Now Is the Hour

by Tom Spanbauer

  The day of this particular spelling bee, for some reason though, things were differnt. I don’t know how. I guess it was one of those days when all you can do is say what the hell.

  Sister Barbara Ann told the class that we were to stand alphabetically, beginning with the A’s at the door, then all the way around the room to the Z’s, Jo Ellen Zener, by the windows on the other side of the room.

  The Saint Joseph’s School and the Holy Cross nuns had a list of spelling words. The list started out with 1-A words, which were real easy, like it and and, then went to 1-B words, which got a little harder, like book and eat, then 2-A and 2-B words — have, love, eyes, then harder and harder and so on, up to the 9-B words.

  The last three words of the 9-B words were the hardest words ever. They were: chandelier, rendezvous, and rhinoceros.

  But there were some sneaky ones all the way through the list you had to look out for.

  Mischievous, salmon, receive.

  Rain, reign, and rein.

  Thought, through, throughout, though, thorough.

  The whole class stayed standing through the 5-A words. Ronald Wilson was the first to go down with a 5-B word, early.

  Then they started dropping like flies.

  Rosemary Gosford went down, Stephanie Smith went down, Roger Waring went down. Vern Breck and Michael Muley went down.

  Joe Scardino couldn’t spell excrement.

  Not really. That’s a joke.

  The word Scardino misspelled was granite.

  Then granite was up to me.

  From under his desk, Scardino gave me the finger.

  But I couldn’t help it. I had to get the silent e.

  G-r-a-n-i-t-e, I spelled.

  Pretty soon it was just me left standing. Sister Barbara Ann wanted to see how far I could go, so she kept giving me new words, and I kept spelling and spelling right through all the 8-B words.

  Industrious was the last of the 8-B words, and when I spelled it right, Sister Barbara Ann’s milky white skin was splotched red under her chin, red coming up her cheeks. Then when I got the 9-A and 9-B words all spelled right, and then the last word, rhinoceros, and I spelled rhinoceros right with the silent h and no u in the ros part, Sister Barbara Ann went into a conniption fit and started walking around in circles, saying I was a child genius and making the sign of the cross, saying Jesus, Mary, and Joseph over and over and over.

  Scardino gave me the finger with both hands.

  Your ass is grass is what Scardino’s lips enunciated out of his mouth without speaking.

  After the spelling bee was over and after I’d won, I was supposed to feel good, I guess, but I didn’t feel good. I felt like I was a big showoff, plus it made me really stick out.

  At recess, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Joe Scardino, Vern Breck, and Michael Muley come around from behind Monsignor Cody’s garage.

  I was standing by the incinerator, next to the guide wire, out on the playground, on the blacktop, waiting for Sister Barbara Ann to ring the ten bells so we could go back inside.

  It was spring. I remember the trees were just starting to get green — that new green that looks like lime Popsicles.

  And lilacs. The lilac bushes along the side of the school. The lilac smell I remember and the wind blowing summer vacation all through the May morning.

  The way Scardino and those guys walked, I knew they were walking right to me.

  There was nowhere to go. Nothing around me, just summer air and open playground.

  So I just stood.

  If it was a movie, the camera would go spinning around and around me.

  I said my favorite aspiration: Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on my soul.

  Joe Scardino walked up close.

  It was spring all right because Joe wasn’t wearing a coat, and his white short-sleeve shirt was rolled up high on his big arms.

  You should wear green on Thursdays, Scardino says to me, because you’re so fucking queer.

  Then he just hauls off.

  I can still see the toe of his black leather boot headed right for my crotch. I jumped back, mostly just threw my hips back, but it was too late.

  There were kids all around playing, but no one seemed to notice me down on my knees. No one noticed I was turning green.

  What I mean to say is nowhere was there help.

  If I told on him, Scardino would find another way to get me.

  What would Jesus do? Where was Sis?

  There I was, just me and my bent-over shadow on the playground pavement.

  So what do I do? I make the sign of the cross and say a prayer for Scardino’s soul. He was going to hell for sure.

  I managed to get to Monsignor Cody’s gray stucco garage wall before I went down all the way.

  In my ears the school bell. Even though I couldn’t see her, I knew Sister Barbara Ann was standing like always in the middle of the playground, next to the incinerator, next to the guide wire, her right arm lifted, the bell above her head. The ten rings of the bell.

  Just like every other day, all the kids stopped what they were doing, stood up straight, put their arms to their sides. Then they turned and walked into Saint Joseph’s School. No one talked. You weren’t supposed to talk. Girls in one line, boys in another.

  The morning sun was hot against the gray stucco. I put my face into the sun. The sun on my closed eyelids made everything inside red.

  That’s when my eyes felt a shadow.

  I opened my eyes, but all I could see was sun and somebody between me and the sun.

  Rig? You OK?

  I knew the voice.

  His real name was Allen, but he always threw up in class, three times already that year. So we called him Puke.

  Puke Price.

  Puke’s shoulders were high up, and his hands were in his pockets. His lopsided glasses held together with tape in the middle.

  Puke stuck out his hand. The morning sun on his open palm made his whole hand glow.

  Jeez, Rig, Puke said, Scardino nailed you square.

  Puke squatted down on his knees, his hand still out in the sun.

  Jesus would have reached out and put his hand inside Puke Price’s hand, but I just couldn’t take Puke’s hand.

  He was Puke Price, and he threw up all the time, and his skin was dry and flaky. He had bad breath. He made radios for a hobby.

  If I took his hand, I’d be like him.

  Forget it. Never in a million years.

  So I just lay there holding my nuts.

  Get away from me, Price, I said. Leave me alone.

  Go puke on something.

  My ball sack swoll up. I was black and blue down there for weeks. But I never told anyone.

  Said I just hurt my knee.

  I mean, who would I tell?

  Please excuse me for being late for class, Sister Barbara Ann, but I had to wait for my nuts to drop back down from my throat.

  Excuse me, Dad, Joe Scardino kicked me in the balls, and I’m afraid I might be hemorrhaging internally, would you please help me?

  Mom, could you please take a look at my balls to see if they are ever going to go back to their normal size again?

  Uh, Sis? I’ve got a problem with my balls. They’re purple. Could you give me a hand?

  Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I made some Italian creep so mad he kicked my balls black and blue.

  Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

  Shit.

  That’s exactly it.

  I didn’t ask for help because I thought there was something wrong with me.

  It was my fault.

  Hell, everything was my fault.

  Even the Korean War was my fault.

  Through my most grievous.

  Fault.

  Fuck.

  That’s exactly the word.

  Fuck.

  Fuck.

  Just the sound of it makes what you want to say just right, doesn’t it?

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.<
br />
  Myself, I didn’t say fuck for a long time. Mostly at first because I thought it was a sin, and then later on I didn’t say fuck because everybody else was saying it. Got so saying fuck was like having a gun in the gun rack in the back window of your pickup.

  It was last night.

  It wasn’t until last night at supper that 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 in front of me, 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 cat’s-eye glasses. Her big black eye, more blue than black. Of course, her husband, Gene, was even worse off. Sis’d broke his arm. So much for the sacrament of marriage. But that’s a whole ’nother story.

  To my right, there was Dad still in his same Levi’s shirt rolled up to the elbows and his big hairy hands and his 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, 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, sunk in deep folds of skin. Her clipped-to-the-quick fingernails. Her rough, red farm hands.

  A rerun of Saturday night’s 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 was 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.

  Just last night. The last night of 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 April. 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 Grand 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.

  To Dad, all it was was nigger-loving hippie communist queers, and with Mom, it was the rosary, the rosary. Pray your rosary. The Virgin said to pray the rosary.

  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, is 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 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 milk can salt shaker in my mouth and eat it 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 tile 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.

  The fucking bright overhead light, the fucking yellow chairs, the fucking oilcloth tablecloth with the fucking tulips on it, the fucking four pieces of roast beef, the fucking green bowl of mashed fucking potatoes, the fucking blue bowl of canned fucking peas, the orange fucking gravy boat, the fucking bread plate, the fucking butter plate, the fucking Heinz 57 ketchup, and the fucking milk cans of salt and pepper.

  My fucking sis in her stupid fucking hairdo and stupid fucking swooped glasses and her stupid fucking black eye.

  My fucking father and his fucking Lava soap and fucking red line across his fucking forehead, his fucking Levi’s shirt and his fucking superior hippie communist queer less-salt-than-thou fucking attitude. Come Sunday, him either in his brown fucking tweed suit and his brown tie or his blue fucking tweed suit and his blue tie, stinking up the fucking inside of the Buick and the whole fucking inside of Saint Joseph’s Church with his overdose of Old Fucking Spice.

  My fucking mother with her fucking bobby pins, her fucking eyebrow pencil, her fucking Red Cherries lipstick on Sunday morning, her hair fluffed out, in one of her three Sunday dresses, the blue fucking flowered one, the navy blue fucking polka dot one, or the fucking brown one with the beads along the scooped collar, her fucking dark seamed nylons, trying to hide her fucking varicose veins, on her head some goofy-looking hat with fucking nets and feathers in it.

  That moment at the table at supper in the kitchen under the bright overhead light. Fuck is 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 m
outh.

  In that silence. That drut dead quiet of a fucking silence that hangs over the table, over our family, hangs 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 from Thy fucking bounty through Christ our fucking Lord.

  A-fucking-men!

  Fuck.

  The pavement is hot and soft on the back of my head, hot through my T-shirt and my cutoff Levi’s, hot on my bare calves.

  I just yelled fuck! so long and hard I had to lie down. Made my throat sore I yelled so hard. Right now, I’m spread-eagle on the going-west side of the road, tensing my toes, then relaxing them, tensing my ankles, then relaxing them, then my calves tensing, relaxing, like it says to do in the yoga book all the way up your body that Billie Cody gave me this morning before I left.

  Five A.M. I’m buzzing on her doorbell. It’s a lot to ask, to wake a friend up so early, but Billie told me she wanted to see me before I go.

  No matter what, Billie said. So I figured no matter what meant no matter what time, and I figured she owed me one, so I shut the pickup off, made sure I was done with all my crying, then walked up the spiral staircase to her mother’s brick home with one of those porch lights on a pole with ivy climbing around it in one of the nicer parts of Pocatello.

  Billie lives with her mom. Her mom had Billie the same age Billie is now, eighteen, a year older than me. Billie’s dad is a plumber and a drunk and an asshole. Her father hasn’t lived with them since her mother kicked him out the beginning of May.

  Billie’s dad didn’t take it well when he found out she was pregnant.

  Wasn’t long after that, Billie and I went to the Senior Summer All Night Party. That father of hers was out looking for Billie and me in his white Ford CODY PLUMBING INC. pickup.

  Said he was going to kill me.

  Billie’s dad and my mom.

  All Mom had was a broom.

  Still my money was on Mom for causing the most damage.

  But the Senior Summer All Night Party and Billie’s dad in his Ford pickup, and my mom in the ’57 Buick, both of them out for blood, is a part of the debacle of all the shit hitting the big old fan that’s a whole long story coming up.