Now Is the Hour

by Tom Spanbauer

  This morning, four-thirty, when I wake up, after I go into the bathroom, after I look at myself in the mirror for the last time, after I shut the bathroom light off, open the door, the way the door sticks, and before I leave the house, before I drive to Billie’s, when I walk up into the kitchen, there is the smell of coffee, and Mom is sitting in her chair at the kitchen table.

  It’s dark, but I can tell. She has her face on, eyebrows swooped, her hair done up. Red Cherries lipstick.

  I immediately go into a crouch position. I think all hell is breaking loose.

  Mom just sits there, though, looks at me. She’s smoking one of Dad’s Viceroys.

  Want a cigarette? she says.

  My mouth fumbles over what the hell to say. Doesn’t say anything.

  Come on, she says. After all this time, you think I don’t know you nick your dad’s cigarettes?

  No, I say. Yes. Then: I don’t know.

  As eloquent as ever.

  Mom pulls out my chrome chair with the plastic yellow seat and backrest. The chair slides along the blue and white tiles.

  She flicks the ash into the ashtray she stole from the 30 Club when she was young.

  Here, she says. Sit down.

  Mom reaches the cigarette across to me.

  Take a drag, she says. It’s the only cigarette I could find.

  I sit down. Take the cigarette.

  Our fingers touch.

  I do a perfect French inhale.

  How do you do that? she says. I never learned to do that.

  The morning light is silver light. Her rummage-sale cotton blouse.

  When you blow the smoke out your mouth, I say, you suck the smoke up with your nose.

  I hand the cigarette back to Mom. Our fingers touch.

  Mom’s face is weird when she tries to French-inhale. Her face is like when you try to flare your nostrils and you don’t know how.

  That weird sound from down deep inside of us.

  Laughter.

  But soft. We do not want to wake him.

  Who’d have thought I’d be laughing with my mother on the day I leave forever.

  Mom crosses her legs. Her jeans. Her Keds.

  Mom hands the cigarette to me.

  Here! Mom says. You take this damn thing. I swear I’ll never get it.

  Our fingers touch.

  Then: I go there too, you know, Mom says. To Russy’s grave. It’s so peaceful. One afternoon I fell asleep right there on the grass in the sun. I especially love it in the fall.

  Do you ever miss him? I say.

  He was born on December eighth and died on March eighteenth, Mom says. One hundred days and nights he screamed and then he died.

  Yah, Mom says, I miss him.

  Two silver rounds, moons, reflected light, her glasses.

  So, Mom says. You’re leaving me.

  Yes jumps right out my mouth.

  Can’t say that I blame you, she says.

  Are you going with her?

  Who? I say.

  Billie Cody, she says.

  No, I say, I’m going alone.

  My pounding heart.

  Good, Mom says.

  Quiet for a while. Just my mom’s breath, my breath.

  I hand the cigarette back to her. Our fingers touch.

  I know you think this is just your mother talking, she says, but Billie’s not the girl for you.

  Then Mom does something she hasn’t done in a long time. She touches me. A soft pat on the top of my hand.

  Mom’s rough, red farm hands. Her cut-to-the-quick fingernails.

  Quiet in the kitchen, in the early morning, quiet all around the touch.

  Mom pulls deep on the cigarette. The bright orange fire in morning light just short of darkness.

  Rig? Mom says. Take me with you, Rig.

  Mom hands the cigarette back to me.

  Our fingers touch.

  Mom? I say.

  Mom exhales so much smoke the room fills up with smoke.

  Please, she says.

  I’ve got to get out of here, she says. All I do is cook and clean for this man, and he never thanks me, never even looks at me.

  I’ve worn my knees out praying, Mom says. The Virgin said to pray the rosary, pray the rosary, but sometimes when I pray I get this feeling who I’m praying to ain’t there.

  Besides you, Mom says, the only thing I got’s the piano.

  And now, Mom says, your sister’s home. I’ll love having a baby around again. But it ain’t worth it. Your sister has no idea what she’s in for.

  So what do you say, Rig? Mom says. While we got the chance. Before he wakes up and wants his mush.

  There’s something only I can do with Mom, and I can do it only rarely.

  The way I do it is I cross my eyes a little, curl up my top lip, and scratch my butt. That’s all I have to do, and Mom’s busting a gut.

  But I don’t cross my eyes, curl my lip, scratch my butt.

  I hand the cigarette back to Mom. Our fingers do not touch.

  My mother’s eyes. High-beam headlights, two most sorrowful mysteries, one pitched a little south, the other east.

  Every which way the light in them travels right on past, right on through, or hardly ever settles on me at all.

  This morning, at the kitchen table, in the silver light, Mom settles her eyes on me.

  Almond-shaped and hazel.

  Flecks of gold.

  Dear broken Mother, here, let me hold myself in such a way that you will see me, and if you see me, if I please you, the trouble will leave your eyes, and your eyes will go soft and be gold.

  And I will stay alive.

  Outside, in the pickup, I’m talking to Tramp. I’m telling him I’ve got to go without him.

  From inside the house, it’s Mom on the piano. The special way her upright piano sounds. Piano wires thrumming inside a thick hardwood box.

  She’s not playing “The Bible Tells Me So.” The song Mom is playing, the song she is singing alone, without me to harmonize with her, is our favorite song she plays.

  Now is the hour when we must say goodbye.

  Soon you’ll be sailing far across the sea.

  While you’re away, oh, then remember me.

  When you return, you’ll find me waiting here.

  After Billie Cody’s house, out on the open highway this morning, I was doing fine, just fine. The sunrise was orange and yellow and so bright I needed sunglasses. The pickup was running good, I was safe, fine out of there, no problem. My arm was out the window, the wing window open so the morning air was coming right at my face. Wind and dust and going fast, there’s nothing better in the world.

  Sunday morning radio.

  What a bunch of shit.

  It was around American Falls when I turned on the radio again.

  I found something all right.

  As clear as a bell.

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

  So many sad songs.

  I cried all the way to Twin Falls.

  Parked the pickup on Norby Street. On the corner of Norby and South Sward.

  Started walking southwest. Only time I stopped was to pick this daisy.

  So that’s how I got here. Out here where there’s nothing. Nothing but desert. Out here where everything’s alive.

  My life from before Russell until this moment out here on Highway 93.

  Quite a story now that I tell it.

  It took awhile. A whole night in the desert to tell the damn thing.

  Not since the yellow Buick with the blonde giving me the peace sign or the bird.

  Out here on Highway 93 it’s cold. I had to put on my Levi’s and my other T-shirt and my white shirt with the iron burn on the collar, and both pairs of socks. Goose flesh all over on my arms and legs. I’m shivering my ass off. Should have packed some winter clothes. My porkpie hat has dew on it.

  The gravel ain’t so pretty now that I’m not stoned.

  In the east
the sky is navy blue, pink, and a little yellow just on the horizon. What looks like maybe more storm clouds.

  Sagebrush. The smell of sagebrush and the cool morning wind and the smell of rain. That and my armpits is what I smell.

  A ribbon of pavement shiny to over both horizons.

  It’s a new day, son, brand-new.

  At sunrise, I decide to check through my stuff, make sure I didn’t forget anything.

  I take out Granny’s corncob pipe, lay the pipe down on the edge of the asphalt. Then there’s the photograph. Me standing in front of the old skinny white house with my fishing pole. I lay the photograph out on the edge of the asphalt. Put a piece of gravel on the photograph so the morning wind don’t blow it away.

  Then there’s the yoga book Billie gave me.

  George’s dollar bill.

  The wadded-up piece of paper.

  I don’t unwad the piece of paper yet. I stick the wad of paper in my pocket with the dollar bill.

  Theresa Nussbaum’s painting is wrapped inside two plastic sacks and tied with rubber bands. I take the painting out of my backpack real slow, then lay the painting next to Granny’s pipe. I undo the rubber bands, pull the plastic off.

  I touch the painting around on the four edges.

  Forest and green mountains where there’d been only a flat expanse of east.

  Have you ever seen The Wizard of Oz?

  The part that turns from black and white to color is my favorite.

  Theresa, the artist from Portland, my red-haired maiden aunt Alma’s roommate, had smiled. If I wasn’t up close, I’d never have noticed that smile.

  The forest and the green mountains are inside, Theresa had said. That’s what an artist does. She travels the world looking for something inside.

  Just over my shoulder, the sun is a beet red ball sitting on top of a blanket of sagebrush. Morning birds, killdeer, mourning doves, red-breasted black birds, sparrows. Slow, rolling wind.

  My breath is clear and deep and sucks in the earth, the sun on the earth, the sagebrush, the wind, and the sky.

  An intent in your life to fold your life around.

  I’m Rigby John Klusener. I’m free and I’m easy and I’m traveling the world looking for what’s inside.

  Out of my backpack, I pull out my water bottle, my toothbrush, and my Crest. I pour water on my toothbrush, then put some Crest on my toothbrush, then I’m brushing my teeth. Crest has been shown to be an effective decay-preventive dentifrice that can be of significant value when used as directed in a conscientiously applied program of oral hygiene and regular professional care.

  Right about then, thunder so loud like to shake your bones.

  A crack of lightning across the northwest sky.

  Fucking great.

  Ten, twenty minutes, I’m going to be soaked through.

  Or French-fried by a stroke of lightning.

  Fuck.

  The photograph I stick in between Theresa’s painting and its frame. I quick wrap Theresa’s painting with the plastic sacks, wrap the rubber bands around, set the painting back in my backpack. Then in goes the yoga book and Granny’s pipe.

  Besides the clothes on my back and the red tie around my head and my porkpie hat and my toothbrush and my Crest and my bottle of water and my roll of toilet paper, and Mom’s sack lunch with the bologna sandwich and the hard-boiled egg and the milk can shaker of salt and the Clover Club potato chips and the piece of apple pie, all’s I got is my wallet and the two hundred dollars.

  Mom blessed her ten twenty-dollar bills with holy water. Then handed them to me. Her rough red farm hands. Her cut-to-the-quick fingernails counted out the twenties into my hand until there were ten.

  Pray your rosary, she said.

  Then kissed my forehead.

  Then there’s the wadded-up piece of paper in my pocket.

  The feeling in my arms that means I’m helpless.

  I reach in my pocket, pull out the wad of paper, bounce the wad up in my hand.

  What do you do with something so important? Eat it. Shove it up your butt. Unwrap it, sew it onto your heart.

  On one side of me the sun is big and bright as it’s ever going to get. On the other side, it’s a big, black thunderhead.

  Another bounce.

  If he loved me like he said he did, then he would’ve waited.

  I spin in circles, around and around, winding up for the pitch, twirling, a dust devil, my arms in the air, a dance. I hurl the wad of paper with a sound from inside and deep, a grunt, and the wad of paper sails through the air like a bird flying.

  The crack of lightning is a bony hand up from the earth. Thunder, crash.

  That quick, George’s goodbye note is gone.

  On the pavement, it’s my shadow.

  I lift my chin up, make my head so the shadow of my head looks like my head is an alien being’s big round head.

  Alien.

  You can always tell how you’re feeling by how your shadow looks.

  That’s when I see it on the horizon. Coming from the east. A glint of sunlight on the windshield. A car.

  I zip up all the zippers, button up all the buttons, quick put my arms through the straps of my backpack, square it up my shoulders. I pull my hat down, step off the gravel up onto the asphalt, plant my feet firm. This guy’s going to have to run me over if he’s going to pass me by.

  I stick my thumb out.

  The car is two miles away, ten miles. Out in the desert, in all this infinity, there’s no way to tell. My eyes are squinting, and I have my hand over my eyes. I can’t see the car anymore, and I begin to think the car is just one more heat puddle on a hot day. Then just like that, the car pops up out of nowhere. A tiny toy car far away. The sunlight is bright on its windshield again. Only this time I can see two sections of windshield. The center post of the windshield making two sunshine glints. That center post in the windshield only in old cars before cars got modern with the windshield one piece of glass.

  The color of the car is the color of the rest of the desert. It’s gray or brown or sage green or sandy or beige. Then the car dips down, and for a long time again it’s gone.

  When it pops up again, the car is close enough for me to see it’s an old Ford.

  A ’49 gray Ford.

  I’d recognize that car anywhere.

  From behind me, the half of the sky that’s dark and full of lightning and thunder and rain is coming at me as fast as George’s car is coming at me out of the sun.

  Thunderbird, eye of lightning, grant us peace.

  Part of me wants to run into the sagebrush and hide.

  Another part wants to start running toward George.

  Another part says, Hold your fucking horses. That may be his car, but that doesn’t mean it’s George.

  He’s probably sold his car to someone else for a case of gin.

  Something else, though.

  The weirdest thing.

  It’s uncanny and immediate.

  Out there in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the road, I’m having a very good parade.

  So I’m trying to stuff it down inside my pants when George’s car comes over the last rise not fifty feet away from me.

  It’s George all right who’s in the car.

  He’s probably not alone, though. He’s probably got some cowboy with him in a big hat and a turquoise belt buckle.

  Then I’m crying, and that quick I stop crying. I’d rather die than cry.

  It’s too late to run into the bush, so I just stand there.

  When George pulls up, I look inside.

  As far as I can see, he is alone. Around his head, the red tie.

  The radio’s on. The song is “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” George reaches over, with his long, beautiful, cinnamon brown fingers turns the radio down.

  Morning, sunshine, George says. Going my way?

  Fuck.

  My good parade is very good and poking up my pants.

  What are you doing here? I say.


  What are you doing here? George says.

  Then I’m kicking in the side of George’s door. While I’m kicking his door, I’m not quite sure why I’m doing it.

  Then: Motherfucker! I yell. You said you’d wait! You didn’t wait! Where the fuck were you?

  I don’t wait for George to answer, I stomp off in the direction of San Francisco. Wind and rain ahead, you can almost see the line of rain crossing over the desert.

  George’s car pulls up alongside. The big, black wheels, the engine heat, so close. That quick, the rain hits. It’s pouring down in buckets.

  George hollers through the car: Rig! George says. Get in! Let’s have a cigarette.

  Something explodes in me, and I’m pulling off my backpack and I’m around the car at George’s window. It’s like running through a car wash. Still, I can’t figure why it is I’m doing this, but, still, I lean back, and with all my weight my fist heads straight for George’s jaw.

  And misses.

  George grabs my arm, pulls with both his hands, and in seconds flat the top half of me is in the car, the other half, my legs, are outside kicking in the rain.

  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.

  The car is still running, and the car is in gear, and the way we are thrashing around, I know we’re not on the road. My head is on the floor on the passenger side. From that angle, looking up, George’s face is some Picasso painting.

  Somehow I get up, and I’m sitting in the seat. There’s no way to see out the windows. Sagebrush after sagebrush scrape up against the car. George is yelling at me, but I can’t hear what he is yelling. All I’m thinking is the son of a bitch didn’t show, and I land a punch smack in his mouth. His head goes back, and blood comes out his nose. I quick go for the door handle. I’m out the door, I’m on the ground, I’m sliding across the mud in the rain. George’s hands slap down on my shoulders, and in nothing flat I’m flying. I’m on my back. George has my arms pinned behind me.

  George is on top. He lifts his knee and puts his knee on my chest.

  Both of us are breathing hard.

  It ain’t like on television when you fight. You have to catch your breath.

  When George speaks, his eyes look away to just above my head.

  When things are hard to say.

  Rig, George says. What’s going on? Why are you treating me this way?