Authors: Tom Spanbauer
I pulled down my porkpie hat, pulled up my suit jacket lapels to close around my neck. I took a deep breath. A low light far away on the left.
An intent in your life to fold your life around.
Love.
I put my eyes on that light, didn't let my eyes go anywhere else, kept walking. For the longest time, all there was was only dark and rain and the crunch of my black Sunday shoes on gravel. My breath in and out. My heart.
The light bulb above the door was covered by a piece of tin. Three cement steps went down to a burnt red steel door. On the steel jamb above the burnt red steel door, just under the light bulb, written in yellow Magic Marker, letters only an inch high:
THE BACK DOOR
.
Of course you know where the back door is.
I knocked once. Then once again, only louder. Then again real loud.
Rain on my porkpie hat, rain on my shoulders. My black Sunday shoes, standing in a puddle of rain. Under the light, I lifted my right hand to the light. The knuckles were bloody again.
I knocked with my left hand this time, the butt of my fist banging, banging on the burnt red door.
So quiet. Nothing. Only rain.
The door opened a crack.
Light behind a tall white man. No lipstick, and I had to look up to his lips.
What do you say? he said.
George Serano? I said. Is George Serano in there?
What do you say? the man said.
He's an Indian guy, about thirty-five years old, I said. He's tall, got black, shiny hair.
The door slammed closed. I leaned up against the door, pushed all my weight against it. Pounded and pounded on the door.
For God's sake! I yelled. Open the door! He's George Serano, and he loves me!
The door opened a crack.
Yes, the tall man said. But do you love
him
?
I squared my shoulders, took a deep breath. I cleared my throat so my voice wouldn't be too high.
OK, I said. I love him too.
That's
so sweet,
the man said. Now, look, in order to get in here, you got to say something. So say it already, and I'll let you in.
You know, he said. Roses . . . daisies . . . lilacs.
Flowers! I said. Fucking flowers! I said,
Of course
I love flowers!
The light inside went out when I walked in the door. I couldn't see a thing. The door closed behind me, steel into steel, the locks latched. The tall man wore English Leather. He lifted my arms and patted me under my arms and down my body. Then from my socks on up inside my legs. He stopped just short of my balls. He took off my porkpie hat, then put the hat back on my head.
His big hand on my shoulder gave me a firm push. In front of my face, something soft hanging down. The tall man opened the velvet curtain.
One large L-shaped room. Knotty pine walls, brown-and-greentiled shiny floors. No bright lights. Only light from lamps. The lamp nearest me, on a low wood side table, cowboys on the lampshade. Below, lying on the shiny tile, a braided rug. Along the walls, couches and sofas, standing lamps. Paintings like in the thirties and forties. A tall ship with white masts on the ocean. A Lassie dog in a snowstorm who'd found a baby lamb. Exotic paintings of Egypt.
Off to the right, a pool table under a hanging colored-glass lamp.
Behind the pool table, a corner bookshelf made of knotty pine, wood sconces across the top. Books on the bookshelves.
Straight ahead, in the center of the L, the bar was knotty pine too, with four or five stools. Behind the bar, no bigger than a wardrobe closet, bottles stacked up. Wooden tables and chairs all around. Early American. Ashtrays like wagon wheels on the tables. To the left, beyond the bar, the jukebox and the dance floor.
It was quiet and warm. Only the music on the jukebox and low talking. Pool ball crack. Twenty, maybe thirty men. Most of them old men. Forty and fifty. Almost all of them were dancing. Paired up. Men dancing slow like a man and a woman. Dean Martin was singing, “You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You,” and everybody was singing along low.
When the song was over, the men thanked their partner, went back to their tables, had a drink, lit up a smoke. When a new song started, “How Much Is That Doggy in the Window?,” the men got up again, got another partner, or the same partner, and started into dancing again, singing low.
George wasn't wearing a yellow dress. He was wearing a white
shirt and a red bow tie and dress pants with suspenders. George was an Italian man. He was dancing with a man who, from behind, I swear, looked exactly like my father.
George was leading.
When George looked up and saw me, when he looked across the smoky room into my eyes, in that moment, I closed my eyes, tried to look away, but I could not. A gust of wind, a hawk, some large bird flying low. A feeling in my bones, instinct, whatever you want to call it. George could see it in my eyes.
Billie Holiday started singing the song KSEI radio always played before it went off the air weeknights at nine-thirty.
I'll be seeing you in all the old familiar places.
George walked across the room, took hold of my hand, my sore hand, led me out to the dance floor. All the men on the dance floor, the men at the tables, even the bartender, stopped and watched. George put his right hand on my back, held my left hand in the air.
There I was dancing with a man, dancing with George.
My shoulders up around my ears. My eyes were like they weren't mine. I couldn't make them look where I wanted them to. They were off staring into space at some goddamn knotty pine, and I wanted to look at George.
What I had to say to George, I had to look at him to say it.
Granny's eyes, the way they looked at you, there was nothing in between.
I closed my eyes tight, took a deep breath.
George was in front of me.
Shiny black hair, suntanned dark cinnamon skin, his dark eyes. The gold bars in his dark eyes. Thick lips the color of the rest of his skin. His sweat, buckskin and flint on the back of my throat. The part of the tomato that folds together red into the stem of green. Vaseline hair tonic. Old Spice.
I knew all these things about George but never up this close.
Our hands were palm to palm on my right, my fingers in between his fingers, or his fingers in between mine. My hand so thin and pink inside his big brown hand. My thumb, how it lay against his thumb. Our forearms touched too. His skin, my too short brown suit jacket and my white shirt poking out.
The slow roll of the dance, now and then the brim of my hat touched his head. My brow and cheekbone, his cheekbone and jaw.
Under my chin, my left thumb was on his red suspender. My thumb was trying to get underneath the suspender. I made my thumb stop.
Under my left palm, starched white cotton and George's shoulder.
The low lamplight on his cheekbone. George's ear. The breath from my nose into the hole of his ear. My nose only inches away from the place where his neck skin and white shirt collar met.
My lips were even closer.
The smell of starch and iron and cotton. Warm breath, tobacco, gin, and lime.
George's hand on my back, his little finger just there at the top crack of my ass. We were touching all along the whole left side of me, the whole right side of him.
The slow roll of the dance, on that side our thighs touched, they came apart, our thighs touched.
And something else down there, loose and full.
I'll be seeing you in every lovely summer's day.
Just me and George and Billie Holiday dancing slow and close.
I saw it coming from a long way off. His head was so still, his eyes on my lips. His lips stuck together as they came apart. Such a slow and graceful descent, the way his lips landed just right on my lips, round and firm-soft too.
Whisker rub. His tongue in my mouth, a perfect French inhale. It was a kind of swoon. Something in George collapsed too. Or we both did. Who knows, at that moment, you couldn't really tell us apart.
It was the longest kiss I'd ever kissed.
Then his lips slid off my mouth, on up my cheek, all the way up to my ear.
George's tongue was in my ear. We were heart to heart, hip to hip, thigh to thigh, two very good parades.
I pulled my head back, put my forehead on George's forehead.
His dark eyes filled up. Two big tears rolled down his cheeks.
Rig, George whispered.
Then: Do people call you Rig?
You know I loved my Granny very much.
My heart pounding. My breath. You know me. Rubber lips. There was everything to say, but I couldn't say a word.
Eye to eye, as I was speaking, my lips touched George's lips.
Granny told me, I whispered, to tell you, I whispered, your name was on her lips.
Your Indian name.
On the dance floor, in the Back Door, Billie Holiday, there was no doubt, I was the only thing holding George Serano up.
An intention in your life to fold your life around.
I stood tall and strong and let him fall. His face against my chest. I reached down, put my arm under his knees, his legs dangled over my arm. One big heft, and I was holding George high in my arms.
There was nowhere to go, no place I knew, no solid, silent place in all the world. So I stood, held George, knotty pine everywhere I looked, men staring. Just stood. Put that solid, silent place in the world inside me and stood.
Stood and stood, held George, held his whole body, until he was quiet.
At Granny's door, when George reached for the green screen door, when he pulled it open by the latch, Bonanza didn't bark. Inside, the light bulb was a bright shine.
George's shirt so white.
George walked around the table. His footsteps, the Italian shoes on the wood planks. I was right behind him. I set my porkpie hat on the table.
Granny lay on her shiny wood floor, folded over onto herself.
George dropped to his knees. So slow the way George put his hands on his grandmother's shoulders, lifted her shoulders, leaned her body against the green enamel of the stove. So slow he reached out, put his hands on Granny's cheeks. His long fingers brought her head up straight.
Behind Granny's head the green enamel of the stove. Majestic.
White hair flying all around her face. George spit on his hands, placed his hands on Granny's head, combed her long white hair away from her face.
George's dark eyes were bright and shiny, the way a child looks, nothing in between. He started singing low. An Indian song that sounded a lot like crying.
At the moment when George started singing, the night was so quiet, I swear I could hear the wind in the cedar tree.
George put his hands under Granny's arms, I grabbed around her Minnetonka moccasins, and we lifted. Skin and bones and a cotton dress. We laid Granny out on the wedding ring quilt of Thunderbirds
on her big brass bed. Laid her arms out straight. Laid her legs out straight. Smoothed out her hair.
From out of the trunk at the base of her bed, George pulled out a blue and red and yellow Pendleton blanket. I helped George fold the blanket over Granny. George smoothed the blanket out, lifted her arms out so they lay on top of the blanket.
George lit the kerosene lamp, opened the kitchen window, then set the lamp in the window. George opened the door, opened the window above her bed. He walked through the door into his room, opened the window in there.
Then something else from out of the trunk. A bundle of herbs that George lit, and when I smelled the herbs, I smelled sage. All around the house, George carried the burning sage. He was singing in Indian and wafting the smoke over everything in Granny's house.
When he got to Bonanza, George stopped.
Bonanza in his Pendleton bed looked like he was sleeping. But he was not sleeping. George put his hand on Bonanza's head.
George went down right there on the floor. Long howls and wails out of him like under the weeping willow that day. Sounds I didn't know a human being could make.
I made it to the tall-backed kitchen chair. Pulled the chair out. Sat down at Granny's table in my favorite place in all the world.
With crying like that, you just can't help it. I was crying too.
It took George a long time, but when he was done crying, he was done. George got up, wiped his eyes and blew his nose, and walked out the door. When he came back, his arms were full of cedar boughs. He laid cedar boughs down all around Granny's body. Candles too. A candle on the sewing machine by her head and a candle on the trunk at her feet.
Granny was really beautiful lying on her brass bed under the blue and red and yellow Pendleton. All the cedar boughs, branches of her ancestors, lying all around her. Above her, on the wall, the photographs. The reflection of the candles on their faces, in their eyes. The smell of cedar and sage smoke.
George's eyes had gone soft. I mean, he was differnt. It felt like a whole new person standing next to me. Somebody I hardly knew.
On the other side of the wall from Granny's bed is George's bed. It's an iron bed, single, with a black and gray Pendleton on it. In the room, besides the bed and the window, is a dresser. A blue glass ashtray on his dresser. On the wall a round mirror. Another bright light bulb hanging down.
George sits down on his bed. The bedsprings squeak. He sits leaned over, his elbows on his knees. I don't know where to go, what to do. All I know is I want to be close. I sit down on the bed too. An arm's length away. The bedsprings squeak. In my jacket pocket is George's pack of Camels. Still one cigarette left.
I light the cigarette, take a drag, hand the cigarette to George.
Smoking is praying, I say.
George takes the cigarette. Through his lips, up his nose, a beautiful French inhale.
Thanks, George says.
I love you, George says.
George hands the cigarette back to me.
Our fingers touch.
The smoke, the prayer in my lungs, I love God so much right then.
I know, I say. Granny already told me.