Kent Haruf - Plainsong

What’s wrong here?

She would not speak nor make any complaint, but turned back toward the class, the rows of suddenly blank faces staring back at her, and looked over their heads toward the Beckman boy who sat at the back row cramped in his desk and who gazed forward blankly, his hands folded on his desk as though he were no more responsible for any disturbance than he was for the setting of the sun. At the front of the classroom the girl watched him. Then without saying any word at all she started walking across the front of the room. By the time she reached the door she was running. Behind her the door crashed against the wall and rebounded and they could hear her rapid steps diminishing in the tiled hallway.

The students sat looking at the door, which was still shuddering. Guthrie rose from his desk. Alberta, he said. Go catch up with her and see what you can do.

A small blond girl in front stood up. But what if I can’t find her?

Go look for her. She can’t be far.

But I don’t know where she went.

Just go look for her. Go on now.

She hurried out of the room into the hall.

Guthrie walked back in the aisle between the desks toward Russell Beckman who still sat with his hands folded. The other students turned to watch as Guthrie passed. He stopped and stood over the boy. What did you say to her?

I didn’t say nothing to her. He made a gesture with his hand. He was brushing something away.

Yes you did. What was it?

I wasn’t even talking to her. I was talking to him. He ducked his head sideways toward the boy next to him. Ask him.

Guthrie looked at the boy in the black cowboy boots in the next desk. The boy stared straight ahead with a sullen look on his face. What’d he say?

I never heard it, the boy said.

You never heard it.

No.

How come everybody else did?

I don’t have any idea. Ask them.

Guthrie looked at him. He turned back to Russell Beckman. I’ll see you out in the hallway.

I never did nothing.

Let’s go.

Russell Beckman glanced at the boy in the next desk. There was a faint expression on the other boy’s face now. Beckman gave a little snort and the expression on the other boy’s face got slightly bigger, and now something was showing in his eyes too. Russell Beckman sighed loudly, as if he were greatly oppressed, and stood up and walked very slowly down the aisle between the other students and out into the empty hall. Guthrie followed him and shut the door. They faced each other.

You said something to Victoria that hurt her. I want to know what’s going on here.

I didn’t do nothing to her, the boy said. I wasn’t even talking to her. I already told you that.

And I’m going to tell you something, Guthrie said. You’re already in serious trouble in this class. You haven’t done anything for weeks. I’m not going to pass you until you do.

You think I care about that?

You will.

No I won’t. You don’t know a goddamn thing about me.

I know more about you than I want to know.

You can go to hell.

Guthrie grabbed the boy’s arm. They struggled and the boy fell back against the metal lockers. He jerked his arm away. His jacket was halfway off his shoulder and he pulled it straight.

The fuck you think you’re doing? he said. You can’t touch me. Keep your fucking hands off me. He stood up straight. His face was dark red now.

You shut your filthy mouth, Guthrie said. And you keep it shut. Whatever you said to her, don’t you ever say something like that again.

Fuck you.

Guthrie grabbed him once more but he jerked away and then the boy swung and hit Guthrie at the side of the face, and then he whirled and ran away down the hallway and on outside, headed toward the parking lot. Guthrie watched him through the hallway windows. The boy got into his car, a dark blue Ford, and drove off, screeching across the parking lot and out of sight. Guthrie stood in the hallway and made himself breathe until he was calm again. The side of his face felt numb. He supposed he would feel it more later on. He took out a handkerchief and wiped it across his mouth and felt something on his tongue and spat it into the handkerchief and looked at it. A bloody piece of a tooth. He put it in his shirt pocket and wiped his mouth again and put the handkerchief away. Then he opened the door to the classroom and entered in on an immediate unnatural quiet. The students were all watching him.

Take out your books, he told them. Read until the bell. I don’t want to hear anything more from any one of you today. You can finish your speeches tomorrow.

The students began to open their books. Just before the bell rang, the door opened and Alberta came back into the room. She came in and stood beside his desk. She wouldn’t look at him.

Did you find her?

She must of went home, Mr. Guthrie.

You looked in the rest rooms?

Yes.

And outside? Out front?

I didn’t want to go out of the building. You’re not suppose to leave the building without a pass.

You could have this time.

But you’re not suppose to.

All right. Take your seat.

The girl sat down in her desk. He looked out at the students and none of them was reading. They were all watching him and just waiting. Then the bell rang and they began to rise and Guthrie looked outside across the street again where the sunlight was red now against the trees.

Just once they took another boy with them to the vacant house and the room where it had happened. They wanted to see it again themselves, to walk in it and feel what that would feel like and what it might be to show it to somebody else, and afterward they were sorry they had ever wanted to know or do any of that at all. He was from Ike’s class in the school, a tall skinny boy with thick hair. Donny Lee Burris.

It was after school was released for the day. They had come through the town park and crossed the railroad tracks already. Then they were out in the road in front of their house, a little past it, out on Railroad Street, and Ike stopped and squatted in the fine dirt. It was a bright cool windless day in November, far enough along in the afternoon that their shadows reached out behind them like dark rags stretched in the dirt road. The road was as dry as powder. Here. This might be his car tracks, he said. Leave them alone.

Bobby and the other boy, Donny Lee, squatted down beside him and studied the double tracks of the high school boy’s car in the dust. They looked up the road toward the place where the tracks must have originated, where the car had been stopped that night in front of the old vacant house at the end of Railroad Street a hundred yards away, and beyond, where the trafficless road ended in sagebrush and soapweed. The other boy stood up. How come they are? he said. They’re probably somebody else’s.

They’re his, Ike said.

The boy looked up the road; he turned and looked back the other way. Then he scraped the toe of his shoe across the tire track, obliterating a piece of it.

What are you doing? Ike said. Quit that.

I thought we was going to look at that old house, the boy said.

All right, Ike said.

They started west toward the vacant building. Alongside the road the old man’s house in the lot adjacent to their own house was quiet and pale as usual, behind the overgrown bushes and the tall ragweed, and there was no sign anywhere of the old man himself.

When they were in front of the empty house at the end of the road they stopped to study it and everything around it. The broken-down neglected locust trees, shaggy barked, the overgrown yard, the dead sunflowers grown up everywhere with their heads loaded and drooping, everything dry and brown now in the late fall, dust-coated, and the sunken house itself diminished and weathered, with the front door swung open carelessly and the windows broken out over the years, and the sole square intact window in the attic bearing a fly screen that was turned down loose from one corner in a way that looked peculiar, like it was sleepy-eyed.