Now Is the Hour

by Tom Spanbauer

  And now, a year later, even more, that moment is still with me, riding on my breath, in the pulse of blood, the deepened lifeline in the palm of my hand. What I have come to know as true. Moments of gesture. To know what it is to love.

  Flaco slid down in the seat so his body stretched out to the end of his knees. He put his long fingers through his curly black hair.

  Rigby John, Flaco said, why don’t you come tonight to our house and visit us?

  The big empty place just down from my throat, the sore place next to my heart. My arms got the helpless feeling in them. I thought I was going to cry. I quick made my hands into fists, put my fists up into my armpits.

  These guys really liked me.

  A deep breath, my mouth finally let the words out.

  Sure, I said, I’ll come up. After supper. But I have to change the water in the pasture first.

  Birthdays on the farm were like any other day except for you got a birthday cake and a pair of new Levi’s or underwear, and Mom and Dad and Sis sang “Happy Birthday” to you.

  That’s the way it was that night at supper. Mom had made my favorite cake, which was a spice carrot cake with caramel frosting. The cake was sitting on the blue dish on the kitchen counter, sixteen blue candles stuck in the frosting.

  I was standing both feet mostly on a square blue tile. I was about to reach out and test the caramel frosting, when, behind me, Mom said, Go wash up good now. Dinner’s ready.

  Mom’s hair was in pin curls and the hairnet over the pin curls.

  Going somewhere tonight? I said. Or are those pin curls for me?

  Mom’s almond-shaped hazel eyes, in them a little touch of gold. Lately she’d stopped wearing housedresses and started wearing pants.

  Just go wash up, she said. Make sure you get behind your ears.

  The cake looks great, Mom, I said. Thanks for making my favorite.

  Mom turned her back to me, grabbed the pot with the spuds, took the potato masher out of the drawer, and started mashing the spuds.

  Use the towel hanging behind the door, she said. And clean the sink out when you’re done.

  Mom had fluffed her hair out and was wearing her new rummage-sale cotton print blouse when she sat down at the table. Dad noticed her lipstick and her penciled-on eyebrows too. Supper was fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and canned string beans. As ever, we started supper with the sign of the cross.

  Bless us, O fucking Lord, and You know the fucking rest.

  Same with the rest of supper. I’ve already told you about fucking supper.

  Sis and I cleared the dishes, scraped the plates into the kitchen garbage bucket under the sink. Mom poured Dad another cup of tea. I carried the cake to the table, set the cake down on the oilcloth tablecloth. Sis brought over the dessert plates and dessert forks, set them down next to the cake. Dad reached into his Levi’s shirt pocket, pulled out his matches, and flipped the pack of matches onto the table. Sis grabbed the matches before me. She struck a match, lit a candle on the end.

  Mom said, Start in the middle so you don’t burn yourself.

  Sis brought the match to the candles in the middle. When the candles were all lit, I sat down in my chrome chair with the plastic yellow seat. Under the table, where nobody could see, I squeezed my hands tight around the seat of my chair. I was smiling too much. I know you could see my gums.

  Sis started singing. It’s important to get the first note to “Happy Birthday” right; otherwise the whole song is ruined. Sis started singing too high. Consequently, everybody was straining their gizzards.

  That’s when Mom stopped singing. She stopped singing and told us all to stop singing. She got up from her chair and walked into the front room. She folded open the piano and sat down on the round piano stool. The first note she hit was middle C. If you can find middle C, you can go anywhere from there.

  Mom hit all the keys just right so everybody knew where to start singing so the song wasn’t ruined. Dad and Sis sang along as Mom played the piano.

  Happy birthday, dear Rigby Joh-on.

  Sweet sixteen and never been kissed was what I was thinking. I was thinking Mom always looked so beautiful when she played the piano. I was thinking I was going to beat off in the pickup parked up in the pasture. I was thinking about the Viceroy on top of the refrigerator I was going to steal. I was thinking Sis should never wear her hair in a French twist. I was thinking about the best way to go about getting two pieces of birthday cake for Flaco and Acho. I was thinking, Oh, you’re supposed to make a wish. I was thinking I didn’t know what to wish, so quick I wished that Flaco and Acho and I would be friends forever.

  Happy birthday to you.

  Sixteen candles aren’t hard to blow out. One big breath, and the little fires are gone and there’s only smoke.

  Dad reached up from below his chair with a brown sack that said BLOCK’S MEN’S STORE on it.

  Here’s a pair of Levi’s for ya, Dad said. Happy birthday.

  In the hay field where we’d finished hauling that day next to the swimming hole, on the pickup radio “Trains and Boats and Planes” was playing. Just as Dionne Warwick sang Those trains and those boats and planes took you away, away from me, I pulled my Levi’s and my shorts down, and my bare ass was sweaty on the pickup seat. I could tell by the feeling at the end of my tongue that I was going to come like a rock. Just when my nipples started to get hard, out the windshield in the robin’s-egg sky, three clouds in the sky were a pink and orange train and a pink and orange boat and a pink and orange plane. Flaco was the train, I was the boat, Acho was the plane.

  Mom and Dad were sitting on the love seat in front of the TV when I walked into the house. They didn’t hear me walk in, or at least they never turned around. That was good. I took another Viceroy off the refrigerator. Strange how people laughing on the television sounds in another room.

  The swimming hole that afternoon and my new friends had made me feel strong. Some kind of solid up into my legs. I was standing on my own two feet. So I just went ahead and did something I wouldn’t usually do.

  The cake was in the cake safe, which was a red cover with stenciling on it and a wooden knob at the top. I cut a big piece of cake for Flaco and put it on a blue paper plate, a big piece of cake for Acho and put it on a red paper plate, and a big piece of cake for me and put it on a green paper plate.

  I was sliding my thumb and index up the cake knife when all of a sudden the bright overhead kitchen light went on.

  What you doing here in the dark? Dad said.

  I didn’t turn around to look at Dad. I knew how he looked.

  Nothing, I said, just getting some cake.

  Three pieces? he said.

  I laid the cake knife in the sink, turned the hot water on, rinsed the knife.

  For Flaco and Acho, I said.

  What? Dad said.

  Dad had his teacup in his hand, the teaspoon sticking out of the teacup. In the bright overhead light, on the top of his head, above the sunburned line on his forehead, you could see where he was going bald.

  Who, I said. Flaco and Acho, I said. Those two Mexicans.

  Dad jumped his chest up. He did that when something pissed him off. Poked his chest out, pulled his shoulders back. Put his free wrist against his hip, jerked his Levi’s up with his wrist.

  Why do you want to give ’em cake? he asked.

  In my mouth I could hear my voice get high and kind of whiny, and I hated that my voice was like that. But I didn’t let that stop me.

  They are my friends, I said. It’s my birthday. They invited me up to their house. We’re going to have some cake.

  They don’t eat cake, Dad said. All they eat’s them tortillas. They don’t eat cake.

  Dad set his teacup down hard on the kitchen counter. The teaspoon rattled inside the cup.

  Not your mother’s cake, Dad said.

  Dad’s body was close to me. The only times he got close was when he was mad. He never punched me or anything, but he didn’t need to. All he had to
do was step close. He was probably still mad that Mom had fluffed her hair out and put on her eyebrows and her lipstick for me. Or mad at something or other. Who could tell? With Dad and me, Dad was always mad.

  Then it was Mom right next to Dad.

  Are you having some cake? Mom said.

  Him and the Mexicans, Dad said.

  The bright, bright kitchen. I always hated that bright kitchen. Made everyone looked tired and weary. Under the bright overhead light, Mom’s hair and her glasses made shadows down her face.

  For Flaco and Acho, I said. My voice inside my mouth was still high.

  It’s my birthday, I said. And they invited me up to their house, and I thought I’d bring them some cake.

  The bright overhead light, Mom’s almond-shaped hazel eyes, you couldn’t see her eyes, only bright reflected in her glasses.

  You don’t go in that house, she said. You’ll catch fleas.

  And who knows what else, Dad said.

  Mom, I said.

  You can’t go in that house, she said.

  I’ll stay outside in the pickup then, I said. We’ll eat the cake in the pickup.

  Nobody said anything. Each of us stood in a blue tile. Like we were a game of chess, and they were the king and the queen and I was one of those pieces you don’t care about. The bright overhead light in my mother’s glasses pointed down at the counter, the red plate, the blue plate, the green plate.

  Took me awhile to find my voice, then finally: They are my friends, Mom, I said. They’re Catholic. They are always praying to the Virgin.

  Our Lady of Guadalupe, I said.

  Dad knew I had her.

  Under the bright light in the kitchen, that moment, his black eyes Roosky Gypsy. My body thick and heavy with his hate. I mean, really. Whatever the case may be, whoever your dad may be, your dad hating you don’t feel good.

  Still don’t. I can still feel it, all the time I feel his hatred for me, maybe it’s permanent. Mostly up high in my chest next to my heart where I smoke I can feel it.

  Dad couldn’t stare his drut stare at me any longer. He turned away quick and left the kitchen.

  Mom opened the drawer under the bread drawer and pulled out the roll of waxed paper. Her rough, red farm hands, her clipped-to-the-quick fingernails, her plain gold wedding ring, how she folded the waxed paper careful over each piece of cake on its paper plate, put each plate in a lunch sack.

  Use the plastic forks, she said. You’ll lose the silverware.

  I put a plastic fork in each of the lunch sacks, closed each sack by making a fist.

  In Mom’s glasses, two beads of bright reflected light.

  Don’t you step foot in that house, she said.

  Up the lane that connects our farm to the rest of yellow Bannock County, the headlights on the dark lane made everything spooky. I shut the engine off, then shut off the headlights at the haystacks. The loud metal-to-metal pop of the door.

  All around me, dark. Stars above me, shiny bits. From the window of the Mexican house, a square electric light. I picked up the three brown paper sacks from the seat. The moon was somewhere where the moon is when it isn’t in the sky. The sound of my boots on the gravel was a sound I knew. That’s when I noticed I was breathing again.

  Something in my ear, a little sound. From above me, in the haystack, a low whistle from an exotic bird.

  The part of the haystack closest to the Mexican house wasn’t a haystack, it was a straw stack. I climbed up careful with the three brown paper sacks. When I reached the top, I placed my feet firm on the edge of a bale.

  In the moonlight the straw glowed like silver-yellow hair. Flaco in his blue shirt and white T-shirt, Acho in his red shirt and white T-shirt, their bodies two dark places in the straw. I sat down in the silver-yellow hair, in the square of moonlight that was gold, then lay back in the straw. Above us and all around us down over the edge of the straw stack and down, the night, all the way to the ground, a dark, mysterious dome.

  The moonlight on Acho’s accordion keys was a wonder my eyes had never seen. Flaco strummed a chord, C, on his guitar. My eyes could see Flaco well enough to see his nod to Acho. Their music started, a sudden feeling and all around you. Magic . . . Acho’s voice was clear and crisp as a sheath of straw. It took me awhile to hear the song because I expected a Mexican song, but there in the night, there in Idaho in the night, in the middle of nowhere, on top of a straw stack above a feedlot full of Hereford cows, Acho sang in perfect English a tune from the radio, a top-ten hit. “Eleanor Rigby.” Only Acho’s way of singing “Eleanor Rigby” was differnt. It went like this:

  Eleanor Rigby John sits in the church where the wedding has been, lives in a dream.

  Thank God it was dark. Acho singing in perfect English, Flaco doing the da ta da da ta da ta da ta on the guitar — and then the Eleanor Rigby John part — thank God it was dark. I tell you, this gringo loco didn’t know what to do.

  The silence after the song was full of everything. The night all of a sudden loud with where the music used to be. I set the brown paper sacks on a straw bale. The paper sacks so much noise. My mouth went to say all that stuff, Oh, that was cool, you guys, what a beautiful voice you have, Acho, where did you learn English so good, where’d you guys learn to play like that.

  But I didn’t say anything, couldn’t really.

  There was only the straw and the moonlight and the night just over the edge of the straw. The low moo of cows. The moon that wasn’t there now was there. A pure white jet stream an arrow right through it.

  After a while, Flaco spoke. Music still in his voice.

  Rigby John? Flaco said. Did you like our song?

  Somewhere way off, a train blew its horn.

  I loved it, I said. Te amo, I said — which means “I love you,” but I meant “it.”

  Acho set the accordion down. The air out of the bellows sounded like the air came out of me.

  Then: But “Eleanor Rigby John”? I said.

  The way those two busted up with laughter, I never got used to it. No matter what it was or how hard I tried, I always started laughing too. Same way with this time laughing, but as I was laughing there was another feeling. In my chest was the scared feeling.

  Flaco laid his guitar on the bale of straw he was sitting on.

  Since the first day we met you when you told us your name, Flaco said, Acho recognized Rigby, and he only knows English in songs, so he made your name into Eleanor Rigby John.

  The moonlight on the straw shined on Flaco’s face.

  We’ve been calling you Eleanor Rigby John for three weeks now, Flaco said. And we always wanted to tell you, but we were afraid you wouldn’t like your name. So instead, we thought we’d sing you the song. Isn’t that right, negro?

  Acho stood up, kicked the straw as he walked to me. He sat down on the bale next to me real close. Flaco reached down and pulled a long-neck Budweiser from between his legs in the straw. He took the bottle, put the neck in his mouth, and pried off the cap with his teeth. The brown bottle in his hand across to me.

  Happy birthday, Rigby John, Flaco said.

  The Budweiser was cold, and the bottle gave my hand a place to wrap myself around. I put the beer to my lips, took a long, long drink.

  My chugalug brought up a long burp. This wasn’t the first time I drank beer. Sis and I had got drunk a bunch of times. Twice.

  Flaco reached into Acho’s pocket, pulled the Winstons out, tapped a cigarette out, cupped the match, and lit the cigarette.

  When I saw the cigarette, there was another way to be scared.

  How do you say it without sounding like your father?

  Cabrón, I said, I’d be careful with that cigarette in the straw.

  Flaco took the tip of the cigarette and moved the tip of the cigarette close to his eyes. When he spoke, Flaco spoke to the cigarette, not to me.

  Yes, I know, Flaco said, the fire. I will be careful.

  Then that smile of his, and in his eyes that Jesus look like that afternoo
n.

  I tried to imagine my father laughing like those two. Maybe if he had a beer he would laugh. Mom could laugh that way. I could still make Mom laugh. Just cross my eyes a little, curl up my top lip, scratch my butt.

  Oh my heavens pretty woman so far, Flaco said.

  Flaco said Acho first heard “Oh my heavens” from a gringa woman he worked for as a gardener in San Luis Obispo. That woman always went around saying oh my heavens. She was an old gringa lady who wore the kind of high heels you could see her painted toenails through. Oh my heavens, oh my heavens, all the time she said, oh my heavens. Flaco waved his arms around like the woman in San Luis Obispo.

  Acho figured that was how you cussed in English, Flaco said. So he started saying oh my heavens, oh my heavens too, but it got so oh my heavens wasn’t enough, so he added pretty woman. Because pretty sounds like puta, so it became oh my heavens pretty woman.

  It is a very mysterious English word, isn’t it? Flaco said. Woman. Sounds like Marilyn Monroe. Woman.

  Woman woman woman, Flaco said. Pretty woman.

  Through the bottle, the moon was a brown moon soaked in beer. I wanted to drink the whole beer and then another and another, but I only sipped.

  And the so far? I asked.

  When negro fucked her, Flaco said, when she came, that’s the sound she made.

  Soooo! Faaar! Flaco and Acho screamed out together, their mouths wide open on each side of me, their white teeth, the moon on their teeth.

  Something jumped up into my throat when Flaco said fucked her. It sounded so easy. Like he had shaken her hand or something. Fucked her. For a moment, it made me a little crazy, and my breath started to go. But then in no time, I was rolling around in the spread straw with them laughing my ass off. Then Acho said something in fast Spanish to Flaco as Acho pointed at my crotch. Flaco and Acho screamed the way they’d screamed like in horror movies when the woman saw the monster like they did that afternoon when they saw me naked with my cock pointing out in front of me.

  Flaco said the Spanish again for me real slow: