Sam McCain - 05 - Everybody's Somebody's Fool Read Online Free Page B

out here in the country dancing on a piece of cloth; and the baseball park where the Little Leaguers dreamed of big league glory, not understanding that the cost of such glory would be their innocence.
    We got Koma on the radio, best
    rock-and-roll station in the country, pure rock all the way across the land from Oklahoma City, the favorite of small-town Midwestern kids and adult-kids everywhere.
    I decided to talk. “I’ll be your lawyer.”
    She didn’t respond at first. Her eyes behind her glasses looked far, far away. She was pulled up on the seat with her fine legs beneath her and her hair caught in the wind.
    “Will I need one?”
    “Probably. Cliffie’ll pester the hell out of you.”
    “He can’t make me say anything I don’t want to say.”
    “He can try.”
    “He’s such an idiot.”
    “You can be an idiot when your old man runs the town,” I said.
    “That’s why I like Iowa City so much better.
    You have a lot more privacy. And they wouldn’t put up with Cliffie for thirty seconds. And it’s a lot more sophisticated. I see a lot of foreign movies there. I never thought I could get used to the subtitles but I have.”
    I sensed she was going to tell me whatever she’d hinted at back on the patio. But she was going to work up to it.
    She said, “You know he left me.”
    “I heard that, yes. I’m sorry.”
    “Something happened to me and as much as I hate to say it, I guess I can’t really blame him for leaving.” She hesitated. “He just couldn’t handle it is all.”
    “Sounds like you’re taking all the blame for whatever happened.”
    “Oh, it isn’t blame so much as … just being real about it.”
    Then we didn’t talk for some time. I headed back to town. The river was nice this time of night, speeding down the long, narrow asphalt with the moonlight on the dark water and campfires on the far shore up near the bend. A Piper Cub glided above the birch trees.
    “Did you hear that I’d been sick?” she said.
    “No, I hadn’t. What was wrong?”
    “Oh, you know, a woman thing.”
    “Are you all right now?”
    “Well, the doctors think everything is going well.” She tried to smile but it didn’t quite work and the sadness was back on her face. “And I pray a lot. I pray all the time.” Then, “I don’t want to—let me put it another way. I’d like to make out with you tonight, Sam. But I can’t. I hope you won’t get mad.”
    “I’ll try and control that psychotic temper of mine.”
    She reached out and put her hand on my shoulder.
    “I’m having a hard time with some—things—Sam.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “I don’t feel very … female these days.
    Do you know much about breast cancer?”
    And then all her comments made sense. Same thing had happened to an aunt of mine.
    “A little, I guess.”
    “Well, I didn’t feel very female after the operation. And when my husband saw me—undressed me the first time—it wasn’t his fault, but I could see how repelled he was and—and I was repelled, too. Every time I’d look in the mirror. They had to take my right breast.”
    She didn’t cry. She simply looked out at a passenger train snaking, its lighted window like the glowing skin of a rattler, across the Midwest midnight.
    “Right now, Sam, I just couldn’t handle making out.”
     
Four
     
    “So you have no idea how it got there?”
    “God, Sam, how many times do I have to tell you? I don’t have any idea at all.”
    “And you weren’t out there last night?”
    “No. Not even close.”
    “And you can prove that?”
    David Egan said, “I can prove it but I’d rather not.”
    I sat on the edge of my desk and lighted a Lucky. He put his hand out. I pitched him the pack.
    He said, “All I’ve got is the habit, Sam. I’ll need a match, too.”
    I’d been planning to go to Iowa City for the Hawkeye game that day. But not now. Not with the events of last night. I’d have to send Dad and Mom on alone.
    David Egan was the local