Part 26 (1/2)

”Maurey didn't know that,” Marcella said. ”What she did was just as heroic as if it was an adder.”

”Oh, my G.o.d, an adder,” Shane said with sarcasm. He tried to denigrate my snake battle, but even Shane looked at me a tad differently. He hadn't called me little missy in over an hour.

When Andrew dropped his c.o.ke it blew foam on Brad's art work and Marcella's rayon dress, which caused a scramble. Andrew whined for another c.o.ke while Brad dramatically ripped the soiled page from his pad and Shane explained how the FBI made Coca-Cola take the cocaine out of its secret formula but each year the company whips up a batch of original recipe for its upper-echelon officers and select members of the executive branch of government.

I turned to Lloyd. ”Does it feel to you that we're establis.h.i.+ng a pattern here on the road?”

He squinted into the side mirror. ”I think we got us a family unit.”

Dear Dad, Here's what I think. I might pick a date, like three months from today, and that'll be the day to stop drinking and turn serious. Meantime I can get it out of my system. How does that idea strike you?

I need you now, Merle Jean Pierce P.S. I killed a snake.

I named the tequila bottle Elvis because Shane had been yammering about him off and on all day, telling bizarre stories in which he saved Elvis's life or career. Shane claimed to be the entire background chorus on ”Blue Christmas.” ”I did four tracks of Blue-blue-blues in harmony with myself,” he said. ”Elvis said colored girls couldn't have done better.”

I also named the tequila Elvis because he was the king and I'd killed a king snake, which metaphorically made me the Elvis killer. Personally, I'd never been that hot for his music-too much hips for country, too much Brylcreem for rock 'n' roll-but it was an okay name for tequila. ”Gimme an Elvis, straight up.” ”I shoot Elvis with lemon and salt.”

The worst social blunder I ever made in my life-before the Auburn-on-the-roof deal-was made on tequila. You ever do something so embarra.s.sing you relive it over and over when you go to the bathroom in the middle of the night? Something so rotten it affects your self-image from that day on?

Soph.o.m.ore year at Laramie, I wasn't ready for a test in Psych 101, so I spent a snowy afternoon sitting in my dorm room staring out the window and doing shots of Cuervo Silver. My roommate, Betsy, was concerned about my welfare, and she convinced me to go downstairs to the cafeteria for supper.

Big mistake. Someone was ribbing Lucy Jane Andrews from Thermopolis about biting a boy's tongue when he French-kissed her on the first date, and she said, ”At least I didn't get pregnant before p.u.b.erty.”

The other three girls at the table sn.i.g.g.e.red and slid their eyes at me. I'd been hearing that c.r.a.p for six years and learned to roll with it as the price you pay for being different, but this time I cracked. I could blame Cuervo or cafeteria food, but the truth is no one is responsible for this gig but me.

”Lucy Jane,” I said too loudly, ”had an accident in her white linen skirt a few years back and now she wears tampons every single day and every single night of the month. She hasn't been out of the bathroom without a plug in since she left high school.”

Polly St. Michel t.i.ttered. I turned on her. ”What are you laughing at? Your stepbrother raped you when you were twelve and now you can't ever have a baby.” I turned on everybody at once. ”You cat women are always gossiping about my daughter. Well, at least I'm honest, I don't hide ugly little secrets.”

Betsy defended herself. ”We don't all hide ugly secrets.”

”Who'll go upstairs in fifteen minutes and make herself vomit like she does after every meal?” The cafeteria got real quiet as I fired my final shot at Dory Crandall. The poor girl had never been anything but kind to me. One midnight she told me her secret because the guilt was driving her to meekness. ”And who slept with her best friend's boyfriend the day before they got married? I'll bet the happy bride would love to know that one.”

Only when I paused for breath and looked in their faces did I realize I'd gone too far. All my female friends.h.i.+ps were dead meat. Even others who weren't at the table would never trust me now, for good reason. In cowboy terms, I'd shot myself in the foot. In the head.

”Tell me about your dad,” Lloyd said.

”What?”

”You write him postcards every day, but he's dead.”

”Who told you my father is dead?”

”You did, yesterday when the highway patrolman stopped us. Don't you remember?” Don't you remember? Always digging at me; sometimes I wished Lloyd were more like Shane. Shane didn't care whether I drank myself to death or not.

A picture of Buddy formed in my mind-six four, black bush of a beard, voice that reverberated with authority. ”Dad was like what you think of as G.o.d.”

Lloyd kept his Jesus eyes on the road. ”What's that mean?”

I thought in terms of honesty. What are G.o.d's characteristics? ”Remote. Perfect, yet remote. G.o.d knows everything you do, but nothing you do affects him one way or the other.”

”Your G.o.d must not be Southern Baptist.”

”The county only decided to plow the ranch road a couple years ago, so back when I started school Mom and Petey and I lived in town all winter while Dad stayed on the mountain. I didn't see him on a day-to-day basis.”

”It's tricky loving someone you don't see. They tend to get built into dream people.” I guess Lloyd was relating my deal to his wife, Sharon.

I two-handed a slug of Elvis. ”Mom was petty. She couldn't stand a cat hair on her curtains, or she'd go berserk if a bee got loose in the car. She spent hours worrying about the characters on a soap opera.”

”All moms are like that,” Lloyd said.

”But Dad treated her like a fairy princess, even after she started flipping out. He took everything she said seriously.”

”So, do you hate him or her for that?”

”Nothing I did affected him. When the baby was born, he still wouldn't come out of the mountains. Shannon and I lived at Sam and Lydia's while Dad took care of the horses.”

I sucked in one h.e.l.l of a good pull on Elvis. ”Dad's not dead. He's gone to San Francisco on business.”

Brad was listening in back. He spoke up in the voice of a fourteen-year-old. ”My dad used to wake me up at night and make me hide in the bathroom while Mom turned a trick in my bed.”

I said, ”Oh.”

31.

I tried to get Sam Callahan to write a story about dry mouth once. He could have a character whose mission in life was to develop a drug that didn't cause next-day ashtray lips.

”It'd be a quest story,” I said.

”I only deal in universal concepts.”

”What concept is more universal than waking up with a dry mouth?”

Of course he didn't write my story; he'd rather write about Jesus playing baseball.

Lloyd shook me awake to darkness and a mythic dry mouth. He said, ”We need gas.”

My lips made a frog-stuck-in-mud sound. Lloyd handed me a canteen he usually saved for the radiator and repeated himself. ”We need gas. You have anything to trade for gas?”

I didn't even swallow the water, just let it soak into my tongue like rain on dust. ”How long have I been asleep?”

”Since you finished your bottle. We tried to wake you for supper.”