GroVont: Sorrow Floats Part 9

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 sunfishing 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 shirts, 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 fishing 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."

Shane and I let that statement lie between us on the floor. I think it was such an obvious opening that he suspected a trap. Or maybe Lydia was too easy for an all-star lech to bother with. Instead I blindly jumped into the good-bye thing. I'm not big on good-bye things. Every vacation when the time comes for Sam and Shannon to head back south, I make an excuse and bag out a few minutes before they leave. I never even said good-bye to Dad, and he's dead.

Lydia hugged me and told me not to commit suicide or buy flowers from hippies on city street corners because the money went straight to the Moonies. I can tell I'm not latently gay or anything because I don't initiate hugs with women. Men either, come to think of it.

"You heading straight out from here?" she asked.

"After we pick up the tent and drop by the post office. Might as well take Sam his tent."

"You tell that overgrown horse's t.u.r.d to send me money. It's a disgrace how he treats his mother."

"I thought the story was written by a youngster. Surely you are not old enough to have an adult child?" Shane asked.

Lydia's forehead wrinkled in spite of all that Swedish paste she glops on it. "Of course I don't have an adult child. Will you see Annabel before you leave the valley?"

I wanted a drink right now. "Doesn't seem to be much point."

"Maurey, there's not much point in anything you do."

Dear Dad, I told Hank to shoot Frostbite and sell his hooves to Purina. We'll use the guts for bearbait and give the hide and meat to the religious fanatics up in Buffalo Valley. I'm leaving on a tour of southern cities tonight. You can reach me through Lydia Callahan.

Write, wire, or call, Maurey ***

Loaded, oiled, and ga.s.sed, our trio in the belly of Moby d.i.c.k headed across Togwotee Pa.s.s and into what people in Jackson Hole call Out There. Shane babbled nonstop from his perch in back, Lloyd held the steering wheel with both hands, his head c.o.c.ked, listening closely to M.D.'s engine as it strained against the trailer and Coors. My Jack bottle that I'd named Scout after Tonto's horse snuggled in his position between my thighs on the pa.s.senger seat.

On the long curves, I looked back at a killer spring sunset between the Grand and Mount Moran. The peaks were majestic, the valley floor a warm, dark green. Auburn did not know I was no longer a cry away. This was stupid. I almost told Lloyd to pull it over and let me go. Only a true idiot would walk away from paradise. Only a total idiot would leave her child to smuggle bad beer and go into hiding from somebody. Who was I hiding from? Dothan, my son, my hometown, myself?

Shane rambled about a snuff queen in Denver he violated with a .44-40 caliber Colt Peacemaker. Her method of finding fulfillment was to have herself nailed by a loaded handgun. Those were Shane's words-"violate" and "fulfillment."

"She made me flip off the safety," he said. "Is it not peculiar the lengths some people will go to for s.e.xual stimulation?"

I drew on Scout. "Did the Colt have a sight?"

Shane blew the first seven notes of "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" on his harmonica, then he stopped. "Of course the Colt had a sight. What woman would screw a pistol without a sight?"

What woman indeed? I fingered Charley's barrel in my wind-breaker pocket. No sight, but he didn't need one. I'm not that kind of girl.

Lloyd leaned toward the stick shift and said, "Spark plug wires are arcing. Hear that?" All I heard was the sun going down on my home.

12.

Lloyd drove, I drank, Shane talked. While all three musketeers were practiced professionals at our chosen tasks, Shane was beyond practiced. Shane was a Renaissance talker. An eighth-degree black belt of the mouth.

In the Wind River Canyon he lectured on Manuel Lisa and early explorations of Yellowstone, including the Hayden Expedition of 1872, then he went on to reasons why the South could have won the Civil War and proper procedures for cooking a peac.o.c.k-boil it forty minutes, then hang it by the neck outside for three days. Otherwise treat it like a turkey.

Between p.r.o.nouncements he blew six or seven notes of "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" on the harmonica, sometimes eight notes. Lloyd's face never changed, and he never gave comment. I think he was listening to the engine, which he found more interesting.

Shane gave a blow-by-blow account of flax farming in Nicaragua-figures he was part farmer-and why women went nuts over Steve McQueen. He proved the first five lines of the Lord's Prayer is actually a limerick by reciting them in singsong: Our Father who art in heaven Hallowed be thy name Thy kingdom come Thy will be done On Earth as it is in Heaven "Second line doesn't rhyme right," I said.

"Does in Hebrew."

I turned to Lloyd. "Does he always talk this much?"

"Only when he likes someone."

"But I don't like him."

"Shane doesn't take that into account when he decides who to like."

Shane spoke in essay form as he compared the Grateful Dead, Allman Brothers, and Willie Nelson. "The most influential bands of the last five years, and each has two lead guitars, a keyboard player, and double drums. Can you name another band with that configuration?" He convinced me Lou Gehrig was better than Babe Ruth, male birds are more beautiful than female, and the s.p.a.ce program failed to ignite the public's imagination because none of the astronauts was named Buck.

"Buzz wasn't close enough?" I asked.

"Do not insult my intelligence, la.s.sie."

Shane said Ringo Starr was the greatest Beatle, then named the mothers of Adam, Hoss, and Little Joe on the Bonanza TV show-Elizabeth, Ingrid, and Maria-and the last picture show to play in The Last Picture Show-The Kid from Texas, starring Audie Murphy and Gale Storm.

"Have you ever noticed Australian women are made particularly ardent by a.n.a.l entry?" Shane said. He blew the second phrase of "Tumbling Tumbleweeds." "The French have seven words for a man going down on a woman. We have b.l.o.w. .j.o.b for a woman on a man or, G.o.d forbid, a man on a man, and sixty-nine for everybody on everybody, but the English language does not recognize the male giving pleasure to the female."

The radio was broken, of course. I should have known. I tried drinking faster, but Shane's voice was a fog cutter. Lloyd tuned him out to the point where he might as well have been driving alone. Lloyd had practice, I think. The familiarity level was hard to pin down. They might have formed the team two days before I met them, or twenty years.

If Shane ever came up for air, I meant to ask him why he thought Ringo Starr was the greatest Beatle. I thought so, too, and I'd never met anyone who agreed with me. The idea that Shane and I might have something in common was fairly disturbing. Sam Callahan said George Harrison was greatest for spiritual reasons, and Park wanted to be John Lennon because he aspired to darkness. Dothan hated them all.

The spring of our freshman year, John Lennon went on the radio in England and said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. Sugar's sister, Charlotte, organized a record-burning party on the basketball court behind the Foursquare Gospel Church in Jackson. Dothan and I had our first major fight over the Beatles and religion. I owned all the Beatles alb.u.ms and most of their forty-fives, and he didn't own any, and he wanted to burn mine.

"People will think we're Catholics if we don't," he said.

"I'm fifteen and have a daughter nearly two years old, what do I care what people think?"

Sam and I steamed the labels off my Beatle alb.u.ms and glued them on Sonny and Cher alb.u.ms, then we slipped Sonny and Cher into the Beatle covers. On the forty-fives we switched Beatles for Sopwith Camel, the Detergents, and Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs.

While I was at cheerleading practice my mother let Dothan steal everything I owned by the Beatles. That night Sam and I stood back from the glowing crowd and cheered as "I Got You, Babe" went up in smelly, melted plastic. I kept those Beatle records right up to the day Dothan moved me and all my stuff he didn't covet out of the house.

"Have you seen her?" Without looking at me, Lloyd handed over a three-by-five color photo, the kind with the ragged border developers were into back in the sixties. "Sharon might be going by Carbonneau, or Gunderson. That's her maiden name. Gunderson."

A girl, maybe eighteen, stood next to a sign that read Casino Salvage in front of a brightly lit stucco building. She had straight chestnut hair with these thick bangs that hid her eyebrows. Her face was happy as she vamped the camera by pulling her brown skirt up over one knee, revealing a bony leg and a tooled cowboy boot. She was thin, but not anorexic, only her shoulders slumped. Could have been somewhat pretty if she concentrated on posture.

"Is this your wife?"