Kent Haruf - Eventide

Half an hour later a man in a blue Ford pickup stopped beside the road. The man leaned across and rolled down the window. Bud, where you headed to?

Denver, Hoyt said.

Well, get in here. You can ride as far as I’m going.

Hoyt climbed in and shut the door and they drove west toward town. The man glanced at him. What you gone and done to your face there?

Where?

Your nigh ear.

I wasn’t looking and snatched it on a tree limb.

Well. All right then. You got to watch that.

They drove on and passed through Holt and went west on US 34. The highway stretched out before them, lined on both sides by the shallow barrow ditches. Above the ditches the four-strand barbed-wire fences ran along beside the pastures in the flat sandy country, and above the fences the line of telephone poles rose up out of the ground like truncated trees strung together with black wire. Hoyt rode with him through Norka and as far as Brush. Then he got another ride and traveled on, headed west on a Monday morning in springtime.

IN SCHOOL THAT MORNING THE CHILDREN WERE DISCOVERED almost at once. One of the young girls in Joy Rae’s fifth-grade class, a girl who had been briefly interested in her weeks before when she had appeared at school with lipstick on her mouth, slipped up to the front of the room in the first hour of classes and addressed the teacher in a voice scarcely above a whisper. The teacher at her desk said: I can’t hear you, come here. What is it you want?

The girl leaned next to the woman’s head and whispered in her ear. The teacher studied her and turned to look out into the classroom at Joy Rae. Joy Rae was bent forward over her desktop. Go back to your seat, the teacher said.

The girl returned to her desk at the middle of the room and the teacher rose and walked as if on some routine inspection out among the rows of students, and stopped near Joy Rae and then caught her breath, raising her hand to her mouth, but collected herself immediately and led Joy Rae out into the hall and down to the nurse.

The little boy, her brother, was called in from his classroom.

Then, as before, against their will and despite their protestations they were examined in the nurse’s room. The boy’s pants were lowered, the girl’s dress was raised, and seeing what she saw this time the nurse said angrily: Oh Jesus Christ, where is Thy mercy, and left to bring the principal into the room, and the principal took one look and went back to his office and called the sheriff’s office at the courthouse and then phoned Rose Tyler at Holt County Social Services.

THE CHILDREN WERE QUESTIONED SEPARATELY. PHOTOGRAPHS were taken and a tape was made of their remarks. They each gave the same story. Nothing had happened. They’d been out playing in the alley and had scratched their legs.

Honey, Rose said, don’t lie now. You don’t have to lie for him. Did he threaten you?

We scratched them on the bushes, the girl said.

Her brother was waiting beyond the door in the hall, and she was standing before the cot in the nurse’s room, her hands twisted in the waist of her thin dress, her eyes filled with tears. Her face looked red and desperate. Rose and the sheriff’s deputy sat across from her, watching her.

What did he threaten you with? the deputy said.

He never done nothing to us. The girl wiped at her eyes and glared at them. It was bushes.

That’ll do, honey, Rose said. Never mind now. We know. You don’t have to say anything more. She put her arm around the girl. You don’t have to lie to protect anybody.

The girl jerked away. You ain’t suppose to touch me, she said.

Honey. Nobody’s going to hurt you anymore.

Nobody can touch me.

The deputy looked at Rose and Rose nodded, and he went out to the principal’s office and phoned the judge who was on call that day and got a verbal emergency custody order. Then he phoned Luther and Betty. He told them to stay at the trailer, that he’d want to see them in a few minutes. Then he came back to the nurse’s room, where Rose had both children with her now, sitting with her arms around them, talking to them quietly. The deputy motioned for her to come out to the hall, and they went out and stood below the vivid artwork of schoolchildren taped to the tiled walls and discussed in low voices what to do next. Rose would take the children to the hospital to be examined by the doctor while he drove to the trailer and talked to Luther and Betty. Afterward they would consult again.

THE SHERIFF’S DEPUTY DROVE ACROSS TOWN TO DETROIT Street and parked the car and got out and stood for a moment looking at the trailer. The spring sun appeared to be too bright against the washed-out siding and the sagging roof, the plank porch, the unwashed windows. In the yard redroot and cheatgrass had begun to sprout up in the pale dirt. When he stepped onto the porch Luther let him in.

He sat down in the living room facing the couch where Luther and Betty sat watching him talk, studying his mouth, as if he were some preacher uttering everlasting pronouncements or the county judge himself saying out the law. He began to feel sick. He decided to make this as brief as possible. He told them they already knew about the children, what had been done to them and when and who had done it.

Betty’s pocked face went all to pieces. We never wanted him in here, she said. We told him he couldn’t come in.

You should of called us.

He was going to kill us, Luther said.

Did he say that?

Yes sir. That’s what he said. He wasn’t fooling.

But it’s too late now, isn’t it. He’s already abused your children. You have any idea where he’s run off to?

No sir.

No idea?

He was already gone when we got up this morning.

And he never said anything to you about where he might go.

He never told us nothing about what he was fixing to do.

Except for how he was going to kill us, Betty said.

The sheriff’s deputy looked around the room for a moment, then turned back. Was he still here yesterday when somebody from the sheriff’s office came to the door?

He was back in the hall there, Luther said. Waiting and listening.

He was?

Yes sir.

Well, we’ll find him. He can’t disappear forever.

But mister, Betty said, where’s our kids?

The deputy looked at her. She sat slumped in the couch, her hands in the lap of her dress, her eyes red with tears. Mrs. Tyler has taken them to the doctor, he said. We have to see how bad your uncle hurt them.

When do we get to see them?

That’s up to Mrs. Tyler. But they won’t be allowed to come back here. You understand that, don’t you? Not to live anyhow. There’ll be a hearing about this, probably on Wednesday.

What do you mean?

Ma’am, the judge has issued an emergency custody order and your children are going to be placed in a foster home. There’ll be a hearing about this within forty-eight hours.

Betty stared at him. Suddenly she threw her head back and wailed. You’re taking my children! I knew you was going to! She began to pull at her hair and scratch at her face. Luther leaned toward her and tried to catch her hands but she shoved him away. The sheriff’s deputy stepped across the room and bent over her. Here, he said. He took hold of her hands. Stop that now. That’s not going to do you any good. What good is that going to do anybody?

Betty shook her head, her eyes rolling unfocused, and she continued to wail into the rank and odoriferous air.

ROSE TOOK THE CHILDREN OUT OF SCHOOL AND DROVE TO the hospital and the doctor examined them in the emergency room. The lacerations were bad but he could find no broken bones. He applied antiseptic ointment to the cuts and welts and dressed the worst ones with bandages.