Now Is the Hour (63 page)

The Shoshone prayer from George's lips was soft and high and sounded like Idaho. Silver and gold in the sunlight, wind in the poplars a high sigh and scratch, dry June grass. Heat lightning storms in the night sky. Pickup trucks backing up and a pine box bumping down into a grave.

Outside, George took the fuse out of his pocket, bounced it up once in his hand, then threw the fuse as hard as he could into the tall pasture grass.

Where the tipi had sat, the fire was ash and embers. George pulled up the knees of his pants, sat down like Buddha. I sat down across the fire from him. He laid the broom bristles into the fire. With some poking around, the fire was up and spitting again.

George reached in his pocket, pulled out his pack of Camels, tapped one out, lit it. His French inhale. George handed the cigarette to me.

Is there anything left, George said, that you can think of, that we haven't given away or burned?

My mind went over all the places in the house, in the barn, on the barn, in the chicken coop, in the outhouse.

I hope there's toilet paper left, I said.

George almost smiled, I swear.

Anything else? George said. I packed up my suitcase, we've swept the house. As soon as this broom is burned, I think we're done.

There was something else. I reached into my inside jacket pocket, pulled out Granny's pipe, set the pipe on the ground.

No, George said. I gave that pipe to you.

It's not the pipe, I said.

Then, from inside the same pocket, I pulled out the plastic bag of joints. I rolled out the plastic, picked up the joints, and put them in the palm of my hand.

Threw the joints in the fire, then the plastic bag.

The smoke smelled of broom handle and burnt plastic and marijuana. I went to sniff up the smoke, then didn't.

The wind in the poplar leaves, a wind scattering up high. Old, dead wood croaking. George's dark eyes.

You didn't have to do that, George said. I'm the one who's getting sober.

And I helped, I said.

Then: What about your car? I said. That's a possession, isn't it?

Fuck! George said. My fucking car. It's still parked in town!

What's left to tell about George and me? Not much.

George pulled out his wallet, opened it, and from inside a fold George pulled out a shiny black arrowhead.

George carved his initials into the apple tree first: GS.

Then I carved my initials: RJK.

George carved in the heart around our initials.

For supper that night, we ate nothing.

At the cedar tree, George and I held onto each other's hands and jumped. We were one flying whooping hollering screaming shits and giggles, one long smooth uninterrupted naked thrust through the night sky. Suspended in the air, arms, legs, cocks, a ball-out splash, the whoosh down deep into cool, muddy, green water.

No swimming suit, water all around me touched me deep the way water goes wherever it can go. My legs, my ass, my cock, my balls, waterfall rushing water against me, better even than air. Floating low, my body a slide along dark rocks and mud, tangles of moss, gliding like a seal, some kind of sea animal, I was sprouting gills, breathing
water. In the dark turbulence, my hands found one human leg and then another, and I grabbed the legs and pulled, and from somewhere up above in the breathing-air world was a holler, a high-pitched yell that turned into bubbles.

George's face right up next to mine through the dark, muddy green, George all his teeth. His dark eyes turned devil, George grabbed me, but I was too fast. I was out of the water in one long lunge, the deep breath of air glory in my chest. In no time at all, George's arm around my neck. Then his other arm scooped me up under my knees.

We could not stop. I swear we fucked ourselves so silly, the old two-by-twelve almost snapped.

That night, under the poplars, then up and beyond them, the moon and the stars. Lying in our bedroll, George and I, we couldn't stop touching.

In the morning, there's no chickens, no rooster, no smell of coffee or frying bacon. No porcelain pan to watch the sunlight in. There's just enough toilet paper.

The loud metal-to-metal pop of the pickup door. I get in, George gets in. I turn on the key. The pickup starts, no problem. I put it into reverse. We drive out Granny's lane, past the tansy and the burdock, past the bull thistle, the chamomile, and the purple-head alfalfa. Turn right on Quinn Road, then left. George and I drive past Hess's forty.

It's the first time in a long time I think about my dad.

At the Sinclair station on East Fifth Street, I've got enough money to fill up the tank. I make sure I don't spend George's dollar. George goes in to take a shit. Then I go. The smell of the bathroom after he's done. The smell like his come tastes, like his armpits smell, buckskin and flint on the back of my throat.

When I get back in the pickup, George has two cups of coffee, two glazed doughnuts, and a newspaper, the
Idaho State Journal.
George tosses something into my lap.

I reach down, pick it up. It's a map of Nevada and California.

Then it's a yellow daisy George slips behind my ear.

Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair, George says.

On Pine Street, in front of a small white house, George's '49 Ford is parked.

I flash back to the day, so long ago, when Mom and I were headed for devotions. Just in time, Mom hit the brakes and cranked the steering wheel. Directly in front of us, the old gray '49 Ford parked barely off the road. All around my ears was a loud screech. The Buick spun around for a long time.

God spins you around like that only once in a while. Thank God.

Mom was cussing a blue streak.

Just as I looked and before I quick looked away, that moment, a big fat drop of rain slow from a cottonwood leaf in the last light fell, the splash in his hands, crooked light.

George. Naked in the field.

Those Indians and their goddamn queers.

George leans across the cab, kisses me right there in broad daylight on a Pocatello street. Then he gets out, slams the door, walks around the front of the pickup.

The red tie around his head in the bright day of Pocatello, something about the red tie on his naked head in Pocatello scares me to death.

At my window, George's dark eyes, the sunlight in them, bars of gold.

I love it when your eyes are gold, I say.

George's long, beautiful fingers touch my hand.

I'll see you back at Granny's, George says.

Out of the back, George picks up his leather suitcase, carries his suitcase to his car, opens the trunk, puts the suitcase in the trunk.

I put the pickup into first gear, let out the clutch. I make it a couple blocks before I pull over and stop. Out the rearview mirror, I try to get a look, but George's car is gone.

George is gone.

That quick.

Then I can't do anything. I'm crying too damn hard.

At Russell's grave, I'm spread-eagle under the huge old elm. I tell Russell, the elm, the cemetery, the sky, the whole world, all that's gone on between me and George. It's surprising how long the story goes on. It starts with a spinning Buick and a naked man in a field in the rain and ends in the middle of a day, on a Pocatello street, Pine Street, in front of a white house, his fingers on my hand.

Then: Russell, I say, he took his suitcase. He told me he'll see me at Granny's house. But he took his suitcase.

Only minutes later, as I pull out of Mount Moriah Cemetery. On East Fifth Street in front of the Fanci Freez, I hear the siren. In the rearview mirror, a cop car. Its flashing lights are red and white.

THE COP HAULED
his big self out of the cop car and walked up to the pickup. In the side mirror, it wasn't long and the blue of the cop's uniform took up the whole mirror.

The cop was a big guy, big belly, but the rest of him was as big as his belly. He was like you took a normal person and pumped him up with air. So much flesh on his hands, you wondered how he opened and closed his hands. Pink skin and red hair with freckles. Sergeant Roscoe.

My pounding heart. The feeling in my forearms that means I'm helpless.

Sergeant Roscoe pushed his hat up, put his hands on his hips. Sweat on pink skin. Belts and leather pouches and leather holster and boots and leather straps all over on this guy.

Pig
was the word that came to mind.

Can I see your driver's license and registration, please? Sergeant Roscoe said.

I got my driver's license out of my wallet, handed it to him, then pulled down the visor, slipped the registration out that was always clipped under the piece of plastic.

Our fingers did not touch.

Just wait here, Sergeant Roscoe said. I'll be right back.

The roll of his hips. When Sergeant Roscoe sat down in his police car, the car went down about a foot.

Static on the police radio you could hear all through the bright afternoon.

When Sergeant Roscoe got back, his big pink face and thin yellow-red eyebrows and blue eyes were filling up my whole window.

Mr. Klusener, Sergeant Roscoe said, I'd like you to step out of your pickup.

Leave the keys! Sergeant Roscoe said. Hands up!

Then I was spread-legged, leaning against the front bumper of the pickup, and Sergeant Roscoe was rubbing his billy club up my legs and down.

Put your hands behind your back, he said.

The handcuffs around my wrists, I can't tell you. There was no breath.

Sergeant Roscoe grabbed me by the arm and led me to the back end of his car. He opened the back door of the station wagon, gave me a shove headfirst, and I fell into the caged-in back end. He slammed the door and locked it.

As we drove away, I watched the brown Apache pickup get smaller and smaller and then it was gone.

Just be there at Granny's, George,
I kept on thinking.
Just be there at Granny's.

A long, dark corridor, lined with iron bars. Sergeant Roscoe escorted me by the arm. If he'd had a lariat he'd have hogtied me. A big ring of keys attached to his belt. The sound of the sliding iron gates bouncing off the hallway walls. Way inside down a hall, through rows and rows of iron bars, a black man in an iron-bar room, yelling and screaming. The smell of piss and ammonia.

At the end of a hallway, Roscoe unlocked a gray steel door. Inside was a gray room with a cement floor and one of those windows where you can't see them, but they can see you. I saw it once on TV.

There was a table in the room and four chairs. Everything gray. A gray cement floor. One window up high with bars on the window.

Sergeant Roscoe pushed me down into the chair, undid my handcuffs.

What's with the red tie? he said. Some kind of hippie shit?

I didn't have a chance to answer.

Take your jacket off, Sergeant Roscoe said.

I took my jacket off, handed it to him. Sergeant Roscoe went through all my pockets.

Alleluia. Alleluia. Silently, I thanked the Lord, thanked Saint George, thanked Thunderbird, I'd thrown the joints into the fire.

Take your shirt off, Sergeant Roscoe said. Then your shoes and socks. Then your pants and your undershorts.

I took my shirt off, handed Sergeant Roscoe my shirt.

Roscoe checked in the pocket, stuck his nose in the pocket. Shook the shirt out like when you shake out wrinkles.

Then my shoes. One shoe, then the next.

Sergeant Roscoe stuck his fleshy hands into my shoes, turned my shoes upside down. Tried to pull off the leather heels.

Then my socks.

Sergeant Roscoe turned my socks inside out, stuck his hands up inside my socks. Then my pants.

Sergeant Roscoe checked all the pockets, turned my pants inside out.

OK, he said. Let's have the shorts.

My crusty four-day-old shorts. I took them off, handed them to Roscoe.

There I was standing naked in a gray room, my cold feet on the cement floor. In the window where only they could see me, I could see only a skinny boy.

I couldn't think of anything about me that wasn't wrong.

I tried and tried, but I couldn't come up with anything good.

I'd be a terrible American if communists tortured me.

Just be there at Granny's, George. Just be there at Granny's.

Roscoe took my shorts on the end of his billy club. Held my shorts up in the air between him and the window.

Roscoe's face got even pinker, if that was possible.

Then: Bend over, he said. Grab your cheeks, spread 'em.

Little holes in the cement floor where pieces of gravel had washed out.

Sergeant Roscoe's billy club back there between my cheeks.

You don't have any LSD stuck up in there, do you? he said.

No, I said.

No sir, he said.

No sir, I said.

Then: Put your clothes back on, he said. Sit down in that chair and stay in that chair and don't move.

Behind Sergeant Roscoe, the door slammed loud, and the slam bounced around up and down the hallways.

The clock on the wall was the only other thing in the room. The clock was the black and white kind like in school.

The red hand, snapping off the seconds.

At 3:45 Detective Harold Richardson walked in the room.

Alleluia. Alleluia. Harold Richardson was a Knight of Columbus at Saint Joseph's Church. His wife, Mrs. Richardson, was in the Altar Society with my mother.

Harold! I said.

Detective Richardson, he said.

Detective Richardson, I said.

Detective Richardson was wearing a blue suit and a blue tie. Brown hair, buzz-cut up the sides, a wave in front like Van Johnson.

He set a Coke down on the table and a bag of Clover Club potato chips.

Rigby John, he said, I trust that Sergeant Roscoe made you feel at home.

My chin was moving in a way it had never moved before. It wasn't just rubber lips, it was a rubber lower face.

My hands were shaking. Opening the sack of potato chips was so loud.