Now Is the Hour Page 3

  For right now, I’ll just stick with how difficult it is to raise my index finger, to get my finger to stop shaking enough to hit Billie Cody’s doorbell at five A.M. standing under the lamplight with the ivy growing up around the pole.

  Inside, the light goes on and comes through the two rectangles juxtaposed at an angle on the front door. I open the screen door that has a curly C in aluminum on it.

  C not for Cody but for cunt. An old joke with Billie and me.

  The door latch and the squeaky whooshing sound of the door opening up. Mrs. Cody’s hair is up in rollers, and she already has a cigarette going. She isn’t as pretty as Billie, but there’s something about Mrs. Cody that is beautiful. Maybe it’s just because she’s one of the two or three people in Pocatello who I think really like me.

  Rigby John, Mrs. Cody says, like she’s saying Pope’s a Catholic or Mormons suck.

  She takes a long drag on her cigarette, pulls the top button and buttonhole of her blue house robe together at her neck, leans up against the doorjamb.

  Mrs. Cody always looks at me not like I’m something of her daughter’s. She always looks her blue eyes right close in at me, like she knows something about me I don’t know yet, something that’s going to break my heart.

  She looked at me just that way at five A.M., deeply inhaling on her cigarette. Then she does something she’s never done before. She reaches out and touches me on the forehead. Her fingertips touch the place between my eyes. Where God the Father lives. Where it’s always sore. Then she brushes my hair out of my eyes, her fingertips coming down my cheek, down past my lips to my chin.

  Come on in, Mrs. Cody says, I’ll wake Billie.

  Mrs. Cody’s living room had a picture window that’s aluminum with a part that slides open that has a screen. The living room was painted beige, which Mrs. Cody and Billie hated, partly because Billie’s father painted it that color, and partly because it was beige for chrissakes. Carpet was beige too.

  Mrs. Cody was going to have the room painted and recarpeted. Something bright and hip, Mrs. Cody said, with maybe a swag lamp in the corner. But then Billie got pregnant, and Billie’s dad went after her with a belt, so Mrs. Cody booted her husband out, and now who knows when she’ll have the money.

  In the living room, there’s a fireplace made of thin bricks that were brown to yellow to red with beige mortar. I sat down on the hearth, looked up at the beige paramecia on Billie’s living room ceiling. Paramecia, the plural of paramecium.

  Billie always said the plaster on the ceiling in their living room looked like paramecia. Billie was smart. Straight A’s. She could be a rocket scientist if she wanted, but she wanted to be a beatnik. She was too smart to be a hippie. No makeup, only lipstick, always pink, and then at the end there it was red. Can’t tell you how many nights Billie and I sat in the pickup parked out under the stars, listening to the radio, just talking, talking, about the universe and Jean Paul Sartre, Paul Harvey, and Sigmund Freud.

  That was before she got pregnant.

  I lit a cigarette, threw the match into the fireplace. With the overhead light on, the shadows from the swerved glass that was screwed on over the two bare light bulbs so you didn’t see the two bare light bulbs made the paramecia look more like stalactites or the sword of Damocles hanging down over my head.

  So I went ahead and flipped the switch and shut the overhead light off because I didn’t want anything hanging over my head and because Billie and I never had that light on when we were in there, only the fireplace.

  The moonlight was bright through the aluminum picture window onto the beige carpet and onto the back of the beige armchair. The part of the shadow where the window opened, a straight line of shadow across my tennis shoes.

  Billie was in the bathroom throwing up. Morning sickness, I guessed.

  I was putting out my second cigarette when Billie came around the corner of the fireplace. It was dark, but still I looked right at her belly first. She was wearing my black T-shirt. It looked like a dress on her.

  You couldn’t really tell. I guess it takes sometimes up to five months to tell.

  Billie’d had her hair cut short, bangs, a flip just under the ear. No more hair rats. New henna. The gold loops I’d bought her when she got her ears pierced.

  I could tell all that in the dark. And that she’d just brushed her teeth with Crest, and that she wanted a cigarette fast, and that she was really happy to see me even so early in the morning. I knew all that in one moment. And for some reason right then, I knew the baby was a boy and that she was going to keep the baby.

  Then it was Billie’s voice, deep from sleep, deep from not speaking yet, and deep Simone Signoret from too many cigarettes the night before.

  Hey, Rig, Billie said.

  I had her cigarette ready for her, lifted the snap of orange up to her hand, the only part of her out in the rectangle of moonlight.

  When she inhaled, she stepped her face out into the moonlight. The gold earrings, the moonlight in each of her dark blue eyes.

  So, she said, blowing her breath out with the smoke, you’re leaving.

  The only other time I’d cried in front of a girl it was Billie.

  When I found out she was pregnant, and at Russell’s grave in Mount Moriah Cemetery. Now that I think about it, there were other times too.

  Then this morning, sitting on the hearth in Billie’s beige living room under the paramecia, when I heard Billie’s voice, something under her voice, low in her breath, sounded like the saddest thing I’d ever hear.

  My goddamn chin started doing its weird spasm thing, and my lips didn’t move the way I wanted them to.

  Then we were both on the beige carpet in the moonlight, my mouth up against Billie’s neck, my belly going up and down next to her belly, the baby boy in there. I tried to pull away because of all the snot, but Billie wouldn’t let me go. Then I cried all the harder because Billie wouldn’t let me go.

  When I finally settled down, I was looking into Billie’s big blue eyes.

  Billie had this thing with her eyes. Her tear ducts plugged up, and the inside corners of her eyes got red and puffy.

  Last time I’d seen her, her eyes were almost swollen shut. In the hospital the night of the Senior Summer All Night Party.

  Tear duct cancer, Billie called it.

  My fingertips wiped the tears off Billie’s cheeks.

  It’s a cure, I said.

  What? Billie said.

  Your tear ducts burst, I said. It’s a miracle.

  A fucking miracle, Billie said.

  Then Billie said something about Saint Bernadette and Lourdes and holy tears that cure pregnancy. In no time at all, that weird sound was coming up from down deep, and Billie and I were laughing as hard as I’d been crying.

  Mrs. Cody made breakfast. Coffee. Two eggs over easy, a big slice of ham, and hash browns. Could have spent all morning sitting in the kitchen at the green Formica table with those two jabbering away, but when the sun pushed up a gold glow of isosceles triangle onto green Formica, I knew it was time to go.

  Hugs. Mrs. Cody gave me two big hugs. Then morning breath, coffee and cigarette. I watched Mrs. Cody’s lips tell me to bend down so she could kiss me.

  A big smooch on my forehead. Then her hands together against my cheeks, puckering my face.

  Rigby John Klusener, Mrs. Cody said, you’re a brave man.

  Brimming with tears, her eyes. All along the bottom lid, brimming. Then Mrs. Cody’s hands went over her mouth, and she ran into the bathroom. The latch of the bathroom door closed.

  Billie walked me down the spiral steps. On the third step, she slipped the book into my hands. I didn’t look at the title of the book because no matter what, it was going to be the saddest title of a book ever, so instead of taking the book in my hands and saying, Jeez thanks, or something dumb, I grabbed onto Billie’s arm, just above the wrist, and pulled her to me and put my arms around her.

  I love you, Billie said.

  I went to say
it too, but I stopped. Stepped back and took a good long look at her. There she stood next to the light with the ivy climbing. She’d put on her black beret. Black beret, my black T-shirt, gold earrings, red lips. Barefoot. Short in the leg and big in the bust. Another one of our jokes and what Richard Burton said about Liz.

  I thought: love.

  Almond-shaped hazel eyes.

  Flaco, Acho, Grandma Queep, Georgy Girl.

  I thought: love. Billie Cody.

  So my brain let my lips say the words too.

  I love you too, I said.

  Then: My best to Chuck, I said. I’m so happy he’s all right.

  At the pickup was the loud metal-to-metal pop of the door opening. I lifted up my leg, just about ready to slide my butt up on the seat when Billie said something. I was going to act like I didn’t hear her, but I went ahead and stopped. I looked one more time at Billie.

  What? I said.

  Thank you, Billie said, for everything.

  I’m the one who should say thanks, I said.

  Then, as fate would have it, the both of us at the same time said: We made a promise.

  That strange sound coming from down deep inside us.

  Weird thing, laughter.

  My right hand up, palm out, my two fingers up in a V.

  Peace was all my rubber lips could say.

  Sunday morning you couldn’t get any decent music on the radio. It was all church music and preaching. Plus, the farther I got away from Pocatello, it was just static.

  Besides the radio, Dad’s ’63 Chevy Apache pickup was a pretty smooth drive up Highway 93. The tie rods were loose from driving around the farm, and the whole thing started to shake if you went over sixty, but it didn’t scare me.

  I’ve been scared all my life, and today was the day I promised myself I was going to stop.

  I was, though, scared. That pickup just about shook itself off the road.

  Driving along with no radio, fifty-five miles an hour, just the wing window open, the sun a big orange ball in the passenger side window, I started to think about a lot of things. My whole life really. But most particular what I thought about, after I quit crying after Billie Cody, was what happened this morning before I went over to her house.

  Getting up at four-thirty wasn’t so differnt. Darker. I put my cutoffs on one leg at a time. My green T-shirt. My red Converse high-tops laced up halfway. My backpack was ready to go. I started to sing “Ode to Billie Joe.” I tried after that to get the song out of my head because it’s a sad song, but forget it: once a song’s in my head that’s it.

  I went into the bathroom, closed the door quiet, and locked it after I turned the light on. I took a good look in the mirror. My hair was starting to grow out. Like my head had a four-day beard. Wrapped around my head was my thin red tie. On top of that, I put on my porkpie hat.

  My nose was as big as ever.

  My face was really sun brown from living outside those days with the Indians.

  Crooked bottom teeth.

  Plus at four-thirty in the morning nothing looked good.

  Especially if you flicked the switch on the side of the medicine cabinet and the two fluorescent bulbs lit up.

  I got my toothbrush and toothpaste out of the zipper part of my backpack. Did the same thing I always did when I brushed my teeth. Said in my head: Crest has been shown to be an effective decay-preventive dentifrice that can be of significant value when used as directed in a conscientiously applied program of oral hygiene and regular professional care.

  Spit. Rinsed my mouth out with water. Spit. Put back my toothbrush and toothpaste inside the zipper part.

  I was just about to shut off the light when I stopped. Stopped and looked at things.

  The black and white tiles on the floor. The linoleum halfway up on the wall that looked like gray tiles with a black border of tiles at the top. Really fake. The top half of the walls lavender to the lavender ceiling. The lavender window sash and matching lavender toilet cover. The around-the-bottom-of-the-toilet lavender rug and the lavender rug on the floor below the sink. The bathtub and the lavender towels hanging perfectly on the chrome towel rack on the wall at its base. The painted lavender clothes hamper with the lavender rug glued to the top of the lid. The toilet paper roll. Lavender toilet paper. Fuck.

  The medicine cabinet mirror behind the door, in which, if you moved just right and stood in front of the mirror above the sink, you could see yourself go on and on forever and ever.

  But this morning, when I moved the mirror just right so I could see forever, something looked differnt. I was probably as ugly as ever, but for some reason, after all that’s happened over the past two years, and because I was leaving this fucking place, it was amazing.

  Not just differnt. I looked good.

  Tilted my hat, gave myself in the mirror a big Jimmy Durante smile.

  Things looked differnt if you were never going to see them again.

  I was never going to see myself in that mirror again.

  Or see the window shade I used to pull down so there was just enough space to look in under from outside.

  Sis flushing her Kotex.

  Sis’s hair down there.

  Dad kneeling down at the toilet to pee. Kneeling.

  Dad’s dick.

  Mom putting Johnson and Johnson baby powder under her breasts.

  Mom’s breasts.

  The time I put Mercurochrome in the toilet water and told Mom I’d peed blood because Scardino was going to get me at school.

  All those Saturday night baths we shared the same bath water.

  Never again.

  Never.

  I shut the bathroom light off, opened the door. The way the door sticks.

  Then in the kitchen. Fuck. I couldn’t believe what was in the kitchen. Sitting at the kitchen table.

  I’m sorry it’s too hard. I can’t talk about that right now.

  I’ll have to tell you later.

  I won’t forget. I promise.

  Tramp jumped in the back of the pickup when I started it up.

  My dog, Tramp. Believe me, he was the last thing I wanted to deal with right then. Mostly what I wanted to do was give Tramp a big kick and tell him to get the fuck out of there. But there he sat, his long black hair, smiling, his tongue hanging out. Above each eye was a line of orange hair, and down his nose there was another line of orange, then a patch of red-orange on his chin, and his whiskers were red-orange too. Red-orange hair just on the tips of his ears. Looked like he had a red-orange face on top of his black face.

  His right front paw was red-orange too. That right paw of Tramp’s was really something. He always poked it in the air when you sat down close to him and you cleared your throat and you lowered your voice and you started talking about life, trying to make sense out of it.

  His tongue hung out, he held his lips so you could see his teeth, and that red-orange paw started going to town with the poking, poking. Sometimes I thought I ought to stick a pen between his toes and hold up a piece of cardboard so he could write down in dog language what his paw was trying to say.

  Or stick a baton between his toes and put on some John Philip Sousa so he could poke to beat the band.

  Of course, then there was his tail. Another piece of red-orange.

  When his right paw started poking away, never failed, that tail of his started up too, flip flop flip flop, back and forth, just banging away.

  An endless source of amusement, Tramp and his paw and his tail.

  Can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat myself down next to Tramp, cleared my throat, lowered my voice, and said something like: Tramp, do you think God is dead? Or: Tramp, do you think communism is a threat to the American way of life?

  Sure as hell, Tramp got that look on his face, his tongue came out and he held his mouth so you could see his teeth, and then up went the red-orange paw, poking the air, then his tail, bam bam bam.

  Tramp was just a pup when I found him up at the feedlot. All feet and head a
nd hair. I knew Dad would shoot him so I threw a bunch of gravel at him and called him a son of a bitch, threw more gravel, yelled louder.

  Tramp put his tail between his legs and took off running and yelping.

  I thought for sure he was gone, the way he ran.

  But the next day when I went up to the feedlot, Tramp’s red-orange face over his black face poked out from around the corner of a haystack.

  That’s the first time I sat Tramp down and tried to warn him about Dad. Said: Tramp, it’s probably best for you to get your ass out of Dodge.

  That’s the first time I saw him start in with the tongue and the teeth, the poking-at-the-air paw, and the tail flip-flop, bam-bam-bam, back-and-forth thing.

  Dad let me keep Tramp because I told Dad Tramp was a good cow dog, and he was too. Had the instinct right off. A natural heeler, probably an Australian shepherd mix.

  But there had been other dogs. Dad said I could keep them too.

  Every day when I got home from school the first two weeks, I expected to see Tramp’s dead carcass lying out on the trash heap in the dump hole next to the feedlot.

  But every day I came back, there he was. Tramp. His orange face on his black face, just smiling and happy to see me.

  But I still wasn’t sure. My last dog, Nikki, a terrier mix, I can’t tell you how much I loved that dog. Two full months I had that dog.

  Then one day, out of the blue, Nikki just started shaking and foaming at the mouth. I picked him up. His body was stiff like I’d picked up a piece of wood. I put him in the back of the pickup and drove like hell to Doc Hayden’s.

  Nikki was dead by the time I got there.

  Doc Hayden said strychnine.

  Believe me, in my world, there’s plenty of men mean enough to poison a little dog.

  But there was only one man who did it.

  Early Sunday morning, all I wanted to do was get out of there fast, and there was Tramp in the back of the pickup. His tongue hanging out, smiling, ready to go for a ride.

  I opened the tailgate, hooked the chains at both sides, sat down, dangled my legs over. Moonlight all over on the dark night. The moon on Tramp’s black hair, a shine.