Now Is the Hour

by Tom Spanbauer

  Then: You’re a Cancer, Billie said. Aren’t you?

  I swear, this girl was magic.

  How can you tell? I said.

  At the hospital, she said. On the insurance papers. June 30, 1950.

  Then: I’m Pisces, Billie said. Water signs. That’s good. Pisces are the most beautiful women, except for me.

  Meet you here? she said. Seven-thirty?

  The way I looked at Billie. That great laugh of hers in her big chest that seems to take over her whole body.

  Our date, she said. Next Wednesday.

  Yah, I said quick. Yah, Wednesday for sure. Seven-thirty’s cool.

  The quiet again. Quiet and dark, we were both sitting in again. Billie quick reached around, pulled on the door handle, opened the door. When she reached back like that, just then the headlights of a passing car, and I saw the size of her breasts. They were enormous.

  By the way, I said, have you noticed that all of a sudden there are Indians everywhere you go?

  Billie got out and slammed the door behind her hard.

  Technicolor Pisces, theatrical smoker, woman of mystery, kneeling beatnik, blue-toed existentialist, intellectual snob. In her heart of hearts, Billie Cody was an Idaho girl.

  Only an Idaho girl can slam a pickup door like that.

  We’re surrounded, Billie said.

  An empty cab, the French smell going with her, I snuffed up all the clean fresh French that was left. Outside the window just her face on that side of the pickup. Billie’s big red hennaed hair rats, white plastic glasses over her plugged-up tear duct eyes. Billie’s big smile all over her face.

  Who are you? she said. General Custer?

  Just curious, I said.

  Then: Say, what’s your name? I said.

  Billie, she said, like in Billie Holiday. Cody.

  I reached across the seat and stuck my hand out through the window for her to shake.

  Billie Cody, I said, Rigby John Klusener.

  But Billie didn’t take my hand.

  Rigby John Klusener, she said. Yes.

  On Pole Line Road, a cop car flashing red and white.

  Red and white flashes on the world, headlights, dark. With the tip of her finger, Billie ran her finger along the ridge of my red-and-white-flashing knuckles.

  I know who you are, she said.

  All week I looked forward to next Wednesday.

  There was a couple of times, though, I freaked out about going out on a date with a girl, and how should I act. After all it was my first time, and there was nobody to talk to about what happens on a date. In fact, I couldn’t even tell anyone I had a date. Father Arana would’ve said something hip and cool, then asked if my parents knew, then he’d have started in on venial sin and mortal sin and what the differnce was. Mom would’ve run screaming for the rosary. And forget about Dad. Sis would’ve laughed and then probably threatened to tell Mom and Dad. But I had my bases covered there. Sis still hadn’t told Mom and Dad she was dating Gene Kelso. Sis’s excuse was De Sales Club too.

  With the money I had saved that Sis never got to, I bought some English Leather and new Mennen underarm deodorant and some Barbasol shaving cream and my own Gillette razor, even though I really didn’t need a shave — still don’t really, only on my chin and upper lip, and I think now that I’m a free man I’ll let my mustache and goatee grow.

  But I did try shaving that Wednesday when I got home from school. Dad wasn’t home so he couldn’t show me, even if he was home he wouldn’t show me, so Sis and Mom showed me, and they didn’t know shit about shaving your face. They just knew about armpits and legs.

  Mom’s eyes got a real weird look when she first saw my face lathered up. I hadn’t seen that look in her eyes ever before, so I didn’t understand. But now that I look back on it after all that’s happened, it’s pretty clear. There I was, her little boy, doing something she’d seen only grownup men do.

  In the bathroom, the fluorescent lights were on. Mom was on one side of me, and Sis was on the other, and the three of us were all looking in the bathroom mirror. Mom’s almond-shaped hazel eyes, mine, Sis’s black eyes she got from Dad. Mom and Sis were making faces in the mirror like they said you’re supposed to make faces when you shave. Both Mom and Sis had their heads tilted left, and they were pulling the skin taut on the right side of their faces by screwing up their lips. But when I tilted my head left and pulled the skin taut on the right side of my face by screwing up my lips, when I pulled the razor the first swipe down my cheek, instantly that whole right side of my face was blood, blood mixing in with the white Barbasol shaving cream, everything pink.

  Mom and Sis went screaming females out of the bathroom. They were covering their heads, covering their eyes, screaming. Then they both fainted. I haven’t told you that yet. Something both Mom and Sis do when they see human blood. Mom was the first thud. Out like a light right there on the blue-and-white-checkered floor. Sis made it to her bedroom, crawled under her bed, and then fainted.

  There I was a bleeding face like in a horror movie, and Mom was lying on the blue and white squares of the kitchen floor, twitching, and I didn’t even know where Sis was.

  No wonder I turned out the way I did. Just look at the help I got.

  What a fiasco.

  When I got in the pickup to go to De Sales Club, I had pieces of toilet paper stuck all over my face. Sis wouldn’t even look at me. Don’t ask me how I’d done it, but I’d even cut my ear.

  Billie didn’t say anything about my face right off. You know that first moment when you first look at somebody, and you can catch what her reaction to you is? Well, I looked at her hard in that moment when Billie rolled down her window and looked up out of her mother’s white Pontiac Bonneville and saw my face.

  Billie’s face, no grimace, no horror, no holy shit, what the fuck happened to you.

  Then, after Billie looked at me, I thought maybe it was all in my head that I looked like I’d took a bite out of a chain saw, so I quick reached and turned the side mirror so I could look at myself. It was not pretty.

  Billie opened the door to the pickup, stepped up, put her butt on the seat, slammed the door. It was all I could do to look at her. She looked nice. She had her hair pulled behind her ears. No tear duct cancer, her eyes were clear and blue. A blue oxford shirt this time, the same gold chain necklace with the open palm hanging between her breasts. I tried not to look at her breasts, but with Billie you had to look at her breasts because, well, there they were. Two large melons just down from her chin. The black pants with the stirrups, black strapped shoes with a low heel. Blue toenails. The French smell.

  I was a bag of Redi-Mix cement again, a forty-pound block of extra-sharp Cheddar. Big nose, crooked bottom teeth, and a face full of bloody toilet paper.

  Billie was acting cool, like she had it all together, but she was just being an actress. Inside, her stomach was grumbling and she was afraid she was going to fart again, plus she had her period, and she thought she smelled bad.

  We got to all of this later in Mount Moriah, but as it was happening, Billie and I, the both of us just went along, pretending everything was cool.

  Two weeks I had my nighttime driver’s license, and it was my first time driving out at night alone, and nobody, not even Sis, knew I was doing it. I didn’t know what the fuck, so I did what everybody else did — drove the loop. Slow idling through the Dead Steer past the parked cars and the kids in the cars, then out across two lanes of traffic onto Pole Line Road. Cars lined up at the stoplight, squealing tires on the green. Then across from the Portland Cement Company and the Kraft cheese factory, turn signals flashing, and I was back across two lanes of traffic again, the cars, the kids in cars, slow idling through the Snatch Out, then the loop again, cruising the Snatch Out, the Dead Steer, over and over.

  Billie wanted a Coke, so I drove through the Snatch Out where the cars went through where you ordered food. Into the speakerphone, Billie ordered a cherry Coke Ironport for her and a vanilla Coke for me and a la
rge French fries for both of us. I pulled up to the window, and we got the French fries and the Cokes, and I gave the money to Billie, and she paid the cashier. When the cashier saw my face, she looked at me like I was the Blob or the Monster from the Blue Lagoon.

  We drove the lower end of the loop, onto Ashby Street, then right to the stop sign on Hall. Across Hall, then into the Dead Steer. I reached over for a French fry and instead I picked up the ketchup cup. For some reason, I don’t know why I didn’t know it was the folded extra-thick heavy-duty waxed paper ketchup cup, but I didn’t, and then what do I do but stick the ketchup cup in my mouth.

  When the ketchup cup is in my mouth was when I knew it was a ketchup cup. But what do I do? I was afraid Billie would think I was a dork so I swallowed the ketchup cup.

  That was when Billie looked down at the French fries and said: They didn’t give us any ketchup.

  So I made a big scene of going back to the Snatch Out and telling the cashier she didn’t give us any ketchup. I went to the walk-up window, not the drive-through, and the cashier, when she handed me the ketchup out the window, she said, Did a porcupine get you?

  We cruised the Dead Steer, then I crossed the two lanes of traffic, no problem, onto Pole Line Road. I drove down Pole Line Road and stopped at the red light. Everything was going fine. We were eating the French fries with the ketchup, drinking our Cokes, the music on the radio “Little Deuce Coupe.” The light turned green. The car next to us squealed out, but I didn’t squeal out.

  It was when I went to turn back into the Snatch Out, it was when I flipped the directional signal, and the signal was flashing right, it was when I turned right across the two lanes of traffic of Pole Line Road, that I looked up and from out of nowhere there was a pair of headlights headed right for us.

  The long, high sound of brakes and squealing tires. The car behind the headlights slid and fishtailed, a swerve all over the road. Either I had to gun the engine or put on the brakes, but I didn’t do either. The moment before the shit hit the fan — in the cab of the pickup — the dashboard, the windshield, my hands on the steering wheel, the radio “Little Deuce Coupe,” the knees of Billie’s black stretch pants — everything got real bright. Billie’s hand was on my arm, her tiny blue fingernails. The open gold hand on the gold chain against the skin of her neck. Together Billie’s eyes and my eyes stared ahead at the same air between us. That was when I threw my whole body up against Billie Cody. The incredible softness of her. My neck against her neck, my shoulder and my arm up to cover her face.

  In my ears, it was that awful thwump and then broken glass. Billie Cody and I were catapulted into the air. We landed all broken and bloody on Pole Line Road.

  But none of that happened.

  The first thing I knew was I was the closest to a human being that I can ever remember. Billie’s breath in and out, her breasts against my chest and her heart. When I could, I turned my head and looked out the pickup window. Below me was the hood of a red ’56 Mercury. Its bumper was so close to the pickup’s running board I couldn’t open the door.

  In the car, it was Sis and Gene Kelso.

  Then everything was as fast as it was slow. Sis’s head out of the window started in yelling at me, cussing a blue streak.

  You dipshit, you almost got us killed, and I’m going to tell Mom.

  Then Billie got into it, saying, Go kiss Old Rose, and Up yours, you stupid asshole. Gene Kelso and I, we were just looking at each other, going, Holy shit.

  Fiasco.

  It took me awhile to get the pickup started because my hands were shaking so bad. I couldn’t get the clutch right, the gas. The whole Snatch Out was watching. I don’t know which was worse, almost getting killed, or driving through the Snatch Out after almost getting killed. All the parked cars we drove by, you could tell, everybody in them thinking: Rigby John Klusener is one dumb ass.

  I tried not to show how freaked out I was, but it wasn’t just my hands that were shaking. All the way through the Snatch Out, the muscles in my legs and my back, even my neck muscles, were shaking.

  Don’t ask me how, but the pickup stopped on Ashby Street. On Ashby, the way you always turned was right and then drove to the stop sign on Hall, then across Hall to the Dead Steer.

  Billie said: Turn left.

  Billie’s face was pure white and not just from the Snatch Out neon. We were both train wrecks.

  Billie laid her hand on my leg and left her hand on my leg.

  The pickup turned left.

  You got a cigarette? she said.

  The cigarettes Billie pulled out of my shirt pocket didn’t look so good either. With her foot, Billie pushed the cigarette lighter in and then Billie was lighting my cigarette. Who could tell which of us was shaking the most.

  A fucking fiasco.

  Billie threw her head back, inhaled, exhaled through her nose, then inhaled again.

  The cigarette was a little orange whirlwind by her ear, then the dive to the ashtray, the flick of the ashes with her index, then up again, the cigarette pointing off into the distance, Billie said — like big deal, so what, who cares — she said: I’ve got a grand idea.

  Windshield wiper, the cigarette, back and forth.

  Let’s smoke all these cigarettes, she said, one right after the other, then buy some more, and we’ll go to my most favorite place.

  Billie’s pink lipstick lips were a little screwy off to the side. She poked the cigarette in there. In the dash light, Billie’s face right then looked like my first best friend.

  And park, she said. It’s my most favorite place in the whole world.

  Mount Moriah is Pocatello’s cemetery.

  When Billie said, Turn in here, I said, We can’t go in there. And Billie said, Sure we can. And I said, It’s the cemetery. And Billie said, So? And I said, It’s night, and Billie said, So? And I said, You’re not supposed to drive in there at night. And Billie said, But this is my favorite spot.

  As fate would have it, Billie’s most favorite place in the whole world was an important place for me too. I didn’t have any idea how important. I’d been there only once before when I was just a kid.

  Billie’s favorite place in the whole world was in Mount Moriah Cemetery. Who was buried in that cemetery, in that particular favorite place of Billie’s, was a baby boy I hadn’t thought about in a long time.

  And something else. I probably would never have recognized Russell’s grave if it wasn’t for the wind. Where we were parked in Billie’s favorite place was toward the back of the cemetery in a little cul-de-sac. The lights were off, the radio was on, and Billie and I were smoking, smoking. Clueless. I was fucking clueless. The only thing on my mind was how was I going to get my forty-pound-block-of-Cheddar-cheese arm up over Billie’s head and around her shoulders.

  Then the universe conspired, and I looked up just as a gust of Idaho wind hit an elm, and the elm branches shook, then swayed slow back and forth. The way the elm tree moved, I could feel the way it moved inside my stomach.

  The wind was Thunderbird breathing.

  My eyes followed the sway of the elm from the top branches in the moon, down and down through its candelabra arms, down to its thick trunk, down.

  Sis says it was sunny, but I remember that there were umbrellas and that we all stood under umbrellas, and that I was wearing my overshoes. I stood to the right of Monsignor and the altar boys. I got to smell the incense.

  Then it was the Door of the Dead and them wiping the rain off the folding chair because Dad has to sit down he was crying so hard.

  Just like that, I was out the pickup door, running to the elm tree. Billie was yelling something, but I didn’t pay her any mind. Then my back was smashed against the elm tree, and I was walking around the elm tree always with my back against the elm tree. Around and around until I found in my mind how I stood that day.

  Then I was standing in that same spot, then kneeling, cleaning away the leaves and grass of all the years.

  Nobody, none of us in my family, ev
er came back to visit his grave.

  A piece of moon came through right onto the metal plaque.

  Russell Thomas Klusener. 1955–1956. Agnus Dei.

  Billie knelt down next to me. She had her hand on my shoulder. Something about the way her hand was on my shoulder.

  My first date with Billie Cody. It was in the middle of the night, next to a big old elm tree, I was kneeling in a cemetery, Billie’s hand was on my shoulder, and I was crying. Weird, deep sobs in me the way you throw up. My face was down in the grass, I was eating grass, digging down, trying to get to dirt.

  The whole time, Billie’s hand tender, the way I’d never known, right there on my shoulder.

  How can we carry pain around like that and not know it?

  That was what I said in the middle of the third cigarette. Snot was still hanging out of my nose, I kept trying to snuff up.

  How can we carry pain like that around and not know it?

  Billie sat cross-legged on one side of Agnus Dei, I sat cross-legged on the other side.

  Who was he? Billie said.

  My brother, I said.

  It’s so weird, Billie said. This has always been my favorite place.

  I ate the ketchup cup, I said.

  I know, Billie said. I’m so glad we came here.

  My face, I said. I tried to shave today. Did I freak you out?

  No, Billie said.

  I look like bloody murder, I said.

  People stare at me all the time, Billie said. So I don’t ever stare.

  Tear duct cancer? I said.

  No, Billie said, boobs.

  Oh, I said.

  Billie, I’m so sorry about back there, I said. I almost got us killed.

  Who was that bitch in the car? Billie said.

  My sis.

  Then I said, Were you embarrassed? The whole Snatch Out was looking.

  When I said Snatch Out, Billie laughed that great laugh of hers that took over her whole body. Her cigarette was italicized language and quotation marks.

  We’re still alive, Billie said.

  Then: Billie, I said, I’ve never been with a girl before, I said. I mean, this is my first time even on a date.