Authors: Tom Spanbauer
It was my fault.
Hell, everything was my fault.
Even the Korean War was my fault.
Through my most grievous.
Fault.
Fuck.
That's exactly the word.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Just the sound of it makes what you want to say just right, doesn't it?
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Myself, I didn't say
fuck
for a long time. Mostly at first because I thought it was a sin, and then later on I didn't say
fuck
because everybody else was saying it. Got so saying
fuck
was like having a gun in the gun rack in the back window of your pickup.
It was last night.
It wasn't until last night at supper that the perfectness of
fuck
hit me.
Fuck
as a way to address the world.
There I was sitting at the kitchen table. I was sitting under the bright overhead light, in the same chrome chair with its yellow plastic seat and backrest, and there was Sis sitting directly across the oilcloth tablecloth with red tulips on it in front of me, her hair done up in a French twist and Scotch tape taped across her forehead holding down her bangs. Just below the Scotch tape her swooped cat's-eye glasses. Her big black eye, more blue than black. Of course, her husband, Gene, was even worse off. Sis'd broke his arm. So much for the sacrament of marriage. But that's a whole 'nother story.
To my right, there was Dad still in his same Levi's shirt rolled up to the elbows and his big hairy hands and his forearms smelling of Lava soap. Across his forehead, the line of sunburn straight, red below white above, his black hair smashed down from his Stetson cowboy hat.
On my left there was Mom in her rummage-sale cotton blouse, her jeans, her Keds. Her almond-shaped hazel eyes behind her glasses, her hair in a hairnet up in pin curls. On her forehead were the lines, three parallel lines across, that in the middle, between her eyebrows, sunk in deep folds of skin. Her clipped-to-the-quick fingernails. Her rough, red farm hands.
A rerun of Saturday night's
Lawrence Welk
was on the TV in the front room. Myron Floren was playing “The Beer Barrel Polka,” and there we all were lifting our hands to our foreheads to start the sign of the cross and the Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty through Christ our Lord, amen.
On the table was the same four slices of roast beef. The same bottle of Heinz 57 ketchup, the mashed potatoes in the green bowl, the orange gravy boat, the canned peas in the blue bowl, the butter plate, and the bread plate with four slices of Wonder Bread on it. The salt and pepper shakers the shape of milk cans.
A family.
Just last night. The last night of the last supper I was ever going to sit through.
The four of us sitting around the kitchen table with all that's happened since two years ago last April. Beginning with what happened behind the barn, then Mom's novena to Our Mother of Perpetual Help for my soul, and the altar boy contest and the baseball game between Saint Joseph's and Saint Anthony's. The yellow tulip sticking
out of my ass. The blessed summer with Flaco and Acho. The Slit Sisters. Trying to have a very good parade.
Spineless ass.
Billie Cody, our promise. Sis's wedding. Chuck diPietro. Baling hay with Georgy Girl. Smoking is praying is waiting is trusting. Thunderbird.
Then the Grand Finale. The Big Fiasco.
All
the shit hitting the big fat fan all at once. Billie Cody pregnant. The Senior Summer All Night Party. Mom chasing me with the broom. Joe Scardino, the El Camino, and the Kraft cheese truck. Grandma Queep going to the other side. The Back Door, where men like flowers. Solitary warriors of love. Granny's funeral, digging Granny's grave, the giveaway, George's long fingers touching my hand on Pine Street. My night in the city jail. George's note thumbtacked to the apple tree.
My broken fucking heart.
Which pretty much sums up the whole story, not necessarily in that order, and brings us up to date with last night.
To Dad, all it was was nigger-loving hippie communist queers, and with Mom, it was the rosary, the rosary. Pray your rosary. The Virgin said to pray the rosary.
So with Myron Floren playing “The Beer Barrel Polka” in the front room, we did what we always did. The only thing we knew how to do. We blessed our roast beef, the canned peas, the mashed spuds, the Wonder Bread, with the same old prayer that came out of us like bad breath from a sick dog, then made the sign of the cross again.
Always the meat first, always Dad first, then me, then Sis, then Mom, is the way we passed the food. Then when each of us had our piece of roast beef, each our potatoes and gravy, each our canned peas, then Dad said, Pass the ketchup. Then Sis handed Dad the ketchup. Then ketchup for me, for Sis, for Mom. Then we all picked up our forks and started eating.
Except for me. I always asked for salt, please, because it pissed Dad off that I like salt.
No differnt last night.
I said: Salt, please, and Sis looked over her swooped cat's-eye glasses at Dad first, then molded her mouth all pulled together like a sphincter, handed me the salt shaker milk can.
So I started salting the ketchup on my slice of roast beef, my canned peas, my pile of mashed potatoes with a little crater in them for the gravy.
I started getting kind of weepy because now the Champagne Lady was singing some German schmaltzy shit. Weepy too because I was never going to see my family again, see this house, my bedroom, my bed, see the barn, the swimming hole, the Mexican house, see my dog, Tramp, ever again, never see Flaco or Acho, or Billie Cody or Grandma Queep.
Never see George Serano again.
But I didn't cry because it was just too perfect for me to start crying. I promised myself I would rather bite my tongue off, would rather put the milk can salt shaker in my mouth and eat it whole before I ever cried in front of them again. So I just ate my roast beef, my potatoes and gravy, my canned peas.
I finished my supper in one, maybe one and a half minutes.
Like always, I was still hungry.
So I said to Mom, Mom, can I have another piece of bread?
Mom didn't say anything, just raised her plucked eyebrows that for Sunday morning Mass she penciled in with her eyebrow pencil, put her fork down, picked up the empty bread plate, got up from the table, walked across the blue and white tile floor to the bread drawer, her varicose veins running down to her Keds, bent over, opened the bread drawer, took out the loaf of Wonder Bread, undid the tie, took one piece of bread out, retied the tie, put one piece of Wonder Bread on the bread plate, closed the bread drawer with her knee, walked back over the blue and white tiles to the table, and set the plate in front of me.
That's when I said it inside my head: fuck.
And
fuck
was the most perfect way to say what I needed to say.
The fucking bright overhead light, the fucking yellow chairs, the fucking oilcloth tablecloth with the fucking tulips on it, the fucking four pieces of roast beef, the fucking green bowl of mashed fucking potatoes, the fucking blue bowl of canned fucking peas, the orange fucking gravy boat, the fucking bread plate, the fucking butter plate, the fucking Heinz 57 ketchup, and the fucking milk cans of salt and pepper.
My fucking sis in her stupid fucking hairdo and stupid fucking swooped glasses and her stupid fucking black eye.
My fucking father and his fucking Lava soap and fucking red line across his fucking forehead, his fucking Levi's shirt and his fucking
superior hippie communist queer less-salt-than-thou fucking attitude. Come Sunday, him either in his brown fucking tweed suit and his brown tie or his blue fucking tweed suit and his blue tie, stinking up the fucking inside of the Buick and the whole fucking inside of Saint Joseph's Church with his overdose of Old Fucking Spice.
My fucking mother with her fucking bobby pins, her fucking eyebrow pencil, her fucking Red Cherries lipstick on Sunday morning, her hair fluffed out, in one of her three Sunday dresses, the blue fucking flowered one, the navy blue fucking polka dot one, or the fucking brown one with the beads along the scooped collar, her fucking dark seamed nylons, trying to hide her fucking varicose veins, on her head some goofy-looking hat with fucking nets and feathers in it.
That moment at the table at supper in the kitchen under the bright overhead light.
Fuck
is the perfect way to fucking say it that moment, me fucking me, I was sitting in the yellow fucking chair, my feet on the blue and white kitchen tiles, shoving a piece of fucking buttered Wonder Bread into my mouth.
In that silence. That drut dead quiet of a fucking silence that hangs over the table, over our family, hangs over our fucking lives, the Holy Fucking Ghost.
The silence so loud against my eardrums since my eardrums realized they could hear.
Bless us, O fucking Lord, and these Thy fucking gifts, which we are about to fucking receive from Thy fucking bounty through Christ our fucking Lord.
A-fucking-men!
Fuck.
The pavement is hot and soft on the back of my head, hot through my T-shirt and my cutoff Levi's, hot on my bare calves.
I just yelled
fuck!
so long and hard I had to lie down. Made my throat sore I yelled so hard. Right now, I'm spread-eagle on the going-west side of the road, tensing my toes, then relaxing them, tensing my ankles, then relaxing them, then my calves tensing, relaxing, like it says to do in the yoga book all the way up your body that Billie Cody gave me this morning before I left.
Five
A.M
. I'm buzzing on her doorbell. It's a lot to ask, to wake
a friend up so early, but Billie told me she wanted to see me before I go.
No matter what, Billie said. So I figured no matter what meant no matter what time, and I figured she owed me one, so I shut the pickup off, made sure I was done with all my crying, then walked up the spiral staircase to her mother's brick home with one of those porch lights on a pole with ivy climbing around it in one of the nicer parts of Pocatello.
Billie lives with her mom. Her mom had Billie the same age Billie is now, eighteen, a year older than me. Billie's dad is a plumber and a drunk and an asshole. Her father hasn't lived with them since her mother kicked him out the beginning of May.
Billie's dad didn't take it well when he found out she was pregnant.
Wasn't long after that, Billie and I went to the Senior Summer All Night Party. That father of hers was out looking for Billie and me in his white Ford
CODY PLUMBING INC
. pickup.
Said he was going to kill me.
Billie's dad and my mom.
All Mom had was a broom.
Still my money was on Mom for causing the most damage.
But the Senior Summer All Night Party and Billie's dad in his Ford pickup, and my mom in the '57 Buick, both of them out for blood, is a part of the debacle of all the shit hitting the big old fan that's a whole long story coming up.
For right now, I'll just stick with how difficult it is to raise my index finger, to get my finger to stop shaking enough to hit Billie Cody's doorbell at five
A.M
. standing under the lamplight with the ivy growing up around the pole.
Inside, the light goes on and comes through the two rectangles juxtaposed at an angle on the front door. I open the screen door that has a curly
C
in aluminum on it.
C
not for
Cody
but for
cunt.
An old joke with Billie and me.
The door latch and the squeaky whooshing sound of the door opening up. Mrs. Cody's hair is up in rollers, and she already has a cigarette going. She isn't as pretty as Billie, but there's something about Mrs. Cody that is beautiful. Maybe it's just because she's one of the two or three people in Pocatello who I think really like me.
Rigby John, Mrs. Cody says, like she's saying
Pope's a Catholic
or
Mormons suck.
She takes a long drag on her cigarette, pulls the top button and buttonhole of her blue house robe together at her neck, leans up against the doorjamb.
Mrs. Cody always looks at me not like I'm something of her daughter's. She always looks her blue eyes right close in at me, like she knows something about me I don't know yet, something that's going to break my heart.
She looked at me just that way at five
A.M.
, deeply inhaling on her cigarette. Then she does something she's never done before. She reaches out and touches me on the forehead. Her fingertips touch the place between my eyes. Where God the Father lives. Where it's always sore. Then she brushes my hair out of my eyes, her fingertips coming down my cheek, down past my lips to my chin.
Come on in, Mrs. Cody says, I'll wake Billie.
Mrs. Cody's living room had a picture window that's aluminum with a part that slides open that has a screen. The living room was painted beige, which Mrs. Cody and Billie hated, partly because Billie's father painted it that color, and partly because it was
beige
for chrissakes. Carpet was beige too.
Mrs. Cody was going to have the room painted and recarpeted. Something bright and hip, Mrs. Cody said, with maybe a swag lamp in the corner. But then Billie got pregnant, and Billie's dad went after her with a belt, so Mrs. Cody booted her husband out, and now who knows when she'll have the money.
In the living room, there's a fireplace made of thin bricks that were brown to yellow to red with beige mortar. I sat down on the hearth, looked up at the beige paramecia on Billie's living room ceiling.
Paramecia,
the plural of
paramecium.
Billie always said the plaster on the ceiling in their living room looked like paramecia. Billie was smart. Straight A's. She could be a rocket scientist if she wanted, but she wanted to be a beatnik. She was too smart to be a hippie. No makeup, only lipstick, always pink, and then at the end there it was red. Can't tell you how many nights Billie and I sat in the pickup parked out under the stars, listening to the radio, just talking, talking, about the universe and Jean Paul Sartre, Paul Harvey, and Sigmund Freud.