Now Is the Hour

by Tom Spanbauer

  I set the coffee cup and the saucer and the plate of cookies on the TV stand. Set the TV stand next to the piano. I opened up Mom’s new walnut piano so you could see all the keys. On one white key, I pushed down my thumb then finished the chord with the rest of my fingers. The first key was middle C, something I’d learned from Mom. Mom said, If you can find middle C, you can go anywhere.

  Middle C in the dark rooms of our house, coffee and chocolate cookies. I sat on the green davenport and waited.

  I heard her in the bathroom first. When she walked into the living room, her face was on and her eyebrows penciled in, and her hair fluffed out. Orange Exotica lipstick.

  On her second cup of coffee, I opened the drapes. Mom said I did a real good job on the frosting.

  Mom played the piano, and we sang “The Bible Tells Me So.” Twice. The second time Mom harmonized, which is something I could do if I plugged my ears and listened only to myself.

  Faith, hope, and charity, That’s the way to live successfully. Then: Going to the chapel, and we’re going to get married, which was Sis’s favorite song.

  Then we sang “Now Is the Hour.” I stood real close to Mom sitting on the round spindle chair, so close my arm was almost touching hers. I sang the melody with my ears plugged while Mom harmonized.

  “Now Is the Hour” was just the ticket. There’s something about that song. How it’s sad, but at the same time it makes you feel good inside.

  Mom felt better after “Now Is the Hour.”

  She put her glasses back on, and the gold came back to her eyes.

  “Now Is the Hour” always could make Mom feel better.

  For her fourteenth birthday Sis got an autograph book. The book was white fake leather with a clasp that locked and swirly gold letters that said AUTOGRAPHS. Sis wouldn’t let me sign my autograph in her autograph book. Only Sis’s girlfriends could sign her book and the boys she liked. Those days, Sis wore a brassiere and she wore nylons and a garter belt and she was always talking about boys. In our 4-H Club, it was Kevin Davies. At school it was Johnny Wyeth. At church she was always looking over at Mick Havorka. Sis asked Scardino to sign his autograph in her autograph book, but he wouldn’t do it. But not me. Sis didn’t look at or talk to me. Maybe at home she’d talk to me if she wasn’t in a bad mood. But at school or out in the world, Sis didn’t want a thing to do with me. Unless, of course, she wanted to borrow some money. I always saved my allowance, and she spent hers. It never failed, I was a soft touch and somehow Sis always managed to get money out of me.

  I didn’t really mind, though. Sis was like Mom. I knew a lot more about her than she thought I did. In school, Sis wasn’t very popular. Mom and Dad wouldn’t let Sis be in pep club or in any kind of club at all because it took extra gas, and there was all that goddamn work at home to do. Sis was pretty enough and smart and funny, but she didn’t know it. Sis thought she was ugly and fat and her hair would never go right and Mom wouldn’t let her bleach it. Plus, there weren’t a lot of Catholic boys to date. Everybody and their dog was a Mormon. So the way I made myself Jesus for Mom, I started being like a boyfriend to Sis. But don’t get me wrong. Not really a boyfriend, but like a boyfriend, you know? The way things were going, the way Sis wanted to be beautiful and popular wasn’t going to happen. So it was up to me to help her out.

  One thing Sis and I could do was dance. Sis needed a boy to dance with, and out on the farm there usually weren’t any extra boys around, so when Sis learned how to jitterbug from Francie Lutz, Sis taught me how and we practiced at home.

  Some days, after Sis and I got home from school, before we changed clothes and did the chores, if Mom didn’t have a migraine, Sis put on our three 45’s on the hi-fi. Elvis Presley singing “Jailhouse Rock,” the Everly Brothers singing “Wake Up Little Susie,” and Fats Domino singing “I’m Going to Be a Wheel Someday.”

  I was actually better at dancing than I was at running. Sis and I got so good that I could pick her up and put her on one hip and then on the other hip and then pick Sis up, then pull her down through my legs, then, if she was wearing a full skirt she could spread her legs and when her butt hit my waist I’d pull her back up, and during that last pull up, Sis ducked her head and flipped all the way over three hundred and sixty degrees and landed on her feet.

  The First Annual Catholic High School Conference was held in Idaho Falls. Idaho Falls is only fifty miles from Pocatello, but back then, that was the farthest that Sis and I had ever been away alone besides 4-H camp at Palisades Park. We got to miss school for the whole day.

  Which pissed Joe Scardino off.

  Idaho Falls is a really weird town because there’s a Mormon temple in Idaho Falls, and all the bigwigs at the nuclear power plant in Arco, the “Atomic City,” live in Idaho Falls, plus all the Idaho Falls High School boys peg their pants.

  All day at the conference, it was praying. Then talking, talking, then more praying, then cafeteria lunch, then more praying and talking and praying and talking, then cafeteria dinner, then more praying. But what came after the praying after dinner was what was the most important to me and Sis. The All State Catholic Teen Jitterbug Contest.

  I wasn’t scared a bit standing there in the middle of the gym floor with all the other dancers. I did think my body was going to explode, though, waiting for the music to start.

  The first song was “Lollipop,” and “Lollipop” has a good tempo to jitterbug to. Sis and I did our under-the-arm twirls, and the arms sliding across the shoulders, then the one where Sis holds onto my right hand and I swing under and around, then come up and twirl Sis around twice. We did the cross over of arms and the swing under, and when the song was over, we did a dip just at the perfect moment when the song stopped.

  The judges were two teachers from the Arthur Murray Dance Studios in Idaho Falls, a man and a woman — somebody said they were actually Arthur Murray and his wife, but I couldn’t imagine what Arthur Murray would be doing in Idaho Falls.

  Well, the judges chose Sis and me to be one of the final five pairs of contestants.

  Then the final two.

  Sis said it was good luck, and I agreed. But secretly I wondered if it was because of the rosary I prayed with my special intention that the song they played to choose the grand prize winner would be “Wake Up Little Susie.” Maybe God and Jesus and the Holy Ghost did listen up once in a while.

  A thousand times. Sis and I had practiced dancing to “Wake Up Little Susie” a thousand times.

  Sis and I weren’t sure if we should do the routine where she went on my right hip, then my left, then up in the air, then through my knees, then Sis spread-legged her butt to my waist, then the three-sixty to Sis standing on her feet because we weren’t sure about the spread-legged part, on account of that might have been a sin because when Sis and I did that routine, when Sis was doing the three-sixty, sometimes you could see her underpants.

  So Sis and I were dancing along to “Wake Up Little Susie,” and I was waiting for Sis to give me the clue to go into that routine, but she didn’t. Then all of a sudden, right toward the end, right where it said our reputation is shot, something happened deep inside me down there, and all of a sudden I had Sis on my right hip and then my left hip, then she was up in the air. Sis was smiling big and her Roosky Gypsy eyes were wild, and her curly brown hair was flying, and she was up in the air, then through my legs, then back up in the air, and Sis had the oh-just-fuck-it look on her face, and she went ahead and spread her legs, and her butt hit my waist, and then three hundred and sixty degrees, and Sis was ass over teakettle, and the crowd was all standing up and yelling and cheering.

  The breath coming in and out of both of us was so much to breathe, and we were holding hands and smiling. Sis’s gums were showing, and everybody in the bleachers was screaming, and Sis and I knew it was for us they were screaming.

  Then Arthur Murray said: The winners are Mary Margaret and Rigby John Klusener!

  When I looked at Sis, for some reason when I looked at her,
right then I could see inside her deeper than ever. Sis was beautiful, so happy. But more than that.

  She looked so much like Mom.

  Mom got a kick out of Sis and me winning the dance contest. But what really got her going was that I was going to be confirmed. Confirmation is when the Holy Ghost comes down and enters the souls of the boys and girls, and then afterward the boys and girls become men and women.

  I was pretty excited to become a man. I didn’t know exactly what to expect. I just figured the Holy Ghost being inside you would have to feel great, and because the Holy Ghost was inside you, you’d get strong and start acting strong and honorable, the way men act, the way I’d never acted before, which had to do with not being so afraid, the way Dad wasn’t afraid and Scardino.

  When I was confirmed, though, I was twelve and I didn’t know about sex yet. I mean I’d heard about sex — mostly from Scardino. Plus there was sex in some of the books I read. But up to that point in my life, sex was something that happened to other people, to Sis, to Scardino, Breck, and Muley, and in books. But sex would never happen to me because — and I haven’t told you this yet — I secretly thought God was going to leave me out of the sex thing altogether and that I had a vocation to be a priest.

  I hadn’t actually ever said it out loud. Once I talked to Monsignor Cody about it in confession. I asked the Monsignor if you could be a priest if you were the kind of person who always wondered about God. What He was up to and why did He make people suffer so much, even babies, like little baby Russell. Monsignor didn’t say anything for quite a while, and then he said: That’s exactly the kind of man a priest should be, but you’d better be a Jesuit just in case.

  A Jesuit priest just seemed to make sense. I didn’t want to be a farmer. Maybe I could be a technical engineer because I liked math. But I really didn’t fit anywhere. No friends to speak of. I didn’t like girls that much. Spent most of my time alone reading books. Smart, good in school. I liked to help people. I thought about God all the time. Wondered about the universe. Yet I had a lot of doubts. I’d just seen too much hope go bad.

  There were a bunch of things that happened that changed my mind, thank God. First, really, it was the books. How could I go to Spain and fight the bulls if I was a priest? And falling in love. Falling in love certainly was something I’d never do, but it sounded like just the best thing that could happen. Priests couldn’t fall in love except with God. Still, though, the thought of reading and writing books all day and walking around in long skirts and drinking wine and smoking and talking philosophy while you worked in a garden sounded like an ideal life.

  Two things happened, though, that changed my mind real fast.

  The first thing happened in church one Sunday. It all started when Mom’s sister Aunt Zelda told Mrs. Di Maio that Mary Margaret, my sis, was a whore and was sleeping around. It didn’t take Mom long to get wind of this. And when she did she came unglued. In no time at all, Sis was hiding under the kitchen table with a bloody nose. The following Sunday, as fate would have it, Aunt Zelda and Mom were in charge of the coffee and doughnuts after church. After Communion, Aunt Zelda got up from the pew, genuflected, made the sign of the cross, and walked down the aisle, then down the stairs to the church basement. Mom was right behind her. Then it was right there in the church basement that Mom and Aunt Zelda went at it while Monsignor Cody finished up the Mass. Mom and Aunt Zelda cussing and screaming, the whole congregation could hear.

  It was pretty clear to me. Upstairs, Monsignor was saying, Go in peace. Downstairs, Mom was screaming, You’re the whore.

  Upstairs was all that stuff I’d been taught. Jesus said in order to enter the kingdom of heaven you have to become like a little child. Jesus said to turn the other cheek. Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself.

  Yet it was Mom downstairs I was rooting for. Mom slapping the shit out of Aunt Zelda was what I wished I could do to Joe Scardino. And how could you love your neighbor as yourself if you called your neighbors niggers?

  It was probably right there in that moment when I started to live more downstairs than up.

  The word is hypocrisy, and I learned to spell it around the time I learned how to spell rhinoceros. I knew its definition: an appearance of virtue and religion — but it wasn’t until that Sunday, pots and pans flying in the church basement, all hell breaking loose, that I really got what it meant.

  The second thing that happened was when I turned thirteen. Almost on the very day. Sex hit me like a big hot wind. And since then, being a man is something I haven’t ever got over. Confirmation and the Holy Ghost were no match for what started happening in my pants.

  Then again, I guess that all depends on what you think the Holy Ghost is.

  Still, though, every time I jerked off I wanted to die. Always after, I promised I’d never jerk off again. Then it wouldn’t be even an hour later and there I’d be. Then there I’d be Sunday morning before Mass in the confessional telling Monsignor Cody how many times I’d broke the sixth commandment.

  One time when I told Monsignor how many times, he said way too loud: In one week?

  Believe me, here’s something I’ve learned so far in my seventeen years: you got to make a choice early on if you want to live in this world or the world that comes after this world.

  The way I figure it, we know we got this world, so live in this one while you’re here. I figure the next one will take care of itself.

  I haven’t always been so sure. If I’d never met Georgy Girl, I’d still be beating off with one fist and beating my chest mea maxima culpa with the other.

  My secret places became even more important. At first, my secret places were places I could go to get away from Mom and Sis and places to hide from Dad. Then they became where I could smoke and read books and think. When I turned thirteen, my secret places were places I could beat off, but it was more than just beating off that happened to me when I was alone and I touched myself. Something differnt happened. Something magical.

  When I found my cock, my body suddenly landed in the world. The real world with things in the world. Suddenly our farm, which so far had been more of an idea than a place, started to be differnt. Spring wind across an alfalfa field, water running over gravel, the way fence posts are smooth, the flutter in a horse’s withers, the tiny white cloud in the clear blue sky.

  When I was in a secret place, and I was safe, and no one was around, I could reach inside my shirt pocket and light a cigarette, or I pulled a new library book out from stuck inside my pants, but now I could reach inside my pants and touch my cock, my balls. The magic had returned.

  It was like I’d been sleeping for a long time, then suddenly woke up.

  Scintillatingly gorgeous.

  And the world was alive too. The loft of the barn was a great place to go. The yellow sunlight through the holes in the shingled roof, the Holy Spirit coming on to you from deep inside your bowels.

  Behind the barn, out the back door, the platform of rounded gray concrete, the wood coming down the barn in little waves, the sun warm against the warm, smooth patches of gray, your bare ass against the wood.

  Between the two granaries that face east, the little place between up there that was shaped like an hourglass, you could take all your clothes off and no one could see you, but you could see everything — the land, the sky, the clouds, for miles and miles.

  On top of the railroad cars, three boxcars in a row, when you lay up top on the boxcars, on the wood walkway, if you squinted your eyes and moved your body like you were fucking on a train, believe me, you were the Eiffel Tower, the Chrysler Building, Mount Kilimanjaro, castles in Spain. Faraway places with strange-sounding names. All of those strange-sounding names on your tongue when you came.

  The grain elevator, the circus, a whole new meaning to Flying Wallenda.

  The spud cellar, mostly a smell, deep under the earth, dark, cool, and the smell of earth and raw potatoes. Sometimes you could burrow yourself naked into a pile of spuds and you were a Chri
stian slave during Roman times hiding from the Romans. Or somebody Chinese lying on a cot in an opium den, the Viceroy in the dark, a hot, orange, long puff of opium. The last puff, that magic dragon, was when your nipples got hard and your head filled up with stark blue skies crisscrossed by fluttering flags of Chinese red and Chinese gold. Your breath like those flags after you came. Or you were an American soldier in World War II. hiding out in a German trench, the S.S. encampment only yards away. You sat crouched in the dark, cold, alone, slowly unzipping your fly, waiting for the right moment to pull the pin on your hand grenade and blow the shit out of Hitler’s high command.

  In the Mexican house, sitting bare-assed on the cold iron stove, seeing how far you could shoot this time. But that was before Flaco and Acho. After I met Flaco and Acho, that summer when I was sixteen, and after they left, a couple times I went in the Mexican house to beat off. But both times, just as I was about to come, instead of coming, I cried.

  The swimming hole was a differnt matter — I can’t tell you the number of times I spread myself out naked on the bleached-out two-by-twelve across the water falling down the lava rocks. Always, always my eyes up on the scrub cedar, the blue sky behind its gnarls, the sound of the wind through its branches, something so sweet like you’ve never heard.

  Funny, now that I think of it, I always felt so safe at the swimming hole. I was sure no one could see me. Just over the fence, though, on the other side, the red side, on the rez, in a stand of cottonwoods, was the old log cabin you could barely see that I was sure was deserted. And what do you know, all along, the whole time living in there with his grandmother, was none other than the devil himself — the infamous, drunken, queer Indian, George Serano.

  3 He Wore a Yellow Tulip

  IT ALL MAKES sense when you think about it, and God knows I’ve thought about it. Sex is the reason why I’m out here alone on Highway 93.

  Sex and my family just don’t mix, like Mormons and Coca-Cola, like me and Joe Scardino, like good Catholic white folk and Indians and niggers, no way. No matter how you look at it, it’s just plain weird. God on one side, and sex and Lucifer on the other. My family and the sex-shame-guilt thing.