Now Is the Hour (50 page)

I tried to think of something nice to say. Couldn't think. I put my gloves on too.

George's face in the morning sun wasn't just black and blue. His face was every color you could think of.

Well! George said. Let's haul your fucking hay!

The top part of my lungs, the breath.

It's not my hay, I said. It's my dad's.

Then why not let him haul it? George said.

The hay dust inside in the fingers of my gloves.

When I looked up at George, inside in the whites of George's eyes, little red lightnings.

No doubt about it. George and I were in for another round.

I picked up a hay bale, bucked the hay bale up to George.

George picked up the bale, walked to the front of the truck.

Why don't you and I say fuck it, George said. And go for a hike up Scout Mountain? It's a beautiful day. What do you say?

George's lip was bleeding.

All I wanted was to bend over and hold my chest and my stomach.

A hike? I said. What, are you crazy? We've got hay to haul.

I bucked up another bale.

George gave the bale a kick, then picked it up.

The hay, the hay, the goddamn hay, George said. Your whole life, that's all it is is hay.

Another bale up.

But, I said, my dad.

George picked up the bale, walked with the bale, stacked it.

Don't blame it on your dad, George said. You're a grown man, George said. Why don't you do something for yourself once?

Another bale up. Hay dust blowing back into my face.

I hacked up, spit hay dust.

I can't just up and leave, I said.

Why not? George said. You're not a slave.

I am till I'm eighteen, I said.

Then what? George said. Get drafted and go to 'Nam?

George picked up the hay bale and threw the hay bale the length of the truck bed.

Great! George said. Just great! From a hay slave to a war slave. Fucking great!

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

I'm not going to Vietnam, I said.

My voice was high.

George shook his shoulders and wiggled his butt. He made his voice sound high and like a girl's, like mine:
I'm not going to Vietnam.

I bucked another bale up onto the truck.

George picked it up, threw the bale back into my face. My arms went up just in time, but I was on the ground.

What the fuck you got to say about it?! George screamed. You do
everything
you're told! Of course you'll go to Vietnam! If they tell you to go, you'll go!

Red blood so red on his lips. Blood stretched over his white teeth.

I was back up on my feet as fast as I could get.

What do you know? I said.

You're an ignorant, dutiful redneck, George said. The army's full of them. What the fuck else is there to know?

Redneck? I said. I'm not a redneck.

My neck was red, my face was red, I'm sure.

George's feet were planted square underneath him. From where I stood, he was twelve feet tall.

Redneck pussy, George said. You wouldn't say shit if your mouth was full of it!

Keep away from those people. They only mean trouble for you.

Me
a pussy! I screamed. Look who's talking!

George's leap from the truck was like Superman landing. He landed right next to me — a little too close for me to take a swing, but still I thought I'd better. I was taking a swing when George's gloved hand caught my arm. George's body pushed my body up against the stack of hay.

You'd better take a good look at yourself! I said.

George put his face right into my face. He was spitting blood.

And what is it I would see if I looked, huh? George said. What is it, huh?

George's hand was bringing my arm down slow.

You're
the pussy! I said.

George's dark eyes, the gold bars in them. The red lightnings in the whites.

Tell me what makes me such a pussy, George said.

My arm was down all the way down. George's hand on my arm pressing into my crotch.

It was roiling in my gut and up and out my lips before I even knew it.

I don't parade around town in a yellow dress and fancy red high heels! I said.

The wind blew George's hair back off his forehead. For a moment, I thought George would smile. But he didn't smile. George never smiled.

My arm was clenched, and my hand and George's hand were pushing deep into my crotch.

George's breath was cigarette smoke and toothpaste and blood.

Up close, his bad eye, his left eye, was yellow and weeping.

No accounting for taste, George said. Now, is there?

I lifted up my other arm slow. For a moment there, I thought I'd just lay it on his shoulder. Instead, I grabbed the back of George's hair, knocked his hat off, pulled his face up.

At that angle George was some Picasso painting.

At least I'm not hiding, George said. It kills a man's soul when he hides.

My hand in George's hair was pulling as hard as I could. George's hand on my hand pushed into my crotch was lifting me off the ground.

I wasn't going to let go and neither was he. Grunts and groans,
cursing and swearing, there we were again, George Serano and me, kicking up dust, round three.

A gust of wind, a hawk, some large bird flying low, in a moment, something collapsed. George and I were falling, falling. On the ground, in the stubble, next to the truck tire, we landed.

Our arms around each other, our legs.

George was trying to catch his breath. My breath was in and out of me too. It ain't like on TV when you fight. You have to stop and catch your wind.

Our deep breaths. The buzz of flies. Wind.

Things got slow.

George's voice in my ear: I saw you, George said. You and your girlfriend. That's why I came out the door and down the steps. I wanted you to see me. I wanted to freak out the white boy.

George's chest up against my chest, the quick laugh.

Guess my plan worked, George said.

Arms and legs and arms. I untangled myself, I pushed myself away. Scooted my butt across the ground, leaned against the truck tire.

George let his head drop onto his arm. He lay in the alfalfa stubble like a nude with his clothes on. He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out his Camels, tapped one out. He lit his Camel with a new blue Bic lighter. The perfect French inhale. After several puffs, he did not offer the cigarette to me.

When he finally spoke, George's voice was quiet, deep, down low.

It's true, George said. I got a great big pussy. But I do what I want.

Even Grandma tells you what to do, George said. Sego Milk and a teaspoon of sugar, and what do you do?

I'm not at all like you, George said.

George wiped the bloody spit from his mouth onto his sleeve.

In your whole fucking life, George said. Have you ever done anything that somebody hasn't told you to do?

Right then and there, I'd have slapped George good just to prove I could, really, prove that I was a badass and I could hit a man smack where it hurt the most, right in his bloody wound. But there was the blood on his lips and blood coming down his chin and his blue and green and yellow swollen eye. Blood on his cigarette.

I couldn't do it.

Fuck you, I said.

No, George said. Fuck you.

Don't ask me how, or why, but George and I finished out the day hauling. It wasn't our regular seven loads, only five, but still.

That next morning, driving the truck to Granny's house, I never in a million years figured to see George. Thought he'd be off somewhere
waiting.
But there he was, seven-thirty
A.M.
, standing at the side of the road.

George got in the truck, didn't say good morning or fuck you. Didn't look at me. Same way with the rest of the mornings. George was shut down like a steel trap. A total stranger. And meaner than ever. Even after his lip healed and the green balloon that was his eye went down, we still didn't talk. George never once looked me in the eye. Smoked his cigarette alone.

Which was just fine by me.

I'd bought my own cigarettes. Pall Malls.

I wasn't no better. Just about everything was pissing me off. If a hay bale broke, or the stack on the truck shifted, or if the truck didn't start right off, I took it as a personal offense. One time, the vehicle registration and the proof of insurance that was clipped to the driver's side visor fell down while I was driving over the corrugations. Those fucking little pieces of paper falling down like that pissed me off so bad I took those papers and crushed those papers in my hand, then stuck them in my mouth, and I was ready to gnash them into oblivion before I regained my senses.

Just let any little fucking thing go wrong, and I was ready to tear into it.

My girlfriend was knocked up. I was the laughingstock of Pocatello. And the man I was hauling hay with painted his fingernails.

The truth hurts, man, and here's something even more true.

George was right.

I couldn't even get it up to knock my girlfriend up.

I swear, every day, every day, every day, thousands of screaming magpies gathered in the sky and dived at my head.

On and on and on, one hay-hauling day after the next.

George always showed up. Every morning, there he was, seven-thirty, leaning against Granny's mailbox.

One morning I asked him.

George, I said. Why don't you go for a hike up Scout Mountain? You're so free. What are you turning into, a slave to hay?

George's perfect French inhale. He knew that would get me.

Granny needs a Frigidaire, George said. A couple more weeks, and I can buy it for her.

There was something else, though. Another reason why George was sticking around. But he didn't tell me about that until later.

We finished up Hess's forty and moved on to the home place. That meant George showed up at my house in the morning. That meant I didn't get to see Granny no more. By the end of the week, we'd finished hauling in two-thirds of the crop.

Every morning at seven-thirty, George and I bucked hay till noon. George ate his lunch out in the barn. One o'clock, we'd start in all over again. Ninety degrees in the shade. At six o'clock, I drove George up into the yard, then let him walk home.

The truth is, George wouldn't
let
me drive him home.

Fine by me. After the first day, I never offered.

When the weekend came, I didn't ask Mom and Dad for the pickup.

That's just what I wanted to do. Drive through the Snatch Out. Show my face in town.

On Sunday, I was fit to be tied and was beside myself. I couldn't stand it, out there alone on the farm with just my mind.

I called Billie.

Billie answered the phone.

It took awhile for me to speak.

Billie, I said, I'm pretty messed up. Can we talk?

Silence on the other end of the line.

For a moment, this was all a stupid mistake. All we had to do was talk, and everything would clear up.

Then: Let's be sensible, Billie said. I'm pregnant, and you're not the father. What's there to talk about? That I'm a whore, or you're a damn fool?

My chest was going to explode. In my stomach, lots of farts.

Billie, I said, what about our promise?

Promise? Billie said.

That we'd be friends no matter what, I said.

Another silence. A pregnant silence.

Sorry, Rig, Billie said.

And Billie hung up the phone.

It was in the second week. George and I were bucking hay in the field next to the derrick. I was on the truck stacking. Something shiny caught my eye, and I looked. Dad's pickup was parked at the top end of the field. I pulled my hat down, squinted my eyes for a better look.

Dad was standing against the fence looking through a pair of binoculars. At George and me.

I can't believe it, I said.

George threw a hay bale up onto the truck.

George said: What?

The old man's got the binoculars out, I said. He's checking us out.

George said: I'm so glad we're not fucking.

That moment. The sun was beating down, I was thirsty and hot, hay dust all over on my sweaty back, and I couldn't believe my ears. In front of my eyes, all I could see was Granny, her mouth open, pink gums all around, laughing her ass off.

What do you say to something like that?

Billie too. Billie would have laughed too.

Fuck.

I pretended I hadn't heard.

I puffed up my chest, put my hands on my hips, looked down at George. I never could pretend to be Dad.

What did you say? I said.

Only the top of George's cowboy hat. George threw up another bale. Not a trace of a smile on his face.

Say what? George said.

Another day the end of that week. We were on the last twenty acres, the field that borders Tyhee Road, at the bottom end of the field, almost a half mile from the house.

I heard it first. Music.

As it happened, it was my turn to stack again, so I was on the truck.

A car, it was a fancy car, a new Lincoln, a brand-new '67 white Lincoln. The car was parked on our side of Tyhee Road. The windows
were rolled down, and as far as I could tell, there were three guys in the car, two in the front and one in the back.

The music was loud. Where George and I were standing was about five truckloads away from the car, and still you could hear the music. And the guys laughing.

I stopped stacking and I stood and listened. George bucked up a bale of hay. He saw that I'd stopped and was standing and looking out.

Is your dad playing peeping Tom again? George said.

It's a car, I said, a fancy new Lincoln. And three guys.

Listen! I said.

It took me awhile to figure out the tune. Then when I realized what the tune was, it took me awhile for it to register.

Hey there, Georgy Girl! Why do all the boys just pass you by?