Now Is the Hour

by Tom Spanbauer

  Morning, George said.

  When I said morning back to George, I knew in my heart I’d never yet said morning to him.

  George’s eyes had a little bit of the storm of ’66 in them. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and stepped into the room.

  I’ll be right with you, George said. Just wait outside. I’ll be right out.

  What about his coffee? Granny said. I made him a cup of coffee.

  That’s when the other man, a tall white man in a cowboy hat, walked out of George’s room. His belt buckle a huge piece of turquoise.

  My breath in, my breath out. Things got real slow.

  George’s fist in the air, its shadow, came down, down, down, onto the table.

  Bam.

  The china sugar bowl, the silver salt and pepper, the silver butter dish, jumped up off the table a good inch.

  Grandma Queep’s eyes, her deep brown eternal eyes, not a blink.

  The words out of George’s mouth slow, long, loud, one word at a time.

  He can drink his fucking coffee outside!

  I was drinking my coffee outside, when Granny’s swirled wood door burst open and the green screen door went flying back. George was about ten feet tall coming out the door. His boots hit the top stump, then the bottom stump.

  The coffee burned my mouth, then I spilled my coffee.

  George didn’t look at me, just kept walking straight ahead down the lane. I didn’t know what to do with the cup. When I looked over, Granny was standing in the door. She made a motion with her hand to put the cup on George’s car fender. So I set the blue pewter cup down on the gray fender. Shadows and light, crazy hallucinations all over on everything.

  Halfway down the lane, when I caught up to George and my stride matched his, I turned around, pulled my hat down over my eyes. There was Granny in the shadows and light, waving from her door. I waved back, then looked over at George, then wished I hadn’t waved.

  Hess’s field was the last forty acres to bale, and a field so big it took up the entire fucking planet. Hot sun, blue sky, wind, and brown-looking rows of green hay row after row after row.

  Besides being so big, the only other thing differnt about Hess’s forty was in the top-end corner — a big old weeping willow tree in a low sloping patch of green pasture grass by the ditch.

  No pause, no slowdown, no rest, I hit the field with the tractor in a fury, baling hay the way I’d been baling hay for the past two weeks. At the end of a windrow, I lifted up the baler teeth, shut off the power takeoff, turned the steering wheel around, lined up the baler teeth with the new windrow, dropped the teeth, turned on the power takeoff, and started in on the new row. Back and forth, back and forth, one long, uninterrupted movement around and around, the baler just eating up hay. Yellow hanging dust.

  All morning. Broke for lunch at noon.

  At one o’clock, started back in all over again.

  The day was a particularly hot day even for June. The sky wasn’t blue, it wasn’t a color at all, just bright. Low to the ground ahead of me, waves of heat were mirages on the hay. Puddles of water where there weren’t none. My hands, my arms all the way up to my cutoff sleeves at the shoulder, dark, dark brown, almost black with red. The Snickers candy bar in the toolbox totally melted.

  In the middle of a windrow, in the middle of the field, in the middle of the afternoon, I heard the scream.

  At first, I didn’t know what the hell. A sound, a horrible human sound. George getting chopped up into little pieces. Impaled by a spinning sprocket. Fan belt gone mad about his neck. His arms and legs mangled in the power takeoff. The hydraulic hose strangling him

  to death. The earth opening up. The heavens descending.

  Whatever it was, it was my fault.

  The universe has always conspired to fuck me up.

  The scream got inside my head, in my breath, a huge fist squeezing on my heart. I was pulling on levers, pushing buttons, turning knobs. When everything was shut off, the scream was still inside me and outside me. I covered my ears and jumped from the tractor seat over the tractor wheel. My boots hit the ground running. I was past the baler, right up close to George. He was standing alone on the hay slip, his one hand holding on to the iron bar. He was bent over, looking down. George was screaming at the ground.

  The storm of ’66. I thought it was the storm of ’66 again. George had the DTs. He’d been drinking last night, and now today he was crazy drunk again, and he had the DTs. Only this time, there was no doctors or nurses. Just me and George in the middle of a hay field.

  Everything in me said, Run like hell.

  Yet something weird, something I can’t explain.

  The sound coming out of George was a sound I’d never heard.

  But it was a sound I understood.

  My hand floated through the yellow dust and settled on his shoulder, the muscle under his shirt.

  George? I said.

  I’d never spoken his name in front of him before.

  What looked up from under his cowboy hat, through the yellow dust, was dark, wet eyes. Like Granny’s eyes now, full and deep with everything, nothing in between.

  His lips shiny too and wet like his eyes. Wet eyes and wet, red lips under a thick mask of yellow dust.

  A gust of wind blew around my ears. The world so quiet without the tractor and the baler.

  The whites of George’s eyes were red. Within the red, solid dark rounds. From out of the dark rounds, a light. Bright, sharp as the sun.

  His lips, rubber lips like my lips when I was full of hate and tried to speak.

  Why are you doing this to me? he said.

  Why are you treating me this way?

  More wind and quiet.

  In no time at all, the bones of my body were hung all together wrong.

  Of course, I had no idea what he was talking about.

  And that’s what I said. I said: What are you talking about?

  George stepped back, let go of the iron bar. His body fell back against the stack of hay. Yellow dust flew up all around.

  My head bone connected to my elbow bone, elbow bone connected to foot bone.

  Guilt. I mean, I can see it now as guilt, guilt mixed with fear. Or fear mixed with guilt.

  Back there on that day, though, I couldn’t name it. Bones all haywire. A scared feeling in my chest. My heart beating fast. Breath I couldn’t find.

  You see that weeping willow over there? George said.

  Yah, I said.

  Well, you and I are going over there, George said. And we’re going to sit under that tree. And we’re going to have a drink of water. And we’re going to take a rest.

  In my mind, I could see it all. George and I loafing on the job. Dad driving up in his pickup, his Roosky eyes, him yelling and waving his hands.

  Keep your distance.

  Oh no, I said. We can’t do that.

  George reached up, took his cowboy hat off, beat his cowboy hat against his Levi’s leg. Yellow dust floating up, swirls of yellow dust.

  The hell we can’t, George said.

  George’s black hair sticking up. The line across his forehead. Above the line, sweat and hair and cinnamon brown skin. Below the line, cakes of yellow dust, wet, red eyes, lips.

  Come on, let’s go! he said.

  My feet couldn’t move.

  I can’t, I said. My father.

  George’s hand undid the top button of his white shirt. Then with a hand on each side of his shirt, he grabbed each side and pulled. The pearl buttons snapped open all the way down the front. Yellow dust. On his white T-shirt, yellow, wet stains in his armpits. One long yellow wet stain down the middle to the top of his pants.

  George’s lips were no longer rubber. They knew they were talking, and they knew what to say. His eyes, the sharp bright light gone soft like his voice soft too, the way the first day in the yard leaning against the baler he said good morning.

  Sure you can, he said. And fuck your father.

  In the dark firmament of m
y haywire bones, something hard and brittle gave way.

  Your father is a mean, dry drunk, George said, who hates niggers and injuns.

  Through the yellow dust, across the hot, wavy air, I could see it coming.

  George’s open hand clapped down onto my shoulder.

  Come on, George said. You can do better than that.

  Through the hay stubble, over the mounds of windrows, I followed George. At the barbwire fence, George pushed his hands down the top strand of barbwire, swung one leg over the top, then the other.

  George made a grunt and sat down on the grass next to a big weeping willow root.

  I crossed over the barbwire fence same as George, stepped over the ditch. Already on my skin, I could feel the water in the ditch and the cool green grass in the shadow of the tree.

  George unscrewed his silver thermos and then tipped the thermos up. His Adam’s apple going, water coming out the sides of his mouth, George took a long drink, stopped drinking, burped, then lifted the thermos and started drinking again.

  It took me awhile to find the right place to sit. I didn’t want to sit too close to George, but then I didn’t want to sit too far away either. I decided on a place a little over an arm’s length away from George’s knee. I had my thermos too. I poured the water out of my thermos into its red plastic cup.

  George went on as if I wasn’t there. He capped his thermos, burped again. About the time I sat down, he stood up, pulled his arms out of his white long-sleeve shirt, then shook out the shirt. Man, that yellow dust is nasty stuff. You don’t realize how nasty it is until it’s floating over you while you’re sitting in the shade on soft green grass.

  George let his shirt drop, tossed his cowboy hat on top of his shirt.

  Then something I wasn’t ready for at all.

  In one long motion, George pulled his T-shirt up and off his stomach, the thin line of black hair there, up over his chest, the black hairs of his chest and around his nipples, up off his arms pointed up to the weeping willow. The underneath parts of him, the naked places people don’t see — the black hair of his armpits, the paler undersides of the muscles of his arms — all of him, the top half, that is — right there in front of my eyes.

  Heart stopping, that moment. Heart and somewhere else down low. A catch in my breath. The water in my red plastic cup I was tipping up and into my mouth went in my throat down the wrong pipe, went up my nose, went everywhere. I was coughing, holding on to my throat, making a spectacle, spitting water up all over myself.

  The whole while I was coughing, though, inside me something was differnt. Differnt and new and perfectly still. Water and a big, cool shadow and green grass where usually there was only hot bright sun.

  George wadded up his T-shirt in his hand, took his T-shirt with him as he walked. Just outside the line of shade, at the ditch, George knelt down, then lay down on his belly. He stuck his whole head in the water.

  From where I sat, George’s boots, his long Levi’s legs and big, round butt, the shine of the sun off the smooth hard muscles of his back and shoulders. His head gone down into the ditch.

  His head stayed in the ditch so long I began to worry. Then the splash and his big inhale of air.

  Water dripped off his black hair down his shoulders and back.

  Come on, now, George yelled over. He was waving his hand.

  You try it, he said. It feels great.

  There was nothing on earth I wanted to do more.

  But you know me. Instead I sat there, holding on to my thermos for dear life.

  No, I said. I’d better stay here.

  My voice was high. I hated that my voice was high.

  No, I’d better stay here, George said just like I’d said, the high whine of my voice.

  Get your tight ass over here, he said. Jesus Christ, Klusener, you need to give it up. Relax! Have some fun!

  Something I came to know about George. What George was saying and how he was saying it were often two differnt things. He could tell you to go fuck yourself, but sometimes the way he said it made you want to smile.

  I was over at the ditch before I knew it, kneeling, then lying down an arm’s length from George. The smell of mud and ditch water, moss, and the sun on George’s skin.

  The first time I lay next to him was in the hospital during the storm of ’66.

  This was the second time, by the ditch next to the weeping willow.

  There would be more times lying next to George.

  Take your T-shirt off first, he said. You can use your T-shirt like a towel.

  My whiny voice wanted to say no.

  I pulled my T-shirt off.

  That moment, the way George looked at me, my arms, my chest and belly, my neck, my nipples, my naked skin, was my first time ever. All those years doing what I was not really doing, whacking off and breaking the sixth commandment — getting off only on my body getting off — all of it always internal, isolated, in my head. An imagination of sex that went on within that had nothing to do with the world.

  That day, though, when George’s black eyes landed on my flesh, it was the first time ever sex was outside. Sex was what I saw in George’s eyes.

  Everything differnt. Differnt and bright.

  What always happened when I was half-naked never happened, though.

  Instead, near my heart, a sharp pain. A pitchfork stuck in a bale of hay.

  I shoved my head into the ditch.

  The cool water all around my head, my eyes, my nose, my cheeks, my jaw, my forehead, water in my hair. Even on my lips I felt the water touch me. Bubbles in my ears.

  I was doing fine, hanging out, no problem, everything was cool. No pain in my heart with my head in the ditch.

  Then something happened people who have trouble with breath never want to happen.

  George’s flat, full hand was at the back of my head, pushing my head down.

  The breath. There was no breath.

  My head, my face, was pushed farther down, down into the water, into the mud.

  My arms pressed hard against the earth, pushing against the hand at the back of my head.

  Breath. The pain in my heart spread to all over in my chest. Down into my belly. Up over my shoulders. Down my arms.

  Moments and moments and moments like forever.

  Then George’s hand slid away. The place on my head where his palm had been the outline of it in my mind. The splash, the rush of air, coughing. The air. Breathe the air.

  On my hands and knees, I was still coughing, sputtering. My ears were trying to hear, I was trying to see, still trying to get my breath.

  Serves you right, George said. You shouldn’t ever trust somebody like that.

  My lips, rubber lips. Tears stuck in my eyes. The pain in my chest, in my belly, up my shoulders, down my arms.

  Was hate.

  Finally I said: You did, I said. You trusted me.

  My voice was way high.

  I’m an Indian, George said. Didn’t your old man ever tell you you can’t trust injuns?

  George was still lying across from me, leaning up on his elbow. I never once saw that man smile. His body just a leg’s length away.

  Spontaneous combustion. My leg and foot came up, and my boot heel landed square into the wet sod of George’s nuts.

  George doubled over. He was yelling loud.

  All the times I’d hated and all the times I’d stopped the hate. All the people I’d hated, wished dead, plotted to kill. All the while the feeling in my forearms that meant I was helpless. Spineless ass, spineless ass, spineless ass.

  Spineless, helpless, whiny.

  It was too much.

  I made my hand into a fist. I clenched the muscles of my forearm, my upper arm. I leaned in from the shoulder. Hit George a John Wayne punch from out of the movies. Square in the face.

  I was up and running for the fence. Mid-ditch, midair, my jump stopped. George’s hand was a hard grip around my leg. I went down fast, my knees and legs and boots, splashing into the ditc
h.

  You little cocksucker, George yelled.

  George’s arm reached down and grabbed me around the middle. Just like that, I was up in the air on his shoulder, kicking and yelling. My flailing arms got in one good smack to George’s nose and a couple to his ears.

  But early on it was clear. Despite the fight I put up during the storm of ’66, as George flung me off his shoulder and onto the solid, solid ground that day under the weeping willow, it was clear. I was no match for George Serano.

  No sooner had my back hit the green pasture grass than George Serano’s body was smack down on mine. There went my breath again. George’s hands were around my wrists above my head.

  His face so close to my face, his black eyes, blood inside his nose, his sandpaper whiskers.

  Tiny veins, little red lightnings in the whites of George’s eyes. From out of the dark rounds, bright, sharp light.

  Beyond his face, above, the wind a slow move through the willows.

  You white, tight-assed little shit, George said. You think that you can work me all day out in the heat without a rest? What gives you the right to treat me like that?

  Out of George’s nose, a drop of blood, down to his lip. George’s teeth, the red pink inside his mouth, his hot breath, tobacco and toothpaste so close to my face.

  Mad dogs and Englishmen, George said. I’m not the fucking Englishman, am I?

  George’s thick black body hair against my chest and belly. His armpit hairs almost in my nose. The overwhelming smell of him, sweat I could taste, buckskin and flint in the back of my throat. The part of the tomato that folds together red into the stem of green.

  Pinned down. Man, I hate being pinned down. It’s as bad as losing your breath.

  Breath. It was a miracle. Somehow my breath was back, and I was breathing.

  Every breath I took, I hated George more.

  I swear, if I’d had a gun, I’d have shot the son of a bitch.

  The trouble was, I couldn’t get to my hands.

  Prick! I yelled.

  Spit came out my mouth, flew through the air, and landed on his face.

  You stole my wallet, I yelled. And my new madras shirt. And.

  And and and. My mouth couldn’t speak the other and.

  For a second, the sharp bright light in George’s eyes went soft. For a second, his grip on my wrists let off, and for a second there my hands were free. Then George had them pinned down again.