Tim Sandlin - Skipped Parts

“No, thanks, I’ll pick up my daughter and be gone.”

Then they were in the kitchen and everyone was shuffling around being awkward on the deal.

“Hank,” Buddy said.

“Buddy,” Hank said.

I guess Buddy felt odd about working out a family crisis in front of people he didn’t know. “Get your things,” he said to Maurey.

“I’m already packed.”

Buddy stood next to me, which made me nervous and itchy. I mean, how far had Annabel filled in the details? She couldn’t very well say, “Sam fucked our baby,” without spilling the disgusting details of Howard Stebbins and Rock Springs. Any hint of truth would disorder the dickens out of her order. But then, the very term “make a clean breast” might appeal to Annabel.

I risked a look up, but he was so close all I could see was a plaid shirt, an unzipped red parka, and that black bush of a beard. He stayed put while Maurey went off to our room to gather up her suitcase and bear. When had she packed anyway? Had to be while I was in the shower, but you’d think I would have noticed when I got dressed.

“Get an elk this year, Hank?” Buddy asked.

“Yes. You?”

“Killed a cow up on Goosewing.”

“Goosewing has always been a good location.”

Both men were trying to out-stoic the other. Lydia took the pot from my hand and ran water. “Maurey tells us you went to art school at Stanford.”

Buddy’s beard nodded.

“What kind of art interested you?”

“Bronze.”

“I love bronze, don’t you, Sam?”

“It’s my favorite metal.”

After that no one said anything until Maurey came in and stood next to her father. He put a hand on her shoulder. “Thanks for taking care of my daughter. I hope she wasn’t trouble.”

Lydia smiled at Maurey. “No trouble. You have a fine little girl, Mr. Pierce.”

The beard nodded again.

“See you in school, Sam,” Maurey said.

Then they were gone and, at thirteen years and six months, I discovered the pain in the ass of a woman walking out the door.

Battle Creek, Mich. (UPI)—The C. W. Post Cereal Company today announced the Grand Prize winner in its “Most Ambitious Boy” contest. Sam Callahan of GroVont, Wyo., was chosen over 2 million other entrants because Sam wants to grow up to lead the Chicago Cubs to victory in the World Series.

“More boys become president than win a baseball championship in Chicago,” Sam Callahan said.

The Grand Prize was a lifetime supply of Post Toasties, which Sam Callahan regretfully declined.

My loved ones and I survived to baseball season. Praise the Lord.

I discovered that if I tipped the radio onto its left side and held my thumb on the speaker I could pick up about every other word of the Dodger games on KFI Los Angeles. The games didn’t start till 9:00 and the signal drifted every twenty minutes, but I never missed a one, even though Sandy Koufax pulled a muscle in his pitching arm and the Dodgers dropped ten of their first eleven. It’s not who wins or loses in baseball, it’s how clean you feel when you play it. Or listen to it.

My hero object went from Don Drysdale, who actually played the games, to Vince Skully, who announced them. Vince knew more facts about more subjects than anyone else on earth. I counted—he averaged eight facts between each pitch, and when you figure 250 pitches a game, that’s 2,000 facts in nine innings. Even if he repeated one every few weeks, you spread 2,000 facts a game over a 162-game season and you’ve got a hell of a lot of information.

I don’t impress easily, but Vince Skully blew me away.

“Listen to this guy,” I said to Lydia.

“I liked you better when you read two books at a time.”

“Tell Caspar to forget carbon paper, I’m going on the radio. This guy is a genius.”

“You want facts, read the encyclopedia. Saying this clown is a genius because he knows facts is like saying the phone book is a great novel because it has a lot of characters.”

I tried to explain to her how baseball is the metaphor for life, but she said life isn’t even a metaphor for life.

“Snow is the metaphor for life,” Lydia said. “You fall, you freeze, you melt, you disappear.”

I wouldn’t have bet on the snow-disappearing part. The days grew warmer, we never went below zero at night anymore, but the gray-as-far-as-the-eye-can-see deal seemed the same. Maurey told me spring was on the way, and I said, “How can you tell?”

She said, “Open your eyes and look.”

So I made an effort, I started paying attention to what I was looking at, and, sure enough, the never-ending drabness was moving. One day I couldn’t see the bottom of Soapley’s windows and the next day I could. A rake handle popped up next to the driveway. The highway seemed to widen an inch or so. The snow layer was contracting into itself.

Back in late November, I stood on the back porch one night and wrote my name in the snow in pee—San. Ran out of power halfway through the m . In mid-April I went out on the porch to pick up the mountain of returnable Dr Pepper bottles we’d thrown out the back door all winter, and there it was on what yesterday had been virgin white—San.

“Hey, Lydia.”

Lydia wasn’t impressed. “If my proudest accomplishment of the year was misspelling my name in pee, I’d hang myself right now.”

“You can’t write your name in the snow.”

“A fact that I thank God for each and every day.”

I told Maurey I would give all my future prospects to see dirt.

“What’s the big deal about dirt?” We were standing in front of the White Deck, trying to decide between going in or walking up to the Tastee Freeze. Neither one of us was hungry, so it didn’t much matter. It was one of those Sunday afternoons when nothing you do or don’t do much matters.

“I was used to seeing the ground in Greensboro. By now all the dogwoods and pear trees and magnolias are blooming. The grass is green.”

“You want grass or you want dirt?”

“I don’t care so long as I touch something that isn’t snow.”

Maurey seemed to be considering the situation as Ft. Worth and a couple of loggers came out of the White Deck. Ft. Worth faked a right hook in my direction and told me not to do anything he wouldn’t do. I said he’d do anything, which was the correct response. A conversation with Ft. Worth had all the spontaneity of calisthenics. Dot leaned over a booth next to the window and waved. She was gaining weight at the same rate as Maurey. To me—and to any of the group who knew what was what—Maurey was edging into obvious, although, so far anyway, no gossip had reached Dot, and Dot said that if she didn’t hear it, it wasn’t there.

“I don’t see the big deal, but you want dirt, I’ll show you dirt,” Maurey said.

“Hank says if we lose contact with the Mother Earth our souls will wither like the chokecherry in autumn.”

“Hank talks that way because he thinks he has to. The man couldn’t survive without TV dinners.”

Maurey led me over to the Forest Service headquarters, which had a big scenic deck on the back. You could see all the way to Yellowstone. We slid under the deck and onto real, honest-to-God dirt—or mud, depending on where you sat. I went into king-hell hog heaven—dug my fingernails into the cool earth, touched it with my cheek.

Maurey sat with her legs out and her back leaning against a support beam. “There’ll be mud all over the valley in a few weeks. You better not embarrass me with this discovery-of-dirt stuff in the schoolyard.”

“Can I touch your tummy?”

“Sam, you’re so damn predictable.”

“I just want to touch our baby.” Light came through between the slats of the deck, causing a venetian-blind effect. Maurey’s eyes were in the dark, but her mouth and forehead were lit yellow.