Kent Haruf - Eventide

They stood about in the kitchen watching him cook, and when he was finished at the stove they sat down at the table to eat. He carried the big heavy frying pan to the table and forked two hamburgers onto each plate, the meat was badly overcooked, black and hard as something poked out of a campfire. Then he set the pan on the stove and sat down. Go on ahead and eat, he said, unless somebody wants to pray. No one did. He looked around at them. What are you waiting on? Oh hell, I forgot to buy hamburger buns, didn’t I. Well shoot, he said. He got up and brought a sack of white bread to the table and sat down again. You boys can eat these hamburgers without buns, can’t you?

Yes sir.

Okay then. Let’s see if any of this is worth our attention.

They passed the dish of heated beans around the table and poured ketchup on the hamburgers. The ketchup soaked through and made pink circles on the bread. The bread turned soggy and came apart in their hands so that they had to lean over and eat above their plates. There was not much talking. The boys looked once at their father, and he nodded toward their plates and they ducked their heads and went on eating. When the beans came around again they each spooned out a second large portion. For dessert Raymond got down four coffee cups and opened a big can of grocery-store peaches and went around the table to each place and spooned out bright yellow quarters into each of the cups and poured out the syrup in equal quantities.

Meanwhile Guthrie was looking about the kitchen. There were pieces of machinery and bits of leather and old rusted buckles collected on the chairs and in the corners.

Raymond, he said, you ought to get out of the country now and again. Come into town, have a beer or something. You’re going to get too lonesome out here.

It does get kind of quiet sometimes, Raymond said.

You better drive into town one of these Saturday nights. Have a little fun for yourself.

Well, no. I can’t see what I’d do with myself in town.

You might be surprised, Guthrie said. You might find some manner of interesting trouble to get into.

It might be some kind of trouble I didn’t know how to get out of, Raymond said. What’d I do then?

AFTER LUNCH THEY WENT OUTSIDE AGAIN AND THE TWO boys mounted their horses and rode into the pasture among the cows and located the tall black cow and dropped a rope on her calf and dragged the stiff-legged calf back into the big pen with the rest. The cow made a run at them there, but they were able to turn her away and take the calf inside.

The cattle were all still bawling as before. They would go on bawling and milling for three days. Then the cows would grow hungry enough to move farther out into the pasture to graze and their bags would dry up. As for the calves, Raymond would have to fork out brome hay in the long row of feed bunks in the holding pen and bucket out ground corn on top of the hay, and he’d have to watch them carefully for a while or they might turn sick.

WHEN GUTHRIE AND THE BOYS DROVE OUT TO THE county road to return to Holt, they could still hear the cattle from a mile away.

They’re all right, aren’t they? Bobby said.

Yeah, they’re all right, Guthrie said. They’re going to have to be. It happens every year like this. I thought you knew that.

I never paid it any attention before, Bobby said. I never was a part of it before.

Those cows and heifers are already pregnant with their next year’s calves, Guthrie said. They’d have to wean these calves themselves if we didn’t do it for them. They’ve got to build up their strength for next year’s crop.

They make an awful lot of noise, Ike said. They don’t seem to like it much.

No, Guthrie said.

He looked at his sons riding beside him in the pickup, headed down the gravel road on this bright winter afternoon, the flat open country all around them gray and brown and very dry.

They never do like it, he said. I can’t imagine anything or anybody that would like it. But every living thing in this world gets weaned eventually.

THE RAILROAD PENSION CHECK HAD COME AND THE OLD man wanted to go out despite the bitter cold. The temperature had begun to drop every night into the teens and below. You don’t have to come, he said. I can manage without you.

You can’t go by yourself, DJ said. I’m coming with you.

He went back to his bedroom and got into heavier clothes and returned to the front room and took down his mackinaw and mittens from the plank closet in the corner and put them on and then stood at the door holding his stocking cap in his hand. You better dress warm, Grandpa. You remember last winter when you got frostbite.

Don’t you worry about that. I been out in more freezing weather than you ever heard of. Goddamn it, boy, I worked out in this cold all my life.

He put on his old heavy black coat and pulled a corduroy cap down over his white head, the flaps hanging loose beside his big ears. Then he slipped on leather mittens and looked around the room. Turn that light off.

I will, as soon as you go out. I’m waiting on you, DJ said. Have you got your check?

Course I got my check. It’s right here in my wallet. He patted the chest pocket of his overalls under the heavy coat. Let’s go, he said.

They stepped out and immediately the south wind blowing down on them was enough to take their breath away. Above the lights of town the sky was hard and clear. They walked along the street toward downtown. There was no traffic. The lights were on in Mary Wells’s house but all the blinds were pulled down tight. Patches of snow lay scattered in the yards and ruts of ice were hardened in the road.

At Main Street they turned south into the wind and walked along on the sidewalk. A car drove by, its exhaust as white and ragged as wood smoke, before the wind snatched it away. They crossed the railroad tracks and the red signal light shone at the west. The grain elevators loomed over them.

In Holt’s small business district their paired images walked beside them in the plateglass storefronts. The old man went limping bent over in his heavy coat, his head down, and the boy was a good deal shorter in the windows.

At the corner of Third Street they crossed Main and stepped into the tavern, entering the long hot smoky room with its clamor of loud talk and country music and pool games going on in the back and the television playing from the bracketed shelf above the bar. His grandfather peered about while he stood beside him, waiting. Old men were sitting against the wall at a round wooden table, and they went over there.

Who’s that you got with you? one of them said. Is that DJ? Cold enough for you, boy?

Yes sir. Just about. He took a chair from the next table and sat behind his grandfather.

Just about, he says. Hah.

Don’t tell me you walked over here, another old man said. Walt, you must of about froze your tail off coming down here.

I’ve seen colder, he said.

Everybody’s seen colder. I’m just saying it’s cold.

It’s December, ain’t it, the old man said. Now where’s that waitress? I need something to drink here. I want something to heat up my insides.

She’ll be here. Give her a minute.

Watch her when she comes over, said a red-faced man across the table.

Who is she?

Her name’s Tammy. She’s new.

Who is she?

Reuben DeBaca’s ex-wife from over by Norka. Look her over. Here she comes.

The barmaid came over to the table. She was blonde and good-looking, with wide hips and long legs. She had on tight faded jeans, a deliberate hole in the front of one thigh showing tanned skin underneath, and she wore a white low-cut blouse. When she bent forward to remove two empty glasses from the table, all the old men sitting there watched her closely. Didn’t you just come in? she said to the old man.