Now Is the Hour

by Tom Spanbauer

  Billie’s sore blue eyes on me, they can’t believe I did what I just did.

  Billie looks all around her every which way. But all around her, she’s trapped and there’s no place to go.

  Billie slumps down and a big sob bursts out.

  It’s my kid! Billie yells. Fuck all of you!

  Yah, yah, Scardino says.

  Joe! Chuck says. I’m warning you!

  Scardino leans in, his big arms crossed on the window ledge again.

  But why is it, Klueless, Scardino says, that it’s diPietro here who’s fucked your girlfriend?

  That there was the moment right there in all my life.

  The universe conspired that moment. Just for me.

  Although, for a while there, I didn’t know what the fuck to do with it.

  My helpless arms, you know, the breath, the pain next to my fucking heart, big farts rolling around my belly. The whole shebang, it was all going on.

  Things got slow. Things got fast. Things got far away. Things got like in a car wash. There was thunder, lightning, all of a sudden there was pouring rain. You name it. Everything you can think of happened. My bare butt getting beat by my dad. Mom catching me whacking off. The rosaries, the novenas, the litanies. Fucking litanies, man. The eternal humiliation of the Catholic Church. Slave labor on a hay baler. All of it. The fucking tulip up my ass. The whole ball of red-cunt wax.

  Of all the things I could or couldn’t have done, could have said, should have said, didn’t say, coulda woulda shoulda, this is what I did.

  I raised up my finger. Not my third finger, my second finger.

  I said, Scardino. I said, You see this finger here? On the end of this finger right now is one of the purest pieces of windowpane in the world. The possibilities of ecstasy and insight you can’t fucking imagine. And just because you’re such a fucking prick, I said, this is where it’s going to go.

  That’s when I stuck my index finger in mouth. On my face a look that would have put Theresa of Ávila and Saint Sebastian to shame.

  When I pulled my index finger out of my mouth, I held that finger up, so Joe Scardino could see. That’s when I raised the other finger, the third one, pulled my second and fourth fingers down around it, and flipped off Joe Scardino with one righteous fuck-you flip of the bird.

  In nothing flat, Scardino is around the Pontiac in front, coming around fast to my side. Something deep in me knows this is my worst nightmare.

  Everything I’ve ever known to be true, every place in my body — all the fear, the hate — the place in me that has always wanted to kill this motherfucker, I reach inside deep into the muscle and bone, and call upon.

  Scardino’s heading fast for my door. His hand reaches out for my door handle. That’s when I push. One hard slap of the door.

  The door hits Scardino square. Mostly in his chest and stomach, but somehow with everything going by so fast, I know it’s also hit his head.

  Scardino slams against the fender of the black ’58 Chevy behind him, then goes flying over the hood.

  Headlights in the Snatch Out start flashing on and off, and people yelling.

  Rain. My hat goes flying off, and I’m out the door. I’m just around in front of the Chevy, when out of nowhere, Scardino is a leap from up and out.

  I don’t even think.

  I let go an overarm pitch that sends the key ring and the lava rock flying smack between Scardino’s eyes.

  Immediate blood down Scardino’s face. He holds his hands over his eyes and stumbles away from the Chevy into the passing-by line of cars.

  Thousands of screaming magpies gather in the sky and dive at my head.

  I’m right after him. I lean in and, with all my weight, hit Scardino hard, fist against teeth, skin, muscle. An awful sound that makes me sick. A terrible pain in my hand.

  Scardino is down, lying in a mud puddle. Headlights on and off, on and off. Rain spits and pieces of hail. People all around yelling.

  Chuck diPietro’s yelling: Break it up, you two! Break it up!

  DiPietro tries to grab me. Billie tries to grab me. But no one can touch me.

  I jump, a Flying Wallenda, and land on Scardino’s stomach. Something cracks. Out of Scardino, vomit and air. Weird cries like my brother, Russell, coming out my mouth. I’m sitting on Scardino’s chest. I hit him once, hit him twice, my fists against his face.

  Then in a moment, it’s so quiet. Only rain. Flashing headlights and rain.

  I am breathing hard and holding my chest. It ain’t like on TV, fighting.

  It’s easy to tell about something after it’s over, but while it’s happening it’s all just one thing after another, flipping past your eyes.

  Someone running, something fast. I turn, and it’s diPietro.

  He’s coming at me for the tackle. I roll over, splash into the puddle. DiPietro goes flying by.

  Then Scardino’s on top of me. The tattoo on his inner arm is a Playboy Bunny. His fists are flying, but they’re not really landing. With all the blood, he can’t see. Scardino does land one on my ear. The same ear sore from Mom. Then bam! Smack into my old broken nose.

  Everything goes black, but the next thing I know, I’m back on top again, whaling on Scardino. DiPietro’s got me by the shirt collar. The collar’s tight around my neck. The breath. The top button pops off, then the next button.

  The miracle inside my jacket. The broken end of Mom’s broom handle in my hand is a good fit.

  Let go of me! I yell, or I’ll shove this up his neck!

  The sharp end of the green broom handle in my hand is under Scardino’s chin. DiPietro lets go my collar.

  Quiet. Everything so quiet. Only the headlights and the rain.

  In the puddle next to Scardino’s bloody face, a flash of lightning. Raindrops hit the puddle.

  Blood bubbles from out of Scardino’s nose.

  On my right, diPietro’s on his haunches, he’s moving his hands slow, he’s talking quiet to me. He’s looking me in the eyes, he’s saying something. Billie’s standing next to him. She’s crying and saying something too.

  Headlights on and off, on and off.

  The sharp end of the broom handle, all I’d have to do is give it a shove.

  I give it a shove, just enough to break the skin.

  A stream of blood runs out and down Scardino’s neck.

  Just like that, the pointed end snaps, a thick sliver of wood breaks off and sticks out under Scardino’s chin.

  A gust of wind, a hawk, some large bird flying low, in a moment, something collapses. I look at my hands. I lift my hands up and look at my hands. The broken-end broomstick in my hand.

  Somehow I am standing above Scardino. The headlights are bright all around me, the whole world is bright, bright and so quiet, only rain.

  On my face, on my hair, my eyes, soft rain.

  Scardino is a shadow on the ground, holding up his hands. Open palms, spread-out human-being hands, the universal sign to stop.

  Fuck you as a possible way to address the world.

  My voice is clear and calm and not too high.

  Fucking Scardino, I say. You selfish prick. I’ve had enough of you.

  Quiet. Nothing in the world but quiet, bright headlights, rain.

  Scardino’s up and running through the rain and bright lights. DiPietro runs after him. When Scardino opens his car door, Scardino stops. He yells: I’ll get you for this, you little fairy! Your ass is fucking grass!

  Below me, in the mud of the Snatch Out parking lot, my thin red tie. I reach down, pick up the tie, tie the tie like an Indian around my head.

  Yah? I say. Well, your ass is whipped!

  Quick lightning in my veins. In my chest a big gust of warm wind.

  I reach down and pick up my porkpie hat, put it on.

  I loved God so much right then.

  Scardino dives into his El Camino. DiPietro grabs the hamburgers and Cokes sitting on the roof. Before diPietro gets in the car, he looks over to Billie. Billie looks back, and Billi
e smiles. In the silence and the rain and the bright lights, I’m standing there, and I watch, and Billie and Chuck diPietro smile at each other.

  The 409 dual carburetor Positraction whatever-the-fuck supercharged shit the El Camino is roars into the silence. The squeal of tires as the El Camino reverses, then slams into the Snatch Out fence.

  Laughter. All around, kids in their cars, it’s laughter.

  Then it’s an all-out rubber burn forward, the El Camino fishtailing out of the parking space. Into the line of cars, there’s just space enough between a Rambler and a Corvair. The El Camino makes it through the space, but when it turns toward Pole Line Road, the back fin of the El Camino takes out the left headlight of the Rambler.

  Then it’s only noise we hear. The El Camino jumping the curb. Horns honking all four lanes up and down on Pole Line Road. The Kraft cheese truck pulling out, blaring on its horn.

  Then a crash that sounds like World War III.

  By the time I get through the cars to the sidewalk, the wheels of the Kraft cheese truck in the air are still spinning. The bed of the truck is lying on top of the crushed-flat El Camino.

  Across all four lanes of Pole Line Road, boxes all over broken open.

  Scattered from here to kingdom come, little packets of Parmesan cheese.

  At the emergency entrance to Saint Anthony’s Hospital, there were cop cars in front and cops standing all around.

  Billie and I parked the Pontiac, then walked up the steps of the main entrance. Through the big wood doors, in the hospital corridor, every kid in Pocatello was there. It was so crowded, there was no place to walk. Billie wasn’t wearing her hat. I was, though. That porkpie hat wasn’t going to leave my head for a long time. Tied under it, my thin red tie.

  I pulled down my hat. Kids pushing and crowding. Policemen trying to get people to go home. By the time Billie and I got to the receptionist, it was confirmed.

  One of the two of them, either Scardino or diPietro, was dead, and the other was in a world of hurt.

  Weird, at one point in all the commotion, I looked down at the shiny brown-tiled hospital floor. That’s when I remembered. The blue overnight case that looked like a purse. Surrounded by a hundred people, there we were, Billie and I, standing in the exact spot where we first met.

  There were two policemen posted by the reception desk. Nobody was getting past the two policemen. No matter what.

  Billie did, though. Billie and me.

  At first, the policeman, when he saw Billie’s red cunt–splooged wedding dress, wouldn’t let her anywhere near.

  Then the next thing I knew, Billie was standing on her tiptoes, leaning in and whispering in the cop’s ear.

  The policeman had an Italian name. On his badge: RICCI.

  Officer Ricci’s face went soft and he closed his eyes when Billie told him.

  He pointed down the hallway, told Billie to go down the hallway, down two flights of stairs to Emergency.

  When I stepped up, Officer Ricci stuck out his club. His Italian eyes looked hard at the red tie around my head, my porkpie hat, my beat-up face.

  It’s all right, Billie said. He’s with me.

  He’s my friend, Billie said.

  Billie and I were the only two people in the Emergency waiting room. I lit a cigarette, one for Billie, one for me. There we were, still smoking George’s Camels. Billie’s tear duct cancer looked worse in the fluorescent light.

  I spread my right hand out wide. My other hand held it at the wrist.

  On the green wall, the black and white clock at ten-thirty-five, and Mr. and Mrs. Scardino walked in. Mr. Scardino was short and had thick glasses and was smoking a cigar. He was wearing his pajama tops and pants with suspenders and wingtips and a gangster hat. Mrs. Scardino was old as ever, all in black. She looked tall next to her husband. Her white hair like spiders around her face. In her hands, a long black rosary. The two of them walked slow, Mrs. Scardino leaning into her husband, through the swinging double doors, EMERGENCY ROOM NO ENTRY, their arms around each other.

  Ten-fifty, Mrs. diPietro came running in. A cigarette in her hand, and her face was red. Short, white hair sticking up, an old army jacket, faded jeans, and sneakers with the heel backs broken in.

  No Mr. diPietro.

  Billie didn’t know if there even was one.

  An hour later, just one of George’s Camels left. The swinging double doors opened, and a Benedictine nun walked out. Billie grabbed my hand.

  It was Sister Angelica. Lots of black eyebrows.

  Is your name Billie Cody? Sister Angelica asked.

  Yes! Billie said, and jumped up quick.

  Sister Angelica stepped back, put her hand over her mouth. She stared down at Billie’s red–cunt splooge.

  Charles diPietro would like to speak to you, she said.

  My eyes went straight for Billie’s blue eyes.

  Billie looked up and away. There wasn’t a window there, so she looked at the clock.

  When things are difficult to say.

  Billie’s hand lets go of my hand.

  Down the hallway, Sister Angelica walks, then Billie walks.

  Billie has her own way of walking. Short stride, fast steps, the click of her black strapped high heels. The slick sound of silk.

  Through the swinging double doors.

  That quick, Billie is gone.

  12 The Back Door

  ALL I WANTED was a place to be quiet and alone.

  There was only one place. The swimming hole.

  I drove in the back way, from Quinn Road. Opened the gate with my sore hand, drove through, closed the gate behind me. Drove the pickup up the side of the ditch bank and onto the narrow road. I cut the headlights. From their bedroom, Mom and Dad could see the headlights.

  Even during the day, the canal bank was a narrow fit for the pickup. On one side, it was the dark water of the canal, on the other a twenty-foot drop. I kept my bearings by driving slow, by keeping my head out the window. The left front wheel always just a foot or so away from what I could see of the solid dirt before it sloped into ditch. The lightning helped.

  Mom always said to stay in the car if you’re caught out in this kind of lightning.

  What Mom always said.

  My clothes come off easy. I untie the red tie from around my head, take off the porkpie hat. The wind on me naked. The warm sandy earth up through my bare feet. Now and then my body lights up a bright strobe of lightning.

  I take off running. In the air, warm wind all around me, a bird flying, flying. Lightning cracks open the sky. I plunge my sore and aching body into the moon silver rapids. The sudden whoosh of water, and I’m a fish. Swimming through wet dark. Cool water on my nose, my ears, my eyes. Cool water on my bruised cheek. Tangles of moss around my legs. On the bottom of the canal, thick, slimy mud. I grab the mud, squeeze the mud through my fingers. My right hand feels less stiff.

  Up for air, I climb the bank. The night air cold on my body. I walk barefoot on the gravel to the pickup, slip on my T-shirt, my brown suit pants, tie the thin red tie around my head, put on the porkpie hat. I grab the matches and George’s pack of cigarettes, one Camel left.

  From the two-by-twelve, my feet push off, my legs stretch out, and I’m across to the slick, dark lava rock. As I climb the rock, the sky above flashes one thin, bony hand of electric light.

  The white-water rapids below, I sit down in the same dusty spot I sat last night, look up at Granny’s sacred tree. The wind in the tree. Its sweaty body smell. I’ve got George’s last Camel in my mouth, trying to get wet matches lit. I tip my porkpie hat to Granny’s ancestors.

  Good evening, I say. A lot’s happened since I last saw you.

  Then in a moment, a sound. A branch snaps or something like it. Maybe the water stops, and it’s the silence I hear. Whatever it is, I’m all goose flesh.

  From within the tree, a French inhale. The unmistakable sound.

  George? I say.

  Is that you, George?

  A flash of h
eat lightning.

  Whatever is in the tree, it is not George.

  A dark bird startles up, a bird as big as the tree. The flutter of wings, wafted air against my face, my heart. I am standing in the wind. I have to hold on to my porkpie hat. Slowly the bird rises. Above me, Thunderbird is long, black, slow strokes up and up. In the sky a crack of lightning. Thunder boom presses deep inside my sore ear. Thunderbird’s black wings, its beak, the tail feathers, an outline of lightning all around. Thunderbird is as big as the southern night sky.

  With the dark, the huge wings disappear, and Thunderbird becomes the night.

  Another flash.

  Just below, my eyes settle on the dark rectangle stand of Lombardy poplars, then the clump of dark inside the dark. Granny’s log cabin. The high sigh of the wind. Wind a differnt sound in the poplars than wind in the cedar.

  Inside in there, Granny’s kitchen window is dark.

  Rain or shine, you can bet your life on it, George had said, that light is on every night.

  A gust of wind, a feeling in my bones, instinct, whatever you want to call it. I knew.

  It wasn’t easy getting from the swimming hole to Granny’s cabin. Down the canal bank, in the triangle field of tall grasses, there were gopher holes everywhere. Then there was the barbwire fence and the extra darkness under the Lombardys. All that dead wood lying on the ground, and I was barefoot. When I got to the pounded-down dirt by the outhouse, I was sailing.

  Granny’s dark green screen door. I put my fingers through the door pull and pulled slow. The Inner Sanctum squeak. Bonanza started barking. I knocked once, then again louder. No Granny.

  I pushed the latch down and opened the door, Bonanza going nuts, but not at the door. From the sound, he was on his Pendleton bed.

  Only dark night light through the windows. Flashes of lightning.

  One flash and I see Granny’s legs, her rolled-up tea rose nylons, her Minnetonka moccasins, sticking out from behind the kitchen table.

  My bare feet could feel the shine on Granny’s wood floor. When I got to the kitchen table, I reached for the light, turned the old switch, and electric light went on all over.

  I was down on my knees by her head. I put my ear next to her mouth, but it was my busted ear, so I couldn’t tell.