Now Is the Hour (62 page)

No shit? George said.

It scared me how much I wanted to see George smile. No doubt about it, something was up.

My turn, I said.

And jumped into the hole.

No, George said, thanks. I need to keep moving.

George was moving. All over his whole body his muscles were twitching.

I put my hand on George's twitching shoulder.

How long does it last? I said. After you've quit drinking?

George's eyes looked away, looked down, looked at everything but me.

Days, weeks, George said. A lifetime.

But this shaking, I said.

George raised up his hands, looked at his hands.

Don't know, George said. I've never done this before. At least I've never seen myself do this.

In the hospital, he said. Was I shaking like this?

I didn't even stop to think.

Worse, I said. You were plumb loco. Screaming and crying.

George leaned back onto the side of the hole.

No wonder you hated me so much, George said.

Just the wind. Sand along the ground, the sound of sand. Behind George, a white-tailed rabbit jumped into a clearing. Jumped out.

The first time that afternoon we heard the thunder.

Did you bring some water? I said.

George didn't say anything for a while. Just stood leaning against the wall of the grave. His hands a hard grip on the shovel handle.

Then: It's in my backpack, George said.

Inside George's backpack, a green glass jug with
THUNDERBIRD
on it. The place next to the lip a round of glass where you could put your finger through. I unscrewed the lid, smelled inside. Tipped the jug up. It was water.

George took a long drink, water dribbling out the sides of his mouth. How many times I'd watched his Adam's apple go up and down.

When he was done, I took a drink. Cool water. I was praying to the cool water. Praying to Granny's ancestors. Praying to Thunderbird. Help me with my friend.

I wiped my mouth, screwed the lid back on, set the green Thunderbird jug under the sagebrush shade. I walked off a ways like I was going to pee.

My knees on the ground, I reached down, picked up a handful of earth. I made the sign of the cross.

Just in case.

If Thunderbird didn't listen, maybe someone else would.

Saint George, I said. Slayer of the dragons, I said. Pray for us.

George was still digging like a maniac when I got back to the hole.

George, I said, how about a cigarette?

George stopped shoveling. Stood up, arched his back, looked up at me. The level of the hole was at his armpits.

The way we were standing, I was about five feet taller than George.

George stuck the shovel blade into the earth, stepped on the shovel, pushed it down, then leaned over, scooped up the earth, threw the shovelful of earth onto the pile.

More thunder. Down so low I could feel thunder in my feet.

A long breath and really deep.

George! I said. Tell me where you're at.

The way George curled up his lip. How easy it was to fear this guy. George's shovel went flying out the hole.

Sit down, George said.

I, who have been accused of doing everything he is told, didn't sit down, just stood there.

Sit the fuck down! George yelled.

From inside the grave, George tapped his hand next to my feet, right at the edge of the hole. I sat so that my legs dangled into the grave.

George took off his hat, pulled my legs open, put his chest in, wrapped his arms around me, pulled me in close. I loved God so much right then.

George and I stayed like that for a long time. The shakes going through George's body into mine. Then George lifted up my T-shirt with his teeth, pressed his lips. His tongue and his lips on my belly. With every round of his tongue, I lost another breath.

The hairs on George's head were rough just like his whiskers. Sweat was pouring down my neck, down my chest, down my armpits.

When George finally spoke, his forehead was on my bellybutton, his chin and mouth lay on my crotch.

I'm not shaking just because I'm sober, George said. For the first time in my life I'm afraid.

It's Granny all right, George said. And it's this fucking hole we're digging. It's all the people and the funeral.

But really, George said, it's not knowing what's going to happen next.

I never used to worry about that, George said. I was cool. I was going along smoking and praying and trusting whatever the fuck happened next just happened.

I was sure of myself, George said. Didn't have a care. I knew what I
was doing. I was waiting for Thunderbird. Just me and the tumbling tumbleweeds.

But now that Thunderbird is here, George said, now that spirit is passing in and out of my heart, everything is different. Everything is so fucking.

Fragile, George said. I'm a wreck because of you.

Now that I love you, George said, there's so much to lose.

As soon as I woke up this morning, George said, I knew you and I would be alone out here. What joy, at first. Then I was terrified.

Rig, George said, I've never had sex sober. I've never had sex when I loved. And having sex with you will make it impossible, George said. Yet I know I got to leave.

Thunderbird gives you what you want, George said. My heart is pounding. I can't catch my breath. Thunderbird keeps passing and passing and passing through, and all I can do is tremble.

The tiniest things — clouds, spit, dirt — are little miracles.

Sometimes the world is so beautiful it hurts.

There are moments when I look at you I think I'm going to die.

Which makes it all the worse, George said.

You and I fucking won't be just sex, George said. You're like me. This will become your way of life.

It's a rat's ass, Rig, George said. A life I wouldn't wish on a dog.

Half of me wants to devour you, George said. The other half wants to run and hide. But I don't do either.

All I can do is shake, George said.

Come in my mouth, George says.

My Sunday shoes are off. George pulling off my socks. I unbutton my pants, zip down the zipper, George yanking at my pants. My T-shirt's over my head. George's T-shirt is over his head. My thumbs go inside my jockey shorts. When I sit back down, my bare ass is on the sandy dirt.

I don't close my eyes.

My cock goes into George's mouth. The world gets thick and full. My cock all the way down his throat, then back out, his lips and tongue on the very tip. His sucking makes the raindrops start. Bright sun on George's head, I hold his head, a crystal ball. The whiskers on his lips and chin. Rough and smooth, sun and rain. I press my ass into the earth.

I arch my back, my legs go round and cross behind his head. Slow, it's so slow, my heartbeat, my breath, the thunder roll, his tongue round and round, the lightning that cracks the sky.

I'm not sure I should tell him. What's coming from down low and up. And how much and how fast.

Then the earth moves, and I look, and I'm not on the earth, I'm in the air on George's shoulders. My hands, which have held his head so tight, fly out like a big bird flying. A screaming bird. The way my hips pump George's face pushes him against the side. I go flying, flying to the south, and land in the mound of earth. The dirt is dark wet just on the surface. I'm covered with mud. I let myself roll and roll and fall into the grave on top of George.

George's skin is wet, his face, his head. I'm laughing so hard. That strange sound coming up. I put my mouth to George's mouth and put my laugh into him. I'm straddling his chest and when I look down, my cock is still dripping. Behind my cock, behind my balls, George's cock is big and hard and pointing at my ass. I know it will hurt, and I want it to hurt, and I put his cock head right there inside and push.

Maybe it's the mud and rain. George's cock goes in steady, slow, inside all the way. The bird is a screaming bird again. I slap George hard across the face, one cheek then the next. He's pushing hard and hard and hard. Fire in the ass. Rain on my face. My fingers scrape mud along the walls. Nothing better in the world than digging yourself a hole.

George's face is wild and open and full of joy and free. He's almost smiling.

I can feel him inside the pulse that makes his body jerk.

Just knowing George is coming, I start coming too. One long stream out of my cock that shoots up and splats against his neck.

Finally, I've nailed his Adam's apple.

In the bottom of a grave, in an inch of water, in a puddle of mud. Some of the mud smells like shit. The rain coming down is soft like the whole world is soft. Arms and legs and arms and legs. My hands cup George's balls. There's nothing in between. George and I are eye to eye.

Alone at last, George says.

And we're not baling hay, I say.

We're fucking, not fighting, George says.

Make love, not war, I say.

Solitary warriors of love, George says.

All these summer storms, I say.

Thunderbird ain't through with us yet, George says.

What's going to be left of us when he's through? I say.

An eye is opened that now must look, George says.

You really do have to go, don't you? I say. There's nothing left here for you now.

Then: Me too, I say.

But where can we go now? George says. Now that we are here?

Thunder and lightning all around. George and I stuck together in the bottom of a grave. Only our breaths in and out.

Your father in Apacheland? I say. Or you could visit Italy and your mother?

And what about you? George says.

I lay my head back, try to keep my eyes open as the rain hits my eyes.

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

I expected the funeral to be wild with Indians in traditional outfits, singing and dancing the hoop dance and banging the drum. But it wasn't anything like that. Two guys walked up to Granny's casket and closed it, with Granny and everything of hers in it. How simple it was to close and lock the lid. Took my breath away.

Matthew Owlfeather, smiling with his one tooth, lit some white sage and a cedar branch. He lifted his face to the sky, held his arms out wide. The song he sang was one more human breath to breathe through the cedar boughs of Granny's ancestor tree. Sweet and sad. Above, the sky was big with silver and white billowing clouds. On the undersides of the clouds, strips of yellow. Light rain on and off. Every once in a while, sun poking through.

All along Sheepskin Road, a line of cars parked. Maybe a hundred people standing around in Sandy Hill Cemetery. Granny's pine box was in the back of a new yellow Ford pickup. The pickup pulled into Sandy Hill Cemetery, made a three-point turn, then backed up to the grave. George pulled the tailgate down, and he and five other men pulled the pine box off the pickup, carried the pine box to the grave.
Lowered the pine box down with ropes. The hole was just big enough for Granny's box. Room to spare all the way around.

Then another pine box, low and square, an old yellow dog named Bonanza in the box, set on top of Granny at her feet.

When we threw the earth into the grave onto the pine boxes, I couldn't help but think of Granny smiling down there where George and I had fucked. All the life and love and sweat and tears and come inside the hole.

My wish was for a resting place like that.

Back at Granny's house, the giveaway was just that. Every pot and pan of Granny's, her coffeepot, the pewter cups, every stick of furniture — her bed, her box spring and mattress, her sheets, her pillows, her table and chairs, her sewing machine, the picture of the flowers, the armoire, all the linens and blankets in the armoire, Granny's trunk, all the Pendleton blankets in the trunk. Bonanza's Pendleton blanket. The kerosene lamp. Granny's new refrigerator. Her green enamel Majestic stove. The curtains on the windows, the curtains under the counter of the sink. George's bed, his dresser, the round mirror on his wall. The blue glass ashtray.

The chickens, the eggs, Granny's two bales of straw, the porcelain pans hanging on the barn.

Everything. Even the two light bulbs.

The tipi was dismantled, the canvas rolled up, the poles stacked onto a pickup, hauled away.

As people left, taking with them Granny's worldly goods, George stood where the tipi had set, next to the smoldering fire. In his hands, a big roll of dollar bills. He peeled off a dollar bill for every person. George saved the last dollar bill for me.

By sunset it was just me and George in Granny's empty house. The light through the windows on the shiny floor. The places where her pictures had hung. The stovepipe, crooked, hanging down. The scrapes on the floor where the table and the chairs had sat. The four dents that had been her bed.

George walked through the rooms, close along the walls. He touched everything he could. When he got to the electrical box next to the front door, George opened the metal door, reached in, and unscrewed the fuse. He put the fuse in his pocket, then closed the metal door.

Then out of nowhere.

Would you get the broom for me? George said.

The broom? I said. There's nothing left.

It's in the back of your pickup, George said.

In the back of the pickup, an old broom, its bristles worn down to a fist. And a suitcase. One of those old kinds of suitcases, leather, that look like a valise.

George swept the house, every corner. The little pile of dust he swept up, we picked up with our hands. Carried the dust out to the smoldering fire, threw the dust onto the fire.

We made sure all the doors and windows were open. In the middle of Granny's room, George took my hand. His hands weren't shaking. George in his Italian suit, his white shirt, his Italian shoes, and cotton socks, the red tie tied around his bristly head.

I took my porkpie hat off. Adjusted my red tie. My hair was bristly too. My Sunday shoes were scuffed, my suit pants were bagging out, the suit jacket wrinkled, the burned iron spot on the collar of my white shirt. Underneath, my crusty shorts and a three-or four-day-old T-shirt. I was ripe all right, but not the worse for wear.