Kent Haruf - Plainsong

That too, perhaps, he said. But more, I meant are you going to keep this baby? Carry it full-term and give birth to it?

I plan to.

And you do want it, don’t you.

Yes.

And now that you’ve told me that, you’re not going to do anything foolish such as trying to stop it by yourself by some means.

No.

No, he said. That’s fine then. I believe you. That’s what I need to know. You will have various kinds of trouble, I expect. That’s what happens. Many teenage mothers do. You’re not supposed to be having babies yet. Your body’s not ready. You’re too young. On the other hand, you do seem strong. You don’t appear to be the hysterical kind. Are you the hysterical kind, Miss Roubideaux?

I don’t think so.

Then you should be all right. Do you smoke?

No.

Don’t start. Do you drink alcohol?

No.

Don’t start that either, not now. Do you take any drugs of any kind?

No.

You’re telling me the truth? He looked at her and waited. That’s important. Because everything you take in goes to the baby. You know that, don’t you.

Yes. I know.

You need to eat right. That’s important too. Mrs. Jones can help you with that. I expect she’s a good cook. You need to gain some weight but not too much. Yes, well. All right then. I’ll see you again in a month, and once each month until the eighth month, then I’ll see you every week. Do you have any questions?

For the first time the girl released the hold on herself a little. Her eyes welled up. It was as if what she wanted to ask him was more important and more frightening than anything either one of them had said or done so far. She said, Is the baby all right? Would you tell me that?

Oh, he said. Why yes. So far as I can tell, everything is fine. Didn’t I make that clear? There is no reason why that should change, so long as you take care of yourself. I didn’t mean to frighten you.

She let herself cry silently just a little, while her shoulders slumped forward and her hair fell about her face. The old doctor reached up and took her hand and held it warmly between both of his hands for a moment and was quiet with her, simply looking into her face, serenely, grandfatherly, but not talking, treating her out of respect and kindness, out of his own long experience of patients in examination rooms.

Afterward, when she was calm again, after the doctor had left, she went into the air outside the Holt County Clinic next to the hospital, and the light in the street seemed sharp to her and hard-edged, definite, as if it were no longer merely a late fall afternoon in the hour before dusk, but instead as if it were the first moment of noon in the exact meridian of summer and she was standing precisely under the full illumination of the sun.

In the last period of the day he sat at his desk at the front of the room, listening to their speeches and glancing out the window toward the place where the sun shone aslant on the few bare trees risen up along the street. It looked cold and bleak outside.

The tall girl talking at the head of the class was just finishing. Something to do with Hamilton. She had spent half of her speech on the duel with Burr. What she was saying was scarcely coherent. She finished and glanced at Guthrie and approached his desk and handed over her notes. Thank you, he said. She turned and sat down at her desk near the west windows, and he made a note about what to say to her in conference and again consulted the list before him and looked out at their faces. They looked as if they were waiting for some inevitable doom and disaster. Unless they had already given their speeches. Then they were bored and indifferent. Glenda, he said.

A girl in the middle row said, Mr. Guthrie?

Yes.

I’m not ready today.

Do you have your notes?

Yes. But I’m not ready.

Come ahead. You’ll have to do what you can.

But I don’t know about this, she said.

Come ahead.

She got up and walked to the front and began to read rapidly from her papers without ever once looking up, a stream of uninflected talk that would have bored even her, even as she uttered it, if she weren’t so terrified. About Cornwallis, evidently. The Battle of Yorktown. She didn’t get as far as the surrender. Suddenly she was finished. She turned her paper over and there was nothing on the other side. She looked at Guthrie. I told you I wasn’t ready, she said.

She stood facing him, then she advanced and handed him her papers and went back in a rush to her seat in the middle of the room, her face hotly red, and sat down and peered into the palms of her hands as though she might discover some explanation or at least some form of consolation and succor there, and then she looked at the girl next to her, a large brown-haired girl who gave her a little nod, but it didn’t seem to be enough because lastly she hid her hands under her skirt and sat on them.

At the front of the room at his desk Guthrie made a note and consulted the list of names before him. He called the next one. A big boy in black cowboy boots rose up and stomped forward from the back of the room. Once he got started he talked haltingly for something less than a minute.

That’s it? Guthrie said. You think that just about covers it?

Yeah.

That was pretty short.

I couldn’t find anything, the boy said.

You couldn’t find anything about Thomas Jefferson?

No.

The Declaration of Independence.

No.

The presidency. His life at Monticello.

No.

Where did you look?

Everywhere I could think of.

You must not have thought very long, Guthrie said. Let me see your notes.

I just got this page.

Let me see that much.

The big boy handed over the single sheet of tablet paper and stomped back and sat down. Guthrie watched him. The boy had sulled up now. He was staring straight ahead. The room was quiet, the students all waiting and watching him. He looked away and stared out the window. The trees along the curb in front of the school still showed sunlight at the tops; in the slanting afternoon sun the trees cast the thinnest of shadows as though they had been sprayed onto the street and the brown grass. For weeks it had been very dry and in the nights there were hard freezes. He turned back and called Victoria Roubideaux to make her speech.

When she came forward she was in a black skirt and a soft yellow sweater and her coal black hair fell down her back, and he noticed that her hair was cut off squarely and neatly at the bottom in a straight thick line. She looked better now, better kept. She stopped in front of the class and turned slowly and began at once to speak very softly. He could barely hear her.

Could you talk a little louder, please? Guthrie said.

From the beginning? she said.

No. From where you are.

She began to read from the notes again in a voice that had scarcely more volume. He watched her in profile. The girl was staying in Maggie Jones’s house now. Maggie had told him about it. That was better. She already looked better. Probably Maggie had been the one to trim her hair that way.

Then there was a commotion in the room. Abruptly she stopped reading because somebody had said something from the back of the room and now all of the girls were turned in their seats looking at Russell Beckman. He sat at the very back corner, his red curly hair combed down over his forehead, a big boy wearing a tee-shirt under his red and white Holt County Union High School jacket.

She wouldn’t start reading again. She was still staring out at their faces, holding her papers before her. She looked as though she were in a kind of panic.

What’s wrong? Guthrie said.

She turned her head and looked at him, her eyes guarded and dark.