When I didn’t react, Stebbins stopped the beat-around-the-bush. “I want you at practice tomorrow.”
“Gee, I’d like to, sir. But we just moved to town and my mother needs me at home.”
He frowned and continued inspecting each knuckle of each finger, starting at the left and working his way across. “It takes twenty-two players to practice and I’ve only got twenty-one and half of them still suck their mama’s tit at night.”
“I no longer nurse, sir.”
He looked me straight in the eye. “Callahan, I need to explain how I grade in my classes. You know the difference between an A and an F in English?”
Truth is a pain in the butt to face. “Me coming out for football?”
Stebbins slapped me on the shoulder. “See you tomorrow at four.”
Lydia was right. All men are fuckers. As I slumped out the door, the king-jerk broke into a whistle—“Ragtime Cowboy Joe”—then he stopped. “Hey, Callahan.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did Mark Twain really hate Jews?”
I had my heart set on making it home without any more incidents—that’s one thing I hate, the uncontrolled incident, the completely unplanned demand on my coping abilities—but cities are the place to turn invisible. In GroVont, everyone thinks they have a perfect right to horn in on everybody else’s life.
Anyway, I was walking down Alpine, almost to the dirt spot we were supposed to call a yard, when this voice said, “Son, come over here.”
Son? There was an instant of taking the thing literally until I saw the guy who’d called. Looked like Khrushchev in overalls. He stood across the street in front of one of those loaf-shaped Airstream trailers, only instead of shiny silver, this one had been painted toe-jam black using a cheap brush so every stroke showed. Sagebrush grew up through two ’54 GMC three-quarter-ton trucks, the kind with the oval rear windows, and a king-hell ugly dog stood atop the cab of another ’54 GMC three-quarter-ton with an oval window. My guess was the two dead trucks provided parts transplants for the runner. Fairly easy enough guess to make.
“Son,” the guy said again. “Come here. See this.” He didn’t have a shirt on under the overalls so you could see all this wired-out body hair, and he had on huge black rubber boots that came up to his knees. The truck had a plastic stick-on sign that read County Water Warden.
“What’s a water warden?” I asked.
The man spit. “Don’t talk down to me, son. My granddad homesteaded this valley, and if it wasn’t for him you wouldn’t be living here so free and easy.”
“Oh.” I didn’t follow the line at all, but when people don’t make sense I’ve found it better to grunt and not make any eye contact.
“Don’t tell me there’s no water wardens where you come from.”
I looked at the dog. He had black-and-white spots and was shaped like a banana—had a little bitty stub tail. “Does he always ride on top the cab?” I asked.
“Otis likes the wind.”
“Otis?”
“He’s Otis, I’m Soapley.” Soapley was one of those men who have a three-day growth of beard every day.
“Sam Callahan,” I said. “Pleased to meet you. How does he ride up there without falling off?”
“Water warden opens the headgates. Makes sure ranches get what they’re supposed to and no more. Comes a drought, I run the county.”
“Oh.”
“In winter I plow the road. I’m important then too. I can say who gets out and who don’t.”
“I don’t think we have headgates or road plows in Greensboro.”
“Don’t talk down to me. I won’t be talked down to.” Soapley shifted his weight from one foot to the other—had a stance like he was in the on-deck circle, waiting for his turn at bat. Back and forth, his thumbs kind of twitching.
“I’m not talking down, I just wonder how he stands on the cab while you’re driving without falling off.”
“Otis.”
“That’s your dog’s name.”
“Otis’s smart, smarter than you. That’s why I invited you over.”
“You invited me over?”
“Look at his face and pretend you’re a pretty girl.”
I looked at his bullet-shaped head. He had a good resemblance to Soapley, especially the forehead part. “I can’t pretend I’m a pretty girl.”
“Just do it for God’s sake.”
So I pretended I was Maurey Pierce for a minute, which is a good exercise for a short-story writer.
“Hi, I’m Maurey Pierce.”
“The hell you are.”
I pretended I hated Sam Callahan and sat down to pee.
The ugly dog’s right eye closed and opened.
“He winked at me.”
Soapley hit it big with pride. “Smartest dog in Teton County.”
“Oh.”
Back in my own cabin, I found Mom on the couch. “Lydia, this dog across the street rides on top the truck cab and winks.”
She stared at me across her long fingers, through the blue haze of cigarette smoke. “You expect me to show an interest in this?”
“Not especially.”
“Then don’t muddle the air with details. I don’t want any details whatsoever about goings on in this state.”
As neither one of us still knew how to light the stove, Lydia and I ate in the White Deck Cafe that night. Lydia never was much for cooking anyway.
For food, there was the White Deck Cafe between a barbershop and an art gallery on the town triangle—as opposed to other towns that have a square—and the Tastee Freeze out on the highway by the Forest Service headquarters; except on Sunday nights when the VFW had all the wienies and beans you can eat for a buck.
Anyone celebrating an anniversary or whatever would drive the twenty miles into Jackson where the restaurants had soupspoons and the cash register wasn’t a Dutch Masters box.
The only reason for going to the White Deck was to eat.
After we slid into the booth I started flipping the jukebox wheel while Lydia cleaned silverware with the hem of her shirt. For being a total slob at home, Lydia had remarkably high standards for cleanliness in others.
The waitress called, “Keep your pants zipped, Jack, I’ll be there when I get there,” as she swept by with three dinner plates on her left arm and one in her right hand. She was in her early thirties, maybe ten pounds overweight, and on the back of her belt in white, square letters, I read the word dot.
“Her name is Dot,” I said to Lydia.
Lydia looked at her teeth reflected in the butter knife. “What kind of woman would name a child Dot. I’d rather be blind than saddled with a name like Dot.”
Dot brought the plastic-wrapped menus and two waters all in one hand. “Max told me you’re the folks in Doc Wardell’s place. The guys paid me a dollar each to find out if you’re single.”
There were four other booths of customers, four men each in three of the booths, all with their sleeves rolled up, and two ancient geezers looking dead in the corner. Lydia was the only woman, besides Dot, and I was the only kid. No one used the tables or the stools along the counter.
Lydia inspected the water glasses for spots. “Who’s Max?”
“He owns the place. Max said Doc Wardell rented his house to your father or grandfather or somebody—”
“Tell them I have five husbands,” Lydia said, loud enough for the men to hear for themselves. “Every one of them rich, mean, and jealous. I’ll be rotating them through on a weekly basis.”
Dot broke up. I love people who laugh so hard they break up. I’ve never broken up in my life. She went on for a good minute while the men shifted in their booths, suddenly developing a need for salt or mustard, anything to keep their hands moving. One skinny fart with a king-hell Adam’s apple stared right at Lydia, like she was in a zoo. I took him for a preacher.