Now Is the Hour (48 page)

Slow, sinful saxophone jazz playing out from somewhere inside in there, enormous and dark. Mortal sinful. The wave of warm wind through the yellow dress. Red strapped high heels carefully placed on each step down and down. Black hair up his leg all the way to the thigh. Black hair on his chest. Like Dad's black hair. George's cigarette, his achingly perfect French inhale. Smoking is praying, smoking is praying is waiting. The taste of buckskin and flint on the back of my throat. My stiff cock.

Two lips against two lips soft with a kind of suck, tobacco, and the taste of pink. Billie, my beloved Billie, the girl I could kiss and kiss and kiss, and we'd become a dream. Kissing venial sin, hugging venial sin, everything else is mortal sin. Stuck on Billie's body these mortal sinful parts, mother's parts, sister's parts, soft, wet parts, parts that are hellfire and damnation and contamination to touch. My limp cock.

Blood filling my cock full, and me stuffing my cock in a big wet cunt and fucking the shit out of it.

Fuck you, Father, for I have not fucked and sinned.

Yet I've committed the gravest sin, sinned exceedingly.

My body is ugly. The casket for my smashed-flat roadkill soul.

Monsignor's ear was pressed up against the screen.

My T-shirt and my white Sunday shirt were soaked through. My sweat smelled like sour tobacco, German beer, Billie's cunt.

The words in my throat that wouldn't come out. Words stuck down there in all that phlegm. I swallowed, cleared my throat.

Father, I said.

Down in my voice box, I hacked and cleared, trying to get the words through.

How could I confess about George and Billie? How could I confess about me?

Monsignor was waiting. I was waiting.

Waiting is praying.

What came out of my mouth next were words I didn't expect to hear.

I broke the ninth commandment, Father, I said.

The ninth? Monsignor said.

The ninth, I said. Not the sixth.

I committed the sin of bearing false witness, I said. Once.

False witness? Monsignor said.

The tone of his voice — you could tell, he expected the sixth, the other, more interesting, sin.

Only once? Monsignor said.

Only once, Father, I said. They're all one big once.

Monsignor's hand was up to his mouth, then just his index finger against his lips.

To whom did you bear false witness? Monsignor said.

My lips were dry. I licked my lips.

A friend, I said. I bore false witness to a friend.

My first confession in four years that wasn't about the sixth commandment and self-abuse and the details of self-abuse.

When I finally opened my eyes, Monsignor was mumbling through the prayers, making the sign of the cross with his hand. I was totally surprised. I expected a lecture, an argument, at least a discussion. Maybe he was late for Mass, and there wasn't any time.

Three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys and three Glory Bes. I swear you could say I fucked Christ on the cross in there, and that's what you'd get. Three Our Fathers, three Hail Marys, three Glory Bes. Maybe five. Certainly at the most, it would be five.

During Mass, I hated God.

Mass was long and hot, and I yawned once so big, my throat made that stretching sound. During the sermon I did a drift, snap, drool. Wiped my mouth. Took a deep breath. Mom's sharp elbow jabbed me in the ribs. Her wrinkled, wrinkled lips. Her almond-shaped hazel eyes straight into my heart.

Fuck.

After Mass, Mom and Dad go down for coffee hour. I'm standing alone on the steps of Saint Joe's, trying to figure out what the fuck, when all of a sudden it's Sis who's got a hold of my elbow. She's
wearing a fall with a lace prayer cap on top and a blue dress the size of a house. In her Roosky eyes, I've never seen in Sis's eyes, her be so happy.

I guess it was just being close to Sis again. I felt them. Two big tears rolled down my cheeks.

Sis grabbed my hand, the way she'd always grabbed my hand when we were kids. I snuffed up, wiped my tears. Sis's eyes stayed right on mine as she pulled the Marlboro out of its pack, lit it. She took two puffs, looked around, then quick handed the cigarette to me.

I was on my first puff.

Sis whispered: Sorry about Billie.

My French inhale was good, but then the smoke went all wrong, and I started to cough.

Billie? I coughed.

Sis took the cigarette, took a long, long puff. Sis flipped the fall like it really was her hair.

Yah, Sis whispered, you know — Billie!

Jeez, this was a small town, but how in the hell could Sis possibly know already?

What? I said.

Sis looked around, leaned in close, handed the cigarette to me. Grabbed my hand that way again.

My deep inhale. Smoking is praying.

Sis's hand went up to my forehead, pushed back my hair.

Smoking is praying is waiting.

Billie's pregnant, Rig, Sis whispered.

I know all about it, Sis said. Chuck diPietro is at the house half the time, she said. Him and Gene, they're like
brothers.
It's like I didn't marry one man but
two.

Into my sour-smoke lungs, more smoke. The inhale deeper and deeper.

Chuck is the father, Sis whispered. And that's the God's truth. And the bum won't marry her.

Smoke blew out my lungs like I was on fire.

Air, air all around, yet not a drop to breathe.

Sis took the cigarette. The ashes on it were hanging off all weird. Hot-boxed.

Sis's inhale, then deep-sigh-exhale, old Marlboro smoke.

Men are such assholes, Sis said. Really fucked up.

Sis's eyes and my eyes. Roosky and hazel. Dad's eyes and Mom's. She reached up, put her thumb and index around my chin.

You need a shave, she said.

Then: You know, Rigby John, Sis said. You're such a sweetheart, Sis said. What this world needs is more men in it like you.

AGRAY, HOT SUNDAY
after church, my head thick with hangover, my lungs full of sour Marlboros. I went into my bedroom, closed the door, and threw myself on the bed. The smoldering fire inside. The delicate balance on the grain elevator one giant step too far. I was going down fast. I was the most disgusting human being in the world. I was ugly. My dick didn't work. I couldn't fuck my girlfriend. And the guy I'd been haying with turned out to be a female impersonator. I was stuck in my bedroom, stuck in a Sunday, stuck with my parents, stuck in the house. There was nowhere to go to get away to because I was the one I needed to get away from.

The universe had conspired, and there I was, stuck with myself.

When my parents were both finally out of the house I called Billie. Just made a bigger mess of everything. My whole body was shaking. There was no breath, and when I went to speak, something jumped out of my throat and started screaming.

I called her a little whore and asked who else she'd fucked.

Fucking great, Billie said. Typical fucking male.

Fuck you, Billie, I said.

No, fuck you, Rig, Billie said.

I was in the middle of yelling another
fuck you
when Billie hung up.

I wanted a cigarette but couldn't bear the thought of another cigarette, so I just walked out the door. The gray had burned off, and the day was late-afternoon gold sun. I didn't want the sun. I wanted
a cold rainy day. I walked along with my shadow. George always said you can tell how you're doing by how your shadow looks. My shadow stayed close around my feet, too ashamed to show itself. Tramp and I went to all my safe places. First on top of the granaries. Then in the spud cellar, then crawled up on the grain elevator. Didn't even try to hit balance, just walked up one end, then walked down the other, smacking the elevator down. Scared the wits out of Tramp. On top of the railroad cars, there were no faraway places, there was only me.

The pain that day inside me, I'd never felt the likes before. Pain kept pulling my head down like I was a sinner before an angry God. But I wasn't a sinner, I was still a virgin. Moments from the night before crowded up in my head. The Sunset Motel, freezing in room 58. Flashes of Billie's breasts, her cunt, her soft hair down there, the way her hands had touched my skin. How could something so natural be so frightening?

Differnt. I was differnt all right. A fucking freak.

But most of all, even more than not being able to get it up, the hardest thing to face was Billie and Chuck diPietro together, fucking their brains out.

Billie had betrayed me.

Tramp and I were curled up in the straw in the hayloft of the barn. I'd run the Billie and Chuck scenario over and over in my mind so many times, I can't tell you. Then lying there on the straw, I reached my hand up and brushed my knuckles across my mouth and I remembered George.

Only the day before, when I pulled up to the first stack of bales in the field, I'd just shut the truck off, when George leaned up and went to put his Camel out in the ashtray.

I had my eye on that half-smoked Camel.

George's dark eyes looked at his cigarette, then he handed the cigarette to me.

Thanks, I said.

The cigarette that was on George's lips was on my lips. I took one puff, two, three, hoping I wasn't hot-boxing. I handed the cigarette back to George.

The look on George's face when I handed him the cigarette back. Really, I don't know how to describe it. Shocked, I guess, and maybe a smile under the shock.

George sat there with that look on his face and stared at the cigarette.

You can have your own cigarette if you like, George said.

Oh, I said, it's just.

Like most of the times with George, I didn't know how to say what I wanted to say, so my mouth just started talking.

Last summer, I said, Flaco and Acho. We hauled hay. We shared cigarettes.

We were best friends, I said.

Just like that, George's eyes went red-rimmed and wet like Granny's eyes. Eyes so full of Jesus right then.

Slow, George's big hand reached out and took the cigarette, put the cigarette in his mouth. His black eyes differnt, even darker, not so much Jesus.

He inhaled the smoke, blew smoke out his nose and mouth, handed the cigarette back to me.

Then we can share cigarettes too, George said.

The sore place next to my heart where I smoke. It wasn't just Billie, George had betrayed me too. In a way I wasn't sure how exactly. But somehow a good friend doesn't parade around town in a yellow dress and red high heels showing off, making a spectacle of himself. I mean, not if he's a man. I mean it was embarrassing.

Fuck.

The train wreck of George Serano.

Boy, did I have a lot to learn.

The hay, the hay, the goddamn hay.

Monday morning, I was slamming things around. I didn't eat my mush. Didn't eat the hard fried eggs. I didn't drink the glass of milk. I went straight for Mom's pot of coffee and poured myself a cup. The coffee was terrible. It tasted like half the amount of coffee there's supposed to be. Why was I surprised? Why should coffee be any differnt from anything else of Mom's? She'd probably reused the coffee grounds.

I spit the coffee out in the sink. I'd have a cup at Granny's.

Flying down Tyhee Road in the hay truck, Monday morning early,
Saturday night George all dolled up, dressed up like a girl sitting on the steps was something I couldn't bend my head around. How was I even going to
look
at George, let alone spend the day hauling hay with him?

What's worse was my lungs were still too sore to smoke. I tried, but my old buddy Viceroy tasted like horseshit. It was all horseshit. Everything was horseshit. The whole fucking world, one big pile of fucking horseshit.

In Granny's yard, the magic light and dark was only the goddamn sun coming down through a bunch of old dead trees. The high sigh on top of the trees was only the wind. Granny's green screen door made the same old
Inner Sanctum
squeak. The wood grain of the gray front door in front of my eyes, swirls and swirls. Bonanza barked before I knocked.

Granny opened the door. Woodsmoke and coffee and frying grease. Same old, same old. The smell of buckskin and Prince Albert.

Then it was Granny's red handkerchief. Strands of white hair stuck up like cobwebs all around her face. Her red-rimmed eyes so bright always, like they're crying. Nothing in between.

When her eyes looked into mine, Granny saw right into my soul.

That quick, everything changed.

It took all I had not to cry.

Rigby John, Granny said. You don't look no better than the last time I saw ya. You still eating horseshit?

Shut up, Bonanza! she said.

Bonanza, his toenails little clicks on the shiny floor, made it to the Pendleton pillow and then fell over.

I bit my upper lip. Breathed hard through my nose.

Still eating it, Granny, I said.

Granny's old brown-rope hand pointed over at the table, then pulled out the wood chair with the high back.

Here, she said. Sit down. You want some coffee?

Granny's high-backed chair, me in that chair, my elbow on Granny's table, the light bulb hanging down shining on the wood table. In the red rez, I was not in yellow Bannock County no more. One of the safest places in the world.

When I sat down, the way I was sitting was just like Mom and
Dad. My shoulders up around my ears. I looked around for George.

Sure, I said. Love some coffee.

Granny's hand was on the back of my shoulders.

Relax, Granny said. I'm not going to bite ya.

My shoulders came down an inch.

Do you have any of that other stuff? I said.

What other stuff? Granny said.

Your special remedy for horseshit, I said.

Granny smacked her lips together, sucked her lips in over where she didn't have any teeth. That smile of hers so big, her whole face collapsed around it.

She had to stop and catch her breath, she was laughing so hard.