Tim Sandlin - Skipped Parts

Stebbins read, “His new suit and hat were in the boxes that they had been sent in and these were on the floor at the foot of the pallet where he could get his hands on them as soon as he woke up.”

“Coach,” I said. “Nobody cares.”

Howard Stebbins stopped reading and looked glass-eyed down at the book. There was nothing he could say. The glory should have been his. He could be the one standing up for his principles, announcing to the town, “We copulated and we are not ashamed.” Instead, he was the coward wimp, robbed even of his righteous indignation.

What was left of the class sat there doing a bump-on-a-log routine. Sometimes late at night, I’d wondered what would happen when word spread. Down South, the Klan might visit. In Faulkner or Peyton Place there would have been fires, bodies buried in the garden. But this wasn’t Peyton Place . Besides going into a shun deal or staring—which would give me an itchy butt—there wasn’t much the general townfolk could do. Lydia was a master teacher when it came to ignoring hatred from strangers. Buddy, Dothan, or even Caspar might spoil the gig, but the Golden Rule Class at the Baptist Church couldn’t touch me. Maurey was right—fuck ’em.

When the bell finally rang and everyone stood up to bustle off to their second period, Stebbins said, “Sam, you mind waiting around a minute?”

I looked at Maurey. She smiled and nodded but I wasn’t big on sending her into that hall scene alone.

“I’ll see you in citizenship,” she said.

“You sure?”

“Why not?”

Howard’s desk was all a clutter with about ten new photos of his plucky wife and box-shaped kids—the family bundled up on snow machines, grinning in front of Old Faithful, bathing-suited on a beach. The one of his wife on the beach was unappetizing. She wore a two-piece deal over her paper-doll body, and she smiled so big you could see her gums. If she’d been my wife, and those had been my kids, I’d of screwed Annabel Pierce in a heartbeat.

“So, Coach, what?”

Stebbins rubbed his hands together. “Did she tell on me?”

“Tell on you?”

“Does her father know, about the, you know?”

“Does Buddy know you and his wife shared an abortion?”

He ran his hand over his forehead. I love it when a coach grovels.

“I don’t know if Maurey tattled or not, but I doubt it. She likes her dad.”

“I haven’t spoken to her bitch of a mother since we had our talk. You can tell Maurey that.”

“Knocked her up, got her an abortion, then abandoned the woman, huh?”

He almost looked at me. “Wasn’t that what I was supposed to do?”

“Don’t ask me.”

Mrs. Hinchman must have been the only person in Teton County who didn’t know she had a pregnant girl in the second row. She stood up by the blackboard, fluttering her hands and droning on about the order in which one should read the daily newspaper, as if any of these kids ever saw a daily paper. Front page, editorial page, letters to the editor, classifieds. She made what she took as a joke about how we probably read the sports and comics before the international news. I bet Mrs. Hinchman read the obits first—see who she’d outlived.

Thank God Florence wasn’t in citizenship. As it was, the boys tittered and the girls stared with hostility, which I could cope with. Hostility is okay, the deal I don’t like is when girls burst into tears at the sight of me.

The thing I couldn’t figure was how word had gotten out. Maurey told her father, but I just couldn’t picture Buddy running down the mountain, shouting, “ My daughter is pregnant by an out-of-stater .”

I asked Maurey about this at lunch. “How did everyone find out?”

We had a table to ourselves, of course. In fact we had our table and an empty buffer-zone table on either side. I know now how lepers and Negroes feel.

“What?” It was hamburger day—square hamburgers on round buns with crinkle-cut potatoes.

“Maybe someone guessed about you from your belly, but they all know about me too.”

“Now I’ve told Dad it doesn’t matter who else knows. You going to eat your onion?”

I picked up my onion slice and put it on her meat. “Who did you tell?”

Maurey looked up. “Him.”

Dothan Talbot stood over me grinning like he’d found ten dollars on the sidewalk. “Sammy, boy, how’s it shaking?”

“About the same.”

Dothan laughed. What’s funny about about the same? He turned to Maurey. “We still on for Friday night? Town Without Pity is on at the picture show in Jackson.” He play-socked my shoulder. “You guys ought to love that one.”

He was being ironic. Dothan being ironic was almost as weird as Dothan not smashing my face.

He kept going in the big-happy-family vein. “You and Chuckette come too. It’s hot enough to go parking after the movie.”

“I’ll have to ask Chuckette.”

He winked at Maurey. “He’ll have to ask Chuckette. If this guy gets any funnier, they’ll put him on TV.” Dothan walked off whistling “Town Without Pity.”

One lesson I’ve learned about life—you can stay awake all night sweating in the sheets and trying to figure what will happen, and what happens is never, ever, what you expect. So you might as well not worry and get yourself a solid eight hours because sleep is more important than planning.

Sam Callahan answered the phone on the third ring.

A woman’s voice said, “I once taught a chicken to walk backwards.”

“Flannery O’Connor? I can’t believe it. You’re the best writer anywhere.”

“And if I wanted my people to say Afro-American they’d of said Afro-American.”

“It’s impolite to say nigger nowadays.”

“My people are supposed to be impolite.”

“Gee.”

“And marry that little girl. You don’t want a second-generation bastard on your hands.”

Chuckette and her father came over after supper. We’d spent the afternoon at the Pierces’ loading Maurey’s stuff into the Oldsmobile. I don’t know where Annabel and Petey were, maybe there was an understanding, as in they would clear out for three hours while Maurey packed, or maybe it was dumb luck her mom wasn’t around to watch.

Maurey had a lot of stuff too. This wasn’t a one suitcase, one overnight bag, and a stuffed bear runaway deal. She brought a slew of decorative pillows with things like I U stitched on the front. She carted out fifteen pairs of tennis shoes, ski boots, cross-country boots, snow pacs, cowboy boots (both formal and working), Sunday school high heels, hiking boots, penny loafers, thongs, fuzzy slippers with little rabbit’s heads on the toes.

Then came the sweaters. Maurey’s grandmother on the Annabel side liked to knit and had time on her hands.

We crammed all this junk into my bedroom with a lot of it ending up on or under my desk. The writing career was on a definite back burner.

Maurey said, “When the baby comes you’ll move to the couch.”

“Lydia can move to the couch; she likes it there.”

Lydia blew smoke at Pushmi and Pullyu. “Fat chance, Waldo.”

The telephone rang while I was heating up the third frozen pizza of the week. We’d fallen into this pattern of White Deck, Dougie’s cooking, frozen pizza, White Deck, Dougie’s cooking, frozen pizza. I always figured a tall guy wouldn’t have to cook, but Dougie took pride in the stuff with the French names. He didn’t have a heck of a lot else to take pride in, so I guess you go with what you’ve got.

Lydia came in the kitchen where Maurey was reading The Fox by D. H. Lawrence while I puttered with plates and paper towels.