Now Is the Hour (16 page)

Allen was the one who suggested that we play Poison. How you play Poison is you get the most poisonous stuff and the worst awful things possible, and you pour them all together in one bucket.

The bucket was a gallon bucket of oil-base paint with about an inch of slimy red in the bottom. The weed killer was in the saddle room under the bench in a gray five-gallon bucket that said
POISON
on it. It was a white powder. The skinny piece of an old cedar shingle was what I used to stir the white into the red until it was pink. Next, the bucket went to the gas pump. Three seconds of gasoline into the bucket. Allen stirred the gasoline in with the pink. It smelled awful. The creosote came from the vat where Dad was soaking railroad ties. Inside the bucket it was the color of dark blood. The rat poison from the toolshed. A white powder in a red and yellow can like Kraft Parmesan cheese. Holes in the top of the can so you can shake out the rat poison. Allen sprinkled the rat poison onto what was in the bucket. The Malathion and the DDT came from in the corner of the machine shop where the sugar beet planter was. Both the Malathion and the DDT were in quart-size brown bottles with screw-top lids. The ant spray and furniture polish were from under the kitchen sink. Allen and I held our noses, and Allen sprayed the ant spray into the bucket and I poured in the Olde English furniture polish. Bluing, Clorox, and ammonia from the closet in the washroom went in next. A scoop of phosphate from the Simplot's bag. Then drops of Mercurochrome, gentian violet, Merthiolate from the medicine cabinet. Strychnine, tiny pellets in a little blue bottle from in the saddle room, from inside the cabinet Dad kept under lock and kept the key above the saddle room door. I found that key when my dog Nikki died. Battery acid from a battery from the pile of dead batteries in the weeds next to the wood granary. Really slimy gray and white chicken poop. A dead baby chicken. A mother spider and her million babies in the web in the chicken coop window with the eisenglass. A can of Del Monte lima beans. Mush would have been good in there, or a fried hard egg or a soft-boiled egg, but Mom was in the kitchen so we couldn't get to the mush or the eggs. A piece of Kotex with blood splotches on it from
inside the big garbage burn barrel outside. Allen, not me, held the Kotex by one of the white flaps. One of my father's crusty socks.

I thought of asking Allen to puke into the whole mess, then thought better.

That's when Allen said, Let's piss in it.

Allen had a look. His upper lip curled up a little. Then, before I knew it, there he was, Allen Price's dick hanging out of the zipper under the bunched-up waist of his corduroys. His dick was really white, like the rest of him, and big. Well, not big. For Allen Price, big. I mean, you'd think he'd have a real tiny one. Then his white dick started peeing.

For a moment, I was a little amazed so I just watched the yellow pee from his dick dribble out and then up full force into what was in the bucket. I didn't know what to do. I just knew I couldn't let Puke Price get the best of me, so I undid my Levi's buttons and pulled my cock out.

My cock is a lot like me. It doesn't do what it's told right off. I have to wait. And there's no telling sometimes how long I have to wait, so I just wait.

Allen's dick quit peeing in spurts. He left it hanging out when he was done. That's when Allen's dick started getting bigger and bigger and pinker and poking out right at me.

What you doing, Price? I said.

Allen said: What
you
doing?

I followed Allen's pale eyes down to my own cock hanging out. It should have been no surprise, but it was a surprise. My cock was sticking straight out too. That's when Allen suggested we put another one of our body fluids into what was in the bucket, but the thought of that, the thought of jacking off with Puke Price into what was in the bucket, was just too gross, so I quick put my cock in my pants, turned around, and walked out of the barn, across the yard, and into the house. Allen zipped up right behind me. The screen door slammed.

Mom was in the kitchen, hair flying out, bent over some bowl. The kitchen smelled good.

Oatmeal cookies? I said.

Peanut butter, she said. Go wash your hands first.

After our peanut butter cookies and glasses of milk and before Allen went home with his dad, Allen and I crawled up the ladder to the
granaries, then jumped down between the granaries into the secret place shaped like an hourglass.

I reached in my pocket and pulled out two Viceroys. Allen acted like it was every day that he and I smoked cigarettes. He leaned back against the corrugated-steel granary, inhaled, and didn't cough.

Out of the blue, Allen had a book in his hands. I don't know where the book came from, and I don't remember it before that moment when I was looking at it there in his hands.

It was a Nancy Drew mystery.
The Mystery of the Brass-bound Trunk.
Allen handed me the book.

Here, Rig, he said. Take a look at my book.

The book was blue-green and the regular size of a Nancy Drew mystery. It was usually in the upper right-hand corner of his desk at Saint Joseph's School. Allen always kept the book next to the inkwell, in the upper right-hand corner of his desk.

I read this one, I said. But it's the only one I've read.

I like the Bowery Boys better, I said.

Holding a cigarette for a long time in your mouth makes you cough. I was coughing. Allen took a drag on the Viceroy like he'd been smoking all his life.

Do you notice anything unusual about the book? he asked.

I turned the book around, flipped it over, patted my hand against the cover.

No, I said. It's just a Nancy Drew mystery book.

Allen pulled his legs in and sat like meditating Indians do. Then before I knew it, Allen raised his chin and was speaking right into my face. Cigarette smoke and fried bologna breath going up my nostrils.

If I told you a secret, Allen said, would you promise not to tell?

Something in his right cheek started twitching.

Sure, I said.

Promise? he said. I'll show you a secret, but you have to promise.

I sucked the smoke into my lungs, let the smoke stay inside for a while, then spit the smoke out at the same time I said: Promise.

Allen stubbed out his Viceroy onto the steel-plate floor.

Say the whole thing, Allen said.

What? I said.

Say: I promise I won't tell anyone your secret, Allen said.

A gust of wind blew up and into between the granaries. I stubbed my cigarette out, kept the filter, picked up Allen's, stubbed out his filter too.

I promise I won't tell anyone your secret, I said.

And that you won't call me Puke anymore, Allen said.

The filters went into my shirt pocket.

I won't call you Puke anymore, I said.

Promise, Allen said.

I promise I won't call you Puke anymore, I said.

Allen set the book on his crossed legs. He opened the book and turned the pages of the book, one by one, slowly, slowly.

Page forty-two, Allen said.

Allen opened the book for me to see.

The book had been hollowed out where the words had been on the pages. Only the borders of the pages where there were no words was left, and those pages were glued together. Inside in the secret carved-out hollow space of the book, there were three glass radio tubes. One short one and two long ones with skinny red parts in the filaments.

Allen's hands shook a little when he closed the book. What he said next, he said real slow.

Now remember, Rig, Allen said. You made a promise. You promised me you wouldn't tell.

There's one more thing the universe conspired on. Mom and I almost got ourselves killed by a naked man. It happened on the last of the nine Tuesdays. We were in the Buick on our way to church. It was raining. Rain like you never see in Idaho, coming down in buckets. The swipe of the windshield wipers were back and forth, back and forth, fast as they could go, but still the wipers weren't fast enough. Soon as the wipers swiped, for a moment it was clear and you could see the road, but then, splash, it was just like we were driving underwater.

Outside my window, past the barrow pit, past the barbwire fences, the harrowed spring fields were expanses of dark brown dirt filled with shiny puddles of water. Rain splashing up on the puddles of water.

It was weird too because over there where the sun was setting it wasn't raining. Down low in the west the sky was blue, then yellow, then gold, then pink. Sun shining through all the rain coming down made each raindrop into a tiny ball of light.

There we were, Mom Klusener and Rigby John in our Buick Special speeding eighty miles an hour through a mystery shower of light and shiny rain. When we got to the cottonwoods on Philbin Road, the
rain let up some, but the cottonwoods, just newly leafed out, had more of a surprise for us. The line of cottonwoods, big old grandpa trees, so big around three people with their arms out couldn't circle one, one grandpa after another after another alongside the road reaching up their big arms, lumpy, graceful, fifty feet and higher into the sky, the rain shiny-slick on the bark, the yellow-gold sunset light against the wet. Not just the trees. Everything was glowing. The yellow-gold light onto the Buick, the road in front of us, the fat drops slow falling through the air from the leaves of the cottonwoods, onto the road, onto the blue hood of the Buick, onto the windshield.

The glass of the windshield glowed, the angle of the wipers, inside the Buick even my hands were glowing yellow-gold. Mom's face, those little lines around her lips, the way she held her chin up and gritted her teeth, the light on Mom's face. Everything slowed down so slow, one long breath in and out. Mom's almond-shaped hazel eyes, one pitched south, the other east, and my eyes. My eyes looking into her eyes, that moment. Mom and I, we weren't us, and nothing was familiar. Mom and I were just there, alive and breathing in the rain and glowing light.

Just in time, Mom hit the brakes and cranked the steering wheel. Directly in front of us, the old gray '49 Ford was parked just barely off the road. All around my ears was a loud screech. My right hand held hard onto the armrest of the door. Both of Mom's arms were on the steering wheel. Her hair was flying up. We were spinning. The sun was gone, and it was gray, and outside the windows of the Buick the world was spinning. We spun around for a long time. At least while we were spinning, it was a long time. Now when I look back, I wish the spinning had lasted longer. God spins you around like that only once in a while.

The Buick stopped in the middle of the road, pointing toward town the way it was supposed to be pointing. The world was back in place, regular, the way it was supposed to be. My hand wouldn't let go of the armrest. Mom's hands were shaking so bad, she couldn't get her purse open. When she finally got it open, she pulled out her rosary. Her fingers went straight to the crucifix, then started down the beads.

But Mom wasn't praying. She was cussing a blue streak.

Her hand, her cut-to-the-quick nails, middle finger, index, and thumb, sliding the beads.

Goddamn. Son of a bitch. Asshole. Bastard.

All of them. She was saying all of the cuss words.

I was waiting for her to say
fuck
or
cunt
or
cocksucker,
but she didn't say any of those.

But she did say a word I'd never heard her say before.

To the man standing out in the harrowed field, under the cottonwoods. The driver of the '49 Ford. The man whose clothes hung out of the driver's side window. The naked man in the rain. My first time, my first naked man. The long smooth muscle of him, his hairy chest, his hairline down his belly to the dark brown-black between his legs. His brown and amber glow in the last spot of sunlight, his hands held up out in front of him, cupped. 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.

Mom's fingers were on the bead of the first mystery of the rosary.

Goddamn Indians, Mom said. Drunken bunch of no-good bastards. A menace to society. Especially that son of a bitch George Serano.

Mom's left hand quick rolled down her window. She stuck her head out, red lipstick lips, mouth pointed up to sky.

Goddamn Indian! she screamed. Where'd you learn to drive!

I'm calling the sheriff! she screamed.

Injun George, you better get your pants on fast!

Disgusting goddamn drunk, Mom yelled.

And then she said it. The word I'd heard so many times before but never heard from her.

Queer, she said. You goddamn queer. Those Indians and their goddamn queers.

I heard this story about the Pope. When the Pope is blessing the crowd, the people up front right up close to the Pope are happy they're up close, but they're also dodging around, trying to get away from something. What they are trying to get away from is the shadow of the Pope's hand. If the shadow of the Pope's hand falls on you, it's a curse. Sooner or later, no matter what you do, your fear catches up to you.

The Wednesday morning I won the altar boy contest, and was given the black crystal rosary that was blessed by the Vatican, the shadow fell on me.

The sign of the cross and the morning prayer, Sister Barbara Ann
pointed the black grease pen to the box in the ninth week that was next to my name.

Class, she said. Take a look. See who loves the Virgin the most.

The winner! Sister Barbara Ann says. Rigby John Klusener!

From out of her top drawer, Sister Barbara Ann took out a red velvet box. She held the red velvet box up so the whole class could see, then slow walked down the aisle holding up the red velvet box.

Blessed by the Vatican, Sister Barbara Ann said.

Inside the box it was white shiny cloth. The rosary was curled onto itself, a shiny, black, beaded snake, the silver crucifix on top of the folds.

Hold the rosary up for everyone to see, Sister Barbara Ann said.