Part 24 (1/2)

”You just want to see my b.o.o.b. I know how boys your age are.”

Owsley spit on the ground in disgust. ”I saw t.i.ts every day at the house in Comanche. Yours won't be a thrill.”

I always thought nursing somebody else's baby would be like chewing somebody else's gum, but it wasn't gross like that at all. Whatever instincts a woman has come out in nursing, I suppose, although I've known women who hate it. Lydia Callahan says nursing is nature's way of making you droop.

When I offered Hugo Jr. the right side he latched on natural as a foal on a mare. The effect was truly bewildering, on one hand breathtaking, like being part of something primeval, while on the other hand the ache below my breast for my own baby was almost more than I could stand. That ache separated into an ache for Dad, then an ache for what I'd missed with Mom, then an ache that kind of billowed out to include everything wonderful and impossible about life.

I looked down at Hugo Jr.'s closed eyelids and his upper lip on my breast. The areola was almost back to normal, pre-baby size, but at his touch my nipple hardened, as if the last year hadn't happened. His eyebrows were delicate as a spider web, and the hollow atop his head looked so vulnerable. They put an IV in Auburn's head the day he was born-I cried for six hours.

Hugo Jr. brushed my skin with his hands, and the aches formed into one bubble that rose to my throat and burst. I touched his tiny nose and connected.

d.a.m.n, I thought to myself, the first step back. I'd hoped to avoid this at least until fall.

When Marcella returned with the newly scrubbed Andrew to feed Hugo Jr. honest mother's milk, I walked the hundred yards west to where Hugo Sr. sat in his car eating a Stewart sandwich. I couldn't get over what a block-shaped person he was, like a 1950s sci-fi robot. Square chest, block chin, nose like a quarter-stick of b.u.t.ter imbedded in his face-I hadn't seen any of that in Hugo Jr.

”Loan me twenty dollars,” I said.

He chewed with his mouth slightly open, staring up the road at the American Legion hut. ”Was Andrew hurt bad? I'd never have let him climb that building if I was there.”

”You are here, Hugo. Loan me twenty dollars so I can buy your kid milk.”

”She'll never manage without me.”

”She's done fine so far.”

He glanced at me in his window. ”Make her come back to Dumas and I'll give you the twenty dollars.”

”You think I'd sell out my friends for twenty bucks?”

”Okay, thirty.”

Yellowstone has millions of trees, and they're so thick in the Bitterroot you can't ride a horse off trail, but the mountains around Jackson Hole and GroVont are way-high deserts with loads of open s.p.a.ce between stands. I need open s.p.a.ce. Denseness gives me claustrophobia.

Arkansas was the densest land I'd ever seen. The trees and shrubs, flat s.h.i.+mmering with fertility, were pressed from all sides by intense humidity and these low, off-gray clouds. Driving Moby d.i.c.k up, down, and around the hills was like swimming through a lake of sperm.

We pa.s.sed an unpainted house with a full-width screened porch and three little black kids playing next to a garden. The two girls had yellow ribbons in their hair, and the boy was riding a stick horse with a stuffed-sock head. I knew a few jocks at Laramie who were black-even got nailed by Kareem, who kept score-but I'd never hung out around black children. They seemed exotic and sleek, like palomino horses. I wondered if they felt the heat and humidity the same as I did. Would that s.h.i.+ny skin attract or repel mosquitoes, and did black boys get stiffies younger than white boys?

All through high school this rumor floated around that Sam Callahan's father was black. The rumor was based mostly on misconceptions that develop in places where blacks are rare to nonexistent. Sam ate southern foods, natural enough since he was from the South, but people didn't see it that way. They said, ”Cornbread! Why, he must be part n.i.g.g.e.r.”

He liked Sam Cooke music, and later Jimi Hendrix. He liked basketball better than football. He said ”y'all” when he meant ”you guys.” Pretty flimsy fodder to brand the boy, but in a town small as GroVont flimsy fodder is enough. Knocking me up at thirteen didn't help.

To tell the truth, Sam more or less encouraged the black daddy theory, especially when he got older and started dating.

”I want the girls swept away by the soul man stereotype,” he said to me.

”You want them swept away by the big d.i.c.k stereotype.”

Actually, Sam's d.i.c.k isn't that bad for a little guy.

One time Lydia fed us this long gang-bang story involving five football players-four whiteys and a black halfback-who got her drunk and raped her and peed on her face on Christmas Eve. She used the story as an example of all-men-are-pigs and said any of the five could be Sam's father. Sam used the story as an excuse to alienate himself from the entire male s.e.x.

”What'd you and Hugo Sr. find to talk about?” Marcella asked.

”He offered thirty bucks for you.”

”You think I should go back to him for the sake of the boys?”

”Staying with a bad man for the sake of children is the single stupidest move any woman ever made.”

”You're always so certain, Maurey. I wish I was more like you. I'm never certain about anything.”

Shane was busy on the maps again. ”We shall cross the river at Memphis,” he said. ”I have a cohort from the music industry in Memphis. Elvis stayed with the stage when I quit to pursue my studies in medical school.”

”That's Elvis Presley, no doubt,” I said.

”You've heard of him? He was a struggling artist until I taught him to swivel his pelvis with the downbeat.”

”Yeah, right. Was Elvis there when you nailed Katharine Hepburn on a horse?”

”No, but I did introduce him to his wife. Sweet girl, I dated her first, you know.”

”I read that somewhere.”

”Your sarcasm is quite gauche, little lady. No wonder you can't hold a man.”

Between hills we pa.s.sed a bunch of swampy-looking rivers. Stagnant brown water makes for bad fly-fis.h.i.+ng. ”Lloyd,” I say, ”I understand about needing whiskey or food or oil, or even love. Heck, Dothan needs help with his income tax form. What I don't understand is needing a meeting. What happens to fill a need at these meetings?”

The lines around his eyes looked like a topo map. ”We talk.”

”No good ever came from talking.”

The eyes s.h.i.+fted focus to me. ”Why not come to a meeting and see?”

I didn't say anything for two bridges. ”No, thanks, I could never deal with truth while drinking coffee from Styrofoam cups.”

He shrugged and faced forward. ”Be on the lookout for someplace I might be able to trade for gasoline. We'll be low soon.”

”Gauge says we're full.”

”That gauge always says we're full.”