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.
28
Wild strawberries grew in the shade by the creek, and fireweed blossomed purple on the hill. Juncos flitted through the willows next to the warm spring. I knew the names of things—some things anyway, the stuff Maurey had told me about. I liked knowing what I was looking at. A year ago I wouldn’t have seen the juncos, much less known what to call them.
I leaned back with my ears under the warm water and listened to the gurgle of air bubbles entering the spring from the bottom mud. Air coming right out of the earth—it made an odd picture.
The trouble was, I wasn’t emotionally old enough to deal with being ripped from my dreams. Maybe it was a breakthrough that I knew I wasn’t emotionally old enough. Other people who are immature are so immature they don’t know it. Lydia was emotionally younger than I was, but she’d been ripped so often by life, she’d probably accept losing me. Maybe that’s all maturity is—being ripped so often you don’t care anymore. Caspar was the emotionally oldest person I knew; I wondered how he dealt with losing Me Maw. Maybe jacking around surviving loved ones is a way of dealing.
I’d come up the hill to think, but thinking wasn’t happening. The hot water was more soothing than plan-inspiring, but I guess I needed soothing more than I needed a plan. What I needed most was to be held by someone who loved me and told everything would be all right. Hot water is a weak substitute for love.
Maurey wasn’t in love with me, not in the right way. If she loved me, we could fight Caspar. We could flee into the mountains and live like a Disney movie. We could go Romeo and Juliet and die.
I closed my eyes and felt the sunshine on my face. Life was so pleasant at individual moments. Why couldn’t people cooperate with each other and give me what I wanted?
First choice: Marry Maurey. Second choice: Stay in GroVont with Lydia and raise the baby with Maurey close by. Last resort: Take Maurey and the baby to North Carolina. Culver Military Academy was completely off the list. And leaving the valley before the baby was born was past unthinkable. If Maurey wouldn’t flee with me I’d flee by myself, at least until I attained parenthood. I could live on berries.
When I sat up, water rolled off my hair and down my armpits. Two ravens flapped by, heading west. In Greensboro, I didn’t even know where west was. I liked it here, dammit. I’d never liked it anywhere else. I loved Maurey, I loved the baby, most of all I loved Lydia, and Culver meant losing her too. Who would take care of her? Who would fetch her 10:30 bottle?
Maurey wobbled across the log with her arms out.
“You’re going to fall and break your butt,” I said.