Part 9 (1/2)
I should have been suspicious when Dothan volunteered to wrangle the senior cla.s.s trail ride. He told Sam Callahan that Mae West had once been ridden by Ernest Hemingway, so of course Sam had to have her. You should have seen Sam sit that horse-rigid as uncooked spaghetti. He posted constantly like we were in England. On turns he yanked the reins so hard she did a complete circle, then he overcorrected and circled her back the other way.
A mile up the Forest Service lease fence I was stalled behind Sam while he tried to stop Mae West from grazing. Her head would dip down to gra.s.s level and he'd jerk the reins, which she took as the signal to back up, so she would, and behind her, one at a time, the whole senior cla.s.s of GroVont High would retreat down the mountain.
That's when Dothan popped ”Chewy Chewy” into the eight-track.
Mae West's first kick grazed Frostbite's jaw and he spooked, so I missed a second or two of the action, but when I turned myself back around she was sunfis.h.i.+ng and Sam was laid over on her side hanging on by the saddle horn. And screaming. You never heard such a noise.
He stayed with her quite a while, considering. I remember mixed in under Sam's screams and the horse's snorts, this whiny-a.s.s voice going, ”Chewy, chewy, chewy, chewy.”
Mae West charged the fence, dug in her heels, and Sam flew over her head and front-flipped into barbwire. All in all, I thought it was semifunny-one of Dothan's better sick jokes-but then I'd been thrown off my share of horses, and I knew the world doesn't end. You get back up and get back on.
Sam had no such perspective. He never figured how he'd been had, but in his heart Sam knew somebody other than Mae West caused him a backside full of holes. He wouldn't speak to anyone for days, not even me. Just sulked in his room and wrote stories about how all horses are minions of Satan and must be shunned or they will kill.
11.
Next came a drive all the way into Jackson to cash Hank's check, then back to GroVont for the beer. An argument broke out over who got to hold my money. My money. Imagine the gall. Shane said I'd spend it or misplace it or give it away to a worthy charity because that's what drunks do with their money.
”I've never misplaced money in my life.”
”Just children.”
Lloyd dropped the two of us off at Lydia's with the promise to come back in an hour with the load of beer and a pint of Yukon Jack.
”You won't on-purpose accidentally forget Jack?” I asked.
”Drinkers only quit when they want to; no one has stopped yet from being out of supplies at the moment.”
”Well, I don't want to, so you don't forget.”
On Lydia's two front steps, Shane taught me the tip-back, pull-up method of getting him into places.
”I go up stairs backwards and down stairs forwards,” he said. ”That way if I fall, I land on my face and don't get hurt.”
”Is that supposed to be a joke?”
I set Shane up in Lydia's living room with a Dr Pepper and a Progressive Peacemaker magazine. He picked Sam's short story off the TV table and stared intently at the t.i.tle-”Kiss Your Elbow Enterprises.”
”My grandmother used to make my sister and me kiss our elbow every night before bed,” he said.
”No one has ever kissed their own elbow. Unless their arm got ripped off.”
From somewhere beneath him, Shane extracted a wicked little pocketknife. That chair was a general store on wheels. It was like in the cartoons when the coyote needs a weapon and he reaches out of the picture and comes back with an Acme anvil or six sticks of lit dynamite, only Shane did the trick between his legs.
”I used to kiss my elbow often,” he said. ”I was a special little lad.”
Some crocks are better left alone. I went into Sam's room for shower paraphernalia, and when I came back out carrying my towel and Sam's old razor, Shane had pulled his right leg up so the ankle crossed his left knee and taken off his saddle oxford. He was intently reading Sam's story.
I stopped to check Shane out as a traveling companion. He wasn't grotesquely obese or anything, just your regular fat, but the slump posture in the chair and that dull ruby face made him appear grosser than he was. You know how a Scotch drinker's nose swells up red and laced with tiny exploded blood vessels? Shane's whole face was like that. And his head didn't sit on his neck steady; it sort of bounced or quivered or something.
His couldn't have been an easy life, what with ostracism for being hideous and all. Maybe the lies were compensation, maybe an insecure boy bl.u.s.tered from fear under all those flabs of suet.
Without looking up at me, Shane said, ”I used to write novels. They were rather good, but the literary life is ghastly pretentious, so I quit. Pretension is the one flaw I simply cannot stomach.”
Lydia came home while I was doing the legs and pits job in the shower. She walked right into the bathroom and sat on the toilet where I could see her through the semi-transparent shower curtain. She dropped her jeans over her ankles, but her black-with-red-lace-trim panties stayed up while she peed. Crotchless panties! On a weekday! The mind boggles at what perversions she and Hank must practice in private.
”Maurey,” she said, ”Aqualung is tr.i.m.m.i.n.g his toenails in my living room.”
”That's Shane. I think he's harmless.”
”No guest who trims his toenails is harmless. Did he bring his own furniture?”
”He's in a wheelchair. Didn't you see the wheels?”
”I didn't look.” She stood and pulled up the jeans that were two sizes too tight. ”Didn't I tell you again and again Prell strips every drop of moisture from your head.”
”Better than shampooing with vegetables.”
She picked my Prell off the side of the tub and dropped it in the trash can. ”Might as well shave your head again.”
I managed to dry myself without looking in the mirror.
Cutting back through the living room, Shane sat waving Sam's story around, feeding Lydia this c.o.c.k-and-bull about her son being a literary lion of the first degree. Unlike me, Lydia wallows in flattery. Tell her she has nice hands or is politically vibrant or was a good mother, and pretty soon she'll revert to southern belle and start batting her eyelashes and offering you canned cashews. Takes an insecure person to believe the compliments of strangers, I always say.
Packing consumed all of five minutes. I came through college when straining to look good was considered hypocritical. Powder and paint make 'em what they ain't. Paddin' and stuffin' don't add nothin': fallout from the Janis Joplin beauty school, I guess. I wasn't a hippy chick-no burned bras and body lice for me-but I was no sorority social climber, either. Two pairs of boots, corral and town; flip-flops for in the car; two pairs of Wrangler's; three s.h.i.+rts, two for regular everyday and a nice Neiman Marcus yoked deal with a fitted waist, mother-of-pearl snaps, and baby-doll puffed sleeves for rodeos and funerals; five pairs of cotton panties; a raft of socks that didn't match, but that didn't matter because they'd be under my boots; and two bras just in case we went somewhere I couldn't bounce.
After Dad died I fumigated his wicker trout creel to create a new style in purses. It was way cool with a deep place for my notebook, keys, pints, and whatnot and little places for Carmex and change. I slid Hank's three hundred dollars into the waterproof pocket up top where you're supposed to keep your fis.h.i.+ng license and extra leaders.
I put in a pair of silver hoop earrings Shannon gave me for Christmas. The last time she came to Wyoming we bought a gallon of ice cream one night and pierced each other's ears. You should have seen it, the seven-year-old and the twenty-one-year-old, both terrified of running a knitting needle through our body, yet giggling like sisters. I don't know which scared me most, sticking Shannon or Shannon sticking me. We ended up with blood and ice cream all over both of us. Being a mom can be more fun than s.e.x or alcohol put together.
I carried a suitcase, Sam's day pack, and the creel purse into the living room to find Shane with his claw dipped in a bag of Pepperidge Farm gourmet crackers and Lydia hovering, ready to serve his smallest whim.
She didn't seem surprised to see the suitcase. ”Did you know Mr. Rinesfoos practically began the civil rights movement? That's how he lost the use of his faculties, in a Klan riot in Birmingham.”
”Who's Mr. Rinesfoos?”
Shane popped a fistful of gourmet crackers through his lips. ”Three sheeted racists held me while three more forced my Negro pal Isaiah to bite the curb. As they stomped the back of his curly head, I broke free and began pummeling the Grand Wizard, but their bedpost clubs crushed all the vertebrae in my spine.”
Lydia bought the rap. ”That is so admirable. I'd love to give my body for a cause.”