Kent Haruf - Eventide

Hoyt was still smoking his cigarette. Betty, he said, get your uncle a ashtray. I wouldn’t want to dirty your nice floor.

We don’t have any. Nobody ever smokes in here.

They don’t? He stared at her, then stood up and ran water from the faucet onto his cigarette and dropped it in the sink among the dirty dishes. He sat down again and sighed, rubbing his eyes elaborately. Well, I guess you heard, he said.

About what? Luther said. We didn’t hear anything.

You didn’t hear I lost my job? That son of a bitch out to the dairy laid me off two weeks ago. And that cow wasn’t even marked good. There’s suppose to be orange crayon smeared on her bag. How was I expected to remember she was sick? So I milked her into the tank like you’re suppose to, and the son of a bitch fired me. Then this morning that other son of a bitch over to the apartment house kicked me out.

What happened with him? Luther said.

Nothing. Maybe I was a day or two behind on the rent, but I was about sick of his shit anyway. And he knows what he can do with that goddamn apartment of his. Hoyt looked at them. They were turned toward him, watching him like oversized children. So what do you think about all that? he said.

I think it’s too bad, Betty said. They shouldn’t of treated you that way.

No sir, Luther said. That ain’t right for people to treat you like that.

Hoyt waved his hand. I know all that, he said. I’m not talking about that. I’ll take care of his fat ass one of these days. And he knows it. That much is understood. What I’m talking about is this here. I want to make you a proposition. I’ll come over here and move in with you two, and I’ll pay you some rent while I get on my feet. It’ll be good for all of us. That’s what I’m talking about.

Luther and Betty glanced at each other over their lunchtime dishes. Outside, the wind was shaking the trailer each time it gusted up.

Go ahead, Hoyt said. Feel free to say something. It’s not that difficult.

I don’t know, Betty said. We only got three bedrooms. Joy Rae and Richie sleeps in their own rooms.

They got to have their own rooms, Luther said. And we got ours. We ain’t got no other space.

Just a minute now, Hoyt said. Think about what you’re saying. Why can’t one of them move in with the other one? What’s wrong with that idea? They’re just little kids.

I don’t know, Betty said. She looked about the room as though she’d misplaced something.

What would your mom say? Hoyt said. You not wanting to take in her own brother, not inviting him to come in out of the cold when he needed some help. What do you think she’d say to that?

It ain’t very cold out right now, Betty said.

Are you trying to be smart? That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about you letting me move in here.

Well, we want to help you, she said. It’s just— She gestured vaguely with her hands.

I’ll tell you what, Hoyt said. At least let me take a look. Let’s see what we’re talking about here. There’s no harm in looking, is there?

Abruptly he stood up. They traded glances and followed him down the hallway past the bathroom. Hoyt looked into the bedrooms as he passed, first Luther and Betty’s bedroom, then Richie’s, before coming to a closed door at the end of the hall; he pushed the door open with his foot and walked into Joy Rae’s room. In all the house it alone was neat and clean. The single narrow bed against the wall. A wooden dresser draped with a thin pink scarf. A meager box of jewelry and a brush and comb displayed over the scarf. The faded oval rug on the floor next to the bed.

This here’ll do, he said. At least it’s cleaned up. She can move in with her brother and I’ll stay in here.

Oh, I don’t know about that, Betty said, standing behind him in the doorway.

It’s just for a little while. Till I get going again. Where’s your charity? Don’t you have no heart?

I got my kids to think about too.

How is me moving in here going to hurt your kids?

Joy Rae fixed it up all by herself.

All right, he said. I’m your uncle, but if you don’t want me moving in all you got to do is say get out. I’m not stupid.

I don’t know what to say, she said. Luther, you say something.

Luther looked up the hallway. Well honey, Uncle Hoyt says it’s just for a little while. He lost his own apartment. He ain’t got no other place to go. Seems like we could help him out a little bit.

There, Hoyt said. That’s somebody that cares.

I know one thing, Betty said. Joy Rae isn’t going to like it.

THEY TOLD HER OF THESE NEW ARRANGEMENTS WHEN SHE got home from school that day, and she went immediately to her room and shut the door and lay on the bed and cried bitterly. But that night, as ordered, she moved her things into Richie’s room and hung up her few dresses in the little closet and set out the box of cheap jewelry on the half of the dresser she’d claimed for herself, then picked up his shoes and toys and clothes and put them away.

When she got into bed that night it was too narrow for two of them, even as small and as thin as they were, and in the night after they’d gone to sleep Richie began to dream violently, thrashing in bed, and she was forced to wake him.

Quit your kicking. Quit it, Richie. It’s just a dream, so be quiet.

Then she looked up from the bed and saw her mother’s uncle standing in the doorway staring at them, only his face visible in the shadow. He was leaning against the door frame. She pretended to be asleep and watched him through the darkness, and she could smell him. He’d been out drinking. She had been sitting at the table after supper when he’d asked her father for five dollars. He couldn’t be expected to stay home at night, he’d said, he was still a young man and nobody was about to tie him down. Her father had looked suddenly afraid, and he’d glanced ceilingward for help but none had come, so he’d handed over five dollar bills out of his wallet. Now she kept watching him across the dark, and after a while he left the doorway and went down the hall to her room.

But even after he’d gone Joy Rae couldn’t fall asleep for an hour or more. Then she woke in the morning to discover she was sleeping in a wet bed. Her brother had wet himself in the night and her gown was soaked with it, her legs cold and damp. It made her want to cry. She got up and wiped at her hips and legs with a dirty tee-shirt and began dressing for school. She woke her brother. He whimpered and complained, standing beside the bed.

Hush up, she said.

She helped him skin off his wet underpants. He was shivering and there were goose bumps running down his legs.

We got to get ready for school. The bus is coming. Hush up that crying, you little baby. I’m the one ought to be crying.

FIRST THEY SET TO CLEANING IT, AS PEOPLE DO WHEN they move into a new house. They wanted it clean before they did anything else to it. They brought water from his grandfather’s house, carrying the bucket between them, their hands together on the wire bail, the water sloshing cold against their pants, and in the dark shed beside the alley they washed the dust off the single window and swept out the dirt and the trash with a short stub of a straw broom. Together they hauled out the pieces of scrap iron that were covered with dust and rolled out the whitewalled tire and pushed the old mower and the garden tiller under the mulberry bushes next to the Desoto. Then they swept the dark oily dirt floor a second time and sprinkled water in the corners and scrubbed down the walls of rough-sawn lumber. When they were finished the shed smelled clean, of damp earth and wet wood.

Then they began their search. In the afternoons after school and on succeeding Saturdays they collected things, foraging out into the alleys of Holt. At first they searched only the alleys of their own neighborhood, but after a few days they began to move into the alleys four and five blocks away.