The extent of life’s changes didn’t take any king-hell long time in coming down. Eight-thirty a.m., when Maurey and I swept through the front doors of GroVont Junior High, we were met with the same low-key tact they would have used on Martians. Their eyes were like dogs seeing an elephant for the first time.
“I feel like Lee Harvey Oswald,” Maurey said.
“Which one is our Jack Ruby?”
The silence was too loud to handle. I wanted to tap dance or yell “Fire” or something, anything to get a reaction from the twin lines of kids backed up against their lockers.
“It’s like we have the ultimate cooties,” Maurey said fairly quietly.
“If I touched LaNell she would scream.” LaNell and LaDell stood next to the girl’s room, staring as if we were on TV; they could see us but we couldn’t see them.
I was torn between intimidated and cocky. I mean, their eyes showed scorn and outrage at what I’d done, I think, but every kid in school also knew I’d seen a girl naked. That was their dream and now they knew I’d done it. No one could ever accuse me of virginity again. “You’d think nobody in the seventh grade ever got pregnant.”
Maurey lifted her chin in what I took as a pride move. “They can’t bother me.”
“Right.”
“Let’s go to class.”
“You think they hate us or envy us?”
“You and I are beyond their comprehension.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Florence Talbot was so angry her ears were white. When Maurey and I walked past, she slammed her locker—sounded like a bomb—and stepped right behind us. Like stupid sheep, the others fell in behind Florence. I could hear her breathing in my ear and everyone else’s shuffling loafers, tennis shoes, and cowboy boots. We must have looked like a damn parade.
Chuckette was the only one waiting in homeroom. We’re talking pitiful. You’d think God himself stole her charm bracelet. Puffed eyes, mouth a red gash, she hadn’t even ratted and sprayed her hair; looked like a nest on top her head. I felt bad for her. Chuckette had been raised in a certain way: boyfriends loved girlfriends, kids who respected each other didn’t touch below the neck, motherhood is the highest deal and unmarried motherhood the lowest, and life—make that Maurey and I— had blasted all that moral theory to hell.
I avoided her, but Maurey walked over to her desk and said, “I’m sorry, Charlotte.”
Chuckette wouldn’t raise her head. From my seat, all I could see were tears dripping off her weak chin.
Stebbins had long ago quit trying to teach us anything. The last couple of months of school, he sat behind his desk reading from whatever book I fed him. Seemed to me the underachiever types would learn more from hearing a story than discussing one they hadn’t read. Some of the kids even listened. After Tortilla Flat, Teddy went to the Jackson library, checked out Cannery Row, and read it on his own time. Nothing like that ever happened in seventh-grade English before.
Because it was the last week of school, the last two days actually since classes ended Tuesday, I’d put Howard Stebbins onto The Artificial Nigger by Flannery O’Connor—might as well hit them with something spiffy at the end. I made him change it to The Artificial Afro-American.
Normally you’d think unwed pregnancy would be one of those deals where everyone talks behind your back, but, to your face, ignorance reigns. Florence Talbot wasn’t normal. Howard Stebbins read about three paragraphs into The Artificial Afro-American when she interrupted.
“Is it immoral to knock someone up in junior high?”
Howard looked up from his book.
Florence went on in her razor-cut voice. “I think people who have illegitimate sex should hide at home in shame.”
Maurey said, “Go fuck yourself, Florence.”
One of the Smith twins gasped, but after that we went into a could-have-heard-a-pin-drop situation. Howard ran his hand over his forehead, wishy-washy written all over his face. He couldn’t very well let a student get away with saying fuck in class, nor could he ignore Florence’s shame crack, but he wasn’t in much of a position for public confrontations. Rock Springs hung over his head like rotten meat.
Howard looked back down at his book and read, “He might have been Vergil summoned in the middle of the night to go to Dante, or better, Raphael, awakened by a blast of God’s light to fly to the side of Tobias.”
Florence’s voice was a screech. “Maurey said a whore word.”
I said, “Shut up, Florence.”
Chuckette sobbed and ran from the room.
“Now look what you did,” LaNell said.
Teddy spit but missed the Maxwell House can and came dangerously close to my sneaker.
Stebbins read, “The only dark spot in the room was Nelson’s pallet, underneath the shadow of the window.”
LaDell stood up. “I better go see about Charlotte.” She faced me. “Her poor heart’s broken, there’s no telling what she might do.”
A girl named Jenny that I hadn’t spoken four words to all year burst into tears.
Stebbins read, “Nelson was hunched over on his side, his knees under his chin and his heels under his bottom.”
“I can’t stay in a room beside white trash,” Florence said. “The stench hurts my stomach.”
Maurey repeated, “Go fuck yourself.”
Florence and LaNell and some more who just wanted to skip class left. The rest of us stared at the floor, listening to Jenny whimper. I wanted to see Maurey’s face, to see if she was unhappy or mad or what. Lydia had been coaching her on this moment all along. Attitudes were worked out weeks in advance, to the point where “Go fuck yourself” might turn into Maurey’s theme for the next three months.
Stebbins read, “His new suit and hat were in the boxes that they had been sent in and these were on the floor at the foot of the pallet where he could get his hands on them as soon as he woke up.”
“Coach,” I said. “Nobody cares.”
Howard Stebbins stopped reading and looked glass-eyed down at the book. There was nothing he could say. The glory should have been his. He could be the one standing up for his principles, announcing to the town, “We copulated and we are not ashamed.” Instead, he was the coward wimp, robbed even of his righteous indignation.
What was left of the class sat there doing a bump-on-a-log routine. Sometimes late at night, I’d wondered what would happen when word spread. Down South, the Klan might visit. In Faulkner or Peyton Place there would have been fires, bodies buried in the garden. But this wasn’t Peyton Place. Besides going into a shun deal or staring—which would give me an itchy butt—there wasn’t much the general townfolk could do. Lydia was a master teacher when it came to ignoring hatred from strangers. Buddy, Dothan, or even Caspar might spoil the gig, but the Golden Rule Class at the Baptist Church couldn’t touch me. Maurey was right—fuck ’em.
When the bell finally rang and everyone stood up to bustle off to their second period, Stebbins said, “Sam, you mind waiting around a minute?”
I looked at Maurey. She smiled and nodded but I wasn’t big on sending her into that hall scene alone.
“I’ll see you in citizenship,” she said.
“You sure?”
“Why not?”
Howard’s desk was all a clutter with about ten new photos of his plucky wife and box-shaped kids—the family bundled up on snow machines, grinning in front of Old Faithful, bathing-suited on a beach. The one of his wife on the beach was unappetizing. She wore a two-piece deal over her paper-doll body, and she smiled so big you could see her gums. If she’d been my wife, and those had been my kids, I’d of screwed Annabel Pierce in a heartbeat.
“So, Coach, what?”
Stebbins rubbed his hands together. “Did she tell on me?”
“Tell on you?”
“Does her father know, about the, you know?”
“Does Buddy know you and his wife shared an abortion?”
He ran his hand over his forehead. I love it when a coach grovels.
“I don’t know if Maurey tattled or not, but I doubt it. She likes her dad.”
“I haven’t spoken to her bitch of a mother since we had our talk. You can tell Maurey that.”
“Knocked her up, got her an abortion, then abandoned the woman, huh?”
He almost looked at me. “Wasn’t that what I was supposed to do?”
“Don’t ask me.”
Mrs. Hinchman must have been the only person in Teton County who didn’t know she had a pregnant girl in the second row. She stood up by the blackboard, fluttering her hands and droning on about the order in which one should read the daily newspaper, as if any of these kids ever saw a daily paper. Front page, editorial page, letters to the editor, classifieds. She made what she took as a joke about how we probably read the sports and comics before the international news. I bet Mrs. Hinchman read the obits first—see who she’d outlived.
Thank God Florence wasn’t in citizenship. As it was, the boys tittered and the girls stared with hostility, which I could cope with. Hostility is okay, the deal I don’t like is when girls burst into tears at the sight of me.
The thing I couldn’t figure was how word had gotten out. Maurey told her father, but I just couldn’t picture Buddy running down the mountain, shouting, “My daughter is pregnant by an out-of-stater.”
I asked Maurey about this at lunch. “How did everyone find out?”
We had a table to ourselves, of course. In fact we had our table and an empty buffer-zone table on either side. I know now how lepers and Negroes feel.
“What?” It was hamburger day—square hamburgers on round buns with crinkle-cut potatoes.
“Maybe someone guessed about you from your belly, but they all know about me too.”
“Now I’ve told Dad it doesn’t matter who else knows. You going to eat your onion?”
I picked up my onion slice and put it on her meat. “Who did you tell?”
Maurey looked up. “Him.”
Dothan Talbot stood over me grinning like he’d found ten dollars on the sidewalk. “Sammy, boy, how’s it shaking?”
“About the same.”
Dothan laughed. What’s funny about about the same? He turned to Maurey. “We still on for Friday night? Town Without Pity is on at the picture show in Jackson.” He play-socked my shoulder. “You guys ought to love that one.”
He was being ironic. Dothan being ironic was almost as weird as Dothan not smashing my face.
He kept going in the big-happy-family vein. “You and Chuckette come too. It’s hot enough to go parking after the movie.”
“I’ll have to ask Chuckette.”
He winked at Maurey. “He’ll have to ask Chuckette. If this guy gets any funnier, they’ll put him on TV.” Dothan walked off whistling “Town Without Pity.”
One lesson I’ve learned about life—you can stay awake all night sweating in the sheets and trying to figure what will happen, and what happens is never, ever, what you expect. So you might as well not worry and get yourself a solid eight hours because sleep is more important than planning.
Sam Callahan answered the phone on the third ring.
A woman’s voice said, “I once taught a chicken to walk backwards.”
“Flannery O’Connor? I can’t believe it. You’re the best writer anywhere.”
“And if I wanted my people to say Afro-American they’d of said Afro-American.”
“It’s impolite to say nigger nowadays.”
“My people are supposed to be impolite.”
“Gee.”
“And marry that little girl. You don’t want a second-generation bastard on your hands.”
Chuckette and her father came over after supper. We’d spent the afternoon at the Pierces’ loading Maurey’s stuff into the Oldsmobile. I don’t know where Annabel and Petey were, maybe there was an understanding, as in they would clear out for three hours while Maurey packed, or maybe it was dumb luck her mom wasn’t around to watch.
Maurey had a lot of stuff too. This wasn’t a one suitcase, one overnight bag, and a stuffed bear runaway deal. She brought a slew of decorative pillows with things like I U stitched on the front. She carted out fifteen pairs of tennis shoes, ski boots, cross-country boots, snow pacs, cowboy boots (both formal and working), Sunday school high heels, hiking boots, penny loafers, thongs, fuzzy slippers with little rabbit’s heads on the toes.
Then came the sweaters. Maurey’s grandmother on the Annabel side liked to knit and had time on her hands.
We crammed all this junk into my bedroom with a lot of it ending up on or under my desk. The writing career was on a definite back burner.
Maurey said, “When the baby comes you’ll move to the couch.”
“Lydia can move to the couch; she likes it there.”
Lydia blew smoke at Pushmi and Pullyu. “Fat chance, Waldo.”
The telephone rang while I was heating up the third frozen pizza of the week. We’d fallen into this pattern of White Deck, Dougie’s cooking, frozen pizza, White Deck, Dougie’s cooking, frozen pizza. I always figured a tall guy wouldn’t have to cook, but Dougie took pride in the stuff with the French names. He didn’t have a heck of a lot else to take pride in, so I guess you go with what you’ve got.
Lydia came in the kitchen where Maurey was reading The Fox by D. H. Lawrence while I puttered with plates and paper towels.
“That was your girlfriend’s father. They’re on their way over.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Shouldn’t go around breaking hearts,” Maurey said.
“I never once said I liked Chuckette, right way or wrong way. How can I be blamed for hurting her?”
“You led her on,” Maurey said.
Lydia opened the oven and let out all the heat. “I’ll wager this is the one father you hadn’t considered.”
Neither woman would go to the door when Chuckette and her dad knocked. They had an attitude of make-your-bed, lie-in-it—which pissed me off no end. Maurey was the one who talked me into sex, Lydia the one with the taco shell, Maurey the one who told me to be with Chuckette, Chuckette the one who thought I loved her because I slipped some tongue. All these women controlling my life, then when a daddy shows up at the door, I’m the loneliest guy in town.
Not that I’d rather hide behind the family skirts.
Chuckette’s father turned out to be no threat anyway. He was this little guy, like five-three, with wire-rim glasses and hair parted flat down the middle.
“Here.” He held out the green scarf.
“She can keep it,” I said.
“There’ll be no gifts from your kind in a Christian household.”
Chuckette stood behind him and to the right with her head down and her shoulders slumped.
“I’m really sorry, Chuckette,” I said. “I didn’t plan for this to happen.”
Her eyes came up to mine in the saddest, most beseeching deal you ever saw. “You loving me was the only good thing that will ever happen in my life.”
“I know.”
“At least I can say I was happy once.”
Her father flinched. “Charlotte, go to the car.”
We both watched as she dragged herself, like a defeated animal, across the yard and into their station wagon. I felt sad for her, but I didn’t know what to do. You can’t marry everybody who bases their happiness on you.
Her father turned back to me. “You think this is funny, don’t you.”
“No, sir, I feel bad.”
“Don’t lie to me. You never for a moment took my daughter seriously.”
Wasn’t much I could say to that one.
His little nose kind of trembled. “Boy, I may not look mean, but I’ve got the power of the Lord and a thirty-thirty with a scope, and I’ll do what it takes to protect my family.”
“I respect that, sir.”
I told Maurey what Chuckette said about me loving her was the only good thing that would ever happen to her, and how I realized that was probably true.
“Oh, bull, Sam. She was going to dump you before church camp this summer anyway. She likes Rodney Cannelioski only she’s afraid he won’t like her because she’s soiled on account of you.”
“That’s a lie.”
“She told half the school today that you’re a bad kisser and she only went steady with you because you’re so unpopular and she felt sorry for you and thought it was her Christian duty.”
“I’m a good kisser.”
Maurey shrugged and bit pizza. “She says you slobber.”
This didn’t make sense. We were ostracized at school, how would Maurey know what Chuckette said to anyone. “Who told you all this?”
“Sam, I’m pregnant, not deaf.”
“But no one spoke to me today.”
“Maybe Chuckette’s right.”
After pizza and Chuckette’s father, Maurey and I sat on the front step to watch the sun set behind the Tetons. Another thing about GroVont that’s different from Greensboro—at one time of year the sun goes down at 9:30, when just a few months ago it disappeared by 4:30. That’s a big difference in day length. It disorients everything.
“Nobody up here has a decent porch,” I said.
Maurey’s hair was in barrettes and her face glowed like Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story, as if the setting sun moved a piece of itself into her skin. She leaned forward on the step. “What’s Soapley up to?”
Otis yip-barked while Soapley bent over the bed of his truck, shoving something back toward the tailgate.
“Even the poorest family in North Carolina has a porch big enough for two chairs and a swing. Nobody here takes the time to sit and watch.”
“Usually too cold,” Maurey said. “Anyhow, you’re talking about a mud room. There’s no call for nostalgia over a mud room.”
“A porch is not a mud room.”
“Is when there’s mud.”
“Does Buddy plan to brand my butt?”
Spires of sunset bent around the peaks and flowed down the canyons. The mountains still had snow, so they came off a soft white, gold, and rose. One thing Wyoming has is nice stuff to look at.
“What makes you think Dad might brand your butt?”
“Dot said he would. She said he’d calf-tie me and sear a red TM in my ass, and if I really pissed him off he’d delouse, dehorn, and castrate me.”
“She was kidding; a person can’t be dehorned.”
Soapley shoved what looked like a fat, limp body off the back of his truck. Otis jumped back and forth across the body, having a fit.
“Bear,” Maurey said.
“Maybe I deserve to be branded. Impregnating girls is immoral and deserves punishment.”
“Soapley killed a bear.”
As we crossed the street, Maurey explained Buddy’s policy on teen sex. “Dad thinks a boy gets laid whenever possible regardless of the consequences. He says the boy will trick his way into a girl’s jeans any way he can and that’s fair, you can’t blame the boy any more than you can blame a coyote for stealing a chicken.”
“That’s a good attitude.”
“Not that he wouldn’t shoot any coyote caught in the act.”
“This is a real bear?”
“It’s the girl’s responsibility not to get laid. She has a choice the boy doesn’t have.”
“What’s it mean?”
“You’re a coyote and I’m a slut.”
“Right between the eyes.” Soapley pointed with his knife, a wicked-looking blade in a new-moon curved shape.
“Where’d you get him?” Maurey asked.
“He was feeding on a dead horse up Cache Creek.”
On his back, the bear looked small and pitiful. He was a reddish brown, darker on his belly, with a black nose and scummed-over eyes. His fur was patchy and one ear torn into two strips. I’d never seen a real bear before; this was somewhat of a disappointment.
I knelt to touch the pad on one of his back feet. “Why was there a dead horse up Cache Creek?”
Soapley stuck the knife into the bear’s tunnel and moved his hand down one leg like the bear had a zipper. “Because I shot a horse up Cache Creek. Why’d you think? Horses don’t just die where you need bear bait.”
“Wasn’t Red, was it?” Maurey asked.
Soapley looked at her and nodded. “He was old, not worth much anymore.”
Soapley proceeded to skin the bear. I don’t know where the guts were, back with old Red, I guess. Under his skin the bear was waxy like a melted candle.
Maurey knelt next to me. “Red sure was a good horse.”
“Best I ever had,” Soapley said.
Otis bit into the good ear, stiffened all three legs, and tried to pull the bear away. When Soapley backhanded his nose, Otis growled as if this was a tug of war for life. Soapley slapped again and Otis let go long enough to bite him. Where bears are concerned, loyalty among horses, dogs, and men doesn’t mean much.
As the sky gradually darkened, Maurey and I stood by the tailgate, watching Soapley work. He did a real efficient job, pausing only now and then to kick Otis off whatever limb he was working on next. Skinned, the bear looked exactly like a hunch-backed boy about my age who’d been dipped in Crisco. The fingers were unnerving—each joint so human you couldn’t tell the difference between my hands and the bear’s. Soapley cut off the head, leaving it one piece with the hide.
He grinned at me. “Liver’s in the truck if you want a taste.”
“Raw?”
Maurey nodded. “Animals get scared and shoot adrenaline into themselves right before they die. It goes to the liver so when you eat it your head buzzes. Indians thought eating raw liver gave them the animal’s spirit.”
“This is way out of my background.”
In bed, Maurey snuggled against my ribs with both hands under her chin and her bear down by Alice at our knees. “I’m glad we’re just friends. I wouldn’t want to be alone tonight.”
All afternoon I’d been working on a question, so now I asked it. “Why was Dothan friendly at lunch?”
Her eyes were on my shoulder where I couldn’t see them, but I could feel the lashes when she blinked. “I screwed with him last night.”
“I knew it.”
“I told him we could keep it up so long as he’s nice to you.”
I sat up. “Dammit, Maurey, I’d lots rather him beat me up than screw you.”
She rolled onto her back with an arm over her head. “I would have pretty soon anyway, I guess. He’s my boyfriend.”
“A person doesn’t screw her boyfriend to protect her best friend. That’s not how it works.” I was all upset. For months I’d imagined them doing it—him on top, her sucking his thing, him licking hers. It about drove me nuts, but now I knew for sure and for some bizarre reason it was my fault.
“Did you have an orgasm?”
She scooted back and sat up next to me. “It was his first time. He squirted quicker than you ever did.” We were quiet awhile, each thinking something, hell, I don’t know what. I’m finally back in bed with my true love, the mother of my child, and she’s been screwing the king-hell creep of North America. His mayonnaise was probably up there right this second, touching my baby.
Maurey seemed to talk to herself. “I like him in the right way and I was looking forward to doing it for the right reason, you know, love, but since I did it for the wrong reason it wasn’t any better than doing it with you.”
Not exactly what I wanted to hear.
“At least with you I got off. With Dothan all I got was muddy.”
This was awful. ‘‘Maurey, don’t ever fuck with someone to protect me.”
She touched my arm above the elbow. “I didn’t do it for you. I did it for me. I’m scared and Dad doesn’t love me anymore.”
She had on her white nightie. I loved her more than I ever had before, I guess because she said she was scared.
She poked her index finger into my stomach. “Look—here’s me. Here’s my father, here’s my boyfriend, and here’s my best friend.” She was on the belly button with me on the left rib, Dothan on the right rib, and her father at the top of my pubic hair.
“I’ve lost Dad and I don’t want to lose either of you. If Dothan hates you, I’d have to choose between you guys and I’d be down to only one. I don’t think I could have this baby with only one connection.”
“Which would you choose?”
“Him, I guess. Except then there’d be nowhere to live. Dothan’s parents are grotesque.”
At least she couldn’t say that about Lydia. “You screwed Dothan so you could live with me?”
“I guess. No. I don’t know, Sam. I wish Dad still loved me, then I wouldn’t need either of you and I could live at home.” On my stomach, she traced the connection between her and Buddy.
“I need you.”
Maurey fell back into a lying-down position. “I know, Sam. That just makes everything even weirder.”
I picked up Maurey’s bear and put it on her chest. “I’m sorry.”
She rubbed the bear’s head against her cheek. “Being a grown-up is too complicated.”