Tim Sandlin: Skipped Parts

“But after all that agony, look what you have now,” I said.

“What?”

“Me, aren’t I worth it?”

“Sam, nobody is worth giving birth.”

Shannon was born at 1:45 the next morning. I’ll never figure where Maurey came up with the name Shannon, but it’s pretty and Shannon herself is beautiful as sunshine.

Buddy and I sat on bruised peach-colored plastic chairs in the waiting room playing Chinese checkers. The nurses hadn’t known exactly what stance to take where I was concerned. Little girls had had babies in the Jackson hospital before, only not with little-boy fathers doing the pace thing outside with the little girl’s father, especially little-boy fathers wearing no shirt and only one shoe. Someone found an orderly smock-looking shirt small enough to more or less fit, but I ended up taking off my right shoe and sock so my feet would match. The left foot was a cut and bruised mess that no one offered to fix. I guess if you aren’t a patient they don’t worry with you.

About midnight, one of the nurses brought out a box of toys they kept for kids getting their tonsils out. I’d read both lobby Reader’s Digest s—“I am Joe’s Thyroid”—and concentration had flown off.

The interesting thing about Chinese checkers was watching Buddy handle the marbles. He was so big, and his fingers were even bigger and rougher proportionally than Buddy, it was hard to picture him being concerned with something small as a marble. The man needed large concepts—stallions, freedom, wilderness—not trivialities. Although he did play a mean Chinese checkers. Once I explained the rules, the man was unstoppable.

At first, Buddy hadn’t wanted me at the hospital. He and Hank carried Maurey into the ranch house with her leg in a splint and a wad of towels between her thighs. She was drained white, silent, smiling weakly when she looked at me but not looking at me much.

The plan was for Hank to take Petey to Aunt What’s-Her-Name’s while Buddy drove Maurey to Jackson in the Chevelle. Good thing Annabel was in the nuthouse or they’d of had to cram Maurey into a truck cab.

After they fit her in the backseat, I hopped in to hold her steady on the dirt road.

Buddy said, “You go to town with Hank.”

“I’m staying.”

He stared at me for about five seconds, which made me jumpy, so I tucked a Hudson Bay blanket around Maurey’s waist and good leg and pretended it was a done deal and staring at me with black-bead eyes didn’t matter.

Finally, he said, “Okay.” Maurey didn’t indicate what she wanted from me. She was going into shock.

Halfway between GroVont and Jackson, moving eighty miles an hour, Buddy said, “When I was your age I wouldn’t have passed it up either.”

I glanced at his beard in the rearview mirror. “I love her, Mr. Pierce.”

He swallowed. “I had to be a father; it was my job.”

“She understands.”

Maurey’s hand squeezed mine real hard as another spasm came on. Sweat trickled from her hairline, down her face, and disappeared behind her neck. Her blue eyes stared up at the ceiling. I tried to count between blinks, but gave up at forty-five.

The first twenty minutes at the hospital were frenzied with efficient people running in and out of the emergency room. A man hooked Maurey up to a bag of blood while a woman gave her a pain shot in the rear. When it came time to set her leg, the doctor kicked me out. I said, “No, Maurey needs me,” but the doctor growled like a big dog so I left.

After that, we’re talking seven hours of vacuum time, waiting on the outside, climbing walls on the inside. Buddy talked to me some. He told me about the army and art school and Annabel crying every minute of the drive to the hospital in Salt Lake.

“I can’t comprehend anyone that I love,” Buddy said.

“I know what you mean.”

It’s amazing what people will say in crises—even cowboys.

Sitting in that stupid puke-colored chair, staring at “Humor in Uniform” for an hour without getting any of the jokes, I made a conscious effort to think like a person who doesn’t put himself at the head of the universe.

Caspar had control and he had a right to control. He took the stern-hand-on-a-naughty-child approach because Lydia and I had done nothing but screw up since before I was born. Let’s face the truth here: to a person of Caspar’s generation, knocking up a thirteen-year-old is irresponsible behavior no matter how much love is involved.

The way to be near Maurey wasn’t kicking and screaming as Caspar dragged me off to military school. The cool course was to give up what I wanted for a while so I could grow up and come back later and have it. Maybe Maurey would learn to love me if I wasn’t around. Lots of people are easier to love if you don’t actually look at them every day.

Much as adult thinking rankled, not to mention flying in the face of everything Lydia ever taught me, I decided that if Maurey came out okay and the baby came out okay and they let me hold it once, I would leave quietly with Caspar. There wasn’t any choice so I might as well go with dignity.

Dignity is a tough concept when your fourteenth birthday is almost a month away.

“Would you like some toys to play with?” the nurse asked.

“I’d rather have a Valium.”

I wish the nurse had said, ‘‘Sam Callahan, you have a daughter.” That would have been a hoot. What she said was, “Buddy, you have a granddaughter.”

He said, “Thank you, Caroline,” which meant they knew each other. Probably went to high school together, everybody else in the state did.

We left the Chinese checkers to follow Caroline the nurse down a well-lit hallway to a glass window looking in on the nursery thing. One wall had nine stethoscopes hanging from a rack and a cut-out picture of Yosemite Sam aiming two pistols at the daddies and people at the windows. Two babies lay swaddled in blue blankets in side-by-side cribs. The one I knew right away was mine had her little slit-eyes open, ears you could almost see through, and black cirrus-cloud hair. A light purple wedge ran from the bridge of her nose to the top of her forehead.

I stared at her so hard my breath fogged the glass and made her look all wispy.

Caroline went into the nursery to bring the baby over to the window and present her like a guy in New York did when Caspar ordered a bottle of wine. Even though I’d rehearsed this moment ever since we left Rock Springs, I didn’t know what to feel. I’d expected fatherly instincts to wash over like surf. Instead, I found myself trying to connect this little live person with unfocused eyes and tiny, tiny fingers to runny mayonnaise dripping off my sock. How had one led to the other? It was a big leap.

I said, “I thought blue blankets mean boys.”

“She said it’s a granddaughter.” Buddy leaned forward. “I didn’t plan it to be this way.”

“But she’s so beautiful.”

He touched the glass with two fingers. “She is beautiful.”

My butt was safe from branding after all.

I slept in my clothes in one of the ugly chairs and the room was way hot so I sweat and stuck to the plastic. Rolling over was like pulling off a giant Band-Aid. Made for bizarre dreams.

The North Carolina basketball team held Sam Callahan on the cross while his grandfather hammered nails through each hand, then fastened his ankles to the upright with barbed wire. Someone stuck a dish sponge in hot Dr Pepper and held it to Sam Callahan’s parched mouth. His grandfather moved through the crowd, giving dollar tips to smartly dressed Negroes.

Sam looked across the valley to the cool snow on the Tetons. He allowed a single tear to drop from his newly grown moustache. As blood flowed into his eyes, Sam Callahan groaned aloud. “Forgive my grandfather, for he knows not what he is about.”