Authors: Tom Spanbauer
Sister Angelica stepped back, put her hand over her mouth. She stared down at Billie's redâcunt splooge.
Charles diPietro would like to speak to you, she said.
My eyes went straight for Billie's blue eyes.
Billie looked up and away. There wasn't a window there, so she looked at the clock.
When things are difficult to say.
Billie's hand lets go of my hand.
Down the hallway, Sister Angelica walks, then Billie walks.
Billie has her own way of walking. Short stride, fast steps, the click of her black strapped high heels. The slick sound of silk.
Through the swinging double doors.
That quick, Billie is gone.
ALL I WANTED
was a place to be quiet and alone.
There was only one place. The swimming hole.
I drove in the back way, from Quinn Road. Opened the gate with my sore hand, drove through, closed the gate behind me. Drove the pickup up the side of the ditch bank and onto the narrow road. I cut the headlights. From their bedroom, Mom and Dad could see the headlights.
Even during the day, the canal bank was a narrow fit for the pickup. On one side, it was the dark water of the canal, on the other a twenty-foot drop. I kept my bearings by driving slow, by keeping my head out the window. The left front wheel always just a foot or so away from what I could see of the solid dirt before it sloped into ditch. The lightning helped.
Mom always said to stay in the car if you're caught out in this kind of lightning.
What Mom always said.
My clothes come off easy. I untie the red tie from around my head, take off the porkpie hat. The wind on me naked. The warm sandy earth up through my bare feet. Now and then my body lights up a bright strobe of lightning.
I take off running. In the air, warm wind all around me, a bird flying, flying. Lightning cracks open the sky. I plunge my sore and aching
body into the moon silver rapids. The sudden whoosh of water, and I'm a fish. Swimming through wet dark. Cool water on my nose, my ears, my eyes. Cool water on my bruised cheek. Tangles of moss around my legs. On the bottom of the canal, thick, slimy mud. I grab the mud, squeeze the mud through my fingers. My right hand feels less stiff.
Up for air, I climb the bank. The night air cold on my body. I walk barefoot on the gravel to the pickup, slip on my T-shirt, my brown suit pants, tie the thin red tie around my head, put on the porkpie hat. I grab the matches and George's pack of cigarettes, one Camel left.
From the two-by-twelve, my feet push off, my legs stretch out, and I'm across to the slick, dark lava rock. As I climb the rock, the sky above flashes one thin, bony hand of electric light.
The white-water rapids below, I sit down in the same dusty spot I sat last night, look up at Granny's sacred tree. The wind in the tree. Its sweaty body smell. I've got George's last Camel in my mouth, trying to get wet matches lit. I tip my porkpie hat to Granny's ancestors.
Good evening, I say. A lot's happened since I last saw you.
Then in a moment, a sound. A branch snaps or something like it. Maybe the water stops, and it's the silence I hear. Whatever it is, I'm all goose flesh.
From within the tree, a French inhale. The unmistakable sound.
George? I say.
Is that you, George?
A flash of heat lightning.
Whatever is in the tree, it is not George.
A dark bird startles up, a bird as big as the tree. The flutter of wings, wafted air against my face, my heart. I am standing in the wind. I have to hold on to my porkpie hat. Slowly the bird rises. Above me, Thunderbird is long, black, slow strokes up and up. In the sky a crack of lightning. Thunder boom presses deep inside my sore ear. Thunderbird's black wings, its beak, the tail feathers, an outline of lightning all around. Thunderbird is as big as the southern night sky.
With the dark, the huge wings disappear, and Thunderbird becomes the night.
Another flash.
Just below, my eyes settle on the dark rectangle stand of Lombardy
poplars, then the clump of dark inside the dark. Granny's log cabin. The high sigh of the wind. Wind a differnt sound in the poplars than wind in the cedar.
Inside in there, Granny's kitchen window is dark.
Rain or shine, you can bet your life on it, George had said, that light is on every night.
A gust of wind, a feeling in my bones, instinct, whatever you want to call it. I knew.
It wasn't easy getting from the swimming hole to Granny's cabin. Down the canal bank, in the triangle field of tall grasses, there were gopher holes everywhere. Then there was the barbwire fence and the extra darkness under the Lombardys. All that dead wood lying on the ground, and I was barefoot. When I got to the pounded-down dirt by the outhouse, I was sailing.
Granny's dark green screen door. I put my fingers through the door pull and pulled slow. The
Inner Sanctum
squeak. Bonanza started barking. I knocked once, then again louder. No Granny.
I pushed the latch down and opened the door, Bonanza going nuts, but not at the door. From the sound, he was on his Pendleton bed.
Only dark night light through the windows. Flashes of lightning.
One flash and I see Granny's legs, her rolled-up tea rose nylons, her Minnetonka moccasins, sticking out from behind the kitchen table.
My bare feet could feel the shine on Granny's wood floor. When I got to the kitchen table, I reached for the light, turned the old switch, and electric light went on all over.
I was down on my knees by her head. I put my ear next to her mouth, but it was my busted ear, so I couldn't tell.
Granny's hand, the old brown rope, the long, thin fingers. I put my hand on Granny's hand, loose, thin skin on knobby bones. Her hand was warm.
Granny's eyes opened. Gold bars in her dark brown eternal eyes.
George? she said.
Then something in Indian.
Granny? I said. It's me, Rigby John Klusener. Are you all right?
My butt went down onto Granny's shiny wood floor. I put my hands under her head and shoulders, lifted slow. I moved my legs under her so her head was lying in my lap.
Her heartbeat was in her hands, her heart beat the way she moved her head, her whole body was her heart beating.
Granny's eyes looked straight into my eyes. There was nothing in between.
Then a whole long thing that Granny said, all in Indian, nothing I understand, but looking in Granny's eyes, I understood a lot. Said the same things over and over, like the rosary or a litany you might say. How the morning light came in her kitchen window. The shade of the Lombardys. Hallucinations, the shadows the leaves made on the ground. Her damn dog, Bonanza. All the dead people in the photos above her bed. How much she loved her grandson. The recipes for what ailed you, when you ate too much horseshit, when your grandson came home all bloody and broken and drunk. Coffee and sugar and Sego Milk. The cedar tree, the tree of her ancestors. Her kerosene lamp at night in the kitchen window was the way to keep company with your dead.
Those things and a lot more things I could never begin to know.
Then Granny lifted her arm, made her finger into a pointer. Her heartbeat in the way she pointed.
My pipe, she said. Get my pipe on the table.
Heartbeat in Granny's voice.
I sat up high, my eyes just table height. Next to the covered silver sugar bowl and silver salt and pepper shakers and the silver butter dish, her corncob pipe.
And is my tobacco up there? she said. Prince Albert in a can?
Next to the corncob pipe, the red can of Prince Albert. Some old guy with a mustache and weird hat standing up straight.
Yah, I said.
Well, let him out, she said.
I managed to reach the pipe, then slid the can of Prince Albert over slow.
I got the can open, filled the pipe, all the while Granny's dark eyes in the electric light, nothing in between.
Help me up, she said.
Granny sat up slow, mostly me helping her up. She leaned against the smooth green Majestic just above her head. The bright electric light shining down on her face. Her long hair undone, white hair falling down her shoulders, all the way to the floor.
The heartbeat in Granny's hands as she reached for the pipe.
Granny puffed and puffed, smoke rising, the sweet sharp smell of Prince Albert.
Just tell me one thing, Granny said.
What's that? I said.
Who the hell are you again? she said.
I'm Rigby John, I said. You remember. Klusener. George and I buck hay together.
Oh hell! Granny said. You're Rigby John. The boy George is in love with. A real sweetheart, that boy, coming from that family. Got a nice ass too. Never seen my grandson so smitten! George don't know what the hell to do with himself!
A gust of wind. In a moment, something opens up. Out of Granny's lips, the word was a blow in my chest and love spread out all around over on my body.
Granny held the pipe to her mouth. Her heartbeat in her hands. Big puffs of smoke billowing up.
Then something I wasn't expecting at all.
Granny took the pipe out of her mouth, turned the mouthpiece toward me, and handed me the pipe. The pipe on my lips was wet and hot.
Moments of gesture.
So beautiful Granny right then, her eyes big, round, and dark, bars of gold, red rims all around. Like a child's eyes. Full of life. Nothing in between.
So careful, I laid the corncob pipe back into Granny's open palms. The heartbeat in her palms. The pipe between Granny's lips, puffing, puffing.
You got to go tell George I'm dead, Granny said. He ain't going to like it.
The feeling in my arms that means I'm helpless.
You're not going to die, I said. Do you have a telephone?
Tell him it's a brand-new day, Granny said. Brand-new, son!
You don't have a telephone, do you?
George is out tonight, Granny said. He's more than likely at the Back Door. Do you know where the Back Door is?
Let me help you into bed, I said. I'll run get the pickup and call an ambulance.
Granny put her hand to her mouth. I thought she was going to cough or cry. She started making a weird sound.
Of course you know where the Back Door is, Granny said.
No, I don't, I said.
The weird sound coming up and out of Granny, her eyes closed, her mouth open, the line of pink gums all the way around.
Well, you're sitting on it! Granny said.
Laughter so hard out of Granny, it was scary. Laughter so hard, she could snap in two.
And you know me. I can't be around laughter like that without catching it too.
So there we are, Granny and me on her shiny wood floor, smoking a corncob pipe, laughing our asses off.
That's how I plan to remember her, Granny, laughing.
Then Granny went off again speaking Indian. A long line of words that made no sense. But the way Granny was saying the Indian words, the way she was looking at me and laughing, all's I could do was laugh.
Hooting and hollering, Granny and me, so hard Bonanza started barking.
Shut up, Bonanza! Granny said.
Then that quick, the laughter in Granny stopped.
Granny's old rope hand went up to her neck. Her head slid slow in an arch down the green enamel, her long white hair trailing.
Bent over on the floor, Granny was only a pile of bones.
I put my hand on her hair. Her hair soft and smooth, like when you pet a bird. I put my face down on the floor, right across from Granny's face.
Her heartbeat in her lips.
The door in the alley, Granny said. Tell them you love flowers.
Tell my grandson his name was on my lips.
Granny said one word, an Indian word, and then even though her wide, round, dark eyes were open, even though the gold bars were in her eyes, even though everything else in the world didn't change, that quick, Grandma Queep was gone.
The other half, the dark half, that part of Pocatello, the two dives, the Working Man's Club and Porters and Waiters, the part of Pocatello that exists only in a Judy Garland song.
Niggertown.
Looked like the Princess Theater to me.
Or
The Wizard of Oz
when it goes from black and white to color.
I was standing in the shadows, next to the big square metal dumpster painted dark blue. Behind me, weeds growing up, the cyclone fence, pieces of garbage and tumbleweeds stuck in the fence.
Something like San Francisco about the old buildings. The long, sad windows with the paint peeling off. The rusted broken-down cast-iron fence. The garbage overflowing in the two garbage cans.
The neon blue moon in the cracked window.
WORKING MAN'S CLUB
. Right next to the Working Man's Club, another set of stairs that led up to a door. Above the door, the painted red sign with fancy gold letters, a sign like you'd see in the train station,
PORTERS AND WAITERS
.
Slow, sinful saxophone jazz playing out from somewhere inside in there.
I put my hand on the dumpster, leaned my body against it. The dumpster still smelled of new paint.
Slumming. Just here to see how the other half lives.
I thought if I stood there long enough, George in his shiny yellow dress, in the neon light of the blue neon moon, would walk out the door, step sideways down the steps, place each high red heel exactly on each step, the high tap of the heel on each step. Then at the bottom, George on the second step, George would sit down, reach in his red silk purse and pull out his Camels, tap one out, and light it.
On the street, people all over the place, Mexican people, Indian people, black people, even some white people, up the stairs, down the stairs, into the doors and back out, drunk, dancing, the smell of marijuana.
A yellow dog lifted his leg onto the cast-iron fence.
Everything was there but George.
The door in the alley,
Granny'd said.
I started walking. Rain pouring down on cement and pavement. The alley behind the Working Man's Club and Porters and Waiters was dark shadows, darker than the rest of the night. Two-story buildings on each side. No streetlamps. Big potholes in the alley, puddles of water in the potholes.