Kent Haruf - Our Souls at Night

I don’t know.

This is Holt. This is how Holt looked back in the 1920s. Ninety years ago.

The boy looked up at her old thin wrinkled face ann Louis raised

In late July Ruth went to the bank on Main Street with another old lady who was still permitted to drive, and standing at the teller counter she took up the money she was withdrawing from savings, folded it into her purse and zipped the pocket and turned to leave, and turned halfway around toward the door and fell down and died. Just collapsed in a final frail bundle on the tiled bank floor and stopped breathing. They said afterward that she had probably stopped breathing before she even hit the floor. The other woman covered her mouth with her hand and began to cry. They called for the ambulance but she was long past saving. They didn’t bother taking her to the hospital. The coroner came to certify her death and they took her to the funeral home in town on Birch Street. Her body was cremated and there was a small funeral at the Presbyterian church twoem; margin-top: 3em; margin-bottom: 2em; text-t gravel road.

Addie said, After Connie’s death Carl wasn’t himself. He seemed all right on the outside when he was with other people away from home and at his office, but it changed him. He loved our daughter. More than me. More than Gene. He didn’t pay as much attention to Gene after that and when he did it was often critical, to correct him. Many times I talked to him about it and he said he would try to do better. But it was never the same and it affected Gene. I know it did. I tried to make up for that but that didn’t work either.

What about you and him? That must have changed too.

We stopped making love for a year after Connie’s death. He wasn’t interested. Then when he was interested again it wasn’t much good. It was more just physical than anything loving and emotional. After a year or so we stopped altogether.

When was that?

Ten years before he died.

Did you miss it?

Of course. I missed the cem; margin-top: 3em; margin-bottom: 2em; text-align: ir about his handloseness more. We weren’t at all close anymore. We were cordial and sort of formally pleasant and polite, but that was all.

I didn’t know any of this. I didn’t notice.

No, but how would you have noticed? In public we were kind, even affectionate. And we didn’t see you very much even if we were neighbors. But nobody knew really. I didn’t tell anyone and I’m sure Carl didn’t. Gene knew but he may have come to think that that’s the way it goes, how life is. That married people were that way to each other.

That seems pretty miserable to me.

Oh, it was bad. I tried talking but he wouldn’t talk. I tried coming to bed naked. Put on perfume. I even ordered skimpy little nightgowns from a catalog. He thought it was disgusting. He got rough, kind of mean, when we did make love, the few times we did. Of course it wasn’t love at all. He made me feel worse. I quit trying to fix things and we settled into our long polite and quiet life. I took Ge funeral and t

At midweek they packed Louis’s pickup and drove west up out of the plains toward the mountains, watching the mountains rise up higher as they got closer to the Front Range, the dark forested lower foothills and farther back the white peaks above tree line still with patches of snow even in July, and drove onto U.S. Highway 50 and went on through the few towns. They stopped in one of the towns for hamburgers and then drove up the highway through the Arkansas River canyon, the beautiful fast water, steep red jagged cliffs on each side, there were Rocky Mountain sheep along the road, all ewes with short sharp horns, and went on and then turned off toward North Fork Campground on County Road 240 and entered the national forest. There were not many people or campers in the campground. They got out and began to unload the pickup at a site near the creek. They could hear it running and rushing. The clear icy water, with brook trout holed up in the hollows below the rocks. There were tall fir trees and big ponderosas and aspen along the creek and back in the hillside. Tent and camper sites were marked off by timbers and there were picnic tables and firepit rings nearby.

We’ll look around after we get camp set up, Louis said.

The boy helped set up the tent where Louis said was a good flat smooth place that wasn’t too close to the fire ring. Louis showed him how to position the tent poles and stretch the guide ropes tight and peg them in the ground and how to fold back the window coverings and the door flap. They put their blowup mattresses and sleeping bags inside, Jamie and Bonny to sleep on one side, Addie and Louis on the other. Addie unzipped one of the bags and spread it out for herself and Louis and unzipped the other and laid it over the first sleeping bag, so they could have a wide comfortable bed together, and spread out another bag for Jamie.

Then the camp was set up and they went over to the creek and waded in the icy waters.

It’s too cold, Grandma.

It comes straight out of a snowbank, honey.

By now it was getting dark, long past suppertime. Louis and the boy hauled wood from the pickup since cutting any limbs or trees wasn’t permitted in the national forest. Jamie gathered up twigs and little dry branches from the ground and they laid a small fire inside the circle of rocks and propped a grate over it and Addie and the boy cooked hot dogs and canned beans in an iron frying pan and got out some raw carrots and chips. When the food was hot they sat down at the picnic table and ate and watched the fire.

You want to get some more wood? Louis said.

Jamie and the dog went out of the firelight to the pickup and the boy brought an armload of wood back.

Go ahead and lay some of it on, Louis said.

He put a piece of the wood on the fire, his arm stretched out, his eyes watering and blinking in the smoke. Then he sat down again. The air was cool and fresh, a mountain breeze blowing up. They didn’t talk but looked at the fire and at the stars just above the mountains. They could see the bare peak of Mount Shavano shining in the night sky to the north.

Then Louis took Jamie down along the creek and cut three green willow shoots and sharpened the ends and went back to the campfire. Your grandma has a surprise for you.

What is it?

Addie got out a bag of marshmallows and poked one over the sharp end of eaem; margin-top: 3em; margin-bottom: 2em; text-align: doinidbych of the sticks.

Hold it near the fire. Let it brown up and get soft.

He held it out and it flamed up at once.

Blow on it.

Addie showed him how to brown it slowly by turning the stick. They ate two or three each. Jamie’s mouth and hands got sticky with the sweet insides and blackened with marshmallow ash.

When they finished eating they put the food in the pickup cab for the night so it wouldn’t attract bears. Then Louis took Jamie to the campground toilet and went in with him with a flashlight.

Just do your business and come out, Louis said. We don’t have to linger in here. You want me to stay with you?

It stinks in here.

Louis pointed the flashlight down into the gaping dark hole of the tank.

Go ahead. I’m not leaving you.

Louis turned away and the boy pulled down his pants and sat on the seat with the open tank under him. He was afraid of it. When he was done Louis used the toilet and they went outside where the dog was waiting. They breathed again in the fresh air. They walked over and washed their hands and faces at the pump and went back to the tent.

It stinked in there, Grandma.

I know.

She got Jamie ready for bed in the sleeping bag with Bonny lying on the pillow beside him.