Now Is the Hour (40 page)

I crossed my arms over my heart.

You're lookin' for my grandson, she said. He ain't good for shit, that boy, but I love him.

Grandma Queep had no teeth. Her cheeks sunk in under her cheekbones. She turned her eyes across the room.

On the planked shiny wood floor, a large braided rug in front of an old trunk at the bottom end of a brass bed. Over the braided rug a step was a half-open door. Sunlight and shadows swirling around coming in through the door.

George! she yelled. Get your ass out of bed! The Klusener boy is here. You're late for work! It's a new day, son! A new day!

A thud in the next room. Grandma Queep looked up her dark eyes at me. You could feel the place inside you where they landed. Just below my breastbone in the middle. Her thick, dark lips lifted up on one side, a smile, her pink gums.

Firewater, she said. That's what you white folks think we call it, don't you? Firewater. Hell, it ain't no firewater he's been drinkin'.

The lifted lip was no longer a smile, it was a snarl.

It was a Wild Turkey, she said. And him and some other damn souse drank the whole bottle.

Coffee? she said to me. Her eyes.

It'll be awhile, she said.

No, thank you, ma'am, I said.

Name's Queep, she said, not
ma'am.
Call me anything, but don't call me ma'am. I ain't no madam. My name is Hazel Queep. You can call me Granny, or Grandma Queep. Won't answer to nothin' else.

Grandma Queep walked to the table, a round oak table with carved oak feet. On Granny's feet was a pair of Minnetonka moccasins, the kind you buy at J. C. Penney. A blue and green bird beaded on the top. On her legs were dark tea rose nylons rolled up midcalf.

She pulled out a wood chair with a high back.

Sit down, she said. Cream or sugar?

My legs and feet, two giant steps across the room. Beneath my steps, the solidness of the house.

Sugar, I said. Two teaspoons.

Granny reached down to the pieces of cut wood in front of the cookstove, picked up a piece, opened the door to the oven and slid the wood in, closed the door, then started moving things around on top of the stove.

In one room about twelve by twenty, from where I could see, besides the green enamel Majestic cookstove, was a small window with four panes above the sink. Curtains on the window, white cotton print with rickrack, the same cloth as Granny's dress. Then one of those old refrigerators with the motor on top. Looked like an alien had come down here and landed in an old Indian woman's house.

At the other end of the room, an armoire. Dark like the wood in Saint Joseph's Church. Below the armoire, the braided rug, then the door to George's room. A big trunk with a curved top like the armoire, a red, white, and green Pendleton folded over it. Then the
brass bed, a big white quilt with the same kind of blue and green bird as the one on Granny's Minnetonka moccasins. That whole wall covered with photographs. The old-fashioned oval kind of photographs with strange-looking old people in suits and ties and white dresses in them. Another window with lace curtains. A Singer sewing machine, the treadle kind. A white doily across the top of the sewing machine stand. On the doily a kerosene lamp.

Out of the door of sunlight and shadows, George poked his head around the corner. He didn't look too good. Big purple circles under his eyes, hair all a mess. Black stubble beard. I thought Indians didn't have beards.

Morning, George said.

When I said morning back to George, I knew in my heart I'd never yet said morning to him.

George's eyes had a little bit of the storm of '66 in them. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and stepped into the room.

I'll be right with you, George said. Just wait outside. I'll be right out.

What about his coffee? Granny said. I made him a cup of coffee.

That's when the other man, a tall white man in a cowboy hat, walked out of George's room. His belt buckle a huge piece of turquoise.

My breath in, my breath out. Things got real slow.

George's fist in the air, its shadow, came down, down, down, onto the table.

Bam.

The china sugar bowl, the silver salt and pepper, the silver butter dish, jumped up off the table a good inch.

Grandma Queep's eyes, her deep brown eternal eyes, not a blink.

The words out of George's mouth slow, long, loud, one word at a time.

He can drink his fucking coffee outside!

I was drinking my coffee outside, when Granny's swirled wood door burst open and the green screen door went flying back. George was about ten feet tall coming out the door. His boots hit the top stump, then the bottom stump.

The coffee burned my mouth, then I spilled my coffee.

George didn't look at me, just kept walking straight ahead down the lane. I didn't know what to do with the cup. When I looked over, Granny was standing in the door. She made a motion with her hand to put the cup on George's car fender. So I set the blue pewter cup down on the gray fender. Shadows and light, crazy hallucinations all over on everything.

Halfway down the lane, when I caught up to George and my stride matched his, I turned around, pulled my hat down over my eyes. There was Granny in the shadows and light, waving from her door. I waved back, then looked over at George, then wished I hadn't waved.

Hess's field was the last forty acres to bale, and a field so big it took up the entire fucking planet. Hot sun, blue sky, wind, and brown-looking rows of green hay row after row after row.

Besides being so big, the only other thing differnt about Hess's forty was in the top-end corner — a big old weeping willow tree in a low sloping patch of green pasture grass by the ditch.

No pause, no slowdown, no rest, I hit the field with the tractor in a fury, baling hay the way I'd been baling hay for the past two weeks. At the end of a windrow, I lifted up the baler teeth, shut off the power takeoff, turned the steering wheel around, lined up the baler teeth with the new windrow, dropped the teeth, turned on the power takeoff, and started in on the new row. Back and forth, back and forth, one long, uninterrupted movement around and around, the baler just eating up hay. Yellow hanging dust.

All morning. Broke for lunch at noon.

At one o'clock, started back in all over again.

The day was a particularly hot day even for June. The sky wasn't blue, it wasn't a color at all, just bright. Low to the ground ahead of me, waves of heat were mirages on the hay. Puddles of water where there weren't none. My hands, my arms all the way up to my cutoff sleeves at the shoulder, dark, dark brown, almost black with red. The Snickers candy bar in the toolbox totally melted.

In the middle of a windrow, in the middle of the field, in the middle of the afternoon, I heard the scream.

At first, I didn't know what the hell. A sound, a horrible human sound. George getting chopped up into little pieces. Impaled by a spinning sprocket. Fan belt gone mad about his neck. His arms and
legs mangled in the power takeoff. The hydraulic hose strangling him

to death. The earth opening up. The heavens descending.

Whatever it was, it was my fault.

The universe has always conspired to fuck me up.

The scream got inside my head, in my breath, a huge fist squeezing on my heart. I was pulling on levers, pushing buttons, turning knobs. When everything was shut off, the scream was still inside me and outside me. I covered my ears and jumped from the tractor seat over the tractor wheel. My boots hit the ground running. I was past the baler, right up close to George. He was standing alone on the hay slip, his one hand holding on to the iron bar. He was bent over, looking down. George was screaming at the ground.

The storm of '66. I thought it was the storm of '66 again. George had the DTs. He'd been drinking last night, and now today he was crazy drunk again, and he had the DTs. Only this time, there was no doctors or nurses. Just me and George in the middle of a hay field.

Everything in me said, Run like hell.

Yet something weird, something I can't explain.

The sound coming out of George was a sound I'd never heard.

But it was a sound I understood.

My hand floated through the yellow dust and settled on his shoulder, the muscle under his shirt.

George? I said.

I'd never spoken his name in front of him before.

What looked up from under his cowboy hat, through the yellow dust, was dark, wet eyes. Like Granny's eyes now, full and deep with everything, nothing in between.

His lips shiny too and wet like his eyes. Wet eyes and wet, red lips under a thick mask of yellow dust.

A gust of wind blew around my ears. The world so quiet without the tractor and the baler.

The whites of George's eyes were red. Within the red, solid dark rounds. From out of the dark rounds, a light. Bright, sharp as the sun.

His lips, rubber lips like my lips when I was full of hate and tried to speak.

Why are you doing this to me? he said.

Why are you treating me this way?

More wind and quiet.

In no time at all, the bones of my body were hung all together wrong.

Of course, I had no idea what he was talking about.

And that's what I said. I said: What are you talking about?

George stepped back, let go of the iron bar. His body fell back against the stack of hay. Yellow dust flew up all around.

My head bone connected to my elbow bone, elbow bone connected to foot bone.

Guilt. I mean, I can see it now as guilt, guilt mixed with fear. Or fear mixed with guilt.

Back there on that day, though, I couldn't name it. Bones all haywire. A scared feeling in my chest. My heart beating fast. Breath I couldn't find.

You see that weeping willow over there? George said.

Yah, I said.

Well, you and I are going over there, George said. And we're going to sit under that tree. And we're going to have a drink of water. And we're going to take a rest.

In my mind, I could see it all. George and I loafing on the job. Dad driving up in his pickup, his Roosky eyes, him yelling and waving his hands.

Keep your distance.

Oh no, I said. We can't do that.

George reached up, took his cowboy hat off, beat his cowboy hat against his Levi's leg. Yellow dust floating up, swirls of yellow dust.

The hell we can't, George said.

George's black hair sticking up. The line across his forehead. Above the line, sweat and hair and cinnamon brown skin. Below the line, cakes of yellow dust, wet, red eyes, lips.

Come on, let's go! he said.

My feet couldn't move.

I can't, I said. My father.

George's hand undid the top button of his white shirt. Then with a hand on each side of his shirt, he grabbed each side and pulled. The pearl buttons snapped open all the way down the front. Yellow dust. On his white T-shirt, yellow, wet stains in his armpits. One long yellow wet stain down the middle to the top of his pants.

George's lips were no longer rubber. They knew they were talking, and they knew what to say. His eyes, the sharp bright light gone soft
like his voice soft too, the way the first day in the yard leaning against the baler he said good morning.

Sure you can, he said. And fuck your father.

In the dark firmament of my haywire bones, something hard and brittle gave way.

Your father is a mean, dry drunk, George said, who hates niggers and injuns.

Through the yellow dust, across the hot, wavy air, I could see it coming.

George's open hand clapped down onto my shoulder.

Come on, George said. You can do better than that.

Through the hay stubble, over the mounds of windrows, I followed George. At the barbwire fence, George pushed his hands down the top strand of barbwire, swung one leg over the top, then the other.

George made a grunt and sat down on the grass next to a big weeping willow root.

I crossed over the barbwire fence same as George, stepped over the ditch. Already on my skin, I could feel the water in the ditch and the cool green grass in the shadow of the tree.

George unscrewed his silver thermos and then tipped the thermos up. His Adam's apple going, water coming out the sides of his mouth, George took a long drink, stopped drinking, burped, then lifted the thermos and started drinking again.

It took me awhile to find the right place to sit. I didn't want to sit too close to George, but then I didn't want to sit too far away either. I decided on a place a little over an arm's length away from George's knee. I had my thermos too. I poured the water out of my thermos into its red plastic cup.

George went on as if I wasn't there. He capped his thermos, burped again. About the time I sat down, he stood up, pulled his arms out of his white long-sleeve shirt, then shook out the shirt. Man, that yellow dust is nasty stuff. You don't realize how nasty it is until it's floating over you while you're sitting in the shade on soft green grass.

George let his shirt drop, tossed his cowboy hat on top of his shirt.

Then something I wasn't ready for at all.

In one long motion, George pulled his T-shirt up and off his stomach, the thin line of black hair there, up over his chest, the black hairs of his chest and around his nipples, up off his arms pointed up to the
weeping willow. The underneath parts of him, the naked places people don't see — the black hair of his armpits, the paler undersides of the muscles of his arms — all of him, the top half, that is — right there in front of my eyes.

Heart stopping, that moment. Heart and somewhere else down low. A catch in my breath. The water in my red plastic cup I was tipping up and into my mouth went in my throat down the wrong pipe, went up my nose, went everywhere. I was coughing, holding on to my throat, making a spectacle, spitting water up all over myself.

The whole while I was coughing, though, inside me something was differnt. Differnt and new and perfectly still. Water and a big, cool shadow and green grass where usually there was only hot bright sun.