I Loved You More

by Tom Spanbauer

  Maybe even if we couldn’t have shared the blood, we could’ve still shared the words. Maybe that evening after the sweat lodge, just before supper, when Hank pulled the stump up next to my lawn chair. In those moments, in that gold piece of sunlight, the world smelling of sagebrush and fry bread, terror nowhere around, Hank holding my hand onto his heart, I could have risked it and spoke in my clear voice the words that were true in my heart.

  Hey, Hank, while we’re here let’s promise each other the way Ephraim and I have promised.

  We could’ve that day. We were that close. We could have done it easy. Looked in each other’s eyes and promised love. If only I’d spoken the words.

  Or maybe if I’d have made the joke about the hair.

  Maybe that would have been enough.

  10.

  Sister

  THE LAST LEG OF OUR JOURNEY. BOISE IS TWO HUNDRED and seventy miles away. Five days to go and Hank and I will be back to Manhattan.

  Our night at Ephraim’s was another late one. The three of us on his long couch, percolator coffee and talking talking, listening to Ephraim’s albums that are stacked on the hi-fi. Beethoven, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Merle Haggard. Ephraim lighting one More Menthol off another. The smell of the cigarettes.

  Hank and I have been in Idaho three days and it’s our first night without booze. And so quiet. Outside the screen door, crickets and frogs. The way the three of us sit there in the low light, my left knee against Ephraim’s, my right knee against Hank’s. Like I am finally home. A couple of times I start to talk about the Most Miserable, who’s been following me around. It’s the perfect time and place to talk, but when I step up to say something, there’s nothing. Most Miserable disappears when I try to put words on him. Which just adds to the problem. Finally, I just give in. The naked guy with no dick at the bottom of hell just won’t let himself be talked about. Not yet. Maybe this is the same place as Hank’s. Where he’d never been before that he couldn’t talk about.

  It’s about two o’clock when Hank, his head against the back of the couch, his eyes closed and his mouth open, just starts snoring away.

  All Ephraim’s got is a single bed, so my bed is four big cushions on the floor. Either that or it’s sleep with his mother, or granny.

  “Too bad,” Ephraim says, “there’s not more room on the couch.”

  “He is a beauty,” I say. “Ain’t he?”

  “You’re like me,” Ephraim says. “We always fall for the same kind of guy.”

  “What kind of guy is that?” I say.

  “Straight.”

  THIS DAY ON our way to Boise is Monday or Tuesday, I think. The next day, Wednesday, Reuben and Sal and Gary will drive us up in their Jeep to Atlanta, Idaho. The ghost town in the Trinity Mountains and our reading in the Old Town Hall.

  Hank is driving. For some reason, and I have no idea why, we’re driving down the main street, North Arthur, in Pocatello. The Interstate to Boise bypasses Pocatello altogether, but there we are, driving through downtown Pocatello, past all those old buildings. Idaho First National Bank, Fargo’s, Molinelli’s Jewelers, Bitton-Tuohy, the Oasis Bar, the Chief Theater.

  The windows are rolled down and even the wind is hot. Our backpacks are in the back seat. Hank’s faux leather brown suitcase, my powder blue one are in the trunk. Hank’s in his Hawaiian shorts and his wifebeater, flip-flops. Me, I’m sunning my Manhattan white feet on the dashboard, in my cutoffs and Fruit of the Loom T. The best thing about driving is the open windows and the wind and the music on the FM stations. Golden Oldies. Music from the Sixties and Seventies. Back in Manhattan, there’s no time for golden oldies.

  Both Hank and I see her at the same time.

  Margaret walking out of JC Penney. Always when I see my big sis, something inside me does that little jump. Hank lets out a New York whistle that stops cabs. It’s so loud everyone on the whole block looks around.

  It all happens so fast I can’t do anything to stop it. My hand goes over to cover Hank’s mouth but stops halfway because there’s no use. The whistle is blowing and there’s nothing can stop it. I want to smack Hank and tell him to shut it, but how’s he to know what’s going on with me and my sis.

  And something else: already I can tell. Big Ben has made his decision. And Little Ben is trembling. At my sternum, in the middle of my chest, the lightbulb that you can see the filament flashing. Time to run.

  After all the years, Margaret and me, finally the moment is here.

  Hank pulls into the gravel parking lot across from the old Dairy Queen right next to Sis’s blue Mazda sports car. The crackling of the tires against the gravel. Hank pushes the silver-handled gearshift knob into park. Turns off the key. Always the bright Idaho sun and the gusts of Idaho wind. No place where there’s shade. No place to hide. Hank’s looking at me like he knows more than I think he knows. That look on his face like his message on his answering machine. You know what you got to do. Just like that, Hank slaps his hand into mine, holds it there.

  What I got to do. Even though I don’t know exactly what that is. I open my door, step out into the sun. Close the door behind me. Lean against the Pinto. Sis is close enough to touch when she stops. She’s wearing a blue and white sun dress. Over her Bette Davis eyes, large, octagonal, clear-framed sunglasses. Her purse is something like fishnet, a yellow woven bag over her shoulder. Yellow sandals. A gold M around her neck on a gold chain.

  When she speaks, her voice is almost a whisper, an excited whisper, the way she’s always spoken to me when she knows that something’s wrong.

  “What are you doing here?” she says. “You left so early. I didn’t know where you went.”

  I put my hand on my forehead, my fingers together, shade on my eyes.

  “Ephraim’s,” I say.

  “I figured,” she says. “But I don’t have his number.”

  “Sober yet?” I say.

  “Oh, I know,” she says. “That was quite some birthday. Are you leaving today?”

  “Boise,” I say. “We’re going to Atlanta with Reuben, Sal, and Gary.”

  “Are you going to stop in Jerome and see dad?” she asks.

  I take my hand away from above my eyes. My eyes squint. Put my hand down to my side. Really, I don’t know what to do with my hand.

  Idaho.

  This is what we do in Idaho. We smoke, we pray, we get drunk, we walk the via dolorosa, carry the old wooden cross back to father.

  “No,” I say.

  “He’s getting old, Ben,” she says. “Since mom’s died he’s a different man.”

  “I’m not stopping in Jerome,” I say.

  “You’re just angry,” she says. “Ben, I told you. I’m sorry we missed your reading.”

  It’s all there in my chest. All that I want to say and don’t know how. I’m a kid again and my big sis has just told me she’s spent my allowance I lent her and she’s not going to pay it back. A big baby torpor in me, a tantrum the size of hell. Yet I don’t dare speak my mind. I can’t take the risk. From day one, she’s the person in the whole world who can love me back.

  Big Ben has other plans, though.

  “Margaret.”

  As soon as I say her name, Little Ben is sobbing. Right there in the Idaho sun on North Arthur in Pocatello next to the Dairy Queen. The sound that comes out of me is the sound of the Most Miserable of All. How loud it is. As if that sound isn’t even coming from me. I’m surprised by the power, the way it just comes blasting out of my chest. The suffering I can hear in me as if I am an audience. Then too I wonder about Hank behind me in the car, what he’ll think. Yet I’m so relieved. But then there’s the high whine, the tears, the chest sob, all the weird pauses for breath, the snot, the way my chin is moving like I have nothing to do with it. My shaking hands. My shaking body. I’m barely standing up.

  All this because my sister missed my reading. I’m ashamed for being so petty. The longer I stand there, though, the more I just let myself feel, the clearer things get. All my life I beli
eved my love for my mother and my sister was their only hope. I was their only hope. Without me all they had was my father. With my father they were lost, lonely, ridiculed, enslaved, full of fear. Then I was born, their beautiful boy. The bringer of a new testament of hope and joy and beauty.

  And in return they loved me for it. That is, when they didn’t hate me. After all, I was their boy, not a man, the kind of man a woman wants, my father. God the father. Even I wanted him.

  My sister would say jump and I’d say how high.

  “Margaret.”

  I look up into my sister’s big, octagonal, clear-plastic sunglasses. Behind the dark glasses, those eyes. She’s freaked that I’m losing it on North Arthur. She’s saying Benny Benny Benny and she’s tried to touch me a couple of times and she tries again but I won’t let her touch me. She thinks I’m just her crazy little gay artist brother and one of his dramas. I hate how her voice has that big sister sound.

  “Margaret.”

  “Margaret,” I say, “I love you too much. Too much for a grown man to love his sister. So much more than you’ll ever love me. I’m going to go away for a while, far away.”

  “You’re always so sensitive,” she says. “It was just a joke about your ass.”

  “Sis,” I say, “I can’t be like this and live anymore.”

  “Oh, Benny,” she says, “I love you too. I’m your bestest buddy and you’re biggest fan.”

  Margaret ducks her head down after she’s said that. Her hand is going through her purse. For the Virginia Slims I can see down there at the bottom. That’s when her glasses slip off her face. The big, clear-plastic octagonals bounce on something then land somewhere down on the gravel. At the same time, Margaret and I bend down and both her hand and my hand are on the glasses. Before I know it, Margaret’s got her arms around me. She pulls me in close. I don’t try and stop her. On our knees on the gravel between two parked cars, I hold her close, too, press tight the yellow fishnet purse between us. Sis, the person who was how I learned to love. How I learned tenderness. How she always held me when I cried.

  I am crying. Trying to stop, trying to breathe, but really just crying and crying. Finally, one last big deep loud sob goes through me. Cramps my toes, makes my knees weak, pushes up out of me like vomit. Pain like that. How we carry it around and don’t even know it.

  My chin on her shoulder, my eyes can’t see for tears. Snot pouring out I try and keep off her sundress.

  “I won’t ever love you like this again,” I say. “You got to understand. And I’m not stopping in Jerome.”

  The palm of Margaret’s hand pats my back.

  “I understand,” she says. “I understand.”

  BUT MARGARET DIDN’T understand. Not that day.

  Years later, and we’re not young and we’re sick and we’re getting old, and our mother is dead and our father is dead, Margaret will call me on the telephone.

  “What happened between us?” she’ll ask. “We used to be so close.”

  My end of the phone line will be silent. And Margaret will cry. The way I cried that day. So no, that day, in the rust-red Pinto with Hank, pulling out of the gravel parking lot onto North Arthur, Margaret, no way she understood.

  For years and years, she and I had been life for one another. We’d saved each other from abuse, from death even. The love, the resentment. How profoundly it had shaped my world.

  Now that was over.

  In the Idaho sun, on the corner in front of the Dairy Queen, when I look out the back window, my big sister in her matching shoes and purse, her big, clear-plastic octagonal dark glasses, waving. The same old pain in my chest. How lonely Margaret looked. Just like my mother. My mother, my sister. But I knew this new thing about myself, and because I knew, I’d taken a step. The first step.

  And I could never go back.

  ON I-84, SUN beating down, wind. The Idaho desert. The green exit sign says, Jerome. Hank’s black eyes look over at me.

  “Are you sure about this, Gruney?” Hank says. “He’s your father.”

  Bugs all over the windshield. Madonna’s on the radio singing, Open Your Heart.

  “Keep on going, Hank,” I say.

  Out my window, to the east, where my father is, sunlight on something shiny. A flash of light in the bright afternoon.

  11.

  No hay palabras

  ATLANTA, IDAHO. SOMETHING MAGIC ABOUT IT. MAYBE it’s the Sawtooths, the lithium in the water, maybe it’s because up there you’re more than a mile high.

  Or maybe the magic is something else.

  At the turn of the century, tens of thousands of people from all over the world crowded themselves into that valley. Their one single effort, to dig for gold. The history of the town, just the story of the gold itself – six million tons of gold ore mined out of Atlanta – could give you fever.

  Twenty-nine people live in Atlanta now. Half of that in winter. More dead people in that valley than there are alive.

  Or it’s the wind. Maybe the magic is how the wind blows down along the river and into town.

  Maybe it’s because besides chopping wood, preparing food to eat, eating the food, boiling the water on the cook stove, and cleaning up after – breakfast, lunch, and dinner – all there is to do is walk, or sit in hot pools, or sit on the bank of the North Fork of the Boise River. The water’s too cold to swim. Fly fish for trout if you’re into it. Or sleep.

  Then, too, maybe after all, the magic is the gold. One of gold’s properties is its high electrical conductivity. Maybe Greylock, the mountain peak looming high above Atlanta, is still so full of gold that it’s conducted us to the only place in the world where I could be with four friends, together at the same time, at a time when most of my friends were either dead or dying. In a ghost town for chrissakes, not much to distract us.

  Or maybe what made Atlanta magic wasn’t Atlanta at all. Maybe the magic was just the time. Destiny, fate, fucking fortune, whatever it is. The way the earth was spinning it spun the five of us together, our good health and our youth, still immortal, in a way we’ll never be spun together again.

  Or maybe what made Atlanta magic was the mushrooms.

  LATE MORNING IN Boise, Idaho. Reuben and Sal and Gary, Hank and me, all of us climb in Sal’s Jeep Wagoneer. We’re all big guys and we’re traveling with food and provisions for five men for three days and three nights. There’s no electricity in Atlanta, at least in Gary’s house. No refrigeration. So the Wagoneer is jammed.

  The first hour out of Boise, we’re still on the plains. When we get to Lucky Peak Dam the road starts to climb. In Idaho City, we stop for hamburgers, coffee, French fries, and pie. Not long after Idaho City, we turn off the tarmac.

  Then it’s three and a half hours of dirt road, the Wagoneer going straight up, going straight down mountains. Around every hairpin corner, we slow down, honk the horn. Around every hairpin corner, visions of a huge logging truck barreling down on us. Always on the one side of us, a rock wall. On the other, dropoffs like to clench your sphincter closed forever.

  Three and a half hours of hanging on for dear life to a one-lane road. During the times when we aren’t just about to drive off a cliff, though, we’re talking, dishing, and talking talking. My old friends Reuben and Sal and Gary – it’s been ten years since we’ve all been together in Idaho. I’ve told them Hank is just a friend, but when they meet Hank they fall in love, too. Who wouldn’t. They’ve all read his book and they want to know everything about him.

  At one point, I look over, take a good long look at Hank. The last time I’d really looked at him seems like ages ago, just two days before, at Ephraim’s in Fort Hall in that piece of bright sun after the sweat lodge. He’d just taken my hand and put it over his heart. That’s someplace I’ve never been to. Ever since Hank said that, there hasn’t been much else I’ve been thinking about. What that place for Hank was.

  But this day Hank’s in a car full of chattering homosexuals. First Indians, now queers. Far as I can tell, Hank’s d
oing fine. In fact, more than fine. Who wouldn’t be, traveling with these characters?

  We cross the bridge over the North Fork of the Boise River and start up the last mile of straight low grade to the town of Atlanta. The sun is just going behind the mountain. On the right, from out of the pines, the first building, a two-story gray ghost, old wood from a century ago. Its wavy windows, sun in its cataract eyes look right into my soul. That glint of light I’m not sure happens inside me or out.

  THE ATLANTA TOWN Hall is the old Atlanta Club, a flat-roofed rectangular concrete building that’s modern for Atlanta. Built in the Twenties. We all pile out of the Wagoneer and stretch. Hank lets out a high-pitched fart.

  “Mountain lions,” Hank says.

  Reuben hears the fart, looks at me, and says:

  “He gambled and he lost.”

  Then Gary says: “She was a poor dog. But a good one.”

  Always proud of his farts, Hank. Me, I’m as far away as I can get from him. Then in a moment, something else has my attention. The way the mountain air lays on my skin. I have to stop. Cold on my ears and in my nostrils. My breath in deep, when I breathe out I can see my breath. Magic.

  The Atlanta Club has a shed roof overhang above the front door. A half dozen or so people, bundled up on two old church pews, are sitting in the fading light. One pew on each side of the front door pushed up against the building. Above the pews, two windows you can’t see through.

  In the back of the Wagoneer, Hank finds his faux leather suitcase, I find my powder blue one. By the looks of things we don’t expect to sell any books, so Hank grabs one book and I grab a book and we walk inside. It’s one big high-ceilinged concrete room. The warm hits us first. And the smell of wood fire. To the left is an old wooden bar back, looks like oak, that goes on forever, stained dark and rubbed to raw wood where, over the last century, men and women have bellied up to it. Dark dark all around in the corners and on the floor and above you on the ceiling dark. The brightest light is a kerosene lamp set on a low table, oak too, setting in a circle of high-backed wooden chairs ordered together like old Mormons in front of the potbellied stove.