“Morning, Mrs. Barton,” Hank said, but she was back asleep.
A nurse with her hair all ratted up and sprayed down like she was in a beauty pageant blocked the new mothers’ door with her hands on her hips and her tits in my face.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
I didn’t say anything on account of I figured she was talking to Hank. Grown-ups don’t ask strange kids questions.
“Maurey Pierce,” Hank said.
“You can see her, but the boy stays.” She pointed to a black-on-yellow sign with eight sides like a Stop sign. No visitors under 16 allowed in maternity ward.
“But I’m the father.”
She looked at me through spider eyebrows. “I don’t care if you’re the Pope.”
Hank raised a hand toward her arm, but he didn’t quite touch her. “Susie, the baby is his. Bend the rules and let him in.”
“I can’t do that, Elkrunner.”
I’d had it. “Listen, lady, I’m being carted off to military school this afternoon. If you don’t let me see Maurey and the baby, I won’t see them for years.”
Her hands came off her hips and crossed her chest.
“Susie,” Hank said.
“He’s not sixteen.”
Enough adult behavior. I wasn’t leaving Wyoming without seeing my daughter. Time to revert to childish. “I’ll howl like a coyote and wake up all the sick people.”
Susie’s red lips split into a sneer. I’d of given anything for a thirty-four-ounce Louisville Slugger.
I closed my eyes and howled—owwww. After a few seconds, Hank joined in, only his was way louder—OWWWW. They must train Indians in that stuff. Behind the nurse, a baby wailed with us, and a door opened.
“What’s this?” Buddy stood there like a bear who hadn’t slept.
Her voice was a whine. “Under-sixteen-year-olds aren’t allowed in the maternity ward, Mr. Pierce. They’re germy.”
Buddy’s black eyes went from Susie to me to Hank. Hank was smiling. Howling in a hospital must have given him a charge.
“Sam is sixteen,” Buddy said.
“And I’m Gina Lollobrigida.”
“Who will you be in trouble with if you let him in?” Behind Buddy, the crying stopped as suddenly as it had started.
“Dr. Petrov will put me on report.”
“Tell Dr. Petrov that I said Sam is sixteen. He knows I would never tell a lie.” I knew what was coming next so certainly I could have said it myself. “We played football together in high school.”
Susie gave up and stalked away. Another crisis averted, I went in the room alone.
Maurey reached for my Coke and drained it. “They shaved me again.”
“I thought that was only for abortions.”
“Doctors must shave every time they poke around down there. I might as well start shaving myself like Mama, save them the trouble.”
Maurey looked awfully chipper, considering yesterday. Her hair was brushed shiny and her eyes glittered blue with interest at the baby stuck to her breast. The surf of love I’d expected last night rolled over me, only more for Maurey than the baby. The baby was still a little abstract.
She held out a Bic pen. “Want to sign my cast?”
Her left leg encased to the thigh hung by the same pulley-and-hook deal the vet used on Otis. Her toes were gray.
“Does it hurt?”
“Itches like king-hell, but doesn’t hurt.”
“You never said king-hell before.”
Maurey smiled, which was neat. “You’re rubbing off on me.”
“Holy moley.” I signed up her leg from Buddy—Yer pal, Sam Callahan.
“Is the baby eating breakfast?”
Maurey parted the hospital gown to give me a better view of the baby’s mouth clamped to her nipple. She looked asleep. “Her name is Shannon.”
“That’s pretty, I never heard it before.”
Shannon’s cheeks sucked in and out and the eye I could see opened, then closed slowly, like a tortoise.
“Can I touch her?”
Maurey looked worried for a second. “Okay, but be gentle. Babies aren’t footballs.”
“They don’t travel as far when you kick ’em.”
Maurey didn’t like my joke a bit. For a moment I thought I’d blown the chance to touch my baby. We hemmed around and I apologized and Maurey asked me when was the last time I’d had a bath, which she knew full well was the warm springs.
“That water was probably full of cooties.”
“You didn’t mind it yesterday.”
“Yesterday I was different.”
Finally, I sat on the end of the bed and touched Shannon on the back of her leg, above the plastic I.D. anklet thing. She was soft as a bubble gum bubble and, I imagined, just as delicate. I had created this. The whole deal was so neat I started hyperventilating and had to stand up.
“I hope she grows up to have my looks and Dad’s brains,” Maurey said.
“How about me?”
“She’ll have your hair.”
Sometimes I feel sorry for Petey. He was the only one who lived with Annabel from the abortion to the nuthouse. That period had to have an effect on the kid.
While we waited for Buddy and Hank to haul Maurey out of the woods Petey told me his mother was dead.
“My mama’s dead.”
“No, she’s not.” I poured their coffee dregs together into the same cup and took a drink.
“And Maurey’s going to be dead too. I’ll get her room.”
It was cowboy coffee and the grounds hadn’t settled all that well. “What makes you think your mother is dead?”
“Cause Daddy said she went away to the hospital. Jason’s dad said his mom went away to the hospital and she was dead. Grown-ups say went away when they mean dead.”
When Me Maw died Lydia found me under the round bed and pulled me out. She sat me in a chair and looked me right in the face and said, “Me Maw is dead. We won’t see her anymore.” None of that gone-to-a-better-place jive.
“You want to go outside and pet the horses?” I asked.
“Ever’ time somebody dies or gets a bortion or fat or anything, I have to go out and pet the horses. I hate horses. I’m tired of petting horses.”
Hank drove me to Jackson Drug where we bought a box of nickel cigars. He said this was part of the process, I had to give a cigar to everyone I met all day. I didn’t know if the deal was Indian or Wyoming or maybe people all over America bought cigars when they had babies. The druggist said, “Congratulations.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Hank and I each lit a cigar for the ride to GroVont. I was really tired from the excitement of Maurey breaking her leg and having a baby, and I hadn’t slept much on the sticky chair, so right off the cigar made me sick. Not so much barf sick, though nausea was a factor, as exhaustion-in-every-internal-organ sick.
Everything was over—I was a father, yea, I’d seen Maurey and touched the little baby, all the stuff I’d looked forward to for months had happened and I felt like I’d missed it.
Nothing was left but a long, long trip clear across the country—with the worst driver I’d ever seen.
Hank puffed and sucked and caused a cloud he could have sent signals with. As I got sicker, he started humming the song from “Bonanza.” Bum-ba-ba-bum ba-ba-bum ba-ba-bum-bum.
“What are you happy about?” I asked. “You’re losing a girlfriend.”
Hank took the cigar from between his lips. “Your mother has the heart of a mountain lion. The will of a buffalo.”
“Lydia?”
“She shall never be daunted by a man.”
“Until the first check doesn’t show up.”
Hank bent forward to look up through the cracked windshield at two hawks wheeling in the west. His foot came off the accelerator and we coasted down the highway while he admired, or studied, or whatever he did. They were kind of pretty.