He nodded his head to the people outside the door.
When that crowd gets in here, he said, there won’t be nothing left.
Then he pointed his cane at the green Majestic stove.
Chocolate cake, he said. Get me some. Ice cream’s in the freezer.
The way this guy smiled, I couldn’t figure him out. I cut him a big piece of cake, put a big scoop of vanilla ice cream on the plate, got him a plastic spoon and a paper napkin. His one tooth was a front tooth. Pink gums all the way around like Granny when I handed the plate to him.
On my paper plate, it was beef stew, red Jell-O, and a piece of yellow cake. I sat on the floor across the door from the old man. The food on my plate disappeared in nothing flat. I was just sitting there, staring out the doorway, at the tipi, at the Indian people and the sky and the fancy evening colors. Just half a mile away Mom was making dinner.
The old man’s cane tapped my leg. He said something, but he spoke so low I couldn’t hear a thing. So I knelt down next to him, up close.
His face so close like that, the old man’s smile wasn’t just a smile. It was the way he had to hold his face because he was in pain.
Goddamn legs, he said. They want to cut my feet off.
On the floor, both his feet wrapped up fat and round with Ace bandages.
Would you mind, young man, he said, getting me a cup of coffee?
His voice was so soft, for a moment there, I thought he was a woman.
No sugar, he said. I can’t have sugar.
I went to say something about the cake and ice cream, then didn’t. I figured it wasn’t my place. So I got up, grabbed a plastic cup, put the cup under the spigot, poured the cup full of coffee, and then poured in a half inch of Sego Milk.
The old man’s hands were crooked, fingers and bones poking out every which way. I let go of the plastic cup only when I was sure he held the cup firm.
Thank you, thank you. You’re a lovely boy, he said.
The old man spoke so low he was almost whispering. I knelt down again, scooted in close. It was the only way I’d ever hear.
Are you OK? I said. Why are you whispering?
The old man sat up straight, his shoulders back. Made his lips go tight.
An old man speaks how he wants to speak, he said. Where is your respect?
All the breath went out of me.
I’m so sorry, I said.
Then the old man was holding his crooked hand over his mouth with his one tooth and he was laughing.
Oh, Lordy! White boys! he said. God love ’em.
This time when he spoke, he cupped his hand over his mouth, leaned in closer to me, exaggerated his whisper.
It was a ruse, he said, to bring you near me.
He was up so close, I could see the sorrel brown of his eyes.
Tell me, he said, do you ever go to a cocktail lounge called the Back Door?
The old man’s face looked like a piece of lava rock. His jaw, his cheekbones, his forehead, flat surfaces. Everything else was vertical cliffs.
Yah, I said. Well, one time.
It’s a heavenly place, isn’t it? he said. Out of this world. I used to go there in my younger days. Do they still have Billie Holiday, “I’ll Be Seeing You,” on the jukebox?
Just danced to it the other night, I said.
Oh! he said. That’s my favorite song, he said. Next to Patsy Cline, that is.
“Crazy,” the old man sang. A voice so deep you could hardly hear it.
I love Patsy Cline, he said. That’s what they called me at the Back Door.
Crazy? I said.
Patsy, he said.
Of course, he said, my real name is Matthew Owlfeather. What’s your name again?
Rigby John, I said. Klusener.
So nice to meet you, Rigby John, he said. I like your hat.
And I like yours, I said.
On his Levi’s shirt, silver tips on the collars with a design like two lightning bolts, the same design on his silver bolo tie.
By any chance, are you related to Joe Klusener of Tyhee Road? he said.
My breath was deep.
He’s my father, I said.
Really?! Owlfeather said.
The skin hanging down over his eyes lifted up. Inside in the sorrel brown, a flash.
Your father was quite a handful in the olden days, he said.
You knew my father? I said.
Big Bad Joe, he said. Not biblically. But he did hang around the Back Door.
My father was in the Back Door? I said.
Always making trouble, he said. Him and his cousin. What was his name?
Jimmy Weis, I said.
Yes, he said, Jimmy Weis. The Terrible Twos.
That’s one of the reasons it’s got a steel door now, he said. Your father and his cousin. The Back Door does still have a steel door, doesn’t it?
Did my father sleep with any of the men? I said.
Oh! Owlfeather said. I never tell tales out of school. Especially about kin.
Owlfeather’s lips on the coffee cup. On the coffee cup a lipstick stain.
Mr. Owlfeather, I said. Please tell me.
His perfect French inhale.
I don’t know why, I just did it, leaned down and kissed Owlfeather on his cheek. My lips on the rock of ages. Owlfeather’s smile was really a smile.
Well then, he said.
On his Camel, more lipstick. Dark, dark red.
Technically no, he said. At least no one I was acquainted with.
But you know what they say? he said.
A bully does before all the world what he is incapable of without witness.
What? I said. Say that again.
Bluff, Owlfeather said. A man hates most what’s in his own heart.
Why go to the Back Door if you hate fags?
About that time, all kinds of people started coming in the door. Somebody must have rung the dinner bell. It was a stampede.
You see, I told you, Owlfeather said. It’s a good thing you ate.
His old crooked hand reached out, grabbed a hold of my hand.
Do me another favor, he said. Will you?
Sure, I said.
My hand inside Owlfeather’s, slick and smooth.
When you sleep with George tonight, he said, love your body.
What Owlfeather said next he could barely say because he was laughing so hard.
What? I said.
Go for it while you got your youth and spirit, he said. Fuck yourself silly.
Outside all around, people were sitting in chairs, standing around. The moon on bits of silver, white teeth, white feathers, white beads in earrings and chokers and necklaces. Inside the tipi, the fire was low and the shadows were long. The line moved from left to right. Granny’s coffin was at the north end surrounded by flowers. At the south end was a group of people sitting in chairs. George was one of them. I could barely see him through the crowd. He was in his Italian suit, the red tie tied around his shaved head.
The woman just ahead of me in line reached down and touched Granny’s hands. She said some things to her in Indian. When it was my turn, I touched Granny’s soft, smooth hair.
The only part of Granny’s pine box that you could see was around the bottom. On a stand by her head was a candle and a tall vase filled with wildflowers — daisies and chamomile, wild mustard, bull thistle, daffodils, syringa, wild yellow roses, Indian paintbrush, white sage, and lilac. More flowers too, a wreath of red roses on a stand and a ribbon that said WE LOVE YOU GRANDMA. Granny’s hair was tied back in a bun. She was wearing a buckskin dress. Beaded roses just below her collarbone. Inside, all around Granny was her wedding ring quilt, the design of the wedding rings made up of the stylized bird, the Thunderbird. Across the lid of the pine box, a yellow and brown and orange Pendleton blanket and a shawl with blue fringe with knots in the fringe. Nailed to the lid were Granny’s photographs. A man in buckskin wearing a war bonnet next to a woman with her hair tied back and a shawl over her head.
A photo of a little girl in front of a log cabin. I looked close, and it was Granny’s log cabin. The Lombardy poplars were only knee-high. Two or three people who looked like they were dead. A photo of Granny sitting on the Lombardy poplar stumps in front of the green screen door.
The way the candlelight hit her face, if you squinted your eyes just right, Granny looked like she was smiling.
When I got to George, I stuck out my hand. George stood up off his folding chair, gave me a quick bear hug, then stepped back. George put his hands on my shoulders. Under George’s eyes, his skin was a circle of white outlined in dark purple. Maybe it was just the light from the fire, or the shadows, maybe it was his shaved head. Whatever it was, George looked pretty bad.
You look real tired, I said.
I look sober, George said.
That night late, I woke up out of a deep sleep. George pulled the Pendleton back, got in bed next to me, skin to naked skin. It was a hot night, and he was freezing cold. His body was shaking. George curled his body into mine, nudged in under my arm. In the east, the morning light was just starting in.
Just hold me, Rig, George whispered. Hold me tight.
I moved in close to George, made spoons. I started in talking about the day and all the stuff that happened to me that day, but in no time at all George’s breath was deep and slow and George was snoring.
His leg up across my legs, his arm over my chest, his cock and balls against my thigh. Such powerful magic being close to a man, to George. His slow in-and-out breath. Yet as I lay there, I knew George was more than just asleep. He was way far away.
Where my friend George was I couldn’t tell.
All night, the wind through the cedar tree, Granny’s ancestors, singing and crying and singing. I didn’t sleep a wink.
At daybreak, the chickens and the rooster started in. Pretty soon you could hear people talking and laughing, coughing. Somebody farted real loud. About seven o’clock, when the sun was in our eyes, George rolled off my arm, sat up quick. The whole long naked back of George all the way down to the crack of his ass. From in the kitchen, the smell of bacon and coffee.
The red tie around George’s head was on all screwy. The skin under his eyes was a half-moon of white circled around in purple. The whites of his eyes were red.
You any good with a shovel? George said.
George looked at my hands, then back up into my eyes.
Good, George said. We got us a grave to dig.
At the crossroads of Quinn Road and Tyhee Road, if we turned right, in a half a mile we’d be at my parents’ house. Mom in the kitchen in her red housedress stirring something in a bowl. Dad out in the machine shop with his Stetson off working on the combine. But George and I and our shovels, in the back end of somebody’s old pickup, didn’t turn right; we turned left onto Sheepskin Road, then followed Sheepskin around to where it comes to the plateau and the earth falls into the bottoms.
George and I got out in the middle of nowhere. Not a tree. Only sand and sagebrush and now and then a bitterroot. Jackrabbits everywhere. The August sun and the Idaho wind. George in his cowboy hat, his Levi’s, cowboy boots, and a backpack. Me in my porkpie hat, my T-shirt, my suit pants, and my Sunday shoes. Shovels over our shoulders.
There we were, George and I, alone out there in the middle of the rez, in the middle of all that red, in the middle of Idaho.
At a barbwire fence we stopped. George opened up a wire gate, and we stepped through. He pushed the post of the gate in with his shoulder, looped the wire over the post, and the gate held tight. George knew all about gates.
Don’t let the spirits out, George said.
As we walked I began to see. Piles of rocks, shiny beads, now and then a marble headstone. George and I were in Sandy Hill Cemetery.
Right next to one of the biggest sagebrushes I’d ever seen, taller than me the sagebrush, George dug his shovel in, turned up the sandy dirt. George stepped off two long steps west, then dug a hole there. One long step north, another hole. Then two long steps east and one long step north of the first hole, he dug another hole, and with that, George had the grave marked out.
We went right to work. We didn’t talk. George dug on his side, I dug on mine. We threw the dirt to one side, the south. The sides of the hole we scraped vertical with the back end of our shovels. When I was digging, George was throwing. Digging, throwing, digging, throwing. We went on and on like that for the longest time. Like it was the Olympics for hole digging, and George and I were on the Idaho team. I forgot all about my sore hand. Something so good to push yourself like that. Earth in my nose and my own sweat, and George, glorious George, buckskin and flint on the back of my throat. Shovel for shovel. We dug. We threw. Faster and faster.
There’s nothing better in the world than digging yourself a hole.
Finally, when we were about three feet down, I had to stop.
I leaned up against my shovel. I was breathing like a racehorse.
That’s when I saw it, the rectangle of earth where Granny would lie for all eternity.
Granny for all eternity in that hole. No wonder George was so far away.
The sun was high, and the only shade was from the sagebrush, and that shade wouldn’t be on the grave for at least another hour. George’s T-shirt was soaked through. All around George, on the ground, drops of sweat.
I took my hat off, wiped my head. The sun on my shaved head was hot.
My deep breath.
What about your father? I said. Is he coming to the funeral?
George’s shoulders jerked up, but he didn’t stop. He stuck the shovel blade into the earth, stepped on the shovel, pushed it down, then he leaned down, scooped up the earth, threw the shovelful of earth onto the pile.
Four feet down and going.
No, he said. It’s not a Mormon funeral, so he ain’t coming.
Jeez, I said.
Shovels of dirt flying, flying, out of the hole and into the pile.
Are you going to see him then? I said. After Granny’s funeral?
George kept digging. Didn’t stop for a second.
The feeling in my arms that means I’m helpless. It was like our days in the hay field. Only it was George this time pushing to get the work done.
Then: That old man with one tooth, I said. Matthew Owlfeather, I said. He told me my father used to hang around the Back Door.
That stopped him. George leaned up against his shovel.
No shit? George said.
It scared me how much I wanted to see George smile. No doubt about it, something was up.
My turn, I said.
And jumped into the hole.
No, George said, thanks. I need to keep moving.
George was moving. All over his whole body his muscles were twitching.
I put my hand on George’s twitching shoulder.
How long does it last? I said. After you’ve quit drinking?
George’s eyes looked away, looked down, looked at everything but me.
Days, weeks, George said. A lifetime.
But this shaking, I said.
George raised up his hands, looked at his hands.
Don’t know, George said. I’ve never done this before. At least I’ve never seen myself do this.
In the hospital, he said. Was I shaking like this?
I didn’t even stop to think.
Worse, I said. You were plumb loco. Screaming and crying.
George leaned back onto the side of the hole.
No wonder you hated me so much, George said.
Just the wind. Sand along the ground, the sound of sand. Behind George, a white-tailed rabbit jumped into a clearing. Jumped out.
The first time that afternoon we heard the thunder.
Did you bring some water? I said.
George didn’t say anything for a while. Just stood leaning against the wall of the grave. His hands a hard grip on the shovel handle.
Then: It’s in my backpack, George said.
Inside George’s
backpack, a green glass jug with THUNDERBIRD on it. The place next to the lip a round of glass where you could put your finger through. I unscrewed the lid, smelled inside. Tipped the jug up. It was water.
George took a long drink, water dribbling out the sides of his mouth. How many times I’d watched his Adam’s apple go up and down.
When he was done, I took a drink. Cool water. I was praying to the cool water. Praying to Granny’s ancestors. Praying to Thunderbird. Help me with my friend.
I wiped my mouth, screwed the lid back on, set the green Thunderbird jug under the sagebrush shade. I walked off a ways like I was going to pee.
My knees on the ground, I reached down, picked up a handful of earth. I made the sign of the cross.
Just in case.
If Thunderbird didn’t listen, maybe someone else would.
Saint George, I said. Slayer of the dragons, I said. Pray for us.
George was still digging like a maniac when I got back to the hole.
George, I said, how about a cigarette?
George stopped shoveling. Stood up, arched his back, looked up at me. The level of the hole was at his armpits.
The way we were standing, I was about five feet taller than George.
George stuck the shovel blade into the earth, stepped on the shovel, pushed it down, then leaned over, scooped up the earth, threw the shovelful of earth onto the pile.
More thunder. Down so low I could feel thunder in my feet.
A long breath and really deep.
George! I said. Tell me where you’re at.
The way George curled up his lip. How easy it was to fear this guy. George’s shovel went flying out the hole.
Sit down, George said.
I, who have been accused of doing everything he is told, didn’t sit down, just stood there.
Sit the fuck down! George yelled.
From inside the grave, George tapped his hand next to my feet, right at the edge of the hole. I sat so that my legs dangled into the grave.
George took off his hat, pulled my legs open, put his chest in, wrapped his arms around me, pulled me in close. I loved God so much right then.
George and I stayed like that for a long time. The shakes going through George’s body into mine. Then George lifted up my T-shirt with his teeth, pressed his lips. His tongue and his lips on my belly. With every round of his tongue, I lost another breath.
Now Is the Hour Page 47