Skipped Parts: A Heartbreaking, Wild, and Raunchy Comedy by Tim Sandlin Read Free Book Online Page A

stranger paused to light a Cuban cigar. “Want to come along?”
    Dot looked around to see to whom the stranger was speaking. “You want me to run away to Paris-France?”
    “Your considerable beauty and charm are wasted in this king-hell hole. I want to uncover your light and let it shine on the world.”
    “But I’m overweight.”
    The stranger studied Dot from her white sneakers to her teased hair. “I like ’em with meat.”
    As Dot took off her apron and threw her order book in the trashy she asked, “What’s your line, mister?”
    “I’m God’s gift to waitresses.”
    “And what’s your name?”
    “Callahan, ma’am. Sam Callahan.”
    I actually dragged Lydia to a football game. We were playing Victor, Idaho, and I started at split end—even caught a pass, a first for me and the team.
    The rodeo grounds east of town had bleachers, but the football field didn’t—says something about local priorities. The football field was a flat spot on the valley floor cleared of sagebrush and marked off with lime. Probably the only playing field in America completely surrounded by national park. Spectators backed their trucks up to the sidelines and sat on tailgates, a few even had strap-back lawn chairs. Almost everyone had access to a cooler.
    Maurey Pierce was one of the cheerleaders. They wore these really short, considering the temperature, pleated white skirts and red turtleneck sweaters with gv over what would have been the right breast if any of them had had breasts. I took the color scheme as a joke because our football uniforms were tan and brown, like the hills behind the school. We were in camouflage.
    As the team ran onto the field, the cheerleaders jumped up and bent their knees and yelled “Go, Badgers,” our nickname, and threw their pom-poms in the air. Maurey’s pom-pom landed right in front of me and I stepped on it on purpose,
    At the bench, as the guys milled around, hitting each other in the shoulder pads and growling, I checked back to see Maurey standing there with a muddy pom-pom in her right hand and a godawful look on her face. Ugly, mean. I guess nobody’d ever stepped on anything of hers before. Her legs were pretty, but the knees stuck in a little.
    Lydia parked Caspar’s ’62 Olds on the south 10-yard marker, way off from everyone else, and kept the engine running and the heater on. I knew that was a mistake, but I was so psyched about my mom being out in front of the whole town, I forgot. You see, this big cottonwood tree stood off that end zone, the only decent-sized tree anywhere near school.
    Toward the end of the first quarter, a steady stream of men and boys started drifting up to the cottonwood, then back past the Olds and onto their trucks, lawn chairs, and coolers. Practically every guy waved to Lydia, coming and going.
    I caught my pass on the last play of the first half. We were behind, 24-zip with nothing to lose, so Stebbins called for the Hail Mary bomb. Jimmy Crandall, the quarterback, figured out what he meant and showed the rest of us with a stick in the dirt.
    The play involves both receivers and all three running backs splitting off to the right side of the line and when Jimmy goes “Yup, yup,” we take off hell-bent for downfield, he throws the ball as far as he can, and we see what happens from there.
    Jimmy “yupped” and everybody took off but me. I’d watched the Crandall kid throw in practice. Had an arm like a broomstick. So our receivers and all their defenders charge off forty yards downfield and Jimmy launches this wounded duck that wobbles about twelve yards to where I’m waiting—hits me in both hands and the chest, I hang on, the crowd goes wild. About ten potato heads jumped on me, but I didn’t fumble and we got our first first down of the half, what would prove to be the only first down of the game.
    Ft. Worth and a bunch of those White Deck hoodlums leapt in their trucks and honked horns. Maybe it was sarcasm, hell, I don’t know. But I