” Lydia said. She stacked them up next to the arm on her end of the couch and set her coffee cup on Werdin to Zunser .

I’d gotten her a harmonica. One thing you have to admire about Lydia, she’s honest. If she doesn’t like something, she doesn’t spare anybody’s feelings.

“Oh,” she said. “How interesting.” She blew one squawk note and put it next to her coffee cup. I didn’t feel bad. Lydia is impossible to buy things for and I’d gotten over the personal-rejection crush years earlier when I hand-made and varnished a jewelry box out of Popsicle sticks and she accidentally stepped on it.

Since then, I’d been buying her things I wanted.

Hank was new to the deal though. I felt kind of sorry for him when she sniffed at his Indian bead earrings. They were real pretty.

“They’re real pretty,” she said in a tone like they weren’t. Maybe she thought they were. Whenever Lydia says something sincere it comes out sounding like irony. She saves her truth tone for lies to Caspar.

Living around Caspar and Lydia was always tense, but Christmas things got even more tense than usual. Christmas is like an intensifier—good things are real good and bad things are worse; and things at the manor house never were king-hell neat to start with.

Or maybe it was on account of Me Maw being dead. Christmas is the season for missing dead people.

Whatever it was, Caspar got crabbier and Lydia bitchier and I mostly stayed in my room and played with whatever game they’d sprung for that year. Caspar was big on educational stuff—chemistry sets, butterfly nets. When I was young Lydia bought stuff for old kids and when I got older she bought stuff for toddlers.

The year before our banishment, she got me an Etch A Sketch that said right on the package, “For children 4 through 9.”

It was a weird Christmas too. Caspar’s hearing aid wasn’t working—that or he had it turned off—so whenever I thanked him for a gift, he said “What’s that?” and I had to thank him over and over.

My main present was a toy construction company. “Build your first plant,” Caspar said. “Commerce.”

“What’s that?” I asked, looking at all the plastic bricks with lock-in nubs on top, and the girders and wheels and stuff. Gave me the same feeling as a snake—I had no desire in the world to touch any of it.

“Commerce,” Caspar grunted again. He stood over me with his arms folded and his little yellow mum and bow tie giving him a smug Captain Kangaroo-type glow. I guess him buying me my first industrial plant to build was like Hank giving me a rifle, a tradition deal. I’m not big on tradition deals.

Just as Caspar said “Commerce” the second time, Lydia wandered into the parlor barefoot in a shortie nightie. She liked to go skimpy around the Carolina house because it made Caspar nervous. All that skin flashing ended when we moved to Wyoming.

She walked over by the fake Christmas tree and lit a cigarette. Her legs were knobby. “Talk sentences in front of Sam, Daddy. He’ll grow up thinking men snort instead of using speech.”

Caspar glared at her. “If you were a union I’d break you in half.”

Lydia blew smoke out her nostrils. “I’m not a union, I’m a daughter.”

“Nothing but Communists in the unions. I loathe Communists.”

The cook, who was Negro and named Flossie Mae, brought me a waffle and a glass of grapefruit juice.