Now Is the Hour by Tom Spanbauer

Author:Tom Spanbauer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2008-06-05T07:00:00+00:00

PART III

Thunderbird

8 A Day in the Life

I HAD NO idea the events of the summer of my seventeenth year would blow my ass clean out of Bannock County, three hundred miles out of Pocatello, and I’d be out here on Highway 93, alone with the moon, my thumb stuck out, a full feeling in my soul, and my heart broke. So much happened in a year, too much to comprehend. It’s only just over a year ago Mom and I’d finished the novena for chrissakes. Then last summer, Flaco and Acho. Then Billie. Not to mention Sis’s wedding fiasco and Dad’s threat of divorce and Billie going off with Chuck diPietro.

Smoking marijuana.

That’s a lot. And it was nothing compared to what was about to come my way.

In the meantime things had settled down. All the shit people had been feeling got stuffed back in the closet, and everyone, as usual, was going about his business as if nothing was up. I was fine with that.

The only thing I knew for sure was it was haying time again. And this summer, it was even more hay than last summer. And this summer, no Flaco and Acho. This summer, the actual haying part wasn’t even going to be a family affair. Mom just flat-out said no. Sis was married and pregnant, and Dad always had some other damn business to do when it came to haying. So it was just going to be me and some hired man for both the haying and the hauling.

The first sign that things weren’t going according to plan was Dad announced we wouldn’t start haying on the Saturday, the day he’d planned. So I had a day off. Didn’t know what to do with myself. Then Sunday off too.

Sunday night after supper, when I got the water changed up in the pasture, when I came back into the house, no one was sitting in the love seat in front of the TV waiting for Bonanza.

Mom and Dad were in their bedroom with the door closed. That’d never happened in the daytime before, or even early evening. Inside in their bedroom you could hear them talking, sometimes talking loud, but not yelling.

I thought perhaps it was more divorce.

When the Bonanza music started, Dad came out of the bedroom. He sat down on the love seat alone. Pretty soon Mom came out. She went into the kitchen, made Dad some tea, and brought the cup of tea in with her and sat down.

It was an episode where the Cartwrights were having troubles with the local Indians. We just sat there, staring at the TV, Dad stirring and drinking his tea. I tried to get a sideways glance at Mom, but she was on the other side of Dad, so I couldn’t tell what was going on. Plus Mom was doing her disappearing act, and when she did her disappearing act, it was practically impossible to find her.

Only I could do it. But she and I had to be alone.

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