Tim Sandlin - Skipped Parts

Maurey put her arm around my shoulders, which made me feel real good. She popped the silly tie off my shirt. “Can you give us a ride into town, Dougie? I’m not up to walking home after another funeral.”

There was a letter from Caspar in the box:

Dear Samuel,

We have before us the fiendishness of business competition and the World War, passion and wrongdoing, antagonism between classes and moral depravity within them, economic tyranny above and the slave spirit below.

Prepare to take your rightful position. The Black Horse Troop awaits.

Your Mentor,

Caspar Callahan

“What’s all this?” Maurey asked.

“He steals quotes from books and we’re supposed to think it’s off-the-cuff wisdom. The Black Horse Troop is a bad sign, means Culver Military Academy.”

“Economic tyranny above?”

“That’s him if us slave spirits below get out of line.”

“Is unwed pregnancy out of line?”

That was the crucial question. “He didn’t like it when Lydia got knocked up.”

“Do you think he knows about me and my baby?”

I didn’t care to dwell on it. Of course Caspar knew. He knew all. And the lack of comment or action had been weird. Lydia and I could make future plans to our ears, but Caspar controlled the cash flow. Like God.

“What will he do?” Maurey asked.

“You want TV dinners for supper or pancakes?”

“Pancakes.”

Way middle of the night, like 3:30 a.m., Maurey shook me awake. “Farlow’s up against my bladder and I have to pee.”

I hoped this wasn’t headed to another night on the floor. “So pee.”

“Listen.”

From the other side of the house came giggles, grunts, and sloshes. “Lydia and Hank in the tub?”

Maurey nodded. “And it’s really squirrelly.”

“What’s squirrelly? Lydia likes doing it in water.”

“They have the moose in there with them.”

I sat up in bed. “Les is in the tub?”

Maurey nodded again, wide-eyed. I found her a quart mason jar to pee in, then we turned on the light and sat on the edge of the bed, imagining where a moose head fit into dicks and tunnels.

The possibilities were endless.

Otis’s wink delighted Delores to no end. She couldn’t get over an ugly, three-legged dog who stared in her eyes and winked.

“Ray used to wink just like that in high school,” she said. “Especially in Mrs. Hinchman’s class, he’d leer at me across the room all hour and when I finally looked at him Ray’d wink just like that dog. I thought it was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen. Only later I found out winking is the closest Ray ever comes to foreplay.”

“You know why women fake orgasms?” Lydia asked.

Soapley went somewhat embarrassed. He wasn’t used to our little gang. We only invited him because it was Maurey’s birthday and no one else we invited over could come on account of their mothers wouldn’t let them. The Callahan house had a reputation for evil.

Soapley’s job was to help me cut wienie sticks out of willow fronds while Hank built the fire. Hank got fire duty because he was an Indian. What he did was spray a half-pint of lighter fluid on some kindling and say, “Blackfoot brave start-um heap big fire,” then he threw in a lit match.

The birthday girl was cross. “I don’t give a hoot why women fake orgasms and I think wienies and marshmallows for breakfast is stupid.” Maurey sat on a pillow on the back stoop, big as a beached whale. We were down to the last week and a half and her sense of humor had failed.

All Maurey’d done for days was piss and moan. “You did this to me, you horny little squirrel. I hope you never poke a girl again. If you ever go on a date the rest of your life, I’ll be there to tell the girl you can’t pull out before you squirt.”

“I bet I could now.”

“I’ll be dead before you get a chance to find out with me.”

“Maurey, we’re partners.”

“Yeah, right.”

Lydia leaned back in her lawn chair and blew Lark smoke in Hank’s direction. “Women fake orgasms because men fake foreplay.”

Nobody laughed—which made me miss Dot. Dot would be rolling on the ground over a joke that bad. She always made a person feel appreciated.

Soapley eyed the perfect point of his wienie stick and said, “What’s foreplay?”

The birthday party–wienie roast had been Hank’s idea after he discovered I’d never cooked over a fire with sticks.

“You never roasted marshmallows?”

“Lydia thinks marshmallows are plebeian. I’ve never even been on a picnic.”

Hank stared at Lydia. She did her shooshing-flies gesture. “Well, beat the crap out of me. I’m a terrible mother.”

Nobody disagreed and a wienie roast was planned for Maurey’s big fourteenth.

The guys cooked meat while the women sat in lawn chairs and told us we were doing it all wrong. Delores shook up a Dr Pepper and held her thumb over the end to spray my face. Hank said a cookout wasn’t American unless that happened. I don’t know, it all seemed ritualistic to me.

“Why do women brag about faking orgasms?” Delores asked.

I was watching Hank’s fingers, how slowly he moved them as he spooned relish and onions on his bun. “I do not understand women,” he said.

Lydia was automatic. “So what else is new.”

“What’s the purpose of faking an orgasm if you tell the man later that you faked an orgasm?”

I looked at Maurey and smiled. She sent a cynical prissy smile back. She’d been talking death and discomfort ever since the funeral, to the point where I was ready to get this baby deal done.

Delores talked with her mouth full of wienie. “Sometimes when I have a real orgasm I tell the guy I faked it so he won’t be so cocky. I hate a cocky guy.”

Delores had gone king-hell ape on the getup—bright red boots, tight pants, and low-cut blouse deal that showed big air between her breasts, even redder scarf around her neck, red dangly earrings, and, to make herself a piece of art, she’d dyed her hair the color of a North Carolina State home-football-game jersey. I mean red . Soapley wouldn’t look at her. Every time she bent down to feed Otis a marshmallow, Soapley stared at the ground between his feet and talked irrigation. “Not enough water behind the dam. I’ll be locking headgates by next week.”

Hank had amazing patience with marshmallows. His came out all golden, same tint as his skin. Mine caught fire. Maurey said she liked them black so I burned seven or eight and took them one at a time to her on the steps. She ate them off the end of my willow stick. Two bites—one for the outer charred stuff and one for the inner gooey stuff. She ate with her eyes closed.

“My baby’s going to be raised on marshmallows,” Maurey said.

Lydia lit a Lucky Strike off the butt of a Kool. Hot dogs and marshmallows were so far beneath her dignity nobody even bothered to ask if she wanted any. “I raised Sam on Dr Pepper.”

Right after we sang “Happy Birthday” I got Delores back for the spray in the face. Lydia hadn’t had time to bake a cake, naturally, so we stuck a hurricane candle on a marshmallow and had Maurey blow it out.

“Make a wish, honey,” Delores said.

“I wish I’d have this baby today,” Maurey said, and blew.

While Delores was bent forward toward the candle, I flipped an old gooey cooked marshmallow off the end of my stick into her cleavage. It stuck for a second before falling into the depths of red.

Delores did a high wail and jumped me like a red tornado. I fell over backward; Otis went into a barking frenzy.

Delores giggle-shouted, “Hank, get him.”