Tim Sandlin: Skipped Parts

Nothing was left but a long, long trip clear across the country—with the worst driver I’d ever seen.

Hank puffed and sucked and caused a cloud he could have sent signals with. As I got sicker, he started humming the song from “Bonanza.” Bum-ba-ba-bum ba-ba-bum ba-ba-bum-bum .

“What are you happy about?” I asked. “You’re losing a girlfriend.”

Hank took the cigar from between his lips. “Your mother has the heart of a mountain lion. The will of a buffalo.”

“Lydia?”

“She shall never be daunted by a man.”

“Until the first check doesn’t show up.”

Hank bent forward to look up through the cracked windshield at two hawks wheeling in the west. His foot came off the accelerator and we coasted down the highway while he admired, or studied, or whatever he did. They were kind of pretty.

“I got a winter job,” Hank said. “Winter jobs are rarer than girlfriends in these mountains.”

I didn’t ask what the winter job was—I didn’t care—but he told me anyway. “Buddy hired me to feed stock a couple weeks a month while he’s in town with the kids.”

I felt blue-green. “Mind stopping the truck for a second?”

As throwing up goes, this one was fairly normal—wet heaves, dry heaves, fear of death. Hank handed me a bandana and kept talking.

“We worked it out yesterday before you came screaming in the back door. I hadn’t mentioned you two being in the neighborhood, must have been a surprise for Buddy.”

“I wasn’t screaming.”

Hank blew smoke at me. “Try to miss the truck, Sam.”

I climbed back in and leaned against the door using the taped-up window as a pillow. “Life’s not all the Hardy Boys built it up to be, Hank.”

“Beats the alternative.” Hank shifted gears and moved back onto the asphalt. I’d never felt so awful.

“All I want is to go home and sleep till Halloween.”

“We have to drop by the White Deck first. You haven’t had your breakfast.”

“Food makes me puke.”

“Breakfast is important for a boy.”

“I want to go home.”

“After we eat.”

Caspar’s Continental was parked in the line of five or six pickups outside the White Deck.

“I can’t go in there, he’ll kidnap me.”

“Your grandfather will not kidnap you.”

“He’ll take me straight from breakfast to Culver. I won’t be allowed to tell Les good-bye. And Alice, I’m not leaving Wyoming without Alice.”

Hank dropped his butt into the near-empty Orange Crush bottle where it sent out a low hiss. “I will not let him take you without saying good-bye to Les and Alice.”

“I’m sick, Hank. Let’s go home.”

He slid toward me because his door was wired shut. “Breakfast, Sam.”

Caspar sat in one of the booths with Ft. Worth. They were both examining Ft. Worth’s finger when I slid in next to Caspar. Hank took the other side.

“Have you seen this?” Caspar nodded at the hairy fingertip. “Man has an uncanny ability to adapt. Biology is a fascinating subject.”

I looked down at my lap. Handcuffs would have been appropriate.

Ft. Worth’s voice boomed. “Congrats, Sammy. You’re going to love fatherhood. I know I do.”

“You have kids?”

Hank reached for the menu in front of Ft. Worth. “He has two sons, but he has not seen them in years or paid a cent for their upkeep. No wonder he loves being a father.”

Ft. Worth’s lower lip puckered. “I think about ’em all the time.”

“How old are they and when are their birth dates?”

Ft. Worth knew the ages, but couldn’t quite recall the births. Since I was sitting next to Caspar, I didn’t have to look at him, but I could feel the waves of disapproval and disappointment as he sketched the feed plan of a carbon coater on a napkin for Ft. Worth to admire.

“It is all a matter of tension,” Caspar said.

“Did you bring in the cigars?” Hank asked.

“I forgot.”

“I’ll get them.” He moved from the booth and stood up. “If that lazy-ass waitress shows her face, order me a donut.”

I looked up at Hank who was grinning like an idiot. “Lazy-ass” seemed way out of character for him. While I stared, he went on in a loud voice. “Who do you have to fuck to get a cup of coffee in this joint?”

“Keep your pants zipped, Jack.”

Lydia came up behind me and put a hand on my shoulder. She carried a coffeepot in the other hand. The white uniform with the lime green trim was large in the bust and hips, but the little hat was cute.

“Mom?”

“Mutual trust and respect, Sam. Always remember what our relationship is based on. I may be a grandmother, but I’m not thirty yet.”

“You can’t work, Lydia.”

“Watch me.” She poured coffee in my cup. Didn’t leave room for the cream and sugar, but at least there was no spill.

Caspar made a snort sound with his nose. “Never last a month. The first time she breaks a fingernail she’ll be pleading for money.”

“Fat chance, Daddy. Didn’t you always scream at me to get a job?”

“This is colored work.”

“I’m colored as anyone in town.”

The cigar and baby had made me dizzy—now I was king-hell confused. “Does this mean I don’t go to Culver?”

Lydia leaned over me to freshen Caspar’s cup. “Long as we pay for ourselves the old goat can’t force us anywhere.”

“You will never make rent on tips,” Caspar said.

“Dot did.”

“I’m moving in too,” Hank said. “Selling the trailer and coming to town.”

“What about the winter job?”

“That’s only two weeks a month. Maurey and I have to live somewhere while Buddy is up the mountain.”

“Maurey’s living with us?”

“Part-time,” Lydia said. “Now what can I get you? Haven’t got all day to chitchat with the rabble.”

As I ate bacon, eggs over easy, wheat toast with those crappy little cafe jelly things, and frozen hash browns, Caspar explained the carbon paper industry to Ft. Worth and Hank. He about had Ft. Worth ready to move to Greensboro.

“Are there lots of women down in North Carolina?” Ft. Worth asked.

“A hundred-fold more than here.”

“Are they all like Lydia?”

That thought caused a dark cloud to fall across the table as we four considered an entire Southern state full of Lydias.

“Would be a Vision Nightmare come true,” Hank said.

I looked across the room to where she was browbeating some tourists whose kids had talked with food in their mouths—“Don’t you people in Utah know how to raise children?”—and shuddered.

While I tried to decide what you tip your mother, Caspar fiddled with his hearing aid and drummed his black-lined fingernails on the table. “Samuel, I plan to be in the area a few days.”

“You can’t make me leave with you.”

“I have no wish to make you leave yet. Colored work or not, I have dreamed of the day my daughter would choose to find a job. If fear of losing you frightens her into arising off her backside, then so be it, I won’t remove the motivating factor.”

“Me?”

“Exactly.”

I’d been reduced from grandson to motivating factor, but that was okay. I had a home and a family.

Caspar went on in his tobacco-baron tone. “What I was taking into consideration is whether or not you would accompany me into Jackson. I’d like to see my great-granddaughter.”

“Her name is Shannon.”

“That won’t do at all.”

“It’s her name.”

His moustache twitched as he thought a few moments. “I would like to view her with you before I go.”

Sam Callahan sat on his front porch with his cane on his lap and watched sunbeams caress the mountain bluebells and Lonicera alongside the gurgling creek. A sage hen strutted over by the outhouse. Two deer wandered into the yard, heads dipping to the grass, then rising to look with velvet eyes at Sam .