Tim Sandlin - Skipped Parts

She said, “I think Farlow kicked yesterday.”

“We’re naming him Farlow?”

“That’s what I call him when I talk to him at night. Stub Farlow is the name of the guy on the horse on our license plates, but I can’t see calling him Stub.”

“You talk to Farlow at night?”

“I read him horse stories.”

She unzipped her Wranglers and lifted her shirt. In the cross-shadows, her stomach bloated out some, enough to hold up the jeans without help from zippers or buttons, but not much more, only her belly button had turned out where it used to be in. I held out my right hand and touched her with my fingertips.

What I wanted, badly, was a sense of someone real in there, someone that Maurey and I had created out of nothing. But I just couldn’t make the leap from runny mayonnaise on a sock to a human person who could sing and play baseball and watch TV. The deal wasn’t real yet, and I was afraid it never would be.

Maurey gazed down at her belly. “Mom won’t say a word, but I can tell she’s going nuts to find out if I’ve still got it. She sneaks in my room when she thinks I’m asleep and stands there staring at me for hours. It’s spooky.”

“You guys never talked about Rock Springs?”

Maurey put her hand next to mine. “I haven’t talked to Mom about anything since then. She cries constantly, like a wet rag. Gets on my nerves. Feel over here, I think this might be his head.”

I felt, but not very hard for fear of squashing his temple. “What does your dad say?”

“What can he do? He knows something weird is up with Mom and me, but he’s too cowboy to pry.”

“Even if his own family is going nuts?”

“He figures we’ll come to him when we’re ready. Besides, the mares will be foaling soon. Dad doesn’t have time to referee a war.”

“He’s not curious why his daughter and wife won’t talk to each other?”

Maurey guided my fingertips across her stomach. “I guess he’s curious, but he won’t invade our personal problems.”

“You’re his family.”

I thought I felt something, but I wasn’t sure. Her skin was harder than it used to be, like a softball, and I was afraid to touch her belly button.

“At least I’m not sick all day and night anymore,” Maurey said. “Mrs. Hinchman’s perfume about gagged me to death last month.”

“Has Dothan figured it out?”

Maurey lowered her shirt but left her jeans unzipped. She brushed the dirt off her fingers onto my knee. ‘‘Dothan doesn’t know where babies come from. He’s as stupid as you are when it comes to that stuff.”

“Are you training him?”

Maurey slipped by that one. “The secret won’t last forever, so the day after school ends I’m going public. You and Lydia might want to head back to North Carolina about then.”

“I’m not heading anywhere. Farlow’s as much my baby as he is yours.”

“We may have to talk about that some, Sam.”

She moved so the light shaft was on her eyes. They looked dark blue and sad. I reached over and took her hand. “Some shit will hit if this baby’s not half mine after it’s born.”

She pulled her hand away a second, then came back. “Lydia’s been whining for months to go back home. What happens when your grandfather says okay?”

“I’ll stay here with you.”

“Be real, Sam.”

“Or you can come with us.”

“I’m not leaving Wyoming, you think I’m crazy.”

This line of thought gave me a creepy feeling. I was still holding out hope that Buddy would make Maurey marry me. I mean, there were laws that said you had to marry a girl if you got her pregnant. All the time I heard people say, “They had to get married.” Had doesn’t leave a choice. I’d just never figured where Dothan would fit in.

The Forest Service also provided the only spring baseball diamond in the form of its plowed parking lot. On weekends, when the cars were gone, we’d choose sides and play these thirty-two-inning games that practically always ended in beanball fights. Choosing up sides may be the single most devastating element in the formation of bad self-images in America. In every neighborhood one poor little bugger is always the last chosen, which in our case was that born loser, Rodney Cannelioski. If he hadn’t been a loser, people would have called him Rod.

For Rodney the Religious, it was even worse than your average teenage humiliation because we always shipped him off to baseball no-man’s land—right field—and since the Forest Service parking lot was only big enough for the diamond, outfielders stood in knee-deep snow. Cut down on mobility. Balls hit out there stuck like Brer Rabbit’s fist in the tar baby.

Add to which, standing in snow is cold and it’s no wonder Rodney didn’t enjoy himself on weekends.

One Saturday we played from noon till almost dark. I had six home runs and a triple, and Kim Schmidt and I turned a nifty double play on Dothan and somebody’s cousin from Dubois. My next time at bat, Dothan threw four fastballs at my head.

“Easier than letting you hit a home run to Rodney,” he called as I trotted down to first.

“Right,” I said.

I stole second, then when Teddy hit a hard grounder to the shortstop, instead of charging for third, I fielded the ball barehanded and nailed Dothan in the back. Thock . What a wonderful sound.

Results were predictable.

On the walk home I held my head forward and low so the blood would still be flowing enough to freak out Lydia. She can be a tough mom to get a response out of.

“There’s gravel stuck in your ear,” Kim said.

“You know, I’m starting to feel like a local.”

“Starting to act like one too.”

“Think I’ll have a black eye?”

Kim studied my face. “Only thing dark is from asphalt.”

“Maybe if I don’t wash, it’ll look like a black eye.” Bruises would impress Maurey; Chuckette might even let me touch her below the neck. I know that goes against what I said earlier about Chuckette, but a tit’s a tit and should always be touched, regardless of how ugly the head it goes with.

Soapley and Otis stood by one of the dead GMCs, looking somewhat mournfully over at my place. We walked over so I could show off my blood and Kim could get in his throwing-up-dog imitation.

“The three-legged cowdog,” Kim said, then he went into the ack, ack, morph routine. Otis wagged his little tail. I was kind of impressed, which shows how long I’d been away from wholesome entertainment.

The left strap of Soapley’s overalls was broken. He gummed his toothpick around so it pointed at a Volkswagen bug parked in my front yard next to Lydia’s Oldsmobile. “I seen two of them last summer. They had one at the Fina and the little bitty engine was in back. Alcott made a fool of himself looking for it to check the oil.”

“Seems like the wind would blow it off the road,” Kim said.

Soapley didn’t have his teeth in, which was odd for me because I’d never known they came out. His face caved in when he spoke. “One hit a frost heave up by Cooke City and the bubble come right off the wheels, killed a college boy.”

“I wonder who’s at your house,” Kim said.

“Somebody with a Volkswagen,” I said. Unknown visitors were not a good sign. In all the years of my short life with Lydia, not a single surprise visitor had turned into a pleasant experience. Scenes ranged from king-hell boring to ugly three-way tensions between Caspar, Lydia, and the visitor, but however it went, the surprise was never pleasant.

“I better go in,” I said.

“Better hurry or you’ll stop bleeding.”

“Sam’s hurt,” Delores gushed, then she rushed and I backed against the door. She was so short, with such huge breasts and a tiny waist, it was like being rushed by an ostrich. Or maybe the ostrich feeling came from her pink getup. Every time I saw Delores she was dressed completely in one color—white, silver, turquoise—all the way down to her boots and up to her cowboy hat. Today she was a flash of pink.