Now Is the Hour

by Tom Spanbauer

  There was another word. Flaco and Acho also called each other negro, but negro was not a cuss word. Negro is pronounced “nay-gro” with the emphasis on nay. Negro means “black” in Spanish, and negro was a cool thing to say to someone, like you’d say, Hey, buddy, or pal, or chum.

  Flaco and Acho liked it when I cussed in Spanish, so right off I started cussing in Spanish and pretty much preceded and ended everything I said with chingada or puta madre or cabrón or a mixture of all of the above.

  I didn’t use negro with them, though. Although negro was a good thing, only Flaco and Acho used negro. I wasn’t sure why. I figured it was because I was white and American and I was differnt. I could call Flaco and Acho cabrón, or chingada tu puta madre, but I couldn’t call them negro.

  And another word. Gringo.

  When Flaco and Acho were going at it in Spanish, that’s what they called me, gringo, gringo loco, crazy gringo. I took it to mean they liked me.

  As fate would have it, my birthday was our last day of hauling hay. What a day. It’s only looking back on it now that I understand all that went on. It was the first time friends had ever asked me to do something with them, except for the time Scardino asked me to stay at his house and I said his mother’s Parmesan cheese smelled like farts, and except for Allen Price the day we played Poison, and except for Sis when she invited me to go shopping so I could spend my allowance on her school clothes.

  My birthday started out like any other day. The door to the truck opened, and Flaco got in first. He smiled at me as he slid to the middle of the seat. I said, Morning. Flaco just bobbed his head, then Acho got in and slammed the door. Flaco reached into his pocket, pulled a cigarette out, struck a matchstick against the bottom of the dash, lit the cigarette.

  Morning cigarettes made me dizzy, still do, and although I didn’t know it then, now that I look back on it, I always smoked anyway because I wanted to press my lips around what their lips had pressed around. When I went to third gear is when I handed the cigarette to Flaco. Same as ever, I turned the truck left over the cattle guard, drove past the boxcars. When Acho got back in the truck from closing the first gate, I couldn’t stand it any longer.

  I had the cigarette. I inhaled first, blew smoke out my nose, said: Today is my birthday.

  Both Flaco and Acho said: Birthday! And just like that, it was like a whole differnt world. Funny how you don’t know how things are always the same until they’re differnt. Just like that. I saw it in Flaco and Acho’s eyes. A whole new differnt world in their eyes. Then what was in their eyes got in my eyes too. It was still the old hay truck, it was still the same old hot-boxed cigarette, it was still right after the first gate was closed, it was still seven fucking A.M., it was still hay and Idaho and cheap labor, but everything was differnt. Differnt and bright. A whole day lit up ahead of us in our eyes, and in no time at all we were throwing our bodies around in the cab, clapping, cheering, and whistling, pounding on one another. Acho was speaking Spanish so fast it sounded like a machine gun. He started beating the dashboard like a drum.

  Flaco said, This is a great day! It is our last day hauling hay, and it is your birthday. We must celebrate!

  Acho said, Aaii, Reegbeejoan! Chingada tu puta madre!

  Acho picked up the first bale of hay, and as he bent over he let out the longest, loudest fart I’d ever heard. Puta madre, Acho said, then Flaco said, Cabrón something or other in Spanish, and they were laughing hard, and I didn’t need to know what Flaco said to laugh hard too. That started it. After that, every bale of hay that day was something funny, a new way to make us laugh. Funny all morning, funny into the afternoon.

  That afternoon, at the top end of the field, on the last load of hay in the field, Acho popped the clutch and the truck lurched ahead. Flaco was standing on the back of the truck. He tried to keep his balance as the truck bounced over the corrugations, but it was too much. Wasn’t long, and Flaco and the half load of hay we had on the back of the truck went flying ass over teakettle. Good thing we didn’t break any bales, but it wouldn’t have mattered. Acho, cabrón, puta madre, his driving not worth one chingada.

  The field where we were loading hay that day was the hay field next to the swimming hole. The truck, when Acho finally got it stopped, was right next to the gate to the canal.

  It was about three o’clock. Flaco was lying on the ground, his head propped up against a hay bale. Acho sat in the cab of the truck, the door open, smoking a cigarette. I’d just jumped up and was sitting at the back end of the truck, my legs dangling over the side. After laughing, all that was left was the high, hot sun, heat, and hay dust, flies buzzing, and half a load of hay to restack.

  That’s when we heard it. The most beautiful sound.

  The waterfall.

  Spontaneous combustion inside of us all at once.

  Flaco leaped up like some wild animal. He said: Let’s go swimming!

  Acho didn’t have to think about it. He was in midair, puffing on his cigarette, puta madre negro!

  Flaco and Acho were halfway climbing over to the fence before they looked back at me.

  I was still sitting on the back of the truck. In fact, my butt was welded to the back of the truck. The air inside my chest trying hard to breathe.

  Come, Rigby John! Flaco said, come. Let’s us swim. It is your birthday.

  The feeling in my arms that means I am helpless.

  You guys go ahead, I said. I’ll restack the hay.

  Ay! Cabrón chingada tu puta madre, Reegbeejoan! Acho said.

  Just leave the hay, Flaco said. We will swim and then we stack the hay.

  No, I said. You guys go ahead.

  Cabrón? Flaco said.

  Flaco’s dark eyes trying to look inside me all the way from over on the fence.

  Let’s swim! Flaco said.

  How do you say something you don’t even know.

  I can’t, I said. My dad will catch us. You go ahead swimming and I’ll watch out for my dad.

  It wasn’t long, and Flaco and Acho were standing behind the truck. Flaco had his hands around one of my legs, Acho had his hands around the other. They were looking up at me, the gringo loco. How could I help it, being from my family? I mean, now that I look back on it, it’s true I was worried about getting caught by Dad, but, really, that day, my birthday, I could have risked that. What was scaring me, what was welding my ass to the flatbed, was something else.

  I don’t have a swimming suit, I said.

  I mean to tell you. I have never seen two people laugh so hard so fast. The both of them, Flaco and Acho, were squirming around on the ground, in the hay stubble, yelling and screaming, beating their hats against their legs, holding their guts. Like to die laughing, those two.

  And no towel, I said. I don’t have a towel.

  I was one fucking funny gringo, all right. I can laugh at it now, but believe me, sitting on the back of the truck that day, my ass welded to the flatbed, my hands curled around inside the slots where you stick in the sideboards, the prospect of swimming naked with Flaco and Acho was another life away from me.

  So what did Flaco and Acho do? They did what any good friends would do. They helped their friend not to be afraid.

  Don’t get me wrong. They didn’t hold my hand and say, It’s OK, Rigby John, you don’t have to be afraid, you’re among friends. In fact just the opposite. Acho grabbed me around the middle and threw me over his shoulder. Such a surprising feeling. I am a big guy, wasn’t as big then, but I was five foot ten and one hundred and sixty pounds, easy, and there I was up in the air, a sack of potatoes hanging over Acho’s shoulder. I must tell you, I didn’t like it. Every time someone has grabbed me like that, it meant I was nothing. It was my father or Scardino, and I wasn’t considered, I was just something to throw around, to stick a yellow tulip up my ass. The fear was great in me, and I was having trouble breathing. The feeling in my arms that meant I was helpless and everything started to go black.

  Flaco and Acho didn’t know how scared I
was. I mean, I don’t think they knew. Acho didn’t know for sure, he just carried me kicking and screaming like a girl to the gate. He opened the gate even with me on his shoulder. It wasn’t until we got to the canal, just before Acho set me down, that my eyes happened to look over to Flaco. That moment. Something in Flaco’s eyes was like Jesus. I don’t know what you’d call it. His long black eyelashes, his black eyes, something in them, whatever it was, when I looked, down inside me, and quick I felt sure I was not alone. After that glance, just like that, I quit kicking and screaming. Acho put me down on the ground.

  The ground, my feet were on the ground, and up through the ground some kind of solid sucked up into my legs. Flaco’s eyes were still Jesus, and I got my breath back, and I was standing on my own two feet, and I was with my friends, and we were all laughing like before.

  Then the shock of my life — well, that is, up until then — Flaco reached down and grabbed the bottom of his T-shirt and pulled his T-shirt over his head. Armpit hair. My God, I’d never seen Flaco without a shirt. My breath gone away again. Flaco’s shoulders, his collarbone, his nipples. Then both of his shoes were off, he’d kicked them off, and his hands were around his denims, and sure enough in nothing flat there he was, all of Flaco naked right there, the black hair of his crotch, the muscles that curve down from his waist a dovetail to his cock. His cock resting on his balls, darker brown and voluptuous. I don’t know what else to call it, how he was. Thick darker brown than the rest of his skin, his cock, his balls, voluptuous.

  Then Acho too. Naked, stark naked. All that dark brown muscle, one long uninterrupted ripple of muscle, the hair in the middle of his chest, the little trail of hair starting at his waist, then thick down around his cock and balls. His cock and balls full, beautiful, round, like swear words in your mouth that mean “joy” when you speak in a Romance language.

  Beautiful, brown, round asses. Flaco’s ass something so smooth you wanted to slap hard or bite into, but instead you lost your breath, you lost your balance. And Acho’s ass, smooth and round and brown too, but inside the crack a dark mass of black hair.

  All in an instant.

  Naked romping men, whole entire bodies, all of the body, every part of the body. Foot pads to foreskin to earlobes, totally naked, gut-wrenching, breathtaking, heartbreaking, naked.

  I was lost.

  My clothes were not like Flaco’s and Acho’s. My clothes did not come off so easy. All they had to do was undo their buttons, zip down their zippers, unlace their shoelaces, pull off their socks. But not me. Getting my clothes off me in front of Flaco and Acho was a lot differnt.

  I got by, though, with a little help from my friends.

  Flaco started with my hat, off went my hat, then Acho unbuttoned my top button of my shirt, then on down. Off with my shirt. Flaco was kneeling down and unlacing my boots. The bounce of his balls between his legs, I couldn’t look. There went my boots. My smelly socks. Down there on the ground my incredibly white feet. Puta madre, Acho said when he saw my white feet. Then my belt, then the five, count ’em one two three four five Levi’s buttons. Then Acho divested me of my Levi’s and underwear, and there was air around all around me where I loved to have air, my pants a bundle around my feet. I pulled one foot out of the bundle, then the other.

  I was naked.

  In the sun naked.

  With all my zits naked.

  My hands were fists covering my crotch.

  Acho grabbed one hand, Flaco grabbed the other. They pulled my fists away.

  Both Flaco and Acho put their hands over their ears. Their eyes like in horror movies when the woman sees the monster. They screamed loud screams, and they stared at my cock.

  Qué horror! Chingada tu puta madre!

  My head rolled down, my eyes traveled down my chest, over my belly, down to myself down there.

  What I was doing was what I always do when I get half-naked, naked.

  I was poking straight out in front of me.

  Acho pointed at my cock and said something in Spanish that later that night in the haystacks they told me and I memorized: El trae la verga bien parada!

  Which I think sounded like: He tries to have a very good parade.

  But it was not a parade I was trying to have.

  It was a hard-on.

  And I was not trying.

  Then it was something magical. The swimming hole was magical, and the three of us were one flying whooping hollering screaming shits and giggles, one long, smooth, uninterrupted naked thrust through the sky of the dry, hot, sunny Idaho afternoon. Suspended in the air, arms, legs, cocks, a balls-out splash, the whoosh down deep into cool, muddy, green water.

  No swimming suit, water all around me touched me deep the way water goes wherever it can go. My legs, my ass, my cock, my balls, waterfall rushing water against me, better even than air. Floating low, my body a slide along dark rocks and mud, tangles of moss, gliding like a seal, some kind of sea animal, audacious pigs, Esther Williams, I was sprouting gills, breathing water. In the dark turbulence, my hands found one human leg and then another, and I grabbed the legs and pulled and from somewhere up above in the breathing air world is a holler, a high-pitched yell that turned into bubbles.

  Flaco’s face right up next to mine through the dark, muddy, green, Flaco all-his-teeth smile. His Jesus eyes turned devil, Flaco grabbed for me, but I was too fast. I was out of the water in one long lunge, the deep breath of air glory in my chest. In no time at all, Flaco’s arms around my neck. Then Acho got my legs, and the two of them lifted. I was lifted up high, straight-armed, to the Lord, a lodgepole pine, a pyre, a wet, long body in the hot, dry air. Just like that, a splash into green again and dark. Flashes of black hair, brown skin, and differnt parts of bodies, arms, legs, shoulders, the mole on the back of Acho’s neck, Flaco’s brown foot poking out of the green water, the white water of the waterfall. A finger poked me in the ass, right in the sphincter, the same place as the yellow tulip. In an instant, how curiously full it felt in my heart that place of me touched again. This time the touch let the lead out of my ass. I let out a scream. I thought it was laughter that lifted me up, and I walked as if I were walking on water.

  Flaco’s broad hand, his perfect fingernails, curled around a hank of crabgrass next to my foot. I ran in the sun, naked, ran wet in the sun, Flaco behind me, Acho behind him. In my ears all I could hear was the water running out of them, my breath, Flaco’s breath, Acho’s. Past the cement walls from either side that came together at the head gate, my feet were splashes of wet on the dry old board, two-by-twelve, bolted down. My balls bouncing, my cock. I’d never seen my cock when I was running, how it lay on my balls when my legs were together. How it swung loose with the ball sack, my legs stretched out as I jumped to the outcropping of slick, dark, lava rock. I landed, my palms sea anemones, suction cups onto the black, slick rocks. My feet found their way up the side of the mossy, wet, dark lava.

  Once up top, the flat, dusty earth was hot on the bottoms of my feet. I looked down. I was breathing hard, water running down my body. My feet were across the border, my feet were on the rez. Planted deep in all that red, as crooked as the wind, was the lone cedar tree. In the hot sun, the cedar boughs smelled of one more sweaty body. The wind through the cedar, the secret song of the wind in the cedar that moment, was something not outside me but down deep up behind and under, a fist balled up inside me opening to a hand waving in the wind.

  Flaco charges from the left, Acho from the right. They jumped to nail me, but I was one, two, three grand strides and another whoop, high, high in the air, forever it seemed in the air I was falling, falling. Then the rush of water about my ears, the deep green water. In no time at all, it was Flaco, then Acho, full-body splashes. Underwater sea animals, slick, swimming along the bottom.

  We could not stop. We swam, we climbed the bank, we ran in the still blazing heat, goose flesh our bodies, our feet pounded, pounded, over the two-by-twelve, jumping to the lava rocks, handholds, footholds, sometimes the moss
too slick for good purchase, clambering, breathing hard, laughing always, always laughing, up to the top again on the rez in the red world, and the sweat cedar, we jumped again and again, over and over and over. In the world, there was nothing else, only our bodies propelled through the air, under the sun, in the green water, into the white rapids, the plunge.

  Everything differnt, differnt and bright.

  Everything possible.

  Low, gold sun, driving the load home, in first gear, down the arc of the bow of the reservation. Between the two gates, on the longest stretch of open, flat land between the field and the feedlot, Flaco is driving too fast. We always drive too fast when we can, especially between the two gates. And this late afternoon, my birthday, it is the last load. Saturday night and Sunday and no hay to haul ahead of us. I am sitting in the middle between Flaco and Acho. Flaco’s hat is off, and the wind from the open window is blowing his wet hair. Acho isn’t wearing his shirt, and the sun is gold on his skin. Flaco shifts from third gear to fourth gear, and when the gearshift goes into fourth, Flaco’s hand comes down. I doubt if Flaco even knows he’s touched me. The little square inch of skin on my right leg below the knee. Everything gets slow, and I feel the scared place inside me that I don’t know is scared until it stops feeling scared, and when the scared feeling stops I get a big, full feeling in my chest, and I love God so much right then. Our smell, sweat and hay and dust and the smell of the cab, gasoline, oil, exhaust fumes, cigarettes, mossy canal water, roaring down the road in a beat-up old truck. Me in the middle, Flaco and Acho and I, skin to skin to skin, my skin almost as dark as their skin. Just the three of us, close, riding in the truck, the wind blowing through. The way we are smiling we all know. This is a moment in our lives. Flaco takes a drag on the cigarette. Acho closes his eyes, stretches his neck. My exhale settles my body deep into the seat as if the seat is the only thing that holds me up. Each of us knows, and we know that we know, and without a word we bless the moment.