Tim Sandlin - Skipped Parts

Next to me, Teddy spit tobacco juice into his Maxwell House can,

I have this theory that Sir Walter Scott’s books screwed up the South more than Uncle Tom’s Cabin . All those mint julep–swilling gentlemen confused the spiritual butt rape of other races and sexes with gallantry.

Stebbins slid his eyes across me to ask Kim Schmidt a question concerning fairness. I put on my Hank-face and stared at him. That’s how I knew I had the king-hell seducer of housewives. I could look at him and he couldn’t look at me.

In Mrs. Hinchman’s citizenship class we learned how the responsible person votes. Rodney Cannelioski and Kim Schmidt ran for president. LaDell Smith wanted to but Mrs. Hinchman said no girls. Rodney and Kim gave speeches in which Kim promised better school lunches and Rodney said he would introduce every man, woman, and child in America to God. Kim won 26 to 2.

Chuckette gave me crap in the cafeteria. “You didn’t call this weekend.”

That seemed evident, so I concentrated on my mulligan stew. In mulligan stew everything is mashed up together; you can’t avoid the gross stuff.

“I don’t know why I go steady with you. You’re supposed to call me at least once a day.”

Maurey was sitting over at the ninth-grade table, where some kid had his eyelids turned inside out and a mouthful of milk so when he talked the milk dribbled off his face and made him look like an idiot. Maurey’s face lit in delighted disgust and she laughed. I couldn’t believe a soon-to-be-mother would fall for the inside-out-eyelids trick.

“Sharon’s boyfriend Byron calls her house a dozen times a day and lets the phone ring once, then hangs up, just to let her know he still loves her.”

“I bet Sharon’s parents enjoy that.”

“You have to start telling me you love me more often or my attention will wander. A woman should never be taken for granted.”

I’d never once told Chuckette I loved her. “Did you vote for Rodney Cannelioski?”

“We’re doubling again with Maurey and Dothan Talbot Saturday night. Bring more money this time.”

I poked a fork at my stew. “Wouldn’t you rather have a better lunch than meet Jesus?”

“I already know Jesus.”

“Then you should have voted for lunch.”

As Maurey stood up to carry her tray to the dump window, Dothan reached out and slapped her on the bottom, right in a spot I wasn’t allowed to touch. I looked at Chuckette’s face and realized I was sleeping with the prettiest girl in school and going steady with the ugliest.

“I love it when you gaze at me like that,” Chuckette said.

“Oh.”

“Sam, you can be so charming when you try.”

Stebbins didn’t show up for sixth-period PE. A few slows slid around the gym floor in their socks, heaving a basketball at the backboard, calling each other “douche bag.” Douche bag was the in insult of the winter, but I doubt if a one of them knew what a douche bag was. I only knew because I took a drink out of Lydia’s once and she yelled at me.

The rest of us slouched in the bleachers playing dot-to-dot pencil games and finger football. Dothan Talbot passed around three black-and-white postcards of naked women. I wasn’t impressed. I’d seen both Maurey and Lydia naked and these women were dogs compared to mine. Their breasts hung like baseballs in the toe of a sweat sock and their bellies pooched. The one straddling a bicycle had hickies from her navel to her fuzz.

“Be like sticking your prick in a milking machine with that slut,” Dothan said. “Wouldn’t stop till you gave two quarts.”

I bet he got that from his dad. Rodney Cannelioski went bug-eyed holding the picture of the woman on the bicycle in both hands. A trance situation.

“How’d you like to pork that, Roddy?” Dothan asked.

Rodney flushed out. “Degrading. This is an abomination against the sacredness of Eve.”

Everyone started chanting, “Abomination, abomination,” and pushing at Rodney.

Dothan stood up. “Let’s take his pants off and see if he’s stiff.”

A couple of guys jumped on Rodney, he screamed, and I left.

Howard Stebbins sat at his desk in homeroom, his eyes scrunched up in concentration over a paperback. From the door, I watched as he licked a finger and turned the page. The tendency was to feel sorry for him—the sports hero who had lost his glory at nineteen. Now, ten years later, he’s stuck in a meaningless town with a plain wife and three foreheadless rats for children. Small-town adultery is nothing more than boredom and timing. In his position, I’d have probably screwed Annabel. What else was there to do in winter?

But the situation called for toughness. Look at the jerk through Lydia’s eyes. If I walked in with a heart full of pity he’d have me comparing birth-control methods and talking baseball. Never talk baseball with someone you’re supposed to hate.

“This,” I said to myself, “is the man who once said I was too slow to be a nigger.”

He shut the book—Zane Grey, Wanderer of the Wasteland — and looked up.

“They’re depantsing Rodney in the gym,” I said.

Stebbins blinked twice and it came to me that he was at a higher emotional peak over this event than I was.

“New rules,” I said.

His eyes were sheeplike, so I stared at that king-hell cleft running up his chin.

“First, no more forcing me out for sports I don’t want. I deserve an A in English and you are to give it to me.”

He blinked again. The abortion had made him speechless.

“No more licks on Dothan Talbot for not cutting his hair.”

“I thought you and Dothan are enemies. He’s Maurey’s boyfriend.”

“The licks are making him a hero.”

“I hadn’t realized that.”

“You hadn’t realized a lot. Number three, no more Saturday bridge club. It upsets my friend Maurey.”

Stebbins went back to blinking and looking resigned. I’d expected some sort of resistance, maybe a counterthreat. This was too much like cutting off Otis’s leg.

“Anything else?” he asked.

“We’re done with Ivanhoe . He’s a bad influence. Starting tomorrow you read the class Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck.”

“I don’t know where I can lay my hands on a copy,” he said.

“I’ll find one.” I pointed to Wanderer of the Wasteland . “In the meantime, try that. Teddy’ll love it.”

Stebbins turned the book over twice in his hands. “She went through with it. After you took Maurey away, I tried to stop her. I offered to leave my family.”

He looked as if he might cry, which was the last thing I could deal with at the moment. Living with Lydia makes you susceptible to vulnerability. I’d reached enough-is-enough. “They’ll push Rodney out in the snow with no pants,” I said.

Stebbins raised his head. “Maybe I should save him.”

“Maybe you should.”

Maurey showed me how to make a tent out of the blankets so you can read by flashlight and eat graham crackers without your mother finding out.

“But Lydia doesn’t care if we leave the light on and read and eat all night,” I said.

“This is how I’ve always done it. There are certain things you should sneak around to do, even if no one cares.”

“Like reading?”

We sat cross-legged, facing each other, with the books and graham cracker box between us. Maurey’s book was The Black Stallion’s Filly . She’d been on a horse-fiction kick ever since the botched abortion. I was working on Tike and Tiny in the Tetons by Frances Farnsworth, Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre, and the back of the graham cracker box.