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Tim Sandlin: Skipped Parts

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Tim Sandlin Skipped Parts

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Newly arrived in the backwater town of GroVont, Wyoming, teenager Sam Callahan is initiated into adulthood when he embarks on a period of intense sexual experimentation with sassy, smart Maurey Pierce.

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“I don’t know a Pierce girl.”

“Maurey Pierce, the one you riled this morning.”

I fell back on false bravado. “She better watch out for me.”

“She can ride a horse standing on its bare back.”

“Is that a reason to watch out for her?”

Stebbins touched himself on the top of his nose, then along the hairline. “GroVont’s too small to make enemies.”

He was afraid of her. It was my first experience of a grown-up afraid of a kid. Now I think it’s fairly common, some grown-ups are afraid of all kids, but up until then I looked at the world as an us-and-them situation, with Lydia kind of straddling the line.

I wondered if Maurey was running a bluff on everyone. She didn’t seem that mean. She was pretty in a 1939 movie-vamp way. I’d seen her smile early in the volleyball game. Real earth-eating bitches—such as my mother—don’t have fun during sports. They don’t really enjoy anything.

Stebbins looked down at something really interesting on the back of his hands. “I saw that catch you made yesterday.”

I shrugged, not sure if I was supposed to affect modesty over the catch or contrition about the net deal.

“You’ve got some athleticism, Sam. Ever play on a team?”

Bing, my bullshit bell sounded. He wanted something from me. My auto response when someone wants something is to politely lie. “No, sir. I never had time, what with my studies and all.”

“We’ve got a pretty decent little football team here at GroVont Junior High.”

Football is my least favorite sport to play, as opposed to watch, right down there with soccer and checkers. I like games where you stay upright. I can fake basketball pretty well—no kid comes out of North Carolina who can’t—but baseball is where my rocks come off.

When I didn’t react, Stebbins stopped the beat-around-the-bush. “I want you at practice tomorrow.”

“Gee, I’d like to, sir. But we just moved to town and my mother needs me at home.”

He frowned and continued inspecting each knuckle of each finger, starting at the left and working his way across. “It takes twenty-two players to practice and I’ve only got twenty-one and half of them still suck their mama’s tit at night.”

“I no longer nurse, sir.”

He looked me straight in the eye. “Callahan, I need to explain how I grade in my classes. You know the difference between an A and an F in English?”

Truth is a pain in the butt to face. “Me coming out for football?”

Stebbins slapped me on the shoulder. “See you tomorrow at four.”

Lydia was right. All men are fuckers. As I slumped out the door, the king-jerk broke into a whistle—“Ragtime Cowboy Joe”—then he stopped. “Hey, Callahan.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did Mark Twain really hate Jews?”

***

I had my heart set on making it home without any more incidents—that’s one thing I hate, the uncontrolled incident, the completely unplanned demand on my coping abilities—but cities are the place to turn invisible. In GroVont, everyone thinks they have a perfect right to horn in on everybody else’s life.

Anyway, I was walking down Alpine, almost to the dirt spot we were supposed to call a yard, when this voice said, “Son, come over here.”

Son? There was an instant of taking the thing literally until I saw the guy who’d called. Looked like Khrushchev in overalls. He stood across the street in front of one of those loaf-shaped Airstream trailers, only instead of shiny silver, this one had been painted toe-jam black using a cheap brush so every stroke showed. Sagebrush grew up through two ’54 GMC three-quarter-ton trucks, the kind with the oval rear windows, and a king-hell ugly dog stood atop the cab of another ’54 GMC three-quarter-ton with an oval window. My guess was the two dead trucks provided parts transplants for the runner. Fairly easy enough guess to make.

“Son,” the guy said again. “Come here. See this.” He didn’t have a shirt on under the overalls so you could see all this wired-out body hair, and he had on huge black rubber boots that came up to his knees. The truck had a plastic stick-on sign that read County Water Warden.

“What’s a water warden?” I asked.

The man spit. “Don’t talk down to me, son. My granddad homesteaded this valley, and if it wasn’t for him you wouldn’t be living here so free and easy.”

“Oh.” I didn’t follow the line at all, but when people don’t make sense I’ve found it better to grunt and not make any eye contact.

“Don’t tell me there’s no water wardens where you come from.”

I looked at the dog. He had black-and-white spots and was shaped like a banana—had a little bitty stub tail. “Does he always ride on top the cab?” I asked.

“Otis likes the wind.”

“Otis?”

“He’s Otis, I’m Soapley.” Soapley was one of those men who have a three-day growth of beard every day.

“Sam Callahan,” I said. “Pleased to meet you. How does he ride up there without falling off?”

“Water warden opens the headgates. Makes sure ranches get what they’re supposed to and no more. Comes a drought, I run the county.”

“Oh.”

“In winter I plow the road. I’m important then too. I can say who gets out and who don’t.”

“I don’t think we have headgates or road plows in Greensboro.”

“Don’t talk down to me. I won’t be talked down to.” Soapley shifted his weight from one foot to the other—had a stance like he was in the on-deck circle, waiting for his turn at bat. Back and forth, his thumbs kind of twitching.

“I’m not talking down, I just wonder how he stands on the cab while you’re driving without falling off.”

“Otis.”

“That’s your dog’s name.”

“Otis’s smart, smarter than you. That’s why I invited you over.”

“You invited me over?”

“Look at his face and pretend you’re a pretty girl.”

I looked at his bullet-shaped head. He had a good resemblance to Soapley, especially the forehead part. “I can’t pretend I’m a pretty girl.”

“Just do it for God’s sake.”

So I pretended I was Maurey Pierce for a minute, which is a good exercise for a short-story writer.

“Hi, I’m Maurey Pierce.”

“The hell you are.”

I pretended I hated Sam Callahan and sat down to pee.

The ugly dog’s right eye closed and opened.

“He winked at me.”

Soapley hit it big with pride. “Smartest dog in Teton County.”

“Oh.”

***

Back in my own cabin, I found Mom on the couch. “Lydia, this dog across the street rides on top the truck cab and winks.”

She stared at me across her long fingers, through the blue haze of cigarette smoke. “You expect me to show an interest in this?”

“Not especially.”

“Then don’t muddle the air with details. I don’t want any details whatsoever about goings on in this state.”

***

As neither one of us still knew how to light the stove, Lydia and I ate in the White Deck Cafe that night. Lydia never was much for cooking anyway.

For food, there was the White Deck Cafe between a barbershop and an art gallery on the town triangle—as opposed to other towns that have a square—and the Tastee Freeze out on the highway by the Forest Service headquarters; except on Sunday nights when the VFW had all the wienies and beans you can eat for a buck.

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