Kent Haruf - Benediction

No, Mother.

At least you didn’t wait till you were this old.

Alene leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. We’re out here now, Mother.

Lorraine pushed off and swung her arms and swam a few strokes across the tank, the water was deep enough, and crossed to the water pipe. She stood up half out of the water gleaming wet and spun around making a wave with her cupped hands and then came swimming back. She stood up again. Then without a word Willa just lay out and began a surprising backstroke that made her appear to be a kind of delicate white bird in the water and went a little ways across the tank and stood up. Her hair had come loose from its pins and was long and full and shiny, then she floated back to them and stood again.

Your hair is so beautiful, Lorraine said.

Oh. Thank you. I’ve always been too vain about my hair. I’m afraid I still am.

It’s beautiful, Mother. I’ve always wished I had your hair instead of mine.

But you’ve always been so pretty, dear. So tall and graceful.

Oh no. That’s not true.

It is, dear.

Then Lorraine said, Alice, do you know how to swim?

No.

Can you float?

I don’t know how.

It’s time to learn. Come out here into the middle. Alene, will you help?

The two women held her as she lay back.

Now just breathe. And spread your arms out.

When she began to sink they lifted her up, and after a while she was able to stay up and they stepped back and she lay out on the water, half-submerged, her blue eyes open to the blue sky.

After a time they got out and sat in the lawn chairs, facing the sun. It was past middle of the afternoon now. The women put on their sunglasses and drank the chilled wine that had been set in the tank and gave Alice a little to taste. They sat naked, drying in the sun. Willa’s long white hair hung down over the chair back.

Then some of the black cows in the pasture began to come cautiously up to drink. The cattle snorted and switched their tails, looking at the women, until one of the older cows came up and halted and advanced and came on, still watching them, and stepped heavily up onto the concrete and shoved at the stock water with her black rubbery muzzle and drank and afterward stood dripping, looking at them, and drank again. Then the other cattle came up and drank, their young black calves with them.

The women and the girl watched one nearby cow with a calf beside her.

That calf will want to eat when they go back out to the pasture, Willa said. You know how they butt and pull on their mothers.

Yes, but it’s nice to nurse, Lorraine said. You feel the world might be all right then. And you can feel it down inside you too.

What if you had to be butted like they do? Willa said. What if you were a milk cow with that great bag hanging down? Think of that between your legs, the way milk cows have to trot with that full bag.

I know, Lorraine said. But think of a man washing your tits with warm soapy water, fondling you twice a day.

She and Alene laughed.

Or a woman, Alene said. Women milk cows too.

Or a woman, Lorraine said.

Now you’re going to embarrass Alice and me, Willa said.

Are you embarrassed, Alice?

No.

No. She’s not embarrassed.

I’m going to get back in, Alice said.

The women watched her move to the tank, this young thin quiet girl, naked out in the country in the broad daylight. The cows looked at her. She climbed into the tank and lay out flat and floated and paddled her feet and came to the other side and stood. A brief gust of wind rose up, the water spouted from the pipe, and she turned her head and drank.

The women climbed into the tank with her and squatted down and lay back and floated and stood streaming. Their faces and bodies shining. Later they got out and dried off and put on their clothes and carried the lawn chairs and the empty wine bottle and walked back through the corral and across the hot gravel drive to the house. Their hair was still damp. It felt heavy and cool on the backs of their necks.

TWO MONTHS AFTER Alene introduced the principal to her mother in a Denver restaurant, she was buying groceries on a Saturday morning in the little town where she taught school. She was standing in the produce section when a short black-haired woman in nice clothes came up to her and without warning reached up and slapped her in the face.

Wait! Alene said. What are you doing?

But she recognized the woman. She’d never met her before, but she’d seen her picture in the newspaper once, showing the principal with his wife and their two children.

The woman began to scream. You’re filthy! You’re just a whore! I won’t let him go! I won’t ever! She raised her hand again, but Alene caught her wrists and shoved her away. The woman fell back in her high-heeled shoes and good dress against the stand of oranges and knocked some of them rolling out across the floor.

Oh! You shoved me! You can’t do that.

People were watching them now. Housewives, old single men, the stockboy. The woman rushed at Alene and tried now to hit her with her purse, swinging it. Wait, Alene said. Stop it.

Oh, don’t speak to me. Whore!

Then the grocery manager came hurrying up. What’s going on here? What’s this?

She’s sleeping with my husband. She wants to steal him. She’s a whore.

Here now, he said. Stop this. Let me help you. He put his arm around her and she tried to slap him too, but he caught her arms and pinned them to her sides. Whoa, he said, let’s just go outside. Come with me.

He held her tight and half carried her out the door. Alene and the others watched them out in the parking lot. The manager opened the car door and she got in. She appeared to be calmer now, as if she suddenly were exhausted. He stood talking to her, and then he shut the car door, she started the engine and drove off. The manager came back in the store and walked up to Alene. Aren’t you a teacher in the grade school?

Yes.

What are you doing? he said and shook his head.

I’ll just go, Alene said. She left her grocery cart and went outside to her car into the cold day. She drove home and on the following Monday she returned to her classroom of young children. Everyone in town knew what had happened in the grocery store and nevertheless there she was, still teaching.

The principal of her school called her into the school office and said they could not have this behavior, she’d have to be on probation now, and one more thing like this, if anything happened again, they’d let her go. She was a good teacher, he said. They didn’t want to lose her. But they couldn’t have this.

In the other town the man, the principal, almost lost his job too. The district school board met with him in executive session in the school’s library. The board chairman, a retired insurance agent, said, In the name of Jesus, what were you thinking of? Didn’t you know you can’t do that?

Yes. I knew.

Then why did you?

Oh, we all know why, said one of the other board members, a young man. Why did you think you could get away with it? That’s what I want to know. I thought you grew up in a place like this.

Yes. It was about this size.

Then you would know you can’t do anything without everybody else in town hearing what happened before you even got home. Whether you broke your leg or your thumb or some woman’s heart on the other side of the county there.

I know that, the principal said.

So what were you thinking of? Tell us.

He didn’t answer. He looked around the room at them, in the school library with the reference books collecting dust on the shelves and the school librarian’s desk located in the place where she could keep watch on everything, and the bright posters on the walls.