Authors: Tom Spanbauer
Sometimes, after supper, I'd go out and sit and watch Dad milk the cows. I never said much to him, at least that I can remember. I just sat on a milk stool in the corner by the milk cans and under the red portable radio. I was his audience. Dad making things go, it was something to watch him move. He was like a big cat but not as smooth, maybe more like a small horse, yet a horse you had to be careful of. He had the Holstein cows lined up in the barn, the shiny stainless-steel milk machines pumping away, their suction cups on the cows' teats, the pump sound, the smell of warm, raw milk and cow shit and straw, my father.
What I knew about the farm outside our house and yard was what I knew about him. On the other side of the fence, the gas pump, and beyond the gas pump, the yard, acres of gravel stretched out so trucks could pull in and turn around. Dad's bright, square, tin toolshed. The red brick barn. Inside the barn, the saddle room, the chicken coop, the calf pen, and the stanchions where Dad milked the cows. Out the back door of the barn, the pigpen, the screaming pigs who ate little boys when they were bad. The spud cellar we weren't allowed to go into. Somewhere out there too, the railroad cars. Then the Portneuf River. We had to stay clear of the Portneuf. Then beyond, somewhere far away in the distant fields, was the Mexican house, and out even farther, at the end of our farm, on the other side of the barbwire fence and on the other side of the road, on three sides of our farm was the reservation, where the Indians lived.
Dad had a map. The map was in a big book with lots of colorful maps in it. One day, under the bright 'lectric light bulb hanging over the kitchen table, Dad plopped the map book down on our kitchen table.
'Lectric,
like
differnt.
That was the way Mom and Dad talked.
His big hands flipped through the pages. On one page Dad stopped, put his head down close, and with his big index finger and wide, heavy nail, the line of grease under the nail, Dad pointed to Sis and me where our farm was.
Sis leaned up on the table with her elbows. Across the table, I stood up on the chair and leaned in too on my elbows like Sis.
On the map it was yellow and it was red. Dad said the yellow was
where Bannock County was and where the white people lived, and the red was the reservation, where the Indians lived.
Then Dad slew his eyes up at me and Sis. His dark black eyes, Roosky Gypsy eyes, my mother called them. His black eyebrows, his sunburned face, and the line across his forehead where the hat line was.
Look here, Dad said. You see where the yellow Bannock County pokes out into this square yellow patch into the red reservation?
Sis leaned down even closer. I did too.
On the map, right under Dad's finger, at the end, right where the line of grease under his nail was, I could see yellow Bannock County and how in just that one place it poked out a yellow square into all that red.
That's our farm, Dad said. Only one side of us connected to Bannock County. All the other sides, all three of them, right up against injuns.
Surrounded by them, Dad said. Surrounded by injuns on three sides.
Something fast inside me, some way my heart beat. My hands went over my chest and belly. What was fast inside my heart when Dad said
Surrounded by injuns
wasn't only fear. It was magic.
Sis is the one who asked the question, not me.
Sis's dark eyes like Dad's. Shirley Temple hair. Sis wrinkled up her nose.
Are injuns the same as Mexicans? Sis asked.
In the kitchen, under the 'lectric light bulb, Mom somewhere at the sink or at the cookstove, her hair flying, her back to us, bent over a bowl, beating something in the bowl.
Dad leaned back in his chair. Out of his Levi's shirt pocket, he pulled a pack of Viceroys. The light bulb light on the VO5 made his black hair shine. Dad pulled a Viceroy out of the pack, put the pack back into his pocket. He reached across the cookstove, grabbed the box of kitchen matches, slid open the box, took out a match, and struck the match against the cookstove. He held the flame to the end of his Viceroy.
The way the smoke curled up into his nose. Dad reached back over to the cookstove, tossed the match into the flames.
Indians are a lot like Mexicans, Dad said, because they're dirty and
drive old cars and have dark skin and black hair and don't care about themselves and get drunk.
The cigarette smoke came out Dad's mouth and nose at the same time.
Niggers are like Mexicans and Indians, Dad said, only worse, a lot worse. They ain't got no morals, and they like to get drunk too, real drunk. That's how the Pocatello House over in Niggertown got burnt down and how your mom ended up with that burnt piano.
So that was Dad. Still, though, I wanted his attention and even something more. What that something was I didn't know because I never got more than bits and pieces of it. One of them, one of the most important, happened when I was around five or six. It was suppertime and the screen door slammed and Dad was inside the house again big as ever. He took off his boots in the kitchen and grabbed the
Idaho State Journal
off the table. Usually I'd steer clear of him as best I could, but that day for some reason, just as he stepped into the hallway from the kitchen, I stepped into the hallway from my bedroom. There we were, the both of us on the red linoleum surrounded by the wallpaper with the butterflies and dice. I almost ducked back in my door, but it was too late. So I put my head down and kept walking and then moved close to the wall. As he passed, my father laid his hand on my head. Just his two fingers right on the top. I stopped dead in my tracks. Dad kept going.
For the longest time after that, I waited for Dad to touch me on my head again. A couple of times I practically threw myself at him. But I can count the times of his touch on one hand. And he never did touch the top of my head again.
Another time I remember Mom was at the cookstove, and the windows in the kitchen were fogged up. Dad was in the bathroom standing in front of the mirror that was above the sink. He was just in his jockey shorts and his guinea T-shirt. The bright bare light bulb above the sink shined down onto the white of his arms.
Mom told me once that Dad didn't like his upper arms. He thought they were too skinny. So he never wore short-sleeve shirts, only long-sleeve, sometimes rolled up to the elbow.
The hot water was running on a white washrag inside the sink. The steam from the water fogged up the mirror even more than the hot water of his bath. Dad's hands were in the sink, wet black hairs, holding the white washrag, letting it soak in the hot water.
Dad wrung out the washrag with his hands, then bent down and laid the washrag over his face. When he stood back up straight, he looked down at me. Only his black eyes down at me. I was standing in the doorway on the red linoleum floor, the butterflies and dice all around me on the wallpaper.
His mouth moved under the washrag. The washrag sucked in and blew out as he sang:
You dirty little bugger, does your mother know you're out? With your hands in your pockets and your shirttail out.
That's when he came at me, in his white washrag mask, his hands pressing the washrag to his face, his breath pushing the washrag in and out.
You dirty little bugger.
Screaming, ecstatic, the mysterious man-monster who was after me. Mom was standing at the cookstove. I grabbed onto Mom's solid leg, my head buried in the folds of her dress.
My body ached in the places where I knew he would grab me, tickle me. My ribs. Under my chin. In my armpits.
Then: Let's do it again, Daddy. Say that again, Daddy. Chase me again, Daddy.
Just once more.
Another time, just before noon. Dad was lying on the front-room floor. The red portable radio was in the kitchen window and the cowboy was singing, Melt your cold, cold heart. Mom told me to go wake Dad up. Dad on the front-room floor, his Levi's shirt and jeans and cowboy boots taking up that whole side of the room.
Dad, I said. Dinner's ready.
Dad started snoring. My feet moved across the flowered brown carpet. Dad's body got bigger and bigger. His snores louder. My feet were right next to his arm that was under his head.
Dad, I said, Mom said dinner is ready.
My hand went down slow to touch his shoulder.
That's when he jumped. He's playing, I thought, and I laughed. He grabbed me, and he was playing, and the parts of me where he'd tickle, my belly, my sides, my armpits, under my chin, ache. His Lava soap smell, dirty socks. He pulled me around, pushed me down, and I was lying under him. The whole great body of him on top of me, the pearl buttons of his Levi's shirt pocket smashing against my face. No air, no room for breath.
My hand reached out to the corner of the brown carpet with the
flowers on it. If I could reach the corner of the brown flowered carpet, I'd be OK. There was only the weight of him pressing me dead and the corner of the brown flowered carpet. I was screaming, but I didn't know.
Mom's almond-shaped hazel eyes and Sis standing in the hallway door.
Good Lord, Joe, Mom said. Do you have to be so rough on the boy?
Bits and pieces scattered like crumbs that only increased a yearning. A yearning for something more I didn't know from him. And another time, a time special not because he touched me, but because I was with him, when he might have forgot I was even there, when I saw a side of my father I didn't know existed. Just me alone with my father in his pickup out in the world. Snow and ice on the windshield. The windshield wipers, the blast of the heater. My stocking cap, my mittens, my galoshes, only my face sticking out. Outside our skinny white house, no Mom, alone in the cold, white, snowy world with the big man who lived with us, the mystery. At any moment anything could happen. My hands folded in my mittens, I sat as far across the seat I could get from him.
Chains on the tires of the pickup. Clatters against the fenders. Past the spud cellar, Dad turned the steering wheel left, shifted down into first. Even back then only a child, I watched him shift the gears. Ahead of us a big drift of snow. Dad gunned the engine and let out a yahoo. I smiled and probably laughed. Everything amazed me about him, everything about him was big.
Out the side window, the three railroad cars. I didn't know the railroad cars stored grain. The railroad cars were just more of his mystery, a freight train through our farm. It made no sense, but I dared not ask.
Dad turned the steering wheel right, shifted into second, the growl of tires over the steel bars of the cattle guard. Through the windshield, through the wiping windshield wipers, ahead of us was a long road, drifted over with snow. Each snowdrift we hit full on, each snowdrift a burst of snow across the windshield. With each snowdrift, Dad yelled, Hold onto your hat! Then he'd let out a loud yahoo! All the way down the road, one snowdrift after another, Dad yahooing and yelling for me to hold onto my hat. When we came to the biggest snowdrift, my hand on my stocking cap, I quick looked over at him.
Maybe it was just the sun, but for a moment, there was a big bright shine in his eyes. Gold in Dad's eyes, the way Mom's eyes get. I've looked for it ever since, but that gold shine in my father's eyes has been a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.
At the end of the road, on the other side of the Portneuf, at the rise of plateau that was the gravel bar, was the Mexican house. The Mexican house was old and square and gray and dirty, and nobody went in there except Mexicans, and in the summer lots and lots of brown-skinned black-haired Mexicans, who ate only tortillas and didn't speak English, lived in the house while they worked for Dad thinning beets in the fields.
After the magic had gone out of Dad's eyes, and the cold seeped back into the pickup, I remember blowing a hole with my breath and looking through the hole at the Mexican house. Snowdrifts up as high as the windows. No trees, no bushes, just alone. The old gray house looked so cold and lost in the middle of nowhere.
Now that I look back on it, my dad was like that house.
No wonder he hated Mexicans and Indians and black people so much.
Dad might have touched me on the head or put a washcloth over his face and chased me, or plowed me headlong through some snowdrifts, but the whole time I knew I had to be careful, that in a moment I could be pinned down under his body, gasping for breath, a Levi's shirt pressed up against my nose and mouth.
Mostly Dad was just far away in his seagulls, screaming.
In those early days before Russell, Dad far away, circling, circling, there were times there when the only magic we had was us. Mom and Sis and me, and that was enough. Buttering cookie sheets, making frosting, cutting out patterns for pedal pushers. Mom and Sis and me, in our sun hats and seamed hose, rhinestones hanging on our ears, scintillatingly gorgeous, cinnamon toast and cocoa, sometimes oatmeal cookies or chocolate chip, the three of us singing our hearts out:
We are poor little lambs who have lost our way.
Out on Highway 93, my thumb out for over two hours now, I'm the little black sheep who has gone astray. I'm
still
crying.
Baa baa baa.
My mom and me and Sis â it was enough and just more than enough. I'd have written Mom off long ago if it weren't for the early days.
Mom's magic wasn't only about what she could give me, but what I
felt I was giving her. It was a sense of things I'd always had, that there was something mysterious she longed for.
When the wind blew sun and shade across her face, it whispered a sound only she could hear.
Fernweh,
sick with what was far away beyond the blue horizon.
Even back then, I knew that place in her. Where no one touched. The yearning she felt to be touched there.
I tried to touch her, tried to make myself a way that she could catch the falling star and put it in her pocket. No one else would do it. It's for damn sure Dad couldn't do it. And Sis didn't know. So it was up to me, and I tried and tried, but it hardly ever worked. Besides church, it was only when Mom was at her piano. Her alto voice low and sweet when she sang her romantic songs. Really, her music was her only way to carry herself to where she'd never know. How full and happy she was then, how beautiful. Her eyes closed, her chin up a little, singing her heart out.