New Year’s Day I went over to the Pierces’ to watch the Cotton Bowl on their TV. Buddy was home, leaned back in the recliner, sipping on a beer with a plate of Annabel’s snickerdoodles on a tray next to his hand. Maurey and I sat on the couch but she didn’t watch the game. She pulled a cushion up against the arm and sat sideways, reading a book in the old lounging position of bare feet up against my leg.
I felt a little strange, what with her touching me in front of her dad—I’ve never done well with other people’s dads—only he didn’t seem to care. It was hard to tell since his face was mostly hair, beard, and two black eyes like periods at the end of a sentence nobody could read. I wondered if that was an outdoorsman deal they developed to stalk game or if Buddy was the only one with marble eyes. When Hank’s face shut down, it was like a stone slid over his face and he was untouchable, but Buddy’s emotionless look was softer, more like Pushmi and Pullyu over my bed at home.
He talked some about a mule deer that scored a 186 on the Boone and Crockette and a shed roof that caved under the snow, a weasel that had crawled into a generator to get warm and fried itself—not much conversation for the three hours I watched the game. Maurey hung on his every word.
It was Navy against Texas for the national championship. Navy had a king-hell hot-stuff quarterback named Roger Staubach. He zipped passes all over the field, kind of the football equivalent of classical guitar. Magic fingers. Even I could spot style.
Unfortunately, Navy’s defensive line was outweighed about thirty-five pounds a head, and by the middle of the fourth quarter Texas pretty much had a wrap.
Petey spread a ton of Christmas toys around the floor so whenever Annabel brought in another round of food and drink she had to lift her feet and titter. She said, “Go play in your room, Petey,” in a tone of voice that wouldn’t move a rabbit off a road.
One of Petey’s games looked like fun. It was a table soccer deal with knobs you turned to kick the ball at the goalie. I wanted to get on the floor and play it with him, only Maurey would take that as a sign of immaturity.
The book she was reading was Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. She’d given it to me for Christmas.
“It’s about a girl our age coming to terms with her emerging sensuality,” she told me before she borrowed it back. She told Annabel it was by the same author who wrote Peter Pan.
My Christmas present to Maurey was a Pro-Line Frisbee. I found an ad for it in the back of the Sporting News and sent off to a place in Ohio. Could well have been the first Frisbee in northwest Wyoming, which isn’t saying much.
“We had a boy from North Carolina in my company on Iwo Jima,” Buddy said, apropos to diddley. “Had a thick accent the guys made fun of. Lost his leg to a mine. Why don’t you have a thick accent?”
“My grandfather was from New York. I guess you talk more like your family than your neighbors.”
He eyed me over a snickerdoodle. “Kid’s name was Martin Symons. Said his grandmother could heal by faith, she smoothed over scabs with Coca-Cola. Is that something people talk about down there?”
“Not that I’ve heard.”
“I thought Symons’s accent was fake until he stepped on a mine he’d set out only ten minutes earlier. He was screaming, ‘M’laig, m’laig.’”
“Daddy got a Bronze Star,” Maurey said.
“What for?”
Buddy popped the cookie in his mouth and chewed as he talked. “Killing folks. Army put a lot of stock in that talent.”
“Oh.”
“Lot of things they send you to prison for are considered heroic in the right circumstances.”
“Like murder?”
“I’d never let a son of mine join the army.”
Petey rolled on his back and did a “Pow, pow” bit with his thumb and index finger. I decided Buddy Pierce wasn’t such a jerk after all.
Maurey kicked me with her foot. “Let’s go for a walk.”
“But the game’s not over.”
She swung her legs off the couch and bent down on a sock search. “I’m hungry.”
Wrong thing to say about the time Annabel brought in our third tray of homemade junk food. “I made coconut kisses.”
Petey yippied and made a run for the whatever.
Maurey said, “I want a malt. Get up, Sam.”
“Navy might pull it out.” Texas was up 28-6.
“Sam, this book makes me think of other things.” She sent me a heavy-duty meaningful move-it stare and I caught on.
“Yeah, a malt’s just what I need.”
The sky was the same color as the ground and low clouds hid the Tetons so it made GroVont seem like a town in an envelope. I was getting tired of off-white, maybe because winter in Grotina only lasts two and a half or three months and my body knew time should be up.
“Don’t you ever miss dirt?” I asked Maurey as we walked up Alpine.
“Is Lydia home?” Whenever I say something a woman doesn’t understand or want to hear, she doesn’t hear it. It’s not like she ignores me, more like migratory deafness.
“She’s down with a killer hangover. Her and Delores went into Jackson last night and she didn’t come home till dawn. She’d lost her shoes somewhere and about had frostbite.”
“So she’s at your house.”
“Dead asleep when I left. Hank called a couple times. I think she didn’t feel like a wholesome New Year’s Eve so they had a spiff.”
“Maybe she’ll sleep through it.”
I knew what “it” was so I shut up. Ft. Worth drove by in his new Ford pickup truck and waved at us. Then Soapley came by. Otis rode inside now, with his two good front feet up on the dash. I’d taken meat scraps to him several times lately and played with him some in the snow. Whenever Otis saw me he would wag his short tail and jump around, which made me feel bad because he didn’t know what I’d done. Soapley said it was okay. Otis didn’t remember he’d ever had more than three legs.
“Dogs only know how they feel right now,” Soapley had said. “They don’t know nothing about before or after.”
Soapley gave us the Wyoming road wave of four fingers with the thumb under the steering wheel.
“Is the leg still on your desk?” Maurey asked.
“I went to Kimball’s for Lydia’s cigarettes Friday and it was gone when I came home. I guess either her or Hank got rid of it.”
“It looked kind of gross next to the typewriter.”
I shrugged. I hadn’t seen all that much difference between a leg on a desk and a moose head on the wall. “It was starting to smell some.”
Dot drove by on her way to the White Deck. She pulled over and rolled down her window to ask if we wanted a ride. Dot had put on five more pounds since I met her. It was strange that I’d been in GroVont long enough to notice changes. I didn’t really like the idea.
“We’d rather walk, it’s a nice day,” Maurey said, which was a lie. It wasn’t a nice day, it was drab, and I’d rather have ridden.
“Chuckette Morris is having a party next Saturday night,” Maurey said after Dot moved on down the road. “You’re coming to it.”
Maurey had on this dark blue parka thing that made her hair look nice, as if her face was in a frame. It had giant caves for pockets and looked warm. Her parents had given it to her for Christmas.
I asked, “Why?”
Maurey glanced at me and smiled. “Chuckette thinks you have a cute nose. Weird, huh?”
“Chuckette told you this?”
“She asked me if you and I liked each other.”
“What’d you say?”
“I told her that was silly. Don’t look at me that way. She meant ‘like,’ as in the right way, as in boys and girls.”
“You like me but in the wrong way?”