5.

When I met Sam Callahan back when we were both thirteen and starting seventh grade, he confessed this dream of someday being a deep and sensitive novelist who commanded women's love and men's respect. All through junior high and high school he scribbled in three-subject notebooks, filling them with scads of poems and short stories. Most of the stories mixed baseball and romance, with a few sliding over into science fiction.

Sam soon learned deep and sensitive is another way of saying lonesome, and the closest he'd come so far to commanding women's love and men's respect through writing was his job as sports and entertainment intern at the Greensboro Record in Greensboro, North Carolina.

My favorite story he wrote back in high school was the one in which Death turned into a cute little mouse named Bob. Bob wore green shorts and a red football jersey, and he skittered across people while they slept, which killed them so he could collect their souls. Sam said the human soul looks and tastes like Swiss cheese.

Dying from being touched by a mouse became known as getting Bobbed. People were so scared of getting Bobbed that they took to sleeping under loads of blankets with their head covered so no skin showed. Outside of bed they wore layers and layers of polyester mouse-proof clothing and hoods and masks and gloves up to here so no one ever saw anyone, which made them even more scared because they thought Bob might be among them in disguise. A carpenter invented a sealed wooden box that guaranteed nothing and no one could ever touch the person inside. So each and every person in the world crammed themselves into individual boxes and pulled the top shut so they could never be touched by Bob.

One hundred years later s.p.a.cemen from the planet Asthmador landed on Earth. The aliens hopped on the radio and called their wisest elders back home to ask them this question: Since every single Earthling was dead in a coffin, who put them there?

The elders shrugged their mandibles and said, "Beats me."

After I read the story Sam said, "It's an allegory."

"How did the Earth people know being scampered over by Bob would kill them if everyone Bob scampered over was dead and couldn't talk?"

Sam went all sulky, said I didn't understand literature and he wasn't showing me any more stories. He was lying.

Mom is scared to death of death, but Dad took it with the att.i.tude of a cowboy-if you can't understand something, turn it into a joke. Once at a Pierce family reunion up at Granite Hot Springs my born-again uncle from Dubois laid into Dad about his personal savior. My cousin Stella Jean and I were weaving lupines into a hula skirt when Dad's brother Scott stuck his face right up next to Dad and challenged him to accept Christ in his heart.

"Don't you believe in anything?" Scott asked.

"I believe I'll eat another hot dog."

Scott's face and neck filled up with blood. "Where do you think you'll go when you die, Buddy?"

Dad slid a willow stick lengthwise through a wienie. "San Francisco."

The Two Ocean Lake underwater record was four minutes, fourteen seconds, held by Kim Schmidt's cousin from Nebraska. I dived off the pier and kicked twice, found the bottom, then the root. Counting by Mississippis, I wrapped my right arm under the slick wood and held on with my left. Thirty-two Mississippi, thirty-three Mississippi, thirty-four Mississippi...At sixty Mississippi I started over. The water felt cold yet caressing, and in my mind I saw trout and weeds waving by, ignoring me. On the second sixty Mississippi my chest tightened to the point I had to release a few bubbles. The yellow came again. As a child running in circles till I fell, as a little girl bucked off her horse, now as a teenager breaking the Two Ocean Lake underwater record, yellow always preceded black. I exhaled more bubbles, but that didn't help the chest pain. I opened my eyes-no trout, no weeds, only water and the vague form of the downed aspen on the bottom. Lungs really hurt, I'd stopped counting but couldn't recall when. My fingers lost the root. I clawed the bottom, flailing arms and legs pushing me down as the water carried me up. Lungs screamed, panic choked my chest, I fought to stay underwater. My face broke through with a sob intake of air.

"Look who's alive."

"I wouldn't call that live yet."

No forgiving hangover blankness here, I knew the facts in a heartbeat-Everclear, the Flintstones cup, Marilyn Monroe. It took a second to come up with why, then I saw my baby on the roof.

s.h.i.t. I'd failed.

I even knew exactly where I was. Although I hadn't slept here in years, I knew Sam Callahan's bed without opening my eyes.

A male voice said, "I've got pipe to fix."

"You spend more time on her plumbing than mine." Her would be me.

"She pays and you don't."

I slit my eyes open a crack and saw Hank Elkrunner and Lydia Callahan kissing each other good-bye over by the door. Her hand crept up his back into his long Blackfoot hair. His hand slid to the base of her spine.

"Be home tonight," Lydia ordered.

Hank gave her a love spank. "Doubt it. Lauren Bacall is set to pop."

I closed my eyes. Watching other people's affection makes me sad. After he left, Lydia lit a cigarette, then came to the bed and touched my forehead. "Hank says you're alive," she said.

"He's too good for you."

Lydia's hand twitched, like it would when you think you're talking to a person in a coma and the person talks back. "Hank's the best."

"You don't deserve him."

"Yes, I do."

Lydia'd been a mess when she met Hank Elkrunner. Now she had that reformed-drunk-someone-good-loves-me smugness that turns me catty. h.e.l.l, I could stop drinking if someone good loved me.

Lydia sat in an easy chair next to the bed and opened a newspaper. Her drug of choice had gone from gin to current events. "How's your head?"

"There's a spike driven through my third eye."

"I shouldn't wonder. Did you kill the whole fifth?"

I didn't answer. My head hurt, my nose hurt, my crotch hurt, all the muscles in my back hurt-my advice is never botch a suicide.

The paper rustled as Lydia turned a page. "This guy John Ehrlichman is frightening. He reminds me of your husband. The others are all lying snakes, but Ehrlichman's a lying barracuda."

I had no idea what she was talking about. "Where's Auburn?"

"He's home. Delilah Talbot moved in to take care of him."

That brought up a dozen questions, none of which I had the energy to ask. Lydia talked as she read the paper.

"Doc Petrov pumped your stomach, but he said it was too late to do much good. You went into respiratory arrest, then your kidneys kind of crumpled and they stuck in a catheter. You should have seen yourself, Maurey. So many tubes running in and out you looked like a chemistry experiment."

"How long?"

"Two days here and three in intensive care. When Hank brought you off the mountain you were choking on vomit and all that blood was gushing out your nose, I thought we'd lost you."

"Yeah, right."

Auburn and I are on top of Teton Pa.s.s in the early spring and I park the Bronco to watch a fantastically lit sunrise. Beams bend around Jackson Peak, snow on the Sleeping Indian glows with a fire of its own. I step out with my bottle to be closer to the beauty and breathe a prayer of thanks, but I forget to set the emergency brake and the Bronco, with Auburn in his car seat, rolls down the pa.s.s. I run-run harder and harder, reach for the back b.u.mper, but the Bronco is inches beyond my fingertips. Auburn laughs, trusting me. I dive and catch the trailer hitch but still cannot stop the rolling as the car's momentum drags me down the highway. At the cliff the front wheels go over, wrenching the hitch from my hands, and I'm left flat with my head over the edge to watch the car flip front over back, over and over down the mountain. Auburn's cries fill the canyon until the final crash. Then, I'm swept by silence. Once again yellow globs rush me, turning black.

When I met Lydia she used to drink a pint of Gilbey's gin at ten-thirty every night. She and Sam would sit through the sports and weather-Lydia didn't give a hoot about news in those days-then Sam would fetch her bottle and a two-ounce shot gla.s.s with an etching of the Lincoln Memorial on the side. Lydia filled and threw down eight shots-bang, bang-one right after another before bed.

She never offered me any gin, so I can't claim she led me astray, although whenever us kids got way-rowdy or wound up she'd give us each a yellow Valium. I kind of liked those. They made everything fuzzy as the line between me and the rest of the world became less distinct.

When Shannon was teething Lydia showed us how to dip the pacifier in whiskey and honey. Shannon will probably grow up with the idea that pain is relieved by alcohol and sugar. It's not.

My own mom lives in a drugstore wonderland now, but as a kid the only thing I saw her drink was eggnog on Christmas Eve. The woman had a remarkably low tolerance-one cup and she's giggling like a ten-year-old and dancing the rumba to "Jingle Bell Rock."

Every year she and Petey would sing "We three kings of Orient are, smoking on a rubber cigar, we got loaded, it exploded-BOOM."

Dad drank beer at rodeos and football games. Since he died, I've been told in his younger days he could hook back the bourbon, but I never saw it.

The thing is, alcohol had become a factor in my behavior. It snuck up on me. I loved Yukon Jack in a way I wouldn't care to love a man, but I hadn't planned on needing him. I didn't ask for marriage.

The weekend pa.s.sed in two slots-bad dreams and awake. Awake was a bad dream come true, so I preferred the other kind. Twice a day Lydia and Hank helped me into the bathroom, where I sat amid threats of another catheter if I didn't go.

"You've peed on your last sheet," Lydia said. "I'm tired of wiping up your social blunders."

Hank nodded in solemn agreement.

Social blunder is a term Lydia uses a lot. She'll be at someone's house and burn a hole in the rug with her cigarette or break an antique doodad, and she'll put one hand over her mouth and say, "Oh, my, I've committed a social blunder."

Hostesses doubt her sincerity, but I think she is sincere, she just can't deal with honest embarra.s.sment. "Social blunder" is better than what she used to say, which was "f.u.c.k me silly."

During one of the awake periods Lydia asked me if I'd meant to harm myself or if the rooftop episode had simply shoved me off the deep end, alcohol-wise.

"Didn't you read the note?"

"We thought of that and looked, but the only paper Hank found was a speeding ticket on the seat that Auburn'd colored on. Anything you wrote must have blown away."

I awoke soaked in sweat after a nasty dream, in which a bald eagle swooped down to pluck Auburn off a picnic blanket, and found Lydia smoking in her usual chair at the end of the bed, glaring at the TV. She must have sat there most of the week.

She said, "Dirty d.i.c.k Nixon is a boil on the b.u.t.t of a sumo wrestler."

"Why watch if it upsets you?" I asked.

"Because if I relax for a moment, America will flush her freedom down the toilet. You've got mail."

Lydia flicked her cigarette at her jeans' leg and rubbed the ashes into the denim. She didn't believe in ashtrays. When she was done she'd balance the b.u.t.t on its end so every table in the house was covered by little filter columns. Once a week or so Hank went around scooping the mess into a paper bag.

One letter was from Sam in North Carolina and one from Dothan across town. My name on Dothan's envelope was typed, evidently by his secretary Lurlene, since Dothan can't type, which I took as a bad sign.

Sam's letter was written in red ink.

Hey Maurey, Alicia has a problem with foreplay. I met her covering an Up With People concert at Page High. This small woman with Judy Collins eyes and a tight sweater took my hand and led me to a crawl s.p.a.ce under the stage. I could see the audience, from the knees down anyway, tapping their feet as seventy-five kids above us proclaimed their wholesomeness and Alicia tore off my pants.

Later at Sambo's she ate like it was Thanksgiving and told me she equates danger with s.e.xual tension. Since then she's turned tigress on a ferris wheel, in a public toilet at a baseball game, in a booth at Dairy Queen, and on a coffin in an open grave at the cemetery. In bed, she's frigid.

Maurey, I don't know if I want a long-term relationship with this woman. She might be a poor role model for Shannon.

You should see our beautiful daughter grow. She gets prettier and more like you every day. Which scares the pants off me. I caught a 14-year-old boy talking to her at the shopping center yesterday. I was her father when I was fourteen, I know what those little monsters think.

Shannon gave a report on Wyoming the last day of school before vacation. Took my antelope heads into Mrs. Fenster's homeroom and told the cla.s.s they were wild Yellowstone ibex. Even the teacher believed her. Where does she get this tendency to put people on? Surely not from my side of the family. We went to dinner at Tarheels and Shannon refused to eat off the kids' menu. She told Alicia and the waitress she was thirteen and I was lying about her age because I'm cheap. Alicia stuck her hand between my napkin and my lap and we had a fight later. I said perversion is big fun, only not with my daughter in sight, and Alicia called me a hypocrite. The woman who f.u.c.ked under Up With People called me a hypocrite.

I'm ready to change girlfriends. Here's a repercussion of our actions I hadn't planned on, Maurey: Women go ape over single men with young daughters. Shannon's a better line than a big dog.

She put your picture in Grandma Callahan's silver locket and won't take it off even to sleep. I asked her what she wants to do for the summer and she said go to Wyoming. Fat chance with me on the stock car beat. We might slip out there for a week in August, but in the meantime I've signed her up for swimming lessons at the club and hired a black woman named Gus to stick around weekday afternoons and fix supper.

My expenses keeping this house almost exactly double what I make at the paper. Selling Grandpa's carbon paper plant and putting the money in golf carts was a smart move as the bottom is dropping out of carbon paper. I guess Caspar knew what he was up to when he left everything to me instead of Mom.

Say hey to her, kiss Auburn for me, and tell your husband to screw himself with a stick.

Your friend, Sam P.S. Here's my newest story. Don't tell me what you think.

The next page started with "Kiss Your Elbow Enterprises" by Sam Callahan.

I showed Lydia the letter. "I hate it when he calls me Mom," she said. "He only does that to p.i.s.s me off."

"Shannon loves me. It's a good thing she can't see me," I said.

Lydia blew smoke at Henry Kissinger on the TV. "I spent most of my life jiving Dad to get money, and now I have to jive my son. There is no justice."

The letter from Dothan was a four-page official doc.u.ment deal with "Wyoming Family Violence Protection Act, Form No. 1" typed in the upper right corner.

I said, "Wyoming Family Violence Protection Act?" and looked over at Lydia. She was watching TV so intently I could tell she was really watching me.

The form had Dothan and Auburn listed as plaintiff and me as defendant. On page two Lurlene had typed the story about me getting drunk and driving down the highway with Auburn on top of the Bronco. Page three was an A through H list of possible things the plaintiffs could ask the court to do to the defendant. Dothan had X'ed A, B, C, D, F, and G.

Out of curiosity I read the ones I didn't have to do first-E) provide suitable alternative housing, and H) pay injunctive relief, which I took as child support.

Although it was all lawyer words, the things I had to do for the next ninety days boiled down to A) have no contact with Dothan or Auburn, B) give Dothan the house, C) get out of the house, D) stay out of the house, F) not kidnap my son, and G) not touch any joint checking or saving accounts.

The fourth page was all legal giz with words like Es Parte Temporary Order of Protection and more plaintiff-defendant stuff. A judge in Jackson signed and Lurlene notarized it herself. Under the notary stamp Dothan had written, "Send Lurlene your new address so we'll have a place to serve the divorce papers. If you try to see Auburn I'll have you in jail. There's no booze in jail." He didn't sign his name.

Lydia's eyes had a skittish look. "You knew about this," I said.

She breathed smoke out her nose to buy time. "I heard rumors."

"How'd you hear rumors? You haven't left the room since I woke up."

"Hank heard rumors." She lit a new cigarette off the old one, then set the b.u.t.t on its end on the floor. "And the George brothers delivered your stuff last night."

My mouth didn't feel wet enough to talk. "Stuff?"