Now Is the Hour (24 page)

I want you out of here by sundown's what I told them, Dad said. Just get your things and load 'em up in your truck and go.

When Dad finished talking, I didn't know what to do. I hated him and Mom so much right then I didn't know what I was going to do. All there was was a roaring in my ears and a big lump in my chest that was going to come out with a big mess of sobs and tears.

I wished they were dead.

Nothing else in me, in my head, nothing else in my heart.

I wished the two sons of bitches were dead.

I headed straight for the kitchen door. Mom, wild-woman-crazy Mom, jumped in front of me, put her body in front of the kitchen door.

In all my years, I'd never seen her look like that. I mean, yes, there were all those things I knew so well: Her almond-shaped hazel eyes, one pitched south, the other east. The wrinkles on her forehead. The glasses that always shined in the light. The little wrinkles starting along her lips. The way she gritted her teeth. How her cheeks moved because she was gritting her teeth.

There were those things and more. Her high, arched eyebrows, her cheekbones. The tanned-smooth quality of her skin.

And more. Something impenetrable, something hard and mean and stubborn. Something ugly about her, the way she always knew she was right.

Mom spread her arms out wide across the kitchen door.

In her eyes a dare to try and pass.

Spineless ass.

Rigby John Klusener, Mom said. Get to your room and do not leave your room for the rest of the night.

For a moment, in my right hand there was a backhanded slap. First to her right cheek, then her left. There was the way I pushed her head through the glass of the door. The breaking glass, the blood.

Hey! Dad yelled. Your mother told you to do something! Now move!

So what else was there to do? I went downstairs to my bedroom.

As I look back on that evening now, I can see I had no other choice. They were my mother and my father, for sixteen years I'd known nothing else. You honor your father and your mother. And it wasn't even that I had a decision about honoring them or not. I didn't have a clue how to speak the mess inside me I was feeling. Still don't really.

So there I was, the spineless ass, walking down the stairs to my bedroom.

All's I had was
negro,
all's I had was Flaco's long fingers, his open palm on my shoulder. All's I had was Acho's thick fingers on the top of my head.

All's I had was my dark bedroom.

I didn't even have a cigarette.

That night around midnight, Flaco and Acho's old Ford truck, stacked with mattresses, a table, pots and pans, dishes, cups, an old wardrobe, a mirror that reflected the yard light and the stars, piles of dresses and shoes, pants and shirts, flour to make tortillas, all the stuff it takes to live in a house — seven people in a two-room house — and one guitar, one accordion, drove through the yard, the engine loud because of the bad muffler, the headlights gone dim from bad wiring.

The time it takes to drive from the wood granary, past the light pole, past the blue spruce, past the pole fence, the time it takes at the wagon wheel and the Austrian Copper rose to yield to oncoming traffic, on Tyhee Road at midnight no traffic, still the old Ford yields, the brakes squeak, the bed of the truck floats a little.

On the back of the truck, two young boys, men really, I never did ask them how old they were, Flaco in his blue shirt with the really white T-shirt under it, his denim pants, his red Converse tennis shoes untied, Acho in his red shirt and his really white T-shirt under it, his denim pants, his tennis shoes tied up, their legs dangling over the back side of the truck. Their faces, how I knew their faces, the way they smiled, the way the sunlight, the moonlight, lay on their skin. In the hay truck the smell of them, soap, sweat, tortillas, tobacco, instant coffee, cigarettes.

Chingada tu puta madre.

Sí, cabrón.

Oh my heavens pretty woman so far.

Gringa loca.

The back turn signal of the truck a spastic white flash. The brake pedal released, the clutch disengaged, the gas pedal pushed toward the floor, the old Ford leaned around the corner, the high sound of first gear, then second gear, then on down the road.

Flaco and Acho.

I never saw them again.

Not that night, or the next night, but the third night the eastern sky at night was as bright as day.

In the straw stack at the feedlot, it took the fire trucks two days to put the fire out. Spontaneous combustion, the fire marshal said. The fire had been smoldering in there for days.

BACK IN THE
days before Flaco and Acho, when the only things to do on the farm besides work and do chores was to climb up the grain elevator, or sit on top of the boxcars, go into the dark spud cellar, or climb up in the steel granaries, there was a game I used to play out behind the spud cellar under the grain elevator.

I stacked two straw bales on top of each other, then spread out a couple bales of straw on one side of the stacked bales.

What I'd do was take a run at the bales, then tuck my head and flip over the bales, using my hands to push off the top bale, and then land in the soft bed of spread straw.

I usually did the flip after doing the balancing act on the grain elevator.

One day, out of sheer monotony, I decided to spice up my life by stacking a third bale on the stacked straw. It didn't seem like much of a risk. After all, I thought, what's so terrible that could happen?

I took a run at the bales, tucked my head, pushed off the top bale, went flying ass over teakettle for a while, then landed. I landed on my ass as usual, on the straw, but this time my head kept flipping while the rest of me stopped, and my face had a head-on collision with my knee.

Who knows how long I lay out on the spread straw totally knocked out, cuckoo, blood streaming out my nose. For three weeks my eyes
were black. There was a week there my face was so swoll I could barely see out my eyes.

When I could see again and the swelling went down, when I wasn't black and blue anymore, what stayed and what didn't go away was I no longer could breathe out of my nose. My nostrils were plugged up with busted gristle.

That's why I went around with my mouth open all the time, because I couldn't breathe.

Monsignor Cody found something new to say to me. Whenever he saw me, he reached his hand over, put his fingertips on my cheeks, his thumb on my chin, and then closed my mouth with his hand while he said:
Halt dein Mund.

Which is German for “shut your mouth.”

One way or another, all my life the universe has conspired to shut me up.

Submucous resection. That's the name of the operation I had to have to open up the breathing passages in my nose.

As fate would have it, my stay in the hospital was quite an event. Two birds with one stone. I met Billie Cody and George Serano on the same day, in the same place, Saint Anthony's Hospital. Although Billie saw a lot more of me than I did of her. George was a differnt story altogether. It probably makes some kind of sense that I ended up fighting him that day. He was a drunk, and an Indian and in the throes of the DTs. Fear had him around the neck. As things go, I was ready to fight him, but not ready for him. It took a long time and a world of hurt before George and I stood eye to eye, that is without wanting to kill each other. You might say we had some issues. The line between our farm and the rez, the differnce between the yellow and the red, plus there I was a self-righteous Catholic boy with an ax to grind, and there was George, another mean man in my life — a no-good ne'er-do-well Indian and a queer to boot.

Amazing now that I look back on it, I got through all this alive.

Thank God for Billie Cody. I'd never have made it without her.

Dr. Verhooven told me and Mom it was a simple operation. Thursday night I'd check in the hospital. I wouldn't have any dinner, only liquids. Friday morning, Dr. Verhooven would put me under a general anesthetic. I wouldn't be awake during the operation. The operation
consisted of Dr. Verhooven taking a drill and drilling two new holes through the busted gristle in my nose. I'd wake up around lunchtime. I'd be able to have a light lunch. I'd stay in the hospital for the rest of the day, I'd get supper that night, and I'd spend that night in the hospital so they could watch me, and the next morning they'd give me some pills and send me home.

It sounded simple enough.

Mom packed an extra pair of shorts, a T-shirt, a pair of white socks, my toothbrush, and my underarm deodorant in her blue square overnight case. Mom drove me to the hospital. Dad couldn't go because he was still combining wheat. As always, he had something better to do when it came to me.

Neither Mom nor I said a damn word to each other on the ride into town. Usually, what was silent when there was silence came from Mom and Dad. After Flaco and Acho, though, I discovered I could be silent too. Something real hard was in my heart for Dad, and even more for Mom. Sending a family off in the middle of the night — now there's a Christian act of charity for you. Their talk about their good name and the abomination of good Christian values had never sounded so ridiculous.

Halfway to town, Mom got her rosary out. There we were again with the sorrowful mysteries. Every goddamn Hail Mary stuck in my throat. Then after the rosary, just as we started to get into town traffic, insult to injury, Mom started on a litany.

Have mercy on us. Have mercy on us. Pray for us. Pray for us. Pray for us. Over and over and over again.

Fucking litanies, man.

Like to drive you fucking nuts.

Mom's almond-shaped hazel eyes were definitely green, and she squinted a lot, one eye gone south and the other east. Her hair had frizzed so she tried to cover up the frizz with a hat. The blue hat from LeVine's with the pheasant feather in it. Her new big plastic glasses. She wore her tan slacks with the big crease in them and the cuffs and a blue and white polka-dot blouse tucked in and no belt and her white Keds and her nylons. Really, she looked weird. When we walked in the hospital, I didn't want anyone to know I was with her.

At the admissions desk, Mom made me hold the blue square overnight case while she signed the insurance papers. It felt like I was
holding a purse, so I set the overnight case on the shiny waxed linoleum floor closer to her feet.

Across from me in the line was a girl my age from Highland High School. She was checking in to the hospital too. That girl was Billie Cody, but I didn't know it then. Billie was with her mom, and I remember that she was short and that she smiled at me. Pretty soon we were talking, and Billie told me she was in to have her tonsils out and perhaps her tonsils out would help her tear duct thing. I noticed that her eyes were red, but I didn't ask what her tear duct thing was. I told her for me it was submucous resection and that I couldn't breathe out of my nose and the doctor was going to drill me some new holes. I remember Billie laughed, that great laugh of hers in her big chest that seemed to take over her whole body. Billie's mom said something to my mom and my mom said something back. I don't know what they said, but that's the only time those two ever spoke to each other, let alone spent time in the same room together.

When Mom finished with the papers and it was time to go to my room, I didn't want to pick up the blue square overnight case, but I did. Billie looked at the blue square overnight case in my hand, and the way she looked at me was somehow the way Flaco had looked at me, in a moment that look that takes in the whole situation — the overnight case that looks like a purse, me holding the purse, my embarrassment that I was holding something that looked like a purse. Billie saw the whole picture —
Gestalt
is the word Billie would use — all the levels of me and Mom. I saw it in her eyes, her tear duct eyes rimmed in red, there inside her eyes, the Jesus look.

The hospital was dark woodwork and big dark wooden doors with little windows above the doors, mostly open, and green walls. The floor made big creaks in the long lengths of hardwood. In the hallways, up high, you could see where the old gaslights had been on the walls. But the gaslights had been replaced by long fluorescent bulbs hanging down, which made everything have that too bright light from above. The dark woodwork had strange whanged-out shadows.

My room was room 22, and I turned off the fluorescent lights as soon as I walked in. There were three beds in room 22, and my bed was the bed by the big wood bay window. There were no other patients in the room but me. The black and white clock above the door said five-thirty. I looked around before I unbuttoned my madras shirt. I hung the shirt up on a hanger in the closet, then my Levi's on a
hanger. Put my wallet and my change inside the blue overnight case. I pulled off my T-shirt, folded the T-shirt and laid the T-shirt along with my socks and my underwear next to my shoes at the bottom of the closet.

There I was stark-naked in a strange place, and you know what that always does. Poking straight out in front of me. I didn't dare whack off. It was a Catholic hospital, plus I had nothing to come into. Then I saw the sink and the mirror above the sink, and I thought the sink would work. Then there was a knock on the door. I quick pulled the hospital gown over me, didn't tie the gown up in back, just jumped into the bed, lay down, and pulled my hard-on into between my legs and pressed my legs together.

Mom came in with a nurse who was a nun. Sister Angelica. A Benedictine. No big crinkled fan of starched halo across her head like the Holy Cross. Just a little white cap on her forehead called a wimple that looks like it hides horns and a white veil and white robe instead of black.

Rigby John, Sister Angelica said, do you want the lights off?

I was about to mumble some shit I hadn't formulated yet.

That's when Mom said: My son doesn't like bright light, she said. He takes after his grandfather.