Now Is the Hour

by Tom Spanbauer

Scintillatingly gorgeous, I said it too.

  One afternoon, Mom had made cocoa and cinnamon toast and cut the toast into triangles. Sis was sitting on the green davenport and wearing the blue taffeta dress and the white hat that sat on the top of her head with net on it and a rhinestone pin. I was in the green armchair in the green plaid dress and the shiny black velvet hat with the flower brooch. Mom was on the davenport too wearing the black straw sunbonnet with the wide brim and the black lace shawl over her normal housedress. Her dangly rhinestone earrings.

  Mom was talking away, sipping on her cocoa, the plate with her toast on it balanced on her knees. I was right at home with my cocoa and cinnamon toast, scintillatingly gorgeous in my green plaid dress with my mother and my sister. Those were the best of days. Magic in so many ways, but mostly because the world that we created was a secret we couldn’t tell Dad.

  Every Sunday we drove the twelve miles to town to Saint Joseph’s Church, the house of God. Dad opened the big old wood door, the long creak of the brass hinges. The holy water font, where you dipped your fingers and made the sign of the cross. Then your hands folded, you followed Mom and Sis past the stained-glass windows through patches of blue and green and red and gold to the pew. The smell of frankincense and myrrh, the wood pews, the waxed tiled floor. You genuflected because you were standing in front of God. God up there on the altar, inside a gold box that Monsignor Cody unlocked and took the chalice out of during Mass, and sometimes put God, the Bread of Life, into the monstrance that was all gold with rays of gold spraying out in all directions, and Monsignor pointed God at the whole church, the organ playing, the choir singing, the altar boys waving the smoke of the censers and ringing the bells, and everyone in the congregation, even Dad and tall, skinny Ott Lattig, who were the ushers, beat their hearts and said, Lord, I am not worthy.

  There was nothing like it. That special moment of the consecration of the Mass. No movie, no music, not even Mom’s piano, nothing at all like the moment during Mass when the Word became flesh. Nothing quite like my mother in that moment when Monsignor Cody said: This is my body. This is my blood.

  Mom’s head bowed, her fist beating her breast, saying, Lord God, I am not worthy.

  God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, who gave us His only son, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father, by Whom all things were made, and for our salvation came down from heaven. And was made flesh by the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary and was made man and crucified, died, and was buried. And on the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures. And ascending into heaven, He sitteth at the right hand of the Father. And He shall come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.

  Nothing, no Wizard of Oz, no Tinkerbell dust, no scintillating magic at all in the world like the miracle that happened at Mass when the water changed into wine, and the wine changed into blood, and bread became the flesh of God, and my mother was transformed.

  Her high heels with the holes in the toes, her nylons with the seams in them, her violet dress with the orchid all the way down the front, her felt hat that sat on the back of her head, the net in front, the pheasant feather, a saucy whip on the side. Her eyes, my mother’s almond-shaped hazel eyes, only only at that moment always soft and full of love, the glory of beholding God in them, her face all aglow like a saint with a circle above her head.

  Not even piano playing could get you that.

  When she played the piano, Mom was happy. At the consecration of Mass, Mom was holy.

  I don’t know which of those Moms I loved the most.

  There were other Moms too. There was pedal-to-the-metal Mom who drove the Buick seventy miles an hour to church. You never could catch her just sitting. Always kept herself busy. When she wasn’t cooking or cleaning, or baking cookies or pies or cakes, she was sewing a dress for Sis or for her, or she was darning socks, canning, or doing embroidery. During harvest, Mom helped out driving the beet truck. Then there was rosary Mom, more holy Mom, sometimes twice or three times a day.

  But it wasn’t so much that all these Moms were differnt because of all the differnt things she did. It was something else. What made Mom differnt was the same thing that made the world magic. All of a sudden, out of the blue, something appeared in her eyes there’s no way you could figure out.

  Like I said, in the early days, how the world was, which means how I was, was how my mother’s eyes looked. So what I was feeling was what she was feeling and I never could keep up with all that I felt.

  What kept Mom and Dad together is something I never figured out. Dad was so differnt from her. I can’t remember one time he made her laugh. Not a lick of music in him. At Mass he was the usher along with tall, skinny Ott Lattig. Dad just stood there all through Mass, even during the consecration, his feet spread, his arms behind him, at parade rest like a soldier. You never could tell what he was thinking, unless he was mad.

  When he was in the house, all he ever did was sit at the table and wait for her to feed him, and then when the meal was over, after she got him his hot tea, Dad lit up a Viceroy and went back to his Idaho State Journal.

  When it was just me and Sis, when Dad wasn’t around, sometimes Mom would let loose on Dad. How he came from a family of drunks, and he was a hick and he never took her anywhere and all she did was work work work.

  The way I figure it, it was the Catholic Church. Mom and Dad were married in the Catholic Church. That’s a life sentence. The sacrament of matrimony. Duty. Honor and obey your husband, all of that dogma crap.

  Still, though, every now and then when Mom was talking, in her eyes, you could tell they hadn’t always been that way.

  Take for example, her favorite song, “Million Dollar Baby.” You should have heard Mom play that song on her old burnt piano. The reason it was her favorite song was because Mom was working at Kress’s five-and-dime when she married Dad, so you got to figure there was something special there.

  In Kress’s five-and-dime the windows were curved and when you opened one of the big double doors edged in brass, the smell of wood floor hit you, and knickknacks, oilcloth tablecloths, tin, the smell of aluminum pans.

  The way Mom told the story, she was working her last day at Kress’s. Dad drove over from Blackfoot to pick her up because the next day they were going to get married. She said Dad looked like a dream come true, so handsome in his Stetson hat and his new jacket and boots. When she saw him walk in the door she had butterflies in her stomach. It was mostly women who worked in Kress’s, salesgirls, and so Dad walking into Kress’s was quite a sight for all those unmarried young women. Everyone thought he looked like Fred MacMurray, Mom said, so when he walked in, there was a big sigh and giggles all around. Dad walked up to Mom, who was standing behind the table of glassware and dishes. That’s when all the lights went off in the store, and all the salesgirls started singing I Found a Million Dollar Baby in a Five and Ten Cent Store.

  I was even selling china, Mom said.

  As soon as the lights went off and she heard the girls singing, Mom ducked down behind the table. And left Dad standing in the aisle all alone.

  I’d say that was a romantic story, a sweet kind of story, but if there’s magic in it, it’s a muted kind of magic. Reminds me of the only other story I know of their courtship, a story I overheard from my bedroom when my folks had company. It too comes with a song. From the kitchen, there was a bunch of laughing, then clear as a bell, I could hear Mom:

  Joe and I had been out on a couple of dates, Mom said. We were driving along between Shelley and Blackfoot in Joe’s dad’s Buick, listening to the radio. Then a beautiful song came on the radio. It was “Melody of Love.” I said to Joe, So do you even like me a little bit?

  Joe pulled the car over to the side of the road, pulled on the hand brake, and said: Like you? I think I love you.

  I never told that story to anyone, not ever. Not even Sis. My mother a flat forty acres of Idaho field, Dad’s tractor on her circling, the shadow folds of earth turning behind him, seagulls
screaming. It was my secret. My secret rested in my chest, right next to my heart and was sore there. Weird magic, unspeakable.

  Things are differnt now, though. A lot differnt. I can speak out loud and clear that dreaded sinful anti-Catholic word.

  Sex. My mother and my father and sex. Holy shit. Can you imagine. I mean, they had three kids, right?

  Those days before Russell was born and before he died, the older I got, the more I started going out into Dad’s world. Mostly it was my new chores that got me outside. Sis and I had to feed and water the chickens and gather the eggs and slop the kitchen garbage to the pigs. Those chores might sound easy, but they weren’t. Carrying a five-gallon bucket of water from the house past the toolshed to the barn ain’t no treat. Sis and I and later just me carrying that five-gallon bucket. After I filled the bucket, I picked the bucket up and counted to fifty, and walked fast. Then I set the bucket down. Usually where I set the bucket down was right in front of Dad’s tin, square toolshed. So bright in the sun, you had to shade your eyes. Inside in there the air was filled with hooks. Grease and gasoline and forty-gallon drums of oil. Wrenches of all kinds and sizes and one big ball-peen hammer, and an anvil I finally lifted to my chest when I was fifteen. Gathering the eggs was no picnic either. You had to move those old clucks off their eggs, and they’d peck at you. Chicken poop all over the eggs.

  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 t
he 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.