Now Is the Hour (66 page)

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 tiled 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.

That moment at the table at supper in the kitchen under the bright overhead light. The
fuck
was 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 hung over the table, over our family, hung 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 through Thy fucking bounty, through Christ our fucking Lord.

A-fucking-men!

Fuck.

There's one more thing left. The thing back at the beginning that happened in the kitchen I haven't told you yet. One more story.

Maybe it's the story I should have told you first.

Like Russell, it's the biggest story. The one I wasn't the same after.

This morning, four-thirty, when I wake up, after I go into the bathroom, after I look at myself in the mirror for the last time, after I shut the bathroom light off, open the door, the way the door sticks, and before I leave the house, before I drive to Billie's, when I walk up into the kitchen, there is the smell of coffee, and Mom is sitting in her chair at the kitchen table.

It's dark, but I can tell. She has her face on, eyebrows swooped, her hair done up. Red Cherries lipstick.

I immediately go into a crouch position. I think all hell is breaking loose.

Mom just sits there, though, looks at me. She's smoking one of Dad's Viceroys.

Want a cigarette? she says.

My mouth fumbles over what the hell to say. Doesn't say anything.

Come on, she says. After all this time, you think I don't know you nick your dad's cigarettes?

No, I say. Yes. Then: I don't know.

As eloquent as ever.

Mom pulls out my chrome chair with the plastic yellow seat and backrest. The chair slides along the blue and white tiles.

She flicks the ash into the ashtray she stole from the 30 Club when she was young.

Here, she says. Sit down.

Mom reaches the cigarette across to me.

Take a drag, she says. It's the only cigarette I could find.

I sit down. Take the cigarette.

Our fingers touch.

I do a perfect French inhale.

How do you do that? she says. I never learned to do that.

The morning light is silver light. Her rummage-sale cotton blouse.

When you blow the smoke out your mouth, I say, you suck the smoke up with your nose.

I hand the cigarette back to Mom. Our fingers touch.

Mom's face is weird when she tries to French-inhale. Her face is like when you try to flare your nostrils and you don't know how.

That weird sound from down deep inside of us.

Laughter.

But soft. We do not want to wake him.

Who'd have thought I'd be laughing with my mother on the day I leave forever.

Mom crosses her legs. Her jeans. Her Keds.

Mom hands the cigarette to me.

Here! Mom says. You take this damn thing. I swear I'll never get it.

Our fingers touch.

Then: I go there too, you know, Mom says. To Russy's grave. It's so peaceful. One afternoon I fell asleep right there on the grass in the sun. I especially love it in the fall.

Do you ever miss him? I say.

He was born on December eighth and died on March eighteenth, Mom says. One hundred days and nights he screamed and then he died.

Yah, Mom says, I miss him.

Two silver rounds, moons, reflected light, her glasses.

So, Mom says. You're leaving me.

Yes jumps right out my mouth.

Can't say that I blame you, she says.

Are you going with her?

Who? I say.

Billie Cody, she says.

No, I say, I'm going alone.

My pounding heart.

Good, Mom says.

Quiet for a while. Just my mom's breath, my breath.

I hand the cigarette back to her. Our fingers touch.

I know you think this is just your mother talking, she says, but Billie's not the girl for you.

Then Mom does something she hasn't done in a long time. She touches me. A soft pat on the top of my hand.

Mom's rough, red farm hands. Her cut-to-the-quick fingernails.

Quiet in the kitchen, in the early morning, quiet all around the touch.

Mom pulls deep on the cigarette. The bright orange fire in morning light just short of darkness.

Rig? Mom says. Take me with you, Rig.

Mom hands the cigarette back to me.

Our fingers touch.

Mom? I say.

Mom exhales so much smoke the room fills up with smoke.

Please, she says.

I've got to get out of here, she says. All I do is cook and clean for this man, and he never thanks me, never even looks at me.

I've worn my knees out praying, Mom says. The Virgin said to pray the rosary, pray the rosary, but sometimes when I pray I get this feeling who I'm praying to ain't there.

Besides you, Mom says, the only thing I got's the piano.

And now, Mom says, your sister's home. I'll love having a baby around again. But it ain't worth it. Your sister has no idea what she's in for.

So what do you say, Rig? Mom says. While we got the chance. Before he wakes up and wants his mush.

There's something only I can do with Mom, and I can do it only rarely.

The way I do it is I cross my eyes a little, curl up my top lip, and scratch my butt. That's all I have to do, and Mom's busting a gut.

But I don't cross my eyes, curl my lip, scratch my butt.

I hand the cigarette back to Mom. Our fingers do not touch.

My mother's eyes. High-beam headlights, two most sorrowful mysteries, one pitched a little south, the other east.

Every which way the light in them travels right on past, right on through, or hardly ever settles on me at all.

This morning, at the kitchen table, in the silver light, Mom settles her eyes on me.

Almond-shaped and hazel.

Flecks of gold.

Dear broken Mother, here, let me hold myself in such a way that you will see me, and if you see me, if I please you, the trouble will leave your eyes, and your eyes will go soft and be gold.

And I will stay alive.

Outside, in the pickup, I'm talking to Tramp. I'm telling him I've got to go without him.

From inside the house, it's Mom on the piano. The special way her upright piano sounds. Piano wires thrumming inside a thick hardwood box.

She's not playing “The Bible Tells Me So.” The song Mom is playing, the song she is singing alone, without me to harmonize with her, is our favorite song she plays.

After Billie Cody's house, out on the open highway this morning, I was doing fine, just fine. The sunrise was orange and yellow and so bright I needed sunglasses. The pickup was running good, I was safe, fine out of there, no problem. My arm was out the window, the wing window open so the morning air was coming right at my face. Wind and dust and going fast, there's nothing better in the world.

Sunday morning radio.

What a bunch of shit.

It was around American Falls when I turned on the radio again.

I found something all right.

As clear as a bell.

If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.

So many sad songs.

I cried all the way to Twin Falls.

Parked the pickup on Norby Street. On the corner of Norby and South Sward.

Started walking southwest. Only time I stopped was to pick this daisy.

So that's how I got here. Out here where there's nothing. Nothing but desert. Out here where everything's alive.

My life from before Russell until this moment out here on Highway 93.

Quite a story now that I tell it.

It took awhile. A whole night in the desert to tell the damn thing.

Not since the yellow Buick with the blonde giving me the peace sign or the bird.

Out here on Highway 93 it's cold. I had to put on my Levi's and my other T-shirt and my white shirt with the iron burn on the collar, and both pairs of socks. Goose flesh all over on my arms and legs. I'm shivering my ass off. Should have packed some winter clothes. My porkpie hat has dew on it.

The gravel ain't so pretty now that I'm not stoned.

In the east the sky is navy blue, pink, and a little yellow just on the horizon. What looks like maybe more storm clouds.

Sagebrush. The smell of sagebrush and the cool morning wind and the smell of rain. That and my armpits is what I smell.

A ribbon of pavement shiny to over both horizons.

It's a new day, son, brand-new.

At sunrise, I decide to check through my stuff, make sure I didn't forget anything.

I take out Granny's corncob pipe, lay the pipe down on the edge of the asphalt. Then there's the photograph. Me standing in front of the
old skinny white house with my fishing pole. I lay the photograph out on the edge of the asphalt. Put a piece of gravel on the photograph so the morning wind don't blow it away.

Then there's the yoga book Billie gave me.

George's dollar bill.

The wadded-up piece of paper.

I don't unwad the piece of paper yet. I stick the wad of paper in my pocket with the dollar bill.

Theresa Nussbaum's painting is wrapped inside two plastic sacks and tied with rubber bands. I take the painting out of my backpack real slow, then lay the painting next to Granny's pipe. I undo the rubber bands, pull the plastic off.

I touch the painting around on the four edges.

Forest and green mountains where there'd been only a flat expanse of east.

Have you ever seen
The Wizard of Oz
?

The part that turns from black and white to color is my favorite.

Theresa, the artist from Portland, my red-haired maiden aunt Alma's roommate, had smiled. If I wasn't up close, I'd never have noticed that smile.

The forest and the green mountains are inside, Theresa had said. That's what an artist does. She travels the world looking for something inside.

Just over my shoulder, the sun is a beet red ball sitting on top of a blanket of sagebrush. Morning birds, killdeer, mourning doves, red-breasted black birds, sparrows. Slow, rolling wind.

My breath is clear and deep and sucks in the earth, the sun on the earth, the sagebrush, the wind, and the sky.

An intent in your life to fold your life around.

I'm Rigby John Klusener. I'm free and I'm easy and I'm traveling the world looking for what's inside.

Out of my backpack, I pull out my water bottle, my toothbrush, and my Crest. I pour water on my toothbrush, then put some Crest on my toothbrush, then I'm brushing my teeth. Crest has been shown to be an effective decay-preventive dentifrice that can be of significant value when used as directed in a conscientiously applied program of oral hygiene and regular professional care.

Right about then, thunder so loud like to shake your bones.

A crack of lightning across the northwest sky.

Fucking great.

Ten, twenty minutes, I'm going to be soaked through.

Or French-fried by a stroke of lightning.

Fuck.

The photograph I stick in between Theresa's painting and its frame. I quick wrap Theresa's painting with the plastic sacks, wrap the rubber bands around, set the painting back in my backpack. Then in goes the yoga book and Granny's pipe.

Besides the clothes on my back and the red tie around my head and my porkpie hat and my toothbrush and my Crest and my bottle of water and my roll of toilet paper, and Mom's sack lunch with the bologna sandwich and the hard-boiled egg and the milk can shaker of salt and the Clover Club potato chips and the piece of apple pie, all's I got is my wallet and the two hundred dollars.

Mom blessed her ten twenty-dollar bills with holy water. Then handed them to me. Her rough red farm hands. Her cut-to-the-quick fingernails counted out the twenties into my hand until there were ten.

Pray your rosary, she said.

Then kissed my forehead.

Then there's the wadded-up piece of paper in my pocket.

The feeling in my arms that means I'm helpless.

I reach in my pocket, pull out the wad of paper, bounce the wad up in my hand.

What do you do with something so important? Eat it. Shove it up your butt. Unwrap it, sew it onto your heart.

On one side of me the sun is big and bright as it's ever going to get. On the other side, it's a big, black thunderhead.

Another bounce.

If he loved me like he said he did, then he would've waited.

I spin in circles, around and around, winding up for the pitch, twirling, a dust devil, my arms in the air, a dance. I hurl the wad of paper with a sound from inside and deep, a grunt, and the wad of paper sails through the air like a bird flying.