Now Is the Hour Page 4

  I took a breath, leaned over. Put my arm around my dog. My face in his face, on his face. I looked Tramp right in the eyes.

  I told him: Tramp, I’m going somewhere where you can’t go.

  His big old pink tongue poked out his mouth. Tramp started panting, his lips the way so you could see his teeth.

  In his eyes, you could see he knew something was up.

  Then there went his paw, his tail.

  That and the piano that morning about broke my fucking heart.

  I hugged him big, put my face down in his hair, and smelled it. I scratched his ears, tickled his chin the way he liked. Nobody loves you the way your dog loves you.

  I stood up, called Tramp down out of the pickup. He jumped down, walked obedient alongside of me to the pickup door. When I opened the pickup door, he thought he was going to get up front in the cab with me. His face went from obedient to happy just like that. I put my body in front of the door.

  Sit! I said. Tramp, sit down!

  And he sat. Tramp was a good dog.

  Now stay! I said.

  Tramp kept sitting, smiling, his tongue hanging out. I slid my butt up onto the seat. Tramp’s tail back and forth, bam bam bam.

  Tramp kept sitting while I started the pickup. He kept sitting while I put in the clutch, put it into first. He kept sitting while I drove slow on past him.

  Any second, Tramp couldn’t stand it any longer, so I rolled down the window. Said in my deep mean voice: Tramp! Sit down! Stay!

  Tramp was a good dog.

  I drove past the workshop, past the wood granary, past the light pole. Tramp kept sitting as I idled along the driveway past the pole fence, the wagon wheel, the Austrian Copper rose, to Tyhee Road.

  Tramp in the rearview mirror, sitting, the moon a shine on his long black hair, his tail back and forth, bam bam bam.

  When I got onto the tarmac of Tyhee Road, I floored the gas pedal.

  A quarter mile up the road, in the rearview mirror, the moon on Tramp’s long black hair, Tramp beating it around the corner like a bat out of hell.

  That’s when the pickup started to shake.

  It was five miles down Philbin Road at the stand of cottonwoods when I couldn’t see Tramp anywhere in the moonlight in the rearview mirror anymore.

  Then I drove to Billie Cody’s, and I’ve told you everything that happened at her house.

  Out on the open highway, I was doing fine, just fine. The sunrise was orange and yellow and so bright I needed sunglasses. The pickup was running good, I was safe, fine out of there, no problem. My arm was out the window, the wing window open so the morning air was coming right at my face.

  Then I turned on the radio again to see if I could find something. I found something all right.

  Clear as a bell.

  If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.

  So many sad songs.

  I cried all the way to Twin Falls.

  Parked the pickup on Norby Street. On the corner of Norby and South Sward.

  Started walking southwest. Only time I stopped was to pick this daisy.

  So that’s how I got here. Out here where there’s nothing. Nothing but desert. Out here where everything’s alive. Nothing but me and this night and this moon and stars so clear it’s a Christmas card for “We Three Kings of Orient Are.” Sagebrush. The smell of sagebrush and hot pavement and my own armpits. A ribbon of pavement shiny to over the horizon, and just now, out of my backpack, I pulled out my porkpie hat, brushed it off, and put it on. Put the moon behind me, lifted my chin up, and now the shadow of my head looks like my head is an alien being’s big round head.

  Alien.

  You can always tell how you’re feeling by how your shadow looks.

  PART I

  Unforgettable

  1 The Early Days

  BACK WHEN I was a kid, back in the early days, there was this one afternoon. I was looking out the front-room window. Blue sky was everywhere up above, the bright sun shining down, not a cloud. The wash on the wash line was flapping in the breeze. It wasn’t the wash I was looking at, though. It was the shadows of the wash on the grass. There was one shadow in particular that turned into a magic black dog all afternoon doing circus tricks.

  That shadow was everything to me. An ordinary white T-shirt hanging from a pair of clothespins turning into a magic black dog on the yellow-green grass was nothing short of a miracle. When you’re living in a skinny white house in the middle of an alfalfa field in the middle of Idaho and all your family knows how to do is work, you learn to look for miracles. Anything that breaks the routine, anything that comes along and makes you see what’s in front of your eyes a little differnt, is magic.

  Myself, I’ve been looking for magic my whole life. Still looking. That’s exactly why I’m out here on Highway 93. I had to leave Pocatello because everything I knew — my home, my family, my friends — just up and ran out of magic the way you run out of gas. All that’s left to do now is stick my thumb out and start walking.

  I’m not saying it’s easy. Hell, I’ve been crying for two weeks now, still crying, wish to Christ I’d stop. Crying for Mom mostly. Sis and Dad will be all right. I sure as hell won’t miss Scardino, may he rest in peace. I’m crying for Billie Cody too. Who the hell’s going to make me laugh? But most of all, it’s Georgy Girl. Georgy Girl’s the dark hole in my heart.

  It’s hard to leave your whole life. Whatever your life was. And any life, even my life, had its moments.

  Especially in the beginning, before my brother, Russell, was born and before he died, before Dad bulldozed down our skinny white house, the early days, when the Portneuf River still flowed through our farm. When my mother’s eyes were the only show in town, almond-shaped and hazel. What was happening in those eyes was usually what was happening in the world. And in the early days, what the world was, was me.

  Mom’s hazel eyes were gold when she was happy. When her eyes were gold I could find myself inside them. In those early days, I did a lot to keep her eyes gold. One time I remember I told Sis I was born in a trunk in the Princess Theater in Pocatello, Idaho. That’s not the truth, of course. I was born in a hospital like everybody else. Saint Anthony’s Hospital, but I said that to Sis because Mom was listening, and I thought it would make Mom laugh, which it did.

  You got to understand, sometimes on the farm, finding magic was so hard you had to make the magic up yourself. A vivid imagination, Mom called it. Dad called it lying. He was always on my ass for showing off. Making a spectacle of myself. Me, I never saw it as lying. I was just making the world a more livable place. For her. And then of course, because of her, for me.

  Plus I was born there, in Pocatello. The Princess Theater wasn’t there anymore by the time I came on the scene. By the time I came around to it, it was the Chief Theater, and JUDY GARLAND was in smaller blue capital letters under THE WIZARD OF OZ, which was in big red capital letters on the marquee. I was wearing my brown suit just like my dad’s suit with a matching hat like Dad’s too, like men used to wear in the thirties and forties. The day was cold and bright, and Sis held my hand and helped me sound out the big red capital letters. That’s how I learned the letter Z. Neon red and yellow arrows were going around and around the marquee, and people were everywhere. Mom bought Sis a Cup o Gold candy bar and me Milk Duds. Inside the theater it was dark. I sat next to Mom, and Sis was on the other side of Mom, and I was so little that in the seat my Buster Brown shoes stuck out right in front of me.

  When the curtains opened, it was a black-and-white Dorothy and Toto and Auntie Em on the screen. A ways into the movie, in a moment, my mother put her hand inside my hand. She leaned over to me. Her perfume. The sound of her dress against her nylons.

  Now watch closely, Mom whispered. This next part is magic.

  When I looked back up at the screen, the black and white had turned to color.

  Magic. That’s just what it was. Magic.

  Movies and music and church. Before
Russell, mostly that’s what I remember. Not so much the things themselves, but shadows, the way they were inside me, the magic of them.

  Since we lived twelve miles from town, it took a lot of gas to get there and back, so we used the gas for church. Every Sunday, church — nine o’clock Mass, come rain or sleet or snow, hell or high water. The fourth commandment. Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day. Seven o’clock Sunday Mass during harvest.

  When we did go to movies, which was hardly ever, usually it was just Mom and me and Sis after Tuesday evening Mother of Perpetual Help devotions. Tuesday evening devotions we could kill two birds with one stone, church and the movies, plus save on gas. But only if it was a decent movie that the Idaho Catholic Register said wasn’t condemned and was suitable for kids to go to too, which it hardly ever was.

  Before Russell, besides The Wizard of Oz, the only movies I can remember are Bambi, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, Dumbo, Pinocchio, and Peter Pan.

  Seven years and seven movies.

  Still, though, those movies were enough.

  The magic feeling all through me when we walked under the bright flashing neon marquee into the foyer of the Chief Theater with its thick, curvy adobe walls. The strange Indian blanket carpet, red and orange and brown and yellow under your feet. The rows of candy bars in the fluorescent-light glass case, the smell of popcorn, the sound of ice cubes, fizzing Coke. Then through the double doors into the theater and the sloping corridor. The big red velvet curtain with gold fringe hanging in folds with the spotlights on it. Everything around you always so dark at first. Then only when you were in your chair, your butt square on the mohair cushion, did your eyes start to see the paintings of the Indians shooting buffalo with bows and arrows on the walls, and the little alcove on each side, with the red and green lights, that looked like a Romeo and Juliet balcony with a wrought-iron fence.

  Magic all around you everywhere waiting for the movie to start. Magic when the lights went dark. The dimmer the lights, the more the something inside so covered up and careful in you came up and out. Sitting next to Mom, my chest got big and full of air, like I was smart and rich and welcome in the world.

  The newsreel, all the people in the faraway world doing cool stuff. Then Daffy Duck, Woody Woodpecker, Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse. Then the movie.

  There’s No Place Like Home. Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall. Bambi lost in the forest fire without his mother. Pinocchio a real boy. Cinderella’s asshole stepsisters. Tinkerbell dust.

  To this day, if I had one wish, I’d be flying.

  Looks like my thumb out on Highway 93, waving down the next truck, is the closest I’m going to get.

  Music’s another way magic came into our life. My mother was born to make music. She could play the piano by ear. Mom was the sixth child and the fourth daughter of Joseph and Mary Schmidt. Joseph Schmidt, her father, died in 1933, the middle of the Great Depression. Mom was thirteen.

  All Mom’s older sisters got to take piano lessons because it wasn’t the Depression yet, but when it came to be Mom’s turn for piano lessons, there wasn’t any money and her father was already sick.

  Mom tells the story this way. She couldn’t sleep because she kept having piano dreams. In her dreams, her sister Alma was playing the piano and Mom was watching her. Then, like in dreams the way things usually go, all of a sudden it wasn’t Alma but Mom who was playing the piano.

  Mom got up slow and quiet and slipped out of bed. She was just a girl, maybe nine or ten. It was in the middle of the night, but she had something important to figure out. She walked slow, step by step down the stairs, through the dining room and into the parlor, where nobody could sit except when there was company. Mom pulled the piano stool out, opened up the piano, and just like in her dream Mom started playing “A Bicycle Built for Two.”

  It wasn’t until Grandma and Grandpa and all Mom’s brothers and sisters were standing around her at the piano — all of them in their nightgowns and nightshirts, Grandpa holding a candle up because they didn’t have ’lectricity — that Mom woke up and realized she was really playing the piano and it wasn’t a dream.

  Mein Gott im Himmel, my grandfather said. Kleine Mary spielt das Klavier.

  And that’s the way it was after that. All you’d have to do is sing a few lines for Mom, and just like magic there she’d be playing the song for you.

  Back in the early days, it was long afternoons playing on the brown flowered carpet with my Lincoln Logs or my Tinkertoys or Bill Ding, and Mom playing her old piano, burnt black up one side and smelling of burnt hardwood, the Steinway, on the round piano stool you could sit on and spin. Wintertime, the oil stove in the front room too hot to touch with the porcelain pan of water on top. Down the hallway, in the kitchen, fire in the cookstove, and the kindling, pine sap, cut wood, and chunks of coal stacked by the stove. Always a fire in the cookstove so the pipes didn’t freeze in the kitchen sink. The door open to the bathroom, always open unless you were in there, so as to keep those pipes from freezing too. When Mom was playing the piano, you didn’t want to go to the bathroom. Farther down the hallway, other rooms, Mom and Dad’s bedroom and the bedroom I shared with Sis, during the day the doors closed. Way too cold to go in there except to sleep. Even in the winter, though, with frost on the windows, Mom’s playing could warm up the whole house.

  Spring, the whole world smelled like lilac from the big old lilac bush next to the front porch. During the summer I wouldn’t be on the rug but perched on the open windowsill. Like an oven inside the house. Outside at night, crickets and frogs. Inside, Kool-Aid and maple nut ice cream. At night, the smell of chamomile, fresh alfalfa, and water in the ditch. Thunderstorms at night and flash lightning like the world was some ’lectric fuse box gone haywire. One hailstorm so hard it broke the front-room window.

  Always, though, and ever, those early days before Russell, come hell or high water, a hundred degrees or below zero, there were always days when Mom played her songs on her piano. Her feet whizzing back and forth on the pedals, her hands over the keys. Mom’s hair pulled back from her face, her chin up, her almond-shaped hazel eyes mostly gold, a smile busting through.

  Outside the house is where Dad lived. Dad only came in the house at dinner and supper to visit us, then spent the night. Machines were out there with him. The Johnny pop-pop tractor, the combine. Out past our square of lawn, out past the fence, past the gas pump, the acres of yard that spread out to the red brick barn. Next to the barn, Dad’s tin square toolshed, during the day the sun so bright on it you could not look.

  Lying on the front-room floor, flat on the flowered brown carpet, Tinkertoys all around, Sis with her paper dolls, Mom on the round stool playing “Cruising Down the River,” my father was out there in the big world making things go. I liked to think he was circling us. The way I pictured it, our skinny white house was in the middle of a field, and Dad was out there on the fence line on the tractor, going around and around, each time around he was closer to us in the house. In front of the tractor, dry, flat, tan earth. Behind, big brown chunks of piled-up earth. The smell of the earth dark and full of worms. Around and around, behind Dad’s plow a dark shadow circling. The seagulls flying about his head screaming and squawking as if the seagulls were thoughts of his that no one knew, that made him so far away. When Dad finally came in the back door, the field was no longer tan or flat or dry. The field was all shadow, and our house was in the middle of dark brown chunks of earth smelling like he smelled, cow manure and horse piss and sour milk and straw.

  Those early days, all my chores were inside the house. My main job was to put the forks on the left on the napkin next to the plate. Sis set the rest of the table. Then after the meal, Mom and Sis cleared the table while Dad had a Viceroy and his cup of tea with two sugars. Mom washed the dishes while Sis and I wiped them dry. Besides making our beds every morning and cleaning up our room, that was it for our chores in the early days, except for on Saturdays, when it was our special job to dust
the piano. Both Sis and I had dust rags. Mom poured a capful of Olde English furniture polish onto each of our dust rags, and Sis and I made the piano and the round piano stool shine.

  The basement of the house was another special place. Above the coal-room door, lying across on two stuck-out nails, was Dad’s fishing pole. Next to the coal-room door and under Dad’s fishing pole was Mom’s old steamer trunk. Dark, brass-bound, the two brass latches locked in place. It was the kind of trunk that stood on its end. When you opened it up, one side was little drawers and the other side was a stainless-steel rod you could pull out to hang dresses on.

  Inside Mom’s steamer trunk was like its very own room in the house. Not just a room. The steamer trunk was a whole world. A magic world that existed right alongside the everyday world.

  The dress I remember most is the green plaid. Big plaid, maybe some brown in the plaid. There was a blue taffeta dress too, robin’s-egg blue, that made a sound when you touched the taffeta or when you walked in the dress. Sis kept the jewels in the top little drawer. Two rhinestone necklaces, a pearl necklace, and a cameo on a gold strand. A gold ring. The scarves were in the second little drawer. Two pairs of high heels. A brown pair that were scuffed suede with open toes and black high heels with an ankle strap. There were hats too. Those strange kind of hats like in LeVine’s with veils and feathers that Joan Crawford and Gene Tierney and Hedy Lamarr and Aunt Alma used to wear. In the third little drawer was the red purse with the gold latch and the pair of white gloves. And lipstick. Lipstick was in the fourth little drawer. Red. Ruby Scarlet. In the fifth little drawer was the Avon perfume in the bottle that was shaped like the Eiffel Tower.

  When the trunk was open, and the drawers were open, the Eiffel Tower smell hit you and a light spread out magic all around you, onto you, got inside you, magic color like in The Wizard of Oz.

  I was born in that trunk.

  Scintillatingly gorgeous, Sis said.