Now Is the Hour

by Tom Spanbauer

  The hairs on George’s head were rough just like his whiskers. Sweat was pouring down my neck, down my chest, down my armpits.

  When George finally spoke, his forehead was on my bellybutton, his chin and mouth lay on my crotch.

  I’m not shaking just because I’m sober, George said. For the first time in my life I’m afraid.

  It’s Granny all right, George said. And it’s this fucking hole we’re digging. It’s all the people and the funeral.

  But really, George said, it’s not knowing what’s going to happen next.

  I never used to worry about that, George said. I was cool. I was going along smoking and praying and trusting whatever the fuck happened next just happened.

  I was sure of myself, George said. Didn’t have a care. I knew what I was doing. I was waiting for Thunderbird. Just me and the tumbling tumbleweeds.

  But now that Thunderbird is here, George said, now that spirit is passing in and out of my heart, everything is different. Everything is so fucking.

  Fragile, George said. I’m a wreck because of you.

  Now that I love you, George said, there’s so much to lose.

  As soon as I woke up this morning, George said, I knew you and I would be alone out here. What joy, at first. Then I was terrified.

  Rig, George said, I’ve never had sex sober. I’ve never had sex when I loved. And having sex with you will make it impossible, George said. Yet I know I got to leave.

  Thunderbird gives you what you want, George said. My heart is pounding. I can’t catch my breath. Thunderbird keeps passing and passing and passing through, and all I can do is tremble.

  The tiniest things — clouds, spit, dirt — are little miracles.

  Sometimes the world is so beautiful it hurts.

  There are moments when I look at you I think I’m going to die.

  Which makes it all the worse, George said.

  You and I fucking won’t be just sex, George said. You’re like me. This will become your way of life.

  It’s a rat’s ass, Rig, George said. A life I wouldn’t wish on a dog.

  Half of me wants to devour you, George said. The other half wants to run and hide. But I don’t do either.

  All I can do is shake, George said.

  Come in my mouth, George says.

  My Sunday shoes are off. George pulling off my socks. I unbutton my pants, zip down the zipper, George yanking at my pants. My T-shirt’s over my head. George’s T-shirt is over his head. My thumbs go inside my jockey shorts. When I sit back down, my bare ass is on the sandy dirt.

  I don’t close my eyes.

  My cock goes into George’s mouth. The world gets thick and full. My cock all the way down his throat, then back out, his lips and tongue on the very tip. His sucking makes the raindrops start. Bright sun on George’s head, I hold his head, a crystal ball. The whiskers on his lips and chin. Rough and smooth, sun and rain. I press my ass into the earth.

  I arch my back, my legs go round and cross behind his head. Slow, it’s so slow, my heartbeat, my breath, the thunder roll, his tongue round and round, the lightning that cracks the sky.

  I’m not sure I should tell him. What’s coming from down low and up. And how much and how fast.

  Then the earth moves, and I look, and I’m not on the earth, I’m in the air on George’s shoulders. My hands, which have held his head so tight, fly out like a big bird flying. A screaming bird. The way my hips pump George’s face pushes him against the side. I go flying, flying to the south, and land in the mound of earth. The dirt is dark wet just on the surface. I’m covered with mud. I let myself roll and roll and fall into the grave on top of George.

  George’s skin is wet, his face, his head. I’m laughing so hard. That strange sound coming up. I put my mouth to George’s mouth and put my laugh into him. I’m straddling his chest and when I look down, my cock is still dripping. Behind my cock, behind my balls, George’s cock is big and hard and pointing at my ass. I know it will hurt, and I want it to hurt, and I put his cock head right there inside and push.

  Maybe it’s the mud and rain. George’s cock goes in steady, slow, inside all the way. The bird is a screaming bird again. I slap George hard across the face, one cheek then the next. He’s pushing hard and hard and hard. Fire in the ass. Rain on my face. My fingers scrape mud along the walls. Nothing better in the world than digging yourself a hole.

  George’s face is wild and open and full of joy and free. He’s almost smiling.

  I can feel him inside the pulse that makes his body jerk.

  Just knowing George is coming, I start coming too. One long stream out of my cock that shoots up and splats against his neck.

  Finally, I’ve nailed his Adam’s apple.

  In the bottom of a grave, in an inch of water, in a puddle of mud. Some of the mud smells like shit. The rain coming down is soft like the whole world is soft. Arms and legs and arms and legs. My hands cup George’s balls. There’s nothing in between. George and I are eye to eye.

  Alone at last, George says.

  And we’re not baling hay, I say.

  We’re fucking, not fighting, George says.

  Make love, not war, I say.

  Solitary warriors of love, George says.

  All these summer storms, I say.

  Thunderbird ain’t through with us yet, George says.

  What’s going to be left of us when he’s through? I say.

  An eye is opened that now must look, George says.

  You really do have to go, don’t you? I say. There’s nothing left here for you now.

  Then: Me too, I say.

  But where can we go now? George says. Now that we are here?

  Thunder and lightning all around. George and I stuck together in the bottom of a grave. Only our breaths in and out.

  Your father in Apacheland? I say. Or you could visit Italy and your mother?

  And what about you? George says.

  I lay my head back, try to keep my eyes open as the rain hits my eyes.

  If you’re going to San Francisco, I say, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.

  I expected the funeral to be wild with Indians in traditional outfits, singing and dancing the hoop dance and banging the drum. But it wasn’t anything like that. Two guys walked up to Granny’s casket and closed it, with Granny and everything of hers in it. How simple it was to close and lock the lid. Took my breath away.

  Matthew Owlfeather, smiling with his one tooth, lit some white sage and a cedar branch. He lifted his face to the sky, held his arms out wide. The song he sang was one more human breath to breathe through the cedar boughs of Granny’s ancestor tree. Sweet and sad. Above, the sky was big with silver and white billowing clouds. On the undersides of the clouds, strips of yellow. Light rain on and off. Every once in a while, sun poking through.

  All along Sheepskin Road, a line of cars parked. Maybe a hundred people standing around in Sandy Hill Cemetery. Granny’s pine box was in the back of a new yellow Ford pickup. The pickup pulled into Sandy Hill Cemetery, made a three-point turn, then backed up to the grave. George pulled the tailgate down, and he and five other men pulled the pine box off the pickup, carried the pine box to the grave. Lowered the pine box down with ropes. The hole was just big enough for Granny’s box. Room to spare all the way around.

  Then another pine box, low and square, an old yellow dog named Bonanza in the box, set on top of Granny at her feet.

  When we threw the earth into the grave onto the pine boxes, I couldn’t help but think of Granny smiling down there where George and I had fucked. All the life and love and sweat and tears and come inside the hole.

  My wish was for a resting place like that.

  Back at Granny’s house, the giveaway was just that. Every pot and pan of Granny’s, her coffeepot, the pewter cups, every stick of furniture — her bed, her box spring and mattress, her sheets, her pillows, her table and chairs, her sewing machine, the picture of the flowers, the armoire, all the linens and blankets in the ar
moire, Granny’s trunk, all the Pendleton blankets in the trunk. Bonanza’s Pendleton blanket. The kerosene lamp. Granny’s new refrigerator. Her green enamel Majestic stove. The curtains on the windows, the curtains under the counter of the sink. George’s bed, his dresser, the round mirror on his wall. The blue glass ashtray.

  The chickens, the eggs, Granny’s two bales of straw, the porcelain pans hanging on the barn.

  Everything. Even the two light bulbs.

  The tipi was dismantled, the canvas rolled up, the poles stacked onto a pickup, hauled away.

  As people left, taking with them Granny’s worldly goods, George stood where the tipi had set, next to the smoldering fire. In his hands, a big roll of dollar bills. He peeled off a dollar bill for every person. George saved the last dollar bill for me.

  By sunset it was just me and George in Granny’s empty house. The light through the windows on the shiny floor. The places where her pictures had hung. The stovepipe, crooked, hanging down. The scrapes on the floor where the table and the chairs had sat. The four dents that had been her bed.

  George walked through the rooms, close along the walls. He touched everything he could. When he got to the electrical box next to the front door, George opened the metal door, reached in, and unscrewed the fuse. He put the fuse in his pocket, then closed the metal door.

  Then out of nowhere.

  Would you get the broom for me? George said.

  The broom? I said. There’s nothing left.

  It’s in the back of your pickup, George said.

  In the back of the pickup, an old broom, its bristles worn down to a fist. And a suitcase. One of those old kinds of suitcases, leather, that look like a valise.

  George swept the house, every corner. The little pile of dust he swept up, we picked up with our hands. Carried the dust out to the smoldering fire, threw the dust onto the fire.

  We made sure all the doors and windows were open. In the middle of Granny’s room, George took my hand. His hands weren’t shaking. George in his Italian suit, his white shirt, his Italian shoes, and cotton socks, the red tie tied around his bristly head.

  I took my porkpie hat off. Adjusted my red tie. My hair was bristly too. My Sunday shoes were scuffed, my suit pants were bagging out, the suit jacket wrinkled, the burned iron spot on the collar of my white shirt. Underneath, my crusty shorts and a three-or four-day-old T-shirt. I was ripe all right, but not the worse for wear.

  The Shoshone prayer from George’s lips was soft and high and sounded like Idaho. Silver and gold in the sunlight, wind in the poplars a high sigh and scratch, dry June grass. Heat lightning storms in the night sky. Pickup trucks backing up and a pine box bumping down into a grave.

  Outside, George took the fuse out of his pocket, bounced it up once in his hand, then threw the fuse as hard as he could into the tall pasture grass.

  Where the tipi had sat, the fire was ash and embers. George pulled up the knees of his pants, sat down like Buddha. I sat down across the fire from him. He laid the broom bristles into the fire. With some poking around, the fire was up and spitting again.

  George reached in his pocket, pulled out his pack of Camels, tapped one out, lit it. His French inhale. George handed the cigarette to me.

  Is there anything left, George said, that you can think of, that we haven’t given away or burned?

  My mind went over all the places in the house, in the barn, on the barn, in the chicken coop, in the outhouse.

  I hope there’s toilet paper left, I said.

  George almost smiled, I swear.

  Anything else? George said. I packed up my suitcase, we’ve swept the house. As soon as this broom is burned, I think we’re done.

  There was something else. I reached into my inside jacket pocket, pulled out Granny’s pipe, set the pipe on the ground.

  No, George said. I gave that pipe to you.

  It’s not the pipe, I said.

  Then, from inside the same pocket, I pulled out the plastic bag of joints. I rolled out the plastic, picked up the joints, and put them in the palm of my hand.

  Threw the joints in the fire, then the plastic bag.

  The smoke smelled of broom handle and burnt plastic and marijuana. I went to sniff up the smoke, then didn’t.

  The wind in the poplar leaves, a wind scattering up high. Old, dead wood croaking. George’s dark eyes.

  You didn’t have to do that, George said. I’m the one who’s getting sober.

  And I helped, I said.

  Then: What about your car? I said. That’s a possession, isn’t it?

  Fuck! George said. My fucking car. It’s still parked in town!

  What’s left to tell about George and me? Not much.

  George pulled out his wallet, opened it, and from inside a fold George pulled out a shiny black arrowhead.

  George carved his initials into the apple tree first: GS.

  Then I carved my initials: RJK.

  George carved in the heart around our initials.

  For supper that night, we ate nothing.

  At the cedar tree, George and I held onto each other’s hands and jumped. We were one flying whooping hollering screaming shits and giggles, one long smooth uninterrupted naked thrust through the night sky. Suspended in the air, arms, legs, cocks, a ball-out splash, the whoosh down deep into cool, muddy, green water.

  No swimming suit, water all around me touched me deep the way water goes wherever it can go. My legs, my ass, my cock, my balls, waterfall rushing water against me, better even than air. Floating low, my body a slide along dark rocks and mud, tangles of moss, gliding like a seal, some kind of sea animal, I was sprouting gills, breathing water. In the dark turbulence, my hands found one human leg and then another, and I grabbed the legs and pulled, and from somewhere up above in the breathing-air world was a holler, a high-pitched yell that turned into bubbles.

  George’s face right up next to mine through the dark, muddy green, George all his teeth. His dark eyes turned devil, George grabbed me, but I was too fast. I was out of the water in one long lunge, the deep breath of air glory in my chest. In no time at all, George’s arm around my neck. Then his other arm scooped me up under my knees.

  We could not stop. I swear we fucked ourselves so silly, the old two-by-twelve almost snapped.

  That night, under the poplars, then up and beyond them, the moon and the stars. Lying in our bedroll, George and I, we couldn’t stop touching.

  In the morning, there’s no chickens, no rooster, no smell of coffee or frying bacon. No porcelain pan to watch the sunlight in. There’s just enough toilet paper.

  The loud metal-to-metal pop of the pickup door. I get in, George gets in. I turn on the key. The pickup starts, no problem. I put it into reverse. We drive out Granny’s lane, past the tansy and the burdock, past the bull thistle, the chamomile, and the purple-head alfalfa. Turn right on Quinn Road, then left. George and I drive past Hess’s forty.

  It’s the first time in a long time I think about my dad.

  At the Sinclair station on East Fifth Street, I’ve got enough money to fill up the tank. I make sure I don’t spend George’s dollar. George goes in to take a shit. Then I go. The smell of the bathroom after he’s done. The smell like his come tastes, like his armpits smell, buckskin and flint on the back of my throat.

  When I get back in the pickup, George has two cups of coffee, two glazed doughnuts, and a newspaper, the Idaho State Journal. George tosses something into my lap.

  I reach down, pick it up. It’s a map of Nevada and California.

  Then it’s a yellow daisy George slips behind my ear.

  Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair, George says.

  On Pine Street, in front of a small white house, George’s ’49 Ford is parked.

  I flash back to the day, so long ago, when Mom and I were headed for devotions. Just in time, Mom hit the brakes and cranked the steering wheel. Directly in front of us, the old gray ’49 Ford parked barely off the road. All around my ears was a loud
screech. The Buick spun around for a long time.

  God spins you around like that only once in a while. Thank God.

  Mom was cussing a blue streak.

  Just as I looked and before I quick looked away, that moment, a big fat drop of rain slow from a cottonwood leaf in the last light fell, the splash in his hands, crooked light.

  George. Naked in the field.

  Those Indians and their goddamn queers.

  George leans across the cab, kisses me right there in broad daylight on a Pocatello street. Then he gets out, slams the door, walks around the front of the pickup.

  The red tie around his head in the bright day of Pocatello, something about the red tie on his naked head in Pocatello scares me to death.

  At my window, George’s dark eyes, the sunlight in them, bars of gold.

  I love it when your eyes are gold, I say.

  George’s long, beautiful fingers touch my hand.

  I’ll see you back at Granny’s, George says.

  Out of the back, George picks up his leather suitcase, carries his suitcase to his car, opens the trunk, puts the suitcase in the trunk.

  I put the pickup into first gear, let out the clutch. I make it a couple blocks before I pull over and stop. Out the rearview mirror, I try to get a look, but George’s car is gone.

  George is gone.

  That quick.

  Then I can’t do anything. I’m crying too damn hard.

  At Russell’s grave, I’m spread-eagle under the huge old elm. I tell Russell, the elm, the cemetery, the sky, the whole world, all that’s gone on between me and George. It’s surprising how long the story goes on. It starts with a spinning Buick and a naked man in a field in the rain and ends in the middle of a day, on a Pocatello street, Pine Street, in front of a white house, his fingers on my hand.

  Then: Russell, I say, he took his suitcase. He told me he’ll see me at Granny’s house. But he took his suitcase.

  Only minutes later, as I pull out of Mount Moriah Cemetery. On East Fifth Street in front of the Fanci Freez, I hear the siren. In the rearview mirror, a cop car. Its flashing lights are red and white.

  13 As Fate Would Have It

  THE COP HAULED his big self out of the cop car and walked up to the pickup. In the side mirror, it wasn’t long and the blue of the cop’s uniform took up the whole mirror.