In the rearview mirror, Dad is in the pickup right behind us.
The rest of the morning and most of the afternoon was Mom and Dad and I around the kitchen table under the bright overhead light. The same oilcloth tablecloth with red tulips. Mom and I were sitting. Dad was standing. On the blue and white tile, Dad was walking back and forth.
Where have you been the past four days? Dad said.
With friends, I said.
What friends? Dad said. That pregnant girl?
But I won’t say what friends.
You got to keep your distance.
Shame on you! Dad yelled.
Dad put his wrists on his hips, pressed his wrists in and lifted his Levi’s. That was the signal. As soon as Dad started hiking his pants up with his wrists, you knew you were in for it. He was just starting in on waving his arms and whipping up a big brouhaha, when I said:
And at a grave, I said.
That stopped him. His Roosky Gypsy eyes.
A grave? Dad said. Whose grave?
Russell’s grave, I said.
Russell’s grave hit him like a ton of bricks. It was like I’d kicked the wind right out of him. Dad pulled out his chrome chair, sat down, put his elbows on the table, folded his big hairy hands.
When he spoke again, he wasn’t yelling.
What on earth were you doing there? he said.
He’s my brother, I said. What other reason do I need?
Mom quick pushed her chair back, got up from the table, and walked into her bedroom. She came back with her big black rosary. When she sat down again, she made the sign of the cross.
Brimming with tears her eyes, along the bottom lid, brimming.
One big tear rolled down her cheek.
Dad bent his head down into his hands. The top of his head was getting bald.
Quiet. We sat like that, the three of us, and it was quiet.
Then out of nowhere, Dad pounded his fist down onto the table. Over and over again, pounding and pounding his fist.
You’re just trying to upset your mother! he yelled.
Yelling and pounding and yelling like he was nuts. I’ve never seen Dad so exasperated.
Then it was all the nigger-loving hippie communist queers. That’s what was wrong with the country. Pretty soon, he was reciting the Ten Commandments. How many of them I’d broke. I was grounded for the entire year. Could never drive the pickup to town again.
Jeez. Hollering and cussing and laying down the law.
And when I graduated I was enlisting in the army and going to Vietnam.
They’ll make a man out of you there, Dad said.
Weird, the whole time Dad was going off, Mom was quiet. She didn’t look up, she didn’t pipe in and say shit. She just sat there in her rummage-sale cotton blouse and her jeans and her Keds. The thousands of tiny wrinkles around her mouth. Her swooped eyebrows. Her gray hair. The ripples in her jaw. Thumbing the beads of her big black rosary.
With those big gray plastic glasses gone, you could see her face.
Almond-shaped hazel eyes. Grandpa’s eyes. Brimming.
I didn’t say a thing. Just acted like I was listening.
Just be there at Granny’s, George. Just be there at Granny’s.
One time Dad did go for my hat, and right there and then I let him know real fast.
I didn’t block his hand. I didn’t hit him. I didn’t scream or cuss.
I stopped my father with a look.
It was the same look Mom used to stop him.
And what I said: When’s the last time you went to Russy’s grave?
Dad didn’t touch my hat. Or me.
The most important thing, though, that afternoon, wasn’t Dad’s Moses on the Mount conniption fit.
It was that Mom had made my favorite lunch. Bologna sandwiches with lettuce and mayonnaise and mustard, two pieces of bologna. Clover Club potato chips and a hard-boiled egg.
You should have seen the salt I poured on that egg.
Dad was so pissed he grabbed the salt shaker and threw the milk-can salt shaker all the way across the room.
Big deal. So what. Who cares?
Plus there was apple pie. My mother had baked an apple pie.
When I got up and poured myself a cup of coffee, neither one of them said a word.
Any Sego Milk, Mom? I said.
At four o’clock, Dad told me to get the hell out of there and go change the water in the pasture.
I went up into my room, closed the door, sat on my bed. In the same spot I’d sat four days ago, Saturday, when my mother was a crazy maniac, the human barricade at my door.
I looked at my hands. I lifted my hands and looked at my hands.
So much had happened. I didn’t even recognize whose hands they were.
From my window, you could see the tops of Granny’s Lombardy poplars.
My heart pounding. My breath.
Just be there at Granny’s, George.
I quick put my cutoffs on and my tennis shoes and a clean T-shirt. It was a relief to get out of the crusty shorts.
I opened my door, walked down the stairs, turned to walk out the kitchen door. From the top of the refrigerator, I quick grabbed Dad’s Viceroys, tapped a couple out.
Just before the kitchen door went closed, Mom said: Rigby John.
I pretended I didn’t hear her.
Man, I love my pickup. It’s Dad’s pickup, but it should be mine. Tramp sits beside me in the cab. He’s all smiles and his tail beating hard against the seat. His tongue wet bologna.
Tramp, I say, I missed you, buddy.
Tramp’s tongue starts hanging out. He gets that look on his face.
Tramp, I say, would you like to be my jail bitch?
Sure as hell, there he goes, Tramp’s paw poking, poking the air.
I put the pickup into reverse, make a three-point turn, hit the gas. Tramp and I are flying past the steel granaries, past the spud cellar, past the grain elevator. At the intersection where you can go left, past the boxcars, then up the road that is the boundary of yellow Bannock County, I turn right, open the gate, drive through, close the gate. In the place between the gates where you can drive fast, I drive fast. Dust rolling up, the sun shining in the windshield, exhaust fumes. I light a Viceroy. My exhale settles my body deep into the seat. Wind and dust and smoke and going fast. There’s nothing better in the world.
Just be there at Granny’s, George.
At the second gate by the derrick, I open the gate, drive through, close the gate.
Then up the gravel bar that is the natural boundary to the rez. Up the lane between the alfalfa and the barley. To the swimming hole.
I am out and running. Over the fence, Tramp right behind me, onto the ditch bank, then bouncing over the two-by-twelve. My legs stretch out as I jump to the outcropping of slick, dark lava rock. I land, my palms sea anemones, suction cups onto the black, slick rocks. My feet find their way up the mossy, wet lava.
Once on top, I look down.
It is a very good parade.
My feet are across the border, my feet are on the rez.
Planted deep in all that red. Crooked as the wind, Granny’s lone cedar tree. In the hot sun, the cedar boughs smell of one more sweaty body. The wind through the cedar, the secret song of the wind in the cedar that moment is something not outside me but down deep up behind and under, a fist balled up inside me opening to a hand waving in the wind.
Over the fence, through Granny’s back pasture, past the outhouse, past the barn and the chicken coop, into the middle of Granny’s yard.
Poplar leaves scatter. All over on the ground a swirl of hallucinations. Shadows and light, shadows and light.
In the yard, under the apple tree, there is no George’s car.
Granny’s green screen door is open. All through Granny’s house, the doors and windows are open wide. Her shiny wood floors. No sign, no trace of life.
Of George.
A gust of wind, a hawk, in a moment, some large bird fl
ies low out Granny’s kitchen window.
Then it’s Tramp barking and barking. I tell Tramp to stop barking, but he won’t stop barking.
On the apple tree, below our initials with the heart between, there’s a piece of paper thumbtacked to the tree.
The paper rattling in the wind.
The feeling in my arms that means I’m helpless.
My heart pounding. My breath.
Dear Rig,
I already miss you.
Happy trails.
Love,
George
Hallucinations around me all over on the ground. I sit down right there under the apple tree. My arm around the trunk. My head on wood. In my one hand, the piece of paper. In the other hand, my palm full of sunshine. Above me, all around, the wind’s high sigh and scratch.
The universe has always conspired to fuck me up.
Who knows how long I sit there. Who knows how long Tramp barks.
Long afternoon shadows. The blue sky is pink sky is peach sky. Sunset is red.
The piece of paper balled up in my fist. My fist against my chest.
In my fist it is the sharp pain next to my heart.
The thing about poplar trees, if you sit there long and quiet enough, the wind through the poplar leaves is voices. At first, the voices say the usual things. Love songs and poems and shit.
Eleanor Rigby Joan picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been. Hey there, Georgy Girl. I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places.
Then poems. Edgar Allan Poe poems, “The Raven,” and e. e. cummings’s “A Leaf Falls on Loneliness.”
Then, after a long time, other people’s voices and the songs and poems stop, and the wind is only Thunderbird breathing.
Then a gust of wind, a hawk, some large bird, Thunderbird, flies away, and you’re alone.
Then it’s just you there with all you don’t know and your dog, and you can’t cry anymore, and the wind in the poplar trees is just the wind.
That night, last night, when I got home, I opened the kitchen door, walked over the blue and white tiles, straight to the phone. Called Billie Cody. I stretched the phone cord into the bathroom and closed the bathroom door.
Right there on the bathroom floor, without a cigarette, I sat on the black and white tiles in the lavender bathroom and talked to my friend.
Billie was really happy to hear from me. She’d been worried, with the cops and all. She said she was fine. Chuck was fine. She sounded good.
That’s about all she had to say.
I started into talking, and then I couldn’t stop. I told Billie everything.
Everything.
From start to finish.
I didn’t cry. Talked matter of fact, as if the whole thing had happened to someone else.
Me and George, warriors of love, Granny’s death, digging the grave, the cops, the night in jail, the note on the apple tree. Everything. Right up to leaving for San Francisco in the morning.
I don’t think I’ve ever talked so long without stopping. To anyone. To Billie or to Tramp. Must have been over an hour.
The knock on the bathroom door was Mom.
Supper’s ready, she said.
Then: Billie, I said, got to go.
I’ll drop by tomorrow before I leave, I said. Early.
Sis was sitting at the kitchen table where she always used to sit. She had a black eye and two full suitcases in the hallway. It looked like she’d be staying for a while.
Last night.
The night at supper when the perfectness of fuck hit me.
Fuck as a way to address the world.
There I was sitting at the kitchen table. I was sitting under the bright overhead light, in the same chrome chair with its yellow plastic seat and backrest, and there was Sis sitting directly across the oilcloth tablecloth with red tulips on it, her hair done up in a French twist and Scotch tape taped across her forehead holding down her bangs. Just below the Scotch tape, her swooped, black cat’s-eye glasses. Her black eye more blue than black.
To my right there was Dad still in his same Levi’s shirt rolled up to the elbows and his big hairy hands and forearms smelling of Lava soap. Across his forehead, the line of sunburn straight, red below white above, his black hair smashed down from his Stetson cowboy hat.
On my left there was Mom in her rummage-sale cotton blouse, her jeans, and her Keds. Her almond-shaped hazel eyes behind her glasses, her hair in a hairnet up in pin curls. On her forehead were the lines, three parallel lines across, that in the middle, between her eyebrows, sank to deep folds of skin between her eyes. Her clipped-to-the-quick fingernails.
A rerun of Lawrence Welk was on the TV in the front room. Myron Floren was playing “The Beer Barrel Polka,” and there we all were lifting our hands to our foreheads to start the sign of the cross and the bless us O Lord and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty through Christ, our Lord, amen.
On the table were the same four slices of roast beef. The same bottle of Heinz 57 ketchup, the mashed potatoes in the green bowl, the orange gravy boat, the canned peas in the blue bowl, the butter plate, and the bread plate with four slices of Wonder Bread on it. The salt and pepper shakers the shape of milk cans.
A family.
We were all of us in jail.
Just last night. The last night, the last supper, I was ever going to sit through.
The four of us sitting around the kitchen table with all that’s happened since two years ago last March. Beginning with what happened behind the barn, then Mom’s novena to Our Mother of Perpetual Help for my soul, and the altar boy contest and the baseball game between Saint Joseph’s and Saint Anthony’s. The yellow tulip sticking out of my ass. The blessed summer with Flaco and Acho. The Slit Sisters. Trying to have a very good parade. Spineless ass. Billie Cody, our promise. Sis’s wedding. Chuck diPietro. Baling hay with Georgy Girl. Smoking is praying is waiting is trusting. Thunderbird.
Then the Grande Finale. The Big Fiasco. All the shit hitting the big fat fan all at once. Billie Cody pregnant, the Senior Summer All Night Party, Mom chasing me with the broom. Joe Scardino, the El Camino and the Kraft cheese truck. Grandma Queep going to the other side. The Back Door, where men like flowers. Solitary warriors of love. Granny’s funeral, digging Granny’s grave, the giveaway, George’s long fingers touching my hand on Pine Street. My night in the city jail. George’s note thumbtacked to the apple tree.
My broken fucking heart.
Which pretty much sums up the whole story, not necessarily in that order, and brings us up to date with last night.
So with Myron Floren playing “The Beer Barrel Polka” in the front room, we did what we always did. The only thing we knew how to do. We blessed our roast beef, the canned peas, the mashed spuds, the Wonder Bread, with the same old prayer that came out of us like bad breath from a sick dog, then made the sign of the cross again.
Always the meat first, always Dad first, then me, then Sis, then Mom, was the way we passed the food. Then when each of us had our piece of roast beef, each our potatoes and gravy, each our canned peas, then Dad said pass the ketchup. Then Sis handed Dad the ketchup. Then ketchup for me, for Sis, for Mom. Then we all picked up our forks and started eating.
Except for me. I always asked for salt please because it pissed Dad off that I like salt.
No differnt last night.
I said: Salt please, and Sis looked over her swooped black cat’s-eye glasses at Dad first, then molded her mouth all pulled together like a sphincter, handed me the salt shaker milk can.
So I started salting the ketchup on my slice of roast beef, my canned peas, my pile of mashed potatoes with a little crater in them for the gravy.
I started getting kind of weepy because now the Champagne Lady was singing some German schmaltzy shit. Weepy too because I was never going to see my family again, see this house, my bedroom, my bed, see the barn, the swimming hole, the Mexican house, see my dog, Tramp, ever again, never see Flaco or
Acho, or Billie Cody or Grandma Queep.
Never see George Serano again.
But I didn’t cry because it was just too perfect for me to start crying. I promised myself I would rather bite my tongue off, would rather put the salt shaker in my mouth and eat the milk can shaker whole before I ever cried in front of them again. So I just ate my roast beef, my potatoes and gravy, my canned peas.
I finished my supper in one, maybe one and a half minutes.
Like always I was still hungry.
So I said to Mom, Mom, can I have another piece of bread?
Mom didn’t say anything, just raised her plucked eyebrows that for Sunday morning Mass she penciled in with her eyebrow pencil, put her fork down, picked up the empty bread plate, got up from the table, walked across the blue and white tiled floor to the bread drawer, her varicose veins running down to her Keds, bent over, opened the bread drawer, took out the loaf of Wonder Bread, undid the tie, took one piece of bread out, retied the tie, put one piece of Wonder Bread on the bread plate, closed the bread drawer with her knee, walked back over the blue and white tiles to the table, and set the plate in front of me.
That’s when I said it inside my head: fuck.
And fuck was the most perfect way to say what I needed to say.
That moment at the table at supper in the kitchen under the bright overhead light. The fuck was the perfect way to fucking say it that moment, me fucking me, I was sitting in the yellow fucking chair, my feet on the blue and white kitchen tiles, shoving a piece of fucking buttered Wonder Bread into my mouth.
In that silence. That drut dead quiet of a fucking silence that hung over the table, over our family, hung over our fucking lives, the Holy Fucking Ghost.
The silence so loud against my eardrums since my eardrums realized they could hear.
Bless us O fucking Lord and these Thy fucking gifts, which we are about to fucking receive through Thy fucking bounty, through Christ our fucking Lord.
A-fucking-men!
Fuck.
There’s one more thing left. The thing back at the beginning that happened in the kitchen I haven’t told you yet. One more story.
Maybe it’s the story I should have told you first.
Like Russell, it’s the biggest story. The one I wasn’t the same after.
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