Now Is the Hour (23 page)

They made Puke Price look like Steve McQueen.

Thindy and Cricket were what everybody who was anybody in Pocatello steered clear of, never spoke to, wouldn't be caught dead with, who nobody knew the real names of, and knew only either as the Slit Sisters, or by their particular names of Sewage and Slut.

For the longest time, I called them the Slip Sisters. Then Sis made fun of me and told me it was Slit, you dumb shit. And I said, What is slit? And Sis told me.

One story goes, Sewage fucked Scardino in the back seat of his '59 El Camino in the Dead Steer Drive-In on a Saturday night while a group of boys stood around the car watching.

In another story, Slut took on a whole fraternity at Idaho State University, Phi Sigma Epsilon, doggy-style, up on Pocatello Creek.

And not only were these girls nasty. They were ugly, and they were weird. Sewage wore high heels and ankle socks and nylons with a seam in them and big full skirts with lots of petticoats, red petticoats. Slut always tried to look like Sewage, or maybe it was the other way around, so that was pretty much how Slut dressed too. The differnce between them was Sewage wore cat's-eye glasses and had long brown hair that came down in ringlets, and Slut was blond, with hair cut short. She looked like a boy who pierced her ears.

That Sunday, Thindy white, Cricket light blue, in Peter Pan collars and big, wide, white shiny belts that looked like marshmallows with gold buckles, and the both of them with those little shell sweaters with beads on the shoulders and down the fronts, came around the blue spruce, stopped in their tracks, and took a good long look at me.

The wind was blowing Thindy's long brown hair, but Cricket didn't have to worry because she didn't have any hair. Necklaces, charms on the necklaces, and Thindy with her cat's-eye glasses with rhinestones at the tips. Cricket with tiny gold loops punctured into the flesh of her ears.

There was a moment there when all there was in the world was wind and sun and the scratching of petticoats against nylon hose.

Then Slut, I mean Cricket, shaking her head so her earrings shimmered, said: Hello there, cute boy, she said. What is
your
name?

Her earrings went right into her earlobes. I wondered if it hurt having pierced ears.

Rigby John, I said.

Cricket took a step toward me, but Tramp growled, and I moved one foot back and stood mostly on that foot.

I'm Cricket, Cricket said. This is Cindy.

Thindy.

We're looking for Flaco and Acho, Thindy said. Do they live here?

I pointed with my arm to the east, up past the wood granary, down the lane to the boxcars.

Just follow the lane, I said. When you get to the boxcars, turn left, then turn right after the cattle guard. Keep walking, and you'll see their house up by the feedlots.

From the windows I looked like I was doing what I was doing: talking to two girls, pointing, but what I was really doing was trying to figure out a way I could explain to my mother and father what the Slit Sisters were doing in our front yard.

The long walk back into the house, up the stairs. I put my hand around the kitchen doorknob, turned. My body slipped through the door, and the kitchen door closed behind me.

Behind me the Slit Sisters, in front of me the Inquisition.

It was the first time ever I decided to lie to Mom and Dad, and since it was my first time, I decided it had better be fucking good.

They're missionaries with some church, I said. They want to help Mexicans.

Mom's almond-shaped hazel eyes looked over her glasses at me. The wrinkles that started up her forehead.

Dad was glaring too like a Hereford steer. Drut.

I didn't even look at Sis. Sis was way too much to look at.

First Church of God in Christ or something like that, I said, Baptists who think Mexicans are equal and want to convert them.

Sis spun around so fast I thought she'd fall over. She was out of the kitchen in a split second.

There I stood on a blue tile. Mom mostly on a white tile, Dad on a white tile. The light coming in the window made her hair look really gray.

Baptists? Dad said. What are Baptists doing in this country?

That's when Mom started.

I've told you some of the things that I could make Mom do. Well, there were some things she could make me do too. And she started to do one of those things she can make me do right then.

The eyes, always the eyes. It's like she turns a huge floodlight behind them on, and in the floodlight you disappear, and all that's left of you is the big fat lie you're telling.

But inside me was some kind of solid. On my own two feet. I wasn't alone anymore. I had two best friends.

They're Baptists, I said.

Religious people, I said.

Missionaries, I said.

They want to talk to the Mexicans about God, I said.

In the kitchen, everything was clean, clean and scrubbed and swept and shining with light bouncing off because everything was so clean.

The spotlight behind Mom's eyes had me, the deer in her headlights.

I remembered to breathe. Flaco had called me
negro.
Flaco and Acho had rubbed my shoulders and my back the night before.

It was a standoff. Me in my blue square tile and my big fat lie, and Mom in her white square tile with her floodlight.

In a science-fiction movie, this part is where all the test tubes start buzzing and foaming and blowing up.

All that was in the room was the cleanliness next to godliness, the floodlight, and the breath in, the breath out, of me.

Who knows how long I stood there. A month of Sundays. Till hell froze over. From here to eternity.

But in the end, I won. Breathing and a little help from my friends made me win. Mom's almond-shaped hazel eyes couldn't see through me to the big fat lie anymore. I'd broken the spell. Something in me loved God so much right then.

I let out my breath and stepped off my blue tile and walked to the kitchen door.

Where are you going? Mom said.

To feed the chickens, I said.

You stay away from those Baptist girls, Mom said, you hear?

I will, I said. I'm just going to the barn.

I closed the kitchen door behind me, not hard, not soft, just regular
like this was just a regular day and I was shutting the kitchen door. I touched my shirt pocket and touched a Viceroy. Touched my Levi's pocket and touched the matches.

Up on top of the steel granaries, where I'd read all of Steinbeck, I lit the Viceroy. From up there I could see just about everything. I could see the spud cellar, the pigpens, the boxcars, and the grain elevator. There was the lane that connected us with the rest of yellow Bannock County. I could see the light pole. Where the earth rises up and the arc of the reservation begins. I could see the Mexican house. The two girls at the Mexican house and the two boys. I could see as two girls and two boys walked to the straw stack, climbed the straw stack. I saw the two girls and the two boys sit down in the spread straw. Then after a while, I couldn't see anything, just dark spots in the bright afternoon in the spread straw on top of the straw stacks, fucking.

The Slit Sisters didn't come back through the yard until ten o'clock at night. Tramp started barking, and all the lights in the house went on.

Dad was in his light blue pajamas with the dark blue buttons. Mom was in her pink bathrobe, cold cream on her face, her glasses off.

I cracked the door to my bedroom. Mom was standing in a white tile, and Dad was standing in a white tile. Both of them were staring out the window.

Baptists, my ass, Mom said.

Then Mom went around into the front room and opened the front door. From the front porch, Mom hollered out: You two little bitches stay away from my house! We don't want your kind on our property!

Then she slammed the door, came around from the front room, and headed straight for my door. I closed the door quick, ran and jumped in bed, pretended like I was sleeping.

The light from the kitchen when she opened the door went up against my bedroom wall. Mom's shadow, hair flying around her head inside the light on the wall.

Rigby John, she said. Her voice was high and too loud and a little crazy.

Don't ever let me catch you coming anywhere near those girls ever again, she said. There'll be hell to pay if you do.

Mom slammed the door and where her shadow had been on the wall it was dark. But her shadow was still there on my wall, inside the
dark on the wall. All night long, her shadow on the wall, hair flying all around, a shadow inside a shadow, always there on my wall.

I forget just how long it was before the Slit Sisters came walking back into the yard. Two weeks later, maybe three. I was putting gas into the pickup from the gas pump. It was about four in the afternoon. Dad was combining wheat, Mom was down with one of her migraines, and it was time for me to feed hay to the Herefords up in the feedlot.

I didn't see Thindy and Cricket until they were standing right behind me. In fact, I jumped and made a little scream when Cricket spoke. Damn near dropped the gas nozzle. It could have been a real embarrassing disaster.

Hello there, Rigby John, Thindy said. What ya doing?

They pretty much had on the same getups as they had on the last time. High heels and ankle socks, square dance skirts poking way out with all those petticoats underneath. The wide white marshmallow belts.

I'm just putting gas in the pickup, I said.

Duh.

Right then, I know, my face looked just like a Hereford cow's.

Drut.

Where ya going to drive that pickup when you get done putting gas in it? Cricket said.

I knew what was coming, but I couldn't stop it.

I'm driving up to the feedlot, I said.

Next to Flaco and Acho's house? Cricket said.

Yes, I said.

Thindy puckered her lips and poked her shoulders up.

Could you please give us a ride? Thindy said. These rocks hurt our feet in these shoes.

I looked down at their high-heel shoes with the holes in the toes and the ankle socks. I looked over at the house. I looked over at the barn. I looked all around the yard.

Pleee-eease! Thindy and Cricket said.

After all, it was the Christian thing to do.

Inside the cab of the pickup, Thindy and Cricket smelled good. They didn't seem at all like the Slit Sisters or Sewage and Slut doing it doggy-style. They smelled good, and they were laughing, and the skin on their necks was smooth.

I started the pickup. Thindy and Cricket were watching to see how well I could drive. I put the clutch in and shifted into reverse, let the clutch out real smooth.

Oh! Thindy said.

Oooh! Cricket said.

Then I put on the brake, put in the clutch, and shifted into first gear, no problem. I let the clutch out, turned the steering wheel, and there wasn't even the slightest jerk.

That's the way we were, Thindy, Cricket, and I, driving slow, inside the pickup, smelling good, the soft white skin on Thindy's neck, on Cricket's. Cricket's pierced ears looked cool. The round piece of gold just went right into her earlobe, no blood or anything. We hit the bump just down from the gas pump and the bump made the flesh of these girls bounce. Their breasts bounced, and because of the bump and the bouncing, the breasts bouncing, we all laughed, and because we laughed I started to tell them that Flaco and Acho were my best friends ever.

That's when the pickup door opened. It was Mom, and she had her glasses on, her eyes, one pitched south, the other east. Mom grabbed me by the hair and pulled my hair, pulled me by the hair out of the moving pickup. She was slapping me in the face and calling me names. The pickup went rolling and smacked right into the side of the machine shop and stalled. Thindy and Cricket were screaming. I think they were screaming. When I look back on that day, I can say they were screaming, but I really don't know for sure. All I remember is the slaps to my face, on my head, against my ears.

I think Thindy or Cricket said something to Mom. Said she was a crazy woman. I think Mom yelled at them to leave. Called them sluts, dirty bitches. But I really don't remember. It's only looking back that I remember that part, so that part I could be making up.

What I remember, though, besides the slaps on my face, was what my mother called me that day.

My mother put her forehead against my forehead, put her almond-shaped hazel eyes straight into my eyes.

That's when she said it. Something she said I will never forget.

You spineless ass, my mother said.

Spineless ass. In front of those girls, my mother called me a spine less ass.

There was a big hullabaloo after that. Lots of doors slamming and cupboards slamming and yelling and righteous indignation. I'd never seen Mom so nuts. Even Dad didn't understand what was going on with her. I mean, Dad never did understand what was going on with her, but he never let us see that. This time, though, he stared at her like Sis and I stared at her, like she was some wild woman.

That evening after supper, Mom walked up to the sewing machine, her Singer sewing machine that was a piece of furniture in the front room. She walked right up to that sewing machine, squatted down, and put her hands under the wood box of the sewing machine, and lifted. She lifted and lifted and then just heaved that thing over her head.

Singer sewing machine a big pile of kindling with a Singer sewing machine stuck up in the middle of it in the middle of the front-room floor in no time.

Finally, Dad drove up to the Mexican house.

When Dad came back, he sat at the supper table, under the bright overhead light, in his chair at the end of the table and told Mom, Sis, and me all he'd said to Flaco and Acho and their father and their mother and sisters and brothers.

The sunburn line on his forehead. Hat hair. The sideburns next to his ears going gray. His big hands, the black hairs on them, fingers spread out flat on the oilcloth tablecloth.

By sundown tonight, I told 'em, Dad said. Said they were an abomination to our good Christian values. We're good Catholics, I said. I said, We can't have no midnight shenanigans go on around here. I told them, This is our home, Dad said. And you have to show us some respect.