Kent Haruf - Benediction

There, Willa said. That’s better. Isn’t it.

The girl nodded and began to eat her French fries, picking them up one at a time and dipping the end in the ketchup and biting off the end and dipping it in again and eating the rest by small bites. The Johnsons watched her.

I’ve only used squirt bottles, Alice said. I used to help my mother fill the ketchup and mustard bottles and the salt and pepper shakers.

Your mother worked in a restaurant?

Yes. She always had me help her.

Do you have any pictures of her?

I do at Grandma’s. The girl looked around the room. She looked back at her plate. That old man’s dying like my mother did.

You mean Mr. Lewis, the man next door to you.

He’s got it all over him. My mother had it in her breast.

We heard about that. We’re very sorry.

Alice looked out the doorway and said, She didn’t have blond hair like that waitress.

Didn’t she?

She had brown hair like me.

Then she must have been a very pretty woman. I wish we had known her.

How does she get her hair that way? So puffy like that.

Well. She must blow-dry it and tease it and then pick it.

As they drove back to town in the car after lunch, Alice was looking out the side window at the trees and the houses going by. My mother said teasing your hair could damage it, she said.

ON THE PHONE Dad Lewis told Rudy and Bob to bring him the sales numbers in the morning this time since in the afternoons he wasn’t much good anymore, then he hung up and turned to Lorraine. Don’t you want to sit in with us so you can see for yourself what these store accounts look like?

Daddy, they don’t want me there.

How do you know that? It doesn’t matter what they want. If I tell them you’re sitting in, that’s what will happen.

I’m still trying to decide if I want to at all.

You have to make up your mind pretty soon. This isn’t going to go on forever, you know that. You can’t put it off much longer. If you don’t want to, I’ve got to do something else.

I know, Daddy.

So at midmorning the clerks came up on the porch and Rudy knocked quietly on the door. They removed their caps and Mary ushered them into the living room and served them coffee, and again they sat side by side on the couch as they had each time, as if they were attending a funeral service, and Dad was in his chair as always with a blanket over his knees and with his wood cane laid on the floor beside him.

Rudy was a little quick voluble middle-aged man, with a balding head, and Bob was tall and skinny and slow, with thick graying hair combed straight back. Rudy held the store accounts in a file on his lap.

You boys doing any good today? Dad said.

We’re doing pretty good, Rudy said. How about you, Dad? It seems like you’re looking a lot better.

Dad looked at him. Now that is bullshit and you know it.

Well, you don’t look too much on the worse side, Bob said.

Yeah. All right. He looked out the window and looked back. You want something to go with that coffee, you boys?

No thanks, Rudy said.

You, Bob?

No thank you, I don’t think so. It’s still pretty early in the morning.

All right then. Let’s see what you got there.

Rudy stood up and set the file in Dad’s lap and sat back down. Dad took out the reading glasses from his shirt pocket and fit the thin bows over his ears and studied the pages. The two men bent forward and sipped their coffee, watching him.

After a while Dad looked up. Any problem with any of this? he said.

No. Not to speak of.

Anything we do need to speak of, then?

No. Don’t believe so, Dad.

How many lawn mowers we sold this summer by now?

Ten, Rudy said. He looked at Bob. Wasn’t it?

That sounds about right.

Last summer we sold fifteen, Dad said.

Things have been slower this year, Rudy said.

Why’s that now?

They’re not building no new houses in town. That’s mainly it. That’s how I account for it.

What do you say, Bob?

It’s like what he said. And it’s this new mower we ordered in. It costs more.

It’s a better machine, Dad said.

Yeah. But it costs more.

Well yeah, it costs more, Bob. Goddamn it, it’s got to cost more.

Bob inspected his hands. People don’t like to spend too much money on a lawn mower.

All right, Bob. I take your point. Dad opened the file again. He found the line he was looking for. What about this accounts receivable? How come that’s still so high?

That’s old Miss Sprague, Rudy said.

What about her?

She bought that freezer.

I remember she bought it. She bought it before I got sick.

Well. She stopped paying anything on it.

Did you call her?

Yes sir. I called her. Called her two times.

Then did you go to see her?

I went.

Well. Why don’t you just go ahead and tell me, Rudy. This ain’t some kind of mystery, is it?

No, but it’s a bad mess, Dad. He stared across the room for a moment. I figure I can go over to her house and get it back if that’s what you want.

You mean repossess it.

Yes sir. Repossess it.

How come?

You ever been in her house?

About thirty years ago.

Well, I doubt she’s thrown anything away since then. Dad, it’s just an all-out bad situation. She sits in her rocking chair or walks up and down in that mess and confusion all day long. She’s left herself little narrow trails to walk in. And she’s put that freezer out on the back porch loaded up with things. It ain’t even food that she’s got inside. She’s put her old leftover bank papers and family letters and old yellowed newspapers in it. And she’s got it plugged in and turned on, keeping it running, keeping the papers cold. She showed me. She insisted on it. I didn’t want to look at it. I didn’t know what I’d see. Why hell. It just kind of made me feel sick to myself to see all those papers iced up like that. You want me to take her freezer back?

You think she’s lost her mind now? Is that it? Gone over the hill?

I guess that’s what it is. Or just pure old age.

You don’t think she’s going to pay.

I don’t think she can pay. It don’t look likely to me, Dad.

Well. We don’t want it back. We don’t ever want to have to take anything back.

She’s just all alone over there, is mostly what it is.

Nobody to take care of her? Nobody to talk to?

No sir. Not that I know of.

Well. We can’t take back her freezer. It’s like she had some idea but whatever it was she forgot it. Let her go. It’ll be laid onto bad debts, that’s all.

Yes. That’s the best way.

What else? Anything happening around town or out in the country?

You heard they started cutting wheat, Bob said.

They should. It’s almost the start of July.

You heard about that custom combiner from Texas.

I don’t know. I guess. You mean that fellow that claims when you cross into Oklahoma it makes you want to steal?

You heard his story about old Floyd.

I don’t guess I heard that.

Well, as he says, last year they come into this little town down in Oklahoma just before the Fourth of July and the hands, they all wanted a day off. He said he didn’t trust them but they’d been working pretty hard and deserved some vacation. All of them was pretty much a bunch of alkies, he said. Anyway so they was down there in this little place and he let them go for the one day like they asked. Then the next day when they come back one of the men isn’t with them. What happened to Floyd? he says.

Well, one of them says, he’s sort of scratching his foot in the dirt, I guess we lost old Floyd.

What do you mean you lost old Floyd?