Now Is the Hour

by Tom Spanbauer

  That moment.

  The pain near my heart spread out all over inside my chest.

  Breath was fast in and out of George. In his eyes, he was still chasing me around the willow tree. In his dark eyes, ribs of gold.

  Above his head, Thunderbird was a long, slow breath through the willows.

  Then everything stopped. His wrestling body stopped. His grip on my wrists stopped. His breath. George’s eyes went soft like Jesus.

  I wanted to close my eyes but didn’t.

  Perfectly still. George’s eyes and my eyes, only the blue sky in between.

  George sat back, turned around, crossed his legs like Buddha. I sat up too. After a while, I scooted my butt around so that I sat next to him, cross-legged too a little too close. My knee touched his knee. I pulled my knees up, put my arms around my knees.

  George and I sat like that for a long time. We didn’t look at each other, didn’t talk. The wind in the willow tree was Thunderbird. All around our ears, breath through the willows, a sound like the tree knew everything about George and me and, like us, didn’t know what the fuck, so all afternoon, all it did was sigh and sigh.

  Sitting like that makes your butt sore, so I lifted up one cheek, then the other. My knee brushed up against George’s knee again. George reached over and picked up his shirt. Out of his shirt pocket, he pulled out his pack of Camels. He tapped a cigarette out, put the cigarette in his mouth. The wind in the willow tree, another big sigh.

  George took the cigarette out of his mouth, let the cigarette lie in his hand. With his palm open like that, the cigarette in his palm, George swung his hand around to me.

  That cigarette was between my lips in no time. The butt was a little wet. What had been on George’s lips was now on my lips.

  George lit his own cigarette, then lit mine. There never had been a better cigarette, and there will never be.

  How’d you know I smoked? I said.

  The Viceroy butt you left in the lane that day, he said.

  That’s what makes Indians such good hunters. They notice shit like cracked twigs and cigarette butts. I thought maybe I’d say something about Indians being good hunters, but I didn’t know how it would sound coming out of my mouth, so I said something I didn’t have to worry about.

  All this hay still has to be hauled in, you know? I said.

  My voice wasn’t high. My voice was clear, and it sounded the way I wanted it to sound.

  That’s ten days, maybe two more weeks of work, I said.

  George’s shoulder was inches from mine. My sunburned arm was so much darker than his skin.

  George took a long drag on his cigarette. When he spoke, smoke came out his nose and mouth.

  I don’t know if I’m up for it, George said.

  The wind in the willow tree was so loud right then, I needed to shout.

  Don’t you need the job? I said. Don’t you need the money?

  One good weekend, and that money’s gone, George said.

  I wasn’t hugging my knees anymore, and my knees were starting to drop.

  Before what I said next, I took a deep breath. Held it in. Made sure there was plenty of breath. Still, though, trying to coordinate my breath with my rubber lips, plus the cigarette, it took me awhile.

  Finally, really soft and really, really slow, I said: Don’t you ever want to stop drinking?

  From the side, George looked totally differnt. His nose was bigger and had a hook. His lips lifted up on the side, like Granny’s lips.

  All the time, George said.

  My cigarette was hot-boxed, I was smoking so hard.

  Then why don’t you? I said.

  What’s there to do then? George said.

  You could save your money up, I said. Buy your own place.

  George turned his head. In his black eyes, something sharp.

  Settle down? George said. Raise a family?

  George took another drag. He could French-inhale better than anybody I’d ever seen.

  Besides, George said. I already have my own place.

  My French inhale went up just one nostril.

  Granny’s place? I said.

  Nope, George said.

  George pounded his open palm on the pasture grass.

  It’s right here, he said.

  You don’t need to buy it to own it, George said. If you own yourself, you own the world.

  My knees were slowly moving down and down. If my right knee went all the way down, it would rest on George’s knee.

  Another deep breath. A deep breath and another long, deep drag.

  Really soft and really slow: How can you own yourself, I said, if you can’t stay sober?

  George laughed his chest up just one laugh.

  That’s the problem, George said. What to do while you wait?

  Boredom is a bitch, he said.

  Waiting for what? I said.

  With his hand, George pushed the wet hair off his forehead, smoothed his hair. He leaned back on his elbows. Picked a piece of cheatgrass and put the grass in his mouth. George stayed leaning back like that. He chewed on the grass and looked out at the hay field, at puddles of water where there weren’t none, as if what was in the hay field was what he was looking for.

  I don’t know how to say it, George said.

  For Thunderbird? I said. You’re waiting for Thunderbird.

  Yah, George said. You could say that.

  Another perfect French inhale.

  More than likely it will take some kind of storm, George said.

  You’re waiting for a storm? I said.

  George hacked up. His spit was dry, and he spit it out away from me. This time his laugh was hard and wasn’t really a laugh.

  Thunderbird’s a Ford Motor product, George said. My cousin’s got a pink one.

  I tried to let it pass. I figured the whole Thunderbird thing was just not for me to know. I looked at the afternoon sky. The sky was going from only bright to blue. I looked at the hay field. The shadows from the tractor and the baler were long, dark spots on the ground. I knew it was best to keep my mouth shut, but there I went again.

  Jeez, what’s the big deal about this Thunderbird? I said. I only wanted to know.

  Something slow the way George lifted the cigarette to his lips. That, plus the quick way he wanted to jump at me then. Any second, George’s fist was going to come flying around, and my nose would be broke again. I was thinking how to block the punch, where I could run, maybe I could get up the willow tree.

  George looked straight at me. His lips, rubber lips like my lips when I was full of hate and tried to speak.

  Well, maybe there’s some things you’re not supposed to know, George said. The white man can’t know everything. Let me keep of mine what’s left.

  White man.

  I stubbed my Camel out into the pasture grass. The wind in the willow tree was another big sigh. My heart beating in my ears. I couldn’t hear myself think. The breath, the breath, the breath.

  What I said next, I don’t know where it came from. Maybe Thunderbird made me do it, made me keep talking. Since the night of the storm of ’66, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about that damn bird. Plus, you know what? My father, Scardino, all the men in the world you needed to tiptoe around. I was getting tired. The world is full of tough guys. Maybe I wasn’t one of them, but twice now I’d fought back and came out of it alive.

  White man, I said. My father is a white man. Not me, I said. I’m differnt.

  Tiny veins little red lightnings in the whites of George’s eyes. His lips pulled back against his teeth. Smoke was pouring out his mouth and nose.

  Yah, different, George said. You’re different all right, George said. And the little faggot ain’t got a fucking clue.

  In all of my time on this earth so far. That moment, I could feel every part of my body and how it was that every piece fit.

  What pulled me together in one particular place so quick was George’s spit.

  Spit on my face. Faggot in
my ears. The sharp pain all over in my chest.

  Faggot like fuck. The first time you hear it, you know.

  But you know me. I didn’t know.

  I just couldn’t know yet.

  I should have cried, let it out and cried and cried. But I didn’t know George yet. Not like I know him now. So I just sat there, my arms wrapped around my legs. Quiet. The way you are when your breath is knocked out. So quiet you disappear.

  A long time with nothing happening. A truck went by on Quinn Road. The water in the ditch. The sun pushing shadows out of the tractor and baler. The wind in the willow another big sigh.

  George tapped another cigarette out of his pack. I expected the cigarette to go into his mouth, but there was his hand again, with the cigarette lying in his open palm.

  I picked up the cigarette without touching George’s hand. Let him light it.

  It took awhile. George tried a couple times to speak. But he couldn’t speak. Rubber lips. He knew what he had done.

  George lit his cigarette. Three perfect French inhales, a long sigh like the wind in the willow tree, then something I didn’t see coming.

  George reached out his hand. His hand went all the way from him, all the way over to me.

  I didn’t move away, didn’t flinch, just sat.

  For a moment, George’s hand, just two fingers, touched the top of my head. Then his fingers down slow behind my ear, to my neck, from my neck to my chest.

  And then he pulled his hand away.

  Don’t you ever wonder who you are and what you’re here to do? he said.

  Yes. I wanted to say yes. But all I did was blow out smoke and move my head up and down.

  Don’t you wonder what all this is all about? George said.

  George’s eyes looked up and all around. The gold in them. His arms went out and made a big circle around him like a ballerina.

  Don’t you wonder about the mystery that is always around us and in us? George said.

  Then: Yes, I said.

  George pulled his feet up in close, put his arm around his legs.

  A person can’t do it alone, he said. He needs a vision. An intent in his life to fold his life around.

  George’s eyes, the sharp light gone soft like his voice soft too. His lips, thick and full and cinnamon red. Smoke coming out of them. Out his nose.

  There’s all kinds of ways, George said, to go about finding what your vision is. Some people go to sun dance, some to sweat lodges. Some go to the Four Square Baptist Church. Some people go to Mass. There’s all kinds of ceremonies out there you can go and do. Even getting drunk is a way. At least by getting drunk you can feel what it’s like to have the power touch you.

  A long pull on his Camel, the sound of his breath as he pulled the smoke inside.

  But booze is just another lie, George said. It makes things look like a vision, but it ain’t.

  My breath. A deep, deep inhale, all that smoke.

  Then, slow, really, really slow, I said: Then why do you do it?

  You do it, he said. Why do you do it?

  For a moment there, no words came out.

  It’s fun, I said.

  And it’s not fun for me? he said.

  It’s differnt, I said.

  You mean you’re not a drunk? George said. Fuck you. I’ll give you twenty years.

  My thought right then was I’d love a beer. I’d love to smoke some weed with George.

  George’s hand was back up, coming at me again. This time his hand stopped. His Camel pointed at me little jabs.

  You might say Thunderbird is God the Father, George said. Big Daddy. Zeus with his lightning bolt, or Moses’s burning bush.

  Thunderbird is the force in life that makes life alive, George said. The power of the storm is no different from the power that pushes up a blade of grass. It’s all life. It’s all what makes life alive.

  George’s Camel at me, little jabs.

  Shoshone people believe this life force, George said. This power can touch you. When power touches you, you receive a vision. You don’t have to go to the mountain. You don’t have to go on a quest. You don’t have to make a novena. You don’t have to petition the Lord through prayer. Vision can happen to anyone anywhere, anytime. When you go home, your dog could walk up to you and talk to you, tell you what you need to know. Or a crow. Or a seagull. Or maybe the way this tree is talking to us, if we sit here long enough we will hear.

  The wind in the willow tree, another big sigh.

  George’s Camel at me in little jabs.

  All you have to do is wait, George said. Wait and smoke. For Shoshone people, smoking is praying. No matter what you are doing, no matter what is coming down, the secret is to keep smoking and never forget that you are waiting.

  George’s inhale was smoke like you’ve never seen traveling from a mouth up into a nose.

  What I’m doing, George said, is waiting.

  Just me and the tumbling tumbleweeds, George said.

  I’m not baling hay. I’m not hauling hay. I’m not driving my car. I’m not getting drunk. I’m waiting for when the power is ready to touch me, George said. To give me the clue, the missing piece, to tell me what it is I’m supposed to do, or the way I’m supposed to be.

  That night, the back of my hand against my nose and mouth, I rubbed my knuckles across my lips. My legs were tangled up in the bed sheet. Outside my open windows, Thunderbird was not breathing. Not one breath. Quiet, too, the way it was quiet after George had quit talking that afternoon. I’d taken my last drag on the cigarette just as George did too. Together in the same spot on the grass, we stubbed out our cigarettes. Our hands pushing the butts into the earth that way made them look like they were dancing.

  The sky rich blue, the sun going low. No more puddles. Things leaning into themselves into the sun, long black shadows into the gold.

  Quiet, like you’ve disappeared quiet.

  The wind in the willow tree, a sigh. Deep and quick. The way you catch your breath. Before something happens. You can’t do anything to stop.

  9 Downtown

  BY THE END of June, everything about me was going haywire. I wasn’t hungry. I couldn’t sleep. Smoking cigarettes like I was a chimney. My thumbnail I’d bit down all the way to blood.

  Nobody noticed anything differnt, though. Then Mom one day reached over and put her cool, rough, red farm hand on my forehead. Her almond-shaped hazel eyes, high-beamed headlights, looked right into mine.

  Are you wearing a hat out in that heat? she asked.

  Billie too, she did the exact same thing, put her hand on my forehead.

  Rig, are you OK? she said. You’re burning up.

  I was burning up all right. Way up on the grain elevator, I knew I had to keep still and keep balanced, but this time when I finally stopped climbing and took a look around, I was dizzy. Real dizzy, but something in me wanted to keep going up, up into the sky and never come down.

  But it don’t work that way. Ask any Flying Wallenda. Never coming down ain’t possible.

  Out in the hay field, we were hauling, not baling hay, and baling hay George was always fifteen feet away in a cloud of yellow dust, and the tractor and baler were loud. Hauling hay, George’s leg was right there next to the gearshift, and his arm on the back of the seat came almost to my shoulder. The only noise was the truck, and most of the time the truck wasn’t running.

  Out in the hay field, all that silence and propinquity to deal with, like to drive you nuts.

  At the supper table, always Dad’s questions. How far, how much, how many bales, how long before you finish? Mom’s almond-shaped hazel eyes always looking for some nuance. Is George drinking? Is he keeping up his end of the job? Are you keeping your distance? How many days before we can lay him off?

  Then there was Billie. Parked in Mount Moriah one evening, I finally managed to get it out my mouth that the guy I was baling hay with was George Serano, and by the way he was the Indian guy you saw me wrestle with in the hospital during the storm of
’66.

  Billie didn’t bat an eye. She just said: As fate would have it.

  Then: Does he still go on about that bird?

  That was Thunderbird Billie was talking about, and knowing George he’d have a shit fit if I said anything about Thunderbird, so I just told Billie, no, that George didn’t talk much about himself or his religion except for a couple of things. And of course then Billie wanted to know what those couple things were.

  Well, I said, he’s half-Italian. His mother’s Italian and lives somewhere in Italy. His father’s half-Shoshone, half-Apache, and is a Mormon and spends his time in Mexico. While he works, he hums a song. Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.

  And something else about George, I said, is George don’t live his life like us white people do.

  Billie touched her gold chain and the Hand of Fatima around her throat. Her blue eyes opened up wide. Something far off in Billie’s voice right then.

  Us white people? Billie said.

  He’s not goal-oriented, I said. He’s not into achieving anything. He’s not working or making a living or planning for the future. He is waiting.

  Billie reached in her Marlboro pack, pulled out a cigarette. She pushed in the cigarette lighter.

  What’s he waiting for?

  Of all the things I could have said. What came out of my mouth right then, I had no idea.

  For love, I said.

  The cigarette lighter popped out.

  Billie lit the cigarette, took a deep puff. She turned all the way around and looked at me in the eyes. Her blue eyes opened wider, and she seemed to take all of me in for a moment, and in that moment, I swear, Billie’d put two and two together and saw all the way into my dark heart. I tell you, this girl was psychic. Couldn’t put anything past her.

  Billie handed me the cigarette. I watched her face real close, for all the ways I could know her face. But Billie’s face was just Billie’s face, and she didn’t say anything or let on in any way that she knew.

  I was taking a long drag on the cigarette.