Otis’s wink delighted Delores to no end. She couldn’t get over an ugly, three-legged dog who stared in her eyes and winked.
“Ray used to wink just like that in high school,” she said. “Especially in Mrs. Hinchman’s class, he’d leer at me across the room all hour and when I finally looked at him Ray’d wink just like that dog. I thought it was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen. Only later I found out winking is the closest Ray ever comes to foreplay.”
“You know why women fake orgasms?” Lydia asked.
Soapley went somewhat embarrassed. He wasn’t used to our little gang. We only invited him because it was Maurey’s birthday and no one else we invited over could come on account of their mothers wouldn’t let them. The Callahan house had a reputation for evil.
Soapley’s job was to help me cut wienie sticks out of willow fronds while Hank built the fire. Hank got fire duty because he was an Indian. What he did was spray a half-pint of lighter fluid on some kindling and say, “Blackfoot brave start-um heap big fire,” then he threw in a lit match.
The birthday girl was cross. “I don’t give a hoot why women fake orgasms and I think wienies and marshmallows for breakfast is stupid.” Maurey sat on a pillow on the back stoop, big as a beached whale. We were down to the last week and a half and her sense of humor had failed.
All Maurey’d done for days was piss and moan. “You did this to me, you horny little squirrel. I hope you never poke a girl again. If you ever go on a date the rest of your life, I’ll be there to tell the girl you can’t pull out before you squirt.”
“I bet I could now.”
“I’ll be dead before you get a chance to find out with me.”
“Maurey, we’re partners.”
“Yeah, right.”
Lydia leaned back in her lawn chair and blew Lark smoke in Hank’s direction. “Women fake orgasms because men fake foreplay.”
Nobody laughed—which made me miss Dot. Dot would be rolling on the ground over a joke that bad. She always made a person feel appreciated.
Soapley eyed the perfect point of his wienie stick and said, “What’s foreplay?”
The birthday party–wienie roast had been Hank’s idea after he discovered I’d never cooked over a fire with sticks.
“You never roasted marshmallows?”
“Lydia thinks marshmallows are plebeian. I’ve never even been on a picnic.”
Hank stared at Lydia. She did her shooshing-flies gesture. “Well, beat the crap out of me. I’m a terrible mother.”
Nobody disagreed and a wienie roast was planned for Maurey’s big fourteenth.
The guys cooked meat while the women sat in lawn chairs and told us we were doing it all wrong. Delores shook up a Dr Pepper and held her thumb over the end to spray my face. Hank said a cookout wasn’t American unless that happened. I don’t know, it all seemed ritualistic to me.
“Why do women brag about faking orgasms?” Delores asked.
I was watching Hank’s fingers, how slowly he moved them as he spooned relish and onions on his bun. “I do not understand women,” he said.
Lydia was automatic. “So what else is new.”
“What’s the purpose of faking an orgasm if you tell the man later that you faked an orgasm?”
I looked at Maurey and smiled. She sent a cynical prissy smile back. She’d been talking death and discomfort ever since the funeral, to the point where I was ready to get this baby deal done.
Delores talked with her mouth full of wienie. “Sometimes when I have a real orgasm I tell the guy I faked it so he won’t be so cocky. I hate a cocky guy.”
Delores had gone king-hell ape on the getup—bright red boots, tight pants, and low-cut blouse deal that showed big air between her breasts, even redder scarf around her neck, red dangly earrings, and, to make herself a piece of art, she’d dyed her hair the color of a North Carolina State home-football-game jersey. I mean red. Soapley wouldn’t look at her. Every time she bent down to feed Otis a marshmallow, Soapley stared at the ground between his feet and talked irrigation. “Not enough water behind the dam. I’ll be locking headgates by next week.”
Hank had amazing patience with marshmallows. His came out all golden, same tint as his skin. Mine caught fire. Maurey said she liked them black so I burned seven or eight and took them one at a time to her on the steps. She ate them off the end of my willow stick. Two bites—one for the outer charred stuff and one for the inner gooey stuff. She ate with her eyes closed.
“My baby’s going to be raised on marshmallows,” Maurey said.
Lydia lit a Lucky Strike off the butt of a Kool. Hot dogs and marshmallows were so far beneath her dignity nobody even bothered to ask if she wanted any. “I raised Sam on Dr Pepper.”
Right after we sang “Happy Birthday” I got Delores back for the spray in the face. Lydia hadn’t had time to bake a cake, naturally, so we stuck a hurricane candle on a marshmallow and had Maurey blow it out.
“Make a wish, honey,” Delores said.
“I wish I’d have this baby today,” Maurey said, and blew.
While Delores was bent forward toward the candle, I flipped an old gooey cooked marshmallow off the end of my stick into her cleavage. It stuck for a second before falling into the depths of red.
Delores did a high wail and jumped me like a red tornado. I fell over backward; Otis went into a barking frenzy.
Delores giggle-shouted, “Hank, get him.”
I fought the pair of them, but Delores sitting on my stomach bent over my face was a fantasy come true of sorts anyhow, so I didn’t mind losing. Above my head, Hank knelt with his knees on my shoulders, which pinned my arms, and his hands holding down both ears. I got into some bucking action that basically amounted to a dry hump.
Delores jumped up and down. “Hi, ho, Silver.”
Lydia’s voice was bored. “Watch it, Delores.”
Otis kept barking and Delores kept laughing. “Hold his nose, Hank. I want his mouth open.”
I started to say something rude and she stuffed a marshmallow in my mouth, then another and another. Breathing got difficult until Hank let go of my nose, but by then I couldn’t close my mouth because of the marshmallows so Delores stuffed in a few more. I tried to bite her and she went up on her knees, then slammed down on my chest, which almost blew my face into an exploding pimple joke.
“Ten’s the record,” Delores said. “How many more we got to go?”
Hank’s voice came from above my head. “Four, but we might have to use his ears for the last two.”
“Okay.” Delores was smooshing a marshmallow into my right ear when Otis suddenly stopped barking. Hank’s knees went off my shoulders. Delores kept cramming for a few seconds, then she quit too. I was shaking my head back and forth and laughing and trying to touch Delores’s magic spots, so it took awhile for the silence to sink in.
Time kind of froze up—way too quiet for good-hearted rowdiness. I looked up at Delores’s lipstick-smeared face. She was turned, looking at something on the right. I moved my head and saw white wing-tips.
No one in Wyoming would wear white wing-tips.
“Get up, Samuel,” Caspar said.
Delores moved off me. I looked over at Lydia who had gone pale. Maurey pulled herself to her feet. So did Hank. Everyone was standing except Lydia.
Caspar repeated himself. “Get up, Samuel.”
Same white suit, pencil moustache, ivory-colored hearing aid, yellow mum, and black-lined fingernails; he had the expression of a stern master addressing impertinent darkies. Or God.
I stood, pulling marshmallows out of my mouth. They kept coming like the trick where a magician draws thirty feet of scarf out of his nose.
Caspar held a navy blue jacket and pants on a hanger in his right hand. The jacket had fancy brocade and dark yellow ribbons; the pants had a dark gray stripe on the outside of each leg. Caspar carried a round hat with a bill under his left arm.
“This is your Sunday uniform at Culver Military Academy. As soon as you clean out your ear, you will put it on.”
Lydia said, “Daddy.”
“Shut up, girl. We are going home now. We will place Samuel at Culver, then proceed to Greensboro.”
I swallowed the last marshmallow. “I can’t leave, we’re having a baby.”
Caspar drew up to his full, righteous five-foot-four as he studied Maurey on the steps. Then his gaze swept around at Hank and Delores, Soapley and Otis, finally Lydia and back to me. “You two have done enough here. We are leaving today.”
“No.”
“When you attain the age of eighteen and have a job and money, you can make your own decisions. Not before.”
My eyes met Maurey’s. “Who will take care of my baby?”
“I’m sure the young lady has a mother of her own.”
Maurey spoke. “Mom’s in the nuthouse.”
“Be that as it may, you have made your bed, you must lie in it. I will not have my grandson snared by a spider, which is what you are, young lady. And if you think you will ever see a penny of the Callahan fortune, you are sadly, sadly mistaken.”
Lydia said, “Maurey is not a spider.”
“I told you to be quiet.”
She stood up. “I won’t. You can’t come in here and ruin everything. This is our home now. These people are our family.”
Caspar pointed his finger at Lydia. “A floozy, a Kiowa, and a pregnant little girl—which member of your new family will pay next month’s rent.” He turned on Hank. “Can you afford to keep my daughter in gin?”
Hank said, “Blackfoot.”
“And what does that mean?”
“I am Blackfoot, not Kiowa.”
“I understand you live in a one-room trailer. Do you think she will be happy there carrying your papooses?”
Hank’s hands were fists at his sides. I thought he might hit Caspar and wondered what would happen then. After a minute of tense silence, Lydia said, “Daddy, you are such an asshole.”
Caspar broke the stare-down with Hank and turned back on Lydia. “The day you pay your own way you can live anywhere in any disgusting fashion you see fit. Until that day, you do as I dictate.” His busy eyebrows swung to me. “Go inside and put on your uniform.”
I didn’t move. There was no way I could leave Maurey and the baby now. Even if the baby didn’t exist, Lydia was right, this was our home. We fit in GroVont, I couldn’t go back to annual visits to the carbon paper plant.
Caspar’s eyes almost softened. “Samuel, you have no choice. You cannot fight my will.”
I said, “No.”
“I’m doing this for you, Samuel. You can’t be a father at your age. You can’t even take care of yourself.”
Caspar was right. Lydia and I had built this new life for ourselves. We’d discovered we were capable of mattering in a place, we had friends, but the whole deal was based on a check coming the first of every month. We had no control over ourselves after all.
I folded the uniform over my left arm and held the hat in my right hand. Lydia wouldn’t look at me. Hank still stared at Caspar, Delores smiled weakly and I smiled back. As I passed Maurey on the steps, she said loud enough for everyone to hear, “Tell your grandfather to fuck off, Sam.”
“I can’t.”
I went through the kitchen with its sink full of dirty dishes and into the living room and stood under Les, looking up at his great nostrils. I could hear the toilet running. Lydia had told me over and over that life isn’t supposed to be fair, never to want anything and you’ll never be disappointed, but this was ridiculous. This was a gyp.
Neatly, I set the uniform on the TV and the hat on the uniform, then I walked out the front door. The Tetons were pretty, glistening over there across the valley through air so clear the mountains appeared flat. My one-speed bicycle leaned against the front wall under Lydia’s bedroom window. I wheeled it past her Oldsmobile, Delores’s Chevy, Hank’s truck, and Caspar’s Continental with the North Carolina license plate. Then I hopped on and took off.