"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 shimmering 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 shiny 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-fishing. "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 shifted 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."

Funny I hadn't noticed that before.

28.

Masturbation is more a symptom of depression than a function of horniness. I'd suspected this through the drab years of college and confirmed it three weeks after Dad's funeral when I found myself masturbating constantly without even the semblance of a fantasy.

Paul Harvey-Yukon Jack-masturbation-sleep. Take care of Auburn through the evening, then network sitcom-Yukon Jack-masturbation-sleep. After many years of reading several hours a day, the habit came to a halt. I told myself it was because reading took hands I needed for c.l.i.toral manipulation, but I think now it was because reading took effort.

Little on Earth is as depressing as the mechanical o.r.g.a.s.m. G.o.d knows I tried developing fantasies. I pretended Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood had tongues of fire, but the emotional energy needed to respond even to an imaginary man was more than I could handle. Sam Callahan was like kissing my brother, Park made me too sad on top of the depression, and Paul Harvey gave me the w.i.l.l.i.e.s, like sitting on the d.i.c.k of a dead man. I settled for an actor whose name I didn't know who played Meathead on All in the Family.

After a couple weeks of Meathead I gave up and went back to nothing, to fingers without feelings going round and round until release and relief. Alcohol plus masturbation plus too much sleep equals depression. Einstein said that.

What brings the subject up is Malvern, Arkansas. Let's all recall that I was accustomed to daily, at the least, self-service and had been dry for two weeks come Sunday. Mother's Day, when I should have been discussing the moistness of pound cake in Mom's parlor, I climbed into the bathtub for one of those rushing water jobs that make you feel half acrobat, half drowned.

The sign read Malvern, Arkansas-brick capital of the world. I eased past the Oachita Oil Company gas station, right out of Bonnie and Clyde, and into a shady city park. You got your weedy creek, swing set with attached slide, permanently embedded croquet court, statue of a Confederate soldier waving a sword atop a horse with a ma.s.sive barrel and no s.e.xual ident.i.ty, and a tire swing hanging from what Shane said was a sycamore.

Lloyd unloaded three cases of Coors and brought them to the picnic table, where all the gang but Shane had gathered. Shane stayed in Moby d.i.c.k on plumbing patrol. Since we'd lost Critter he'd gone back to changing himself solo. The thing bothering me was the upshot of having less than two dollars in my pocket and nothing in my creel.

"You plan on making me jump through ugly hoops every time I want a bottle?" I asked.

Lloyd looked at me for a moment. Our conversations were being reduced to questions followed by silence as the responder worked out what was really said.

"No."

"Thanks."

Shane's head bobbed out of Moby d.i.c.k's side door. "If she gets whiskey, I get Chips Ahoy!"

The three cases fit perfectly between Lloyd's outstretched hands and his chin. When he moved his head, the Coors moved with him. "Anybody else want anything?"

"I either need a Laundromat or disposables," Marcella said.

Owsley looked up from his pad. "I'd like a Coca-Cola if it's okay."

Andrew hung upside down in the tire swing with his head firmly in the dirt. "If the girl gets a c.o.ke, I want one."

"I'm no girl."

"Of course you're a girl."

"Owsley's a boy just like you," Marcella said.

Andrew fell out of the swing, picked himself up, and came over to inspect Owsley. "Girls have hair, that's why they're girls."

Owsley said, "You must have been raised in a barn."

"Don't make fun of my children. In Dumas boys have short hair, how's he to know different?"

"Well, explain to him about the p.e.n.i.s. It's the wienie makes the boy, Andy, not the hair."

"Don't call me Andy, Owsley."

"Don't call me Owsley."

The discussion scattered into several people speaking simultaneously about what to call them and what not to call the p.e.n.i.s. Lloyd took his load to the gas station to play Let's Make a Deal. It was one of those stations you can look at and know right off they have pink Peanut Platters and soda pops you've never heard of sunk in a metal box full of water. He would be trading with cousins named Gomer and Goober.

I could hear Shane singing "Secret Agent Man" to himself as he cleaned up his thing.

"Don't touch my hair," Owsley shouted at Andrew, who started crying, which made Hugo Jr. cry, which got Marcella all fussy.

I sat on the picnic bench next to Owsley. "You have beautiful hair. I'd give anything for hair like yours."

"You can have it."

He was drawing a large frog sitting in a wheelchair. The resemblance was amazing. I'd never much gone for boys with long hair, except Indians, but Owsley's was special-texture of a Blackfoot and blond as a Swedish fashion model.

"I used to have long, beautiful hair like yours, only mine was brown. After Dad died I went crazy and cut it off. Now everyone treats me different."

Owsley didn't look up. "Kids at school spit in my hair and rub mud on it. Girls touch it."

"h.e.l.l, if it's such a pain in the a.s.s, get rid of it."

I don't think the concept had ever occurred to him. He concentrated on shading the frog's belly, but you could see his young brain trying out the idea. Marcella took her whimpering brood to the creek, where Andrew immediately fell in.

"Freedom won't let me cut it. When he was in prison he told my foster parents he would kill them if they touched my head." His eyes did the unfocused review-of-life-in-a-foster-home. I'd seen the look before. Owsley's voice was kicked-puppy. "They didn't care. They just took me in for the state allowance."

I reached toward his head. "May I touch it?"

He looked at me. "Do you have to, Mrs. Talbot?"

"I'd like to." I slipped my hand behind his ear and ran my fingers all the way to where the last couple of inches rested on the picnic bench. It was like bathing in a waterfall.

I said, "Freedom's gone now, I say if something makes you miserable, ditch it, no matter how beautiful it may be."

Andrew threw a rock that almost hit Hugo Jr. Marcella and both kids went into high frenzy. Shane muttered to himself, "Take that, dirty d.i.c.k. Now I've got you." A backhoe lumbered by on the highway.

Owsley said, "Cut it."