Part 11 (2/2)

From polite, I moved to understanding. ”I notice you are varicosed. Being pleasant to customers might increase your tips and you could afford to have your legs stripped.”

She pointed the wet pencil tip at my face. ”Don't be getting snappy with me, little girl. You're from out of state.”

Lloyd and Shane chose not to partic.i.p.ate in the exchange. Intrusive son of a b.i.t.c.h that he was, even Shane knew not to step between two irritated cat women. But I was more than irritated, I was fed up. Last-straw city. People had been pus.h.i.+ng me and stepping on me and tearing at me for weeks, and Stuckey's was the place to stop it.

I said, ”I demand Paul Harvey.”

”You can demand all day, honey, but you can't have him.”

As Dorothea turned back to the kitchen, I screamed.

Remember Estelle Parsons in Bonnie and Clyde? She was subtlety personified compared to my howl. All activity on the dining side, the curio side, and, I'd bet, out in the parking lot came to a halt. Even the little boy in the ladies' room shut up.

I didn't stop with the scream, either, but kept up a series of bloodcurdlers. I learned my scream from Dothan's father, who used to call in coyotes by cutting toes off rabbits. Rabbits can really scream.

Dorothea dropped her pencil and covered both ears with her hands. She shouted, ”What's wrong with her?”

Shane stopped gorging himself long enough to raise his voice. ”Hysterical digitalis. Her mind must be fed Paul Harvey's voice once daily or she goes insane. If you have some liquid Demerol handy, we might be able to calm her down.”

”We got no liquid whatever you said. Shut her up, she's scaring the customers.” Which was true. All except the man with three toothpicks. He looked bored, a seen-it-all type with a reputation to uphold.

Shane wiped the grease off his mouth with a napkin. ”The alternative would be to tune in Paul Harvey.”

Paul wasn't worth much that day, anyway. All Watergate and a pithy story about his crusty neighbors in the Ozarks-one of those wisdom-of-simple-rural-folk deals. He didn't even give a daily b.u.mper snicker.

14.

Dear Dad, The Indians in the picture are Navajo or Zuni or something, one of those tribes Hank calls Blanket Boys. He says anyone whose ancestors didn't charge bareback across the plains killing buffalo is a wimp. Whatever they are, the sight of turquoise gives 'em a hard-on. They're like pickup truck-driving dope dealers, only these guys deal blue rocks.

It takes all kinds.

Maurey ***

”You want to try your hand at driving?” We stood-or Lloyd and I stood while Shane sat-in the Stuckey's parking lot, looking upwind at New Mexico. About all I could see between us and the mountains was brush and highway and used Pampers. Sparkles from broken beer bottles lined the road, giving a bleak fairy-tale look to things.

”Sure, I want to drive. Listening to his blather could bore a person back into a coma.”

Shane smiled up at me. He was relieving his fluids bag on the rear tire of a white Thunderbird with California plates. I took it as a political statement. Shane was smug because he'd hustled me for a bag of Chips Ahoy cookies based on that hysterical digitalis rap. I'd have gotten Paul Harvey without his help.

”You ever drive a stick s.h.i.+ft?” Lloyd asked. ”Moby's steering is somewhat loose, takes muscle on the turns, especially to the right.”

”I can turn d.i.c.k. You're worn out. Hop in back with the pervert and take a nap.”

”Sharon used to love this ambulance. I can understand why she left me. I was a drunk like you are now, but I'm still surprised she left Moby d.i.c.k.”

”Women don't marry cars,” Shane said as he wheeled over to the side doors for load-up. ”You think houses and drapes and dinette sets mean more to them than people, but get down to it, and men are the only gender can have meaningful relations.h.i.+ps with objects.”

”It has a manual choke,” Lloyd said. ”Are you familiar with the manual choke?”

Driving Moby d.i.c.k was a trip. Where the ignition should have been there was nothing but a blue wire, a red wire, and a switch. The stick s.h.i.+ft was a four-foot rod with a hollowed-out nine ball stuck on top. Made changing gears into a sport. Reverse was where I expected first, which led to initial grinding that almost lost me the wheel. Lloyd would have taken it back, but he really was worn out from driving all night. The Jesus eyes were more puppy-after-electroshock. Or what I imagine puppy-after-electroshock would look like.

He didn't nap in back with Shane but took over the pa.s.senger seat to keep an eye on me. Maybe he thought I had a hidden bottle and would drink on the job. If so, Lloyd was wrong. After a bottle makes me good and sick, I swear off forever, which generally becomes ten or twelve awake hours. Not long by AA One-Day-at-a-Time standards, but for most of those ten hours, sincerity is my middle name.

Every now and then after Dad died I took a shot at quitting completely. I didn't tell anyone because they'd give me guff and know if I failed. If you can't do something, it's best to pretend you don't want to. The extended sobriety spells were generally kicked off at the end of a several-day binge-out when I did something so disgusting, so bottom-of-the-slime-barrel, that I turned on myself.

The last time was in March when I was faking constipation so I could drink behind a locked door, and I dropped my Yukon on the bathroom floor and broke the bottle. Without even thinking, I grabbed an old hand towel, soaked up the liquid, and proceeded to suck that dirty rag dry. Cut the c.r.a.p out of my tongue on broken gla.s.s.

After that I made a deal with G.o.d, but he let down his end of the gig, which was to give me strength, so I let down my end, which was don't drink.

”Where'd you learn to scream like that?” Lloyd asked.

I told him about Garth Talbot and the coyotes and rabbits. ”He sold the coyote pelts for bounty and used the rabbits to make jackalopes. You may not have noticed, but every jackalope in Teton County is missing two or three toes.”

Shane was popping cookies like he was in a compet.i.tion. ”Are you aware that if you slice the big toe off a person you effectively cripple him just as completely as I was crippled when that semi-truck jackknifed on Monarch Pa.s.s?”

”What semitruck?” I asked, but it was too late. Shane was already off on the woman from Montana who'd lost a toe in a Sears Roebuck lawn mower. She liked doing it in apple trees or some-such nonsense. Taking my lesson from Lloyd, I was learning the tune-out technique. I didn't acknowledge the words but let Shane's sound float over me like a TV in the next room at a motel. Or say you live next to a motocross racetrack all your life, pretty soon you won't be able to hear it. Park said the sun makes a loud roar, but we've all heard it all our lives and no one has ever not heard it, so no one knows it's there. Except him.

When I met Park he was sitting under a tree in the snow, crying. His childhood dog had died back in Maine, and his mother used an ink stamp to record the dog's paw on the letter telling Park what had happened. So, I'm bopping along and there's this boy with curly blond hair and pretty fingers holding a letter. I sat down next to him but kept it cool by not saying anything.

He showed me the letter with his dead dog's footprint at the bottom. He said he hadn't cried in years and it felt kind of good to finally let go. Since then, I've discovered that's what they all say when you catch them crying. ”I haven't been able to for years and it feels kind of good to finally let go.”

Sam Callahan says the cowboy code allows for tears on two occasions: when your horse dies or when you hear ”Faded Love” played on twin fiddles.

With Park I took it as vulnerability beneath the hard, society-imposed sh.e.l.l of manhood. I was nineteen.

Park and I talked for ten hours, first in the snow, then in the student union over countless cups of coffee, then on a lobby couch at my freshman dorm. After the Dothan-Rocky Joe fiasco I guess I was ripe for a sensitive man. He told me he'd read Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, he listened to jazz, and my hair was the color of dolphins dancing off the New England coast. He showed me a poem about G.o.d and death that he'd never shown anyone.

I told him about a man I saw die. I told him about Frostbite and my secret warm springs and that I had a five-year-old daughter named Shannon.

We met the next day for breakfast, then we both skipped morning cla.s.ses. I wanted to touch his hair and feel his lips, but after my recent history I thought it best to let Park make the first move. We must have been together two hundred hours before he held my hand. In the dark, watching Butch Ca.s.sidy and the Sundance Kid-he yawned and pretended to accidentally b.u.mp my fingers during the bicycle scene.

That same night he asked permission to kiss me, and I said okay.

Two weeks later he showed me a poem and asked permission for another kiss. Maurey is a nickname. My real name is Merle-after the actress Merle Oberon-and Park had rhymed Merle with pearl and girl about thirty times.

”This poem proves I love you,” he said.

”I love you, too,” I said, which was a first.

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