Part 3 (1/2)
5.
When I met Sam Callahan back when we were both thirteen and starting seventh grade, he confessed this dream of someday being a deep and sensitive novelist who commanded women's love and men's respect. All through junior high and high school he scribbled in three-subject notebooks, filling them with scads of poems and short stories. Most of the stories mixed baseball and romance, with a few sliding over into science fiction.
Sam soon learned deep and sensitive is another way of saying lonesome, and the closest he'd come so far to commanding women's love and men's respect through writing was his job as sports and entertainment intern at the Greensboro Record in Greensboro, North Carolina.
My favorite story he wrote back in high school was the one in which Death turned into a cute little mouse named Bob. Bob wore green shorts and a red football jersey, and he skittered across people while they slept, which killed them so he could collect their souls. Sam said the human soul looks and tastes like Swiss cheese.
Dying from being touched by a mouse became known as getting Bobbed. People were so scared of getting Bobbed that they took to sleeping under loads of blankets with their head covered so no skin showed. Outside of bed they wore layers and layers of polyester mouse-proof clothing and hoods and masks and gloves up to here so no one ever saw anyone, which made them even more scared because they thought Bob might be among them in disguise. A carpenter invented a sealed wooden box that guaranteed nothing and no one could ever touch the person inside. So each and every person in the world crammed themselves into individual boxes and pulled the top shut so they could never be touched by Bob.
One hundred years later s.p.a.cemen from the planet Asthmador landed on Earth. The aliens hopped on the radio and called their wisest elders back home to ask them this question: Since every single Earthling was dead in a coffin, who put them there?
The elders shrugged their mandibles and said, ”Beats me.”
After I read the story Sam said, ”It's an allegory.”
”How did the Earth people know being scampered over by Bob would kill them if everyone Bob scampered over was dead and couldn't talk?”
Sam went all sulky, said I didn't understand literature and he wasn't showing me any more stories. He was lying.
Mom is scared to death of death, but Dad took it with the att.i.tude of a cowboy-if you can't understand something, turn it into a joke. Once at a Pierce family reunion up at Granite Hot Springs my born-again uncle from Dubois laid into Dad about his personal savior. My cousin Stella Jean and I were weaving lupines into a hula skirt when Dad's brother Scott stuck his face right up next to Dad and challenged him to accept Christ in his heart.
”Don't you believe in anything?” Scott asked.
”I believe I'll eat another hot dog.”
Scott's face and neck filled up with blood. ”Where do you think you'll go when you die, Buddy?”
Dad slid a willow stick lengthwise through a wienie. ”San Francisco.”
The Two Ocean Lake underwater record was four minutes, fourteen seconds, held by Kim Schmidt's cousin from Nebraska. I dived off the pier and kicked twice, found the bottom, then the root. Counting by Mississippis, I wrapped my right arm under the slick wood and held on with my left. Thirty-two Mississippi, thirty-three Mississippi, thirty-four Mississippi...At sixty Mississippi I started over. The water felt cold yet caressing, and in my mind I saw trout and weeds waving by, ignoring me. On the second sixty Mississippi my chest tightened to the point I had to release a few bubbles. The yellow came again. As a child running in circles till I fell, as a little girl bucked off her horse, now as a teenager breaking the Two Ocean Lake underwater record, yellow always preceded black. I exhaled more bubbles, but that didn't help the chest pain. I opened my eyes-no trout, no weeds, only water and the vague form of the downed aspen on the bottom. Lungs really hurt, I'd stopped counting but couldn't recall when. My fingers lost the root. I clawed the bottom, flailing arms and legs pus.h.i.+ng me down as the water carried me up. Lungs screamed, panic choked my chest, I fought to stay underwater. My face broke through with a sob intake of air.
”Look who's alive.”
”I wouldn't call that live yet.”
No forgiving hangover blankness here, I knew the facts in a heartbeat-Everclear, the Flintstones cup, Marilyn Monroe. It took a second to come up with why, then I saw my baby on the roof.
s.h.i.+t. I'd failed.
I even knew exactly where I was. Although I hadn't slept here in years, I knew Sam Callahan's bed without opening my eyes.
A male voice said, ”I've got pipe to fix.”
”You spend more time on her plumbing than mine.” Her would be me.
”She pays and you don't.”
I slit my eyes open a crack and saw Hank Elkrunner and Lydia Callahan kissing each other good-bye over by the door. Her hand crept up his back into his long Blackfoot hair. His hand slid to the base of her spine.
”Be home tonight,” Lydia ordered.
Hank gave her a love spank. ”Doubt it. Lauren Bacall is set to pop.”
I closed my eyes. Watching other people's affection makes me sad. After he left, Lydia lit a cigarette, then came to the bed and touched my forehead. ”Hank says you're alive,” she said.
”He's too good for you.”
Lydia's hand twitched, like it would when you think you're talking to a person in a coma and the person talks back. ”Hank's the best.”
”You don't deserve him.”
”Yes, I do.”
Lydia'd been a mess when she met Hank Elkrunner. Now she had that reformed-drunk-someone-good-loves-me smugness that turns me catty. h.e.l.l, I could stop drinking if someone good loved me.
Lydia sat in an easy chair next to the bed and opened a newspaper. Her drug of choice had gone from gin to current events. ”How's your head?”
”There's a spike driven through my third eye.”
”I shouldn't wonder. Did you kill the whole fifth?”
I didn't answer. My head hurt, my nose hurt, my crotch hurt, all the muscles in my back hurt-my advice is never botch a suicide.
The paper rustled as Lydia turned a page. ”This guy John Ehrlichman is frightening. He reminds me of your husband. The others are all lying snakes, but Ehrlichman's a lying barracuda.”
I had no idea what she was talking about. ”Where's Auburn?”
”He's home. Delilah Talbot moved in to take care of him.”
That brought up a dozen questions, none of which I had the energy to ask. Lydia talked as she read the paper.
”Doc Petrov pumped your stomach, but he said it was too late to do much good. You went into respiratory arrest, then your kidneys kind of crumpled and they stuck in a catheter. You should have seen yourself, Maurey. So many tubes running in and out you looked like a chemistry experiment.”
”How long?”
”Two days here and three in intensive care. When Hank brought you off the mountain you were choking on vomit and all that blood was gus.h.i.+ng out your nose, I thought we'd lost you.”
”Yeah, right.”
Auburn and I are on top of Teton Pa.s.s in the early spring and I park the Bronco to watch a fantastically lit sunrise. Beams bend around Jackson Peak, snow on the Sleeping Indian glows with a fire of its own. I step out with my bottle to be closer to the beauty and breathe a prayer of thanks, but I forget to set the emergency brake and the Bronco, with Auburn in his car seat, rolls down the pa.s.s. I run-run harder and harder, reach for the back b.u.mper, but the Bronco is inches beyond my fingertips. Auburn laughs, trusting me. I dive and catch the trailer hitch but still cannot stop the rolling as the car's momentum drags me down the highway. At the cliff the front wheels go over, wrenching the hitch from my hands, and I'm left flat with my head over the edge to watch the car flip front over back, over and over down the mountain. Auburn's cries fill the canyon until the final crash. Then, I'm swept by silence. Once again yellow globs rush me, turning black.
When I met Lydia she used to drink a pint of Gilbey's gin at ten-thirty every night. She and Sam would sit through the sports and weather-Lydia didn't give a hoot about news in those days-then Sam would fetch her bottle and a two-ounce shot gla.s.s with an etching of the Lincoln Memorial on the side. Lydia filled and threw down eight shots-bang, bang-one right after another before bed.