Tim Sandlin - Skipped Parts

“We’d just as soon not get them involved.”

A smile almost flickered onto Dot’s dimples. “Buddy’ll roast your butt on a branding fire.”

I tried not to visualize the image. “What’s an abortion feel like?”

Dot drank some coffee. “I wouldn’t know, someone told me it’s like having your guts and soul sucked away.” More visualization. I think Dot was embarrassed about using the word soul in conversation. She flushed and looked back at the kitchen as if she hoped my burger would come up.

“Abortions are illegal,” I said.

“There’s a place in Rock Springs, a regular clinic during the week, but on Saturdays and Sundays they do those things to women. I hear it’s disgusting, they wheel the women through three at a time and you can hear the doctor or whoever does it scraping the woman next to you.”

“Scraping?”

“I heard more than one woman on the number-three table freaks out and runs away half-gassed.”

I put more sugar in my coffee. What did she mean, “scraping”? And “gassed”? Did they stick a tool up there and pry loose a dead baby?

“How do you know this stuff?” I asked.

“People think waitresses are deaf. Boy, could I write a book if I had the time.”

“I’m going to write a book someday.”

Once again, Dot didn’t treat me my age. “How about I tell you the true stories and you write the book. We’ll split the money.”

A bell dinged and Dot pulled herself out of the booth to go fetch my cheeseburger. After she left, I thought her stories were okay for her, but when I became a writer I was going to make mine up. True stuff isn’t fun enough.

I didn’t see Maurey the rest of the day, but Lydia told me the doctor had done a test and we’d know for certain Tuesday.

“What’s an abortion feel like?” I asked.

She gave me her look. “Feels like cutting your fingernails real short.”

I thought about that. “Someone told Dot it’s like having your guts and soul sucked out.”

“You discussed this with Dot?”

I told her about the clinic in Rock Springs and how the third-table woman can hear scraping on the first-table woman when she’s half-gassed.

Lydia went stern. “Sam, as far as Maurey goes, it’s getting her fingernails trimmed. You got that?”

“Why?”

“This won’t be a lark for her. I’ll brook no talk of guts and souls.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Ma’am me one more time and I’ll cut off your allowance.”

“What allowance?”

Tuesday afternoon we played Clue. Hank was Professor Plum, I was Colonel Mustard, and Maurey was Miss Scarlet. Lydia sat on the milk crate and smoked cigarettes.

She made fun of us. “The butler did it with a shotgun.”

Hank held his cards with both hands and concentrated. Maurey was understandably distracted and I watched her. She had on a light blue sweater with little loops on the shoulders. Every time the refrigerator kicked on, she’d give a little jump.

Hank didn’t like Clue. “This game takes logical thought and logical thought goes against everything the Blackfeet believe.”

Lydia snorted through the smoke. “Whenever Hank feels inadequate he claims his Indian heritage.”

“Who mentioned inadequate?”

“You. You can’t figure out who killed where with what, so you blame your bloodline.”

Hank had been around Lydia enough to know real criticism from exercising her tongue, which is what this was. Explaining people’s flaws to them was a habit of hers; somebody had to do it.

Hank made a decision. “Mrs. White with a rope in the conservatory.” He looked over at Maurey who showed him a card. “Damn.”

It wasn’t the rope or the conservatory because I had both those cards, so Maurey must have Mrs. White. Whoever killed the guy did it with the lead pipe, I knew that much, and I guessed the billiard room, but I was a ways from the murderer.

“What’s a conservatory?” Maurey asked.

Hank and I looked at each other and shrugged.

“Opposite of a lavoratory,” Lydia said.

I looked at the picture of the conservatory on the Clue board. “I think it’s a library.”

Maurey put her finger on the board. “Here’s the library.”

“It’s a place where people conserve things,” Lydia said.

Maurey rolled and came up four. As she moved Miss Scarlet into the library, the phone rang. We froze in this-is-it poses, Maurey staring at the board and me staring at her amazingly blue eyes.

From the living room, I heard Lydia say “Yes” twice and “Thank you” once, which gave the answer because she wouldn’t have said thank you if the news was good. Lydia came to the door and leaned on the frame and blew smoke at us.

“Positive.”

Hank exhaled, but Maurey and I just sat there. She blinked a couple of times and her eyes glistened. I picked up my Professor Plum piece and turned it over between my fingers.

“Say something,” I said.

Maurey blinked twice more, real fast. “Miss Scarlet, lead pipe, library.” She was right.

The next day at lunchtime, Teddy and Dothan got in a king-hell fight over whether some droppings in the school yard were moose or elk. It happened so fast, zoom , the yard went from boring to violent.

I heard them arguing, but my main attention, if you could call it attention, was on Chuckette’s complaint that her sister Sugar was being allowed to do something at the age of eleven that Chuckette hadn’t been allowed to do—talk to boys on the phone, I think. Or use hair spray, I don’t know. Chuckette was always upset about something Sugar was allowed to do—when Dothan suddenly tackled Teddy and they rolled across the snow.

Dothan came up on top with his knees on Teddy’s shoulders. Teddy spit chew juice on Dothan’s shirt and neck. By then a bunch of kids circled around, so I had to watch through their legs, but I saw Dothan making Teddy eat whatever kind of droppings were involved.

Maurey stood on the cafeteria steps, watching the fight.

Chuckette caught me watching Maurey. “Maurey Pierce is lucky to have a boyfriend like Dothan.”

I almost asked why, but figured it didn’t matter anyway. If Maurey liked in the right way a kid who made another kid eat animal shit, she would never really like me.

Chuckette went right on. “I bet I’m the only girl in school who would go steady with you. Everyone says you aren’t good enough for me and I’m settling beneath my dignity.”

I looked at Chuckette’s flat face and my scarf around her neck, and felt depressed. “That’s right, Chuckette, I’m not good enough for you.”

“Don’t pout. I hate it when you pout.”

Lydia drove over to Dot’s duplex to get the scoop on the Rock Springs deal, then she made several hush-tone phone calls. Maurey was over every evening, only Lydia was her best friend now instead of me. They would sit at the kitchen table and talk quietly while I watched our one station on TV. Whenever I went in there, they’d shut up and stare at me until I left. At least she didn’t run to Dothan Talbot.

I asked Lydia what they talked about and she said, “Girl stuff.”

“Why can’t I listen?”

“Give her a week, honey bunny. She still needs your friendship. Just wait until we clean up the mess made by your dick.”

A front came through Friday night, dumping a few inches of fresh snow, so the drive to Rock Springs the next day was even more tense than the usual drive to an abortionist. We loaded up as soon as Annabel left for her weekly bridge-club deal, all three of us in the front seat with Maurey in the middle, and almost immediately she took my hand in hers, which made me feel good. It wasn’t like sexy hand holding—there’d be no jack jobs on this ride—but more like friendship, like she needed to touch someone who liked her. Lydia had never driven on ice before and it took her clear through the Hoback Canyon to realize the brake pedal caused more trouble than it was worth. We slid right through a stop sign, but no one was coming so we didn’t crash.