Kent Haruf - Plainsong

What you waiting on now? the boy said.

Nothing. We’re just looking at it.

I’m going in.

There were tracks still showing at the road edge, where the car had been parked, and shoe prints in the dirt where the two high school boys and the girl with them had climbed in and out of the car. Ike and Bobby were bent over inspecting the tracks.

I’m going, the boy said.

You wait, Ike said. You have to follow me. They stepped around the footprints and entered the lot through the weeds on the path and climbed onto the porch, the old boards dry as kindling and absolutely paintless, and passed through the open door. A broken chair stood in the middle of the room like something crippled that the last tenants had left behind because it couldn’t keep up, and high up on the north wall the plaster was stained by long runs of rainwater. The chimney showed a soot-blackened hole where a stovepipe had vented into it, and on the floor were yellowed newspapers. Also old cigarette butts and sharp pieces of green-looking glass. A rusted can.

They done it in here? the other boy said.

Ike and Bobby looked around the room.

She was in the bedroom, Ike said.

Let’s see that, the boy said.

They moved into the next room. The mattress lay on the bare floor with the candle stubs fitted into the beer bottles on either side. The jar lid still had her cigarette butts, the ends of them stained red from her lipstick. The army blanket was spread out on the mattress. Ike and Bobby moved across the room toward the window through which they’d seen the girl and the two high school boys taking use of her in the night, and leaned out and noted the trampled grass where they themselves had stood in the night, watching.

The other boy knelt next to the mattress. I guess she bout screamed her head off, he said.

Ike looked at him. Why?

Cause that’s how they always do. Holler their heads off when they take it in the pussy. On account of how big it is and how much they like it.

The two brothers studied him with suspicion. Where’d you ever hear something like that? Ike said.

That’s the way they do.

That’s a lie. I don’t believe that.

It don’t matter what you believe.

Well, she didn’t do any of that, Ike said.

She was just on her back, Bobby said. She was just laying on her back looking up and waiting for him to quit bothering her.

Sure, the other boy said. All right. He bent over the rough army blanket and put his face to it and sniffed and raised his eyes dramatically.

What’s that? What are you doing now? Ike said.

Smelling if she’s still here, the boy said.

They watched what he was doing, his antics. He was holding parts of the blanket up to his face and shifting it about, sampling it. They didn’t want him to be acting in such a way in this room. They didn’t approve of it.

You better stop that, Bobby said.

I’m not hurting nothing.

You better leave that alone, Bobby said.

You better stand up from there, Ike said. You quit that.

The boy made a face as if the blanket were too dirty to touch, and he dropped it. He reached and pulled out one of the candle stubs from the throat of a beer bottle. Then I’ll just take me one of these, he said.

You leave them alone too, Ike said.

You don’t own this place. It’s just junk. Old-time shit. What’s wrong with taking something?

They were going to tell him what was wrong with taking something but suddenly there was someone outside on the front porch. They could hear him distinctly. The hard soles of the shoes on the floorboards and then the footsteps coming into the house.

Who’s in here?

It was the old man’s voice, high and whining, crazy. They didn’t answer. They glanced wildly at the window.

Here now, he called. You hear me? Who’s in this goddamn house?

They could hear him coming across the front room and then he stood in the doorway looking at them, the old man from next door in his dirty overalls and high-topped black shoes and his worn-out blue work shirt, his eyes red and maddened, watery-looking, and his cheeks covered with a two-days’ growth of whiskers. In his hands he was waving a rusty shotgun.

You little sonsabitches, he said. What you think you’re doing in here?

We were looking, Ike said. We’re leaving now.

You got no business coming in here. You goddamn kids coming in here breaking things.

We’re not doing nothing, the other boy said. It’s not your place either, is it? This don’t belong to you, mister.

Why, you little smart sonofabitch. I’ll blow your head off. He raised the gun up and leveled it at the boy. I’ll blast you to hell.

No, wait now, Ike said. It’s all right. We’re going. You don’t have to worry. Come on, he said.

He pushed Bobby out ahead of him and pulled the other boy by the arm. When they passed the old man he smelled of kerosene and sweat and of something sour like silage. He turned as they passed, following them with the shotgun raised up in his shaking hands.

Don’t you little shitasses ever come back in here, he said. I’ll come in a-shootin next time. I won’t ask no questions first.

We weren’t doing a thing in there, the other boy said.

What’s that? the old man said. By Jesus, I got a mind to blow your shittin little head off right now. He raised the gun again, dangerously, waving it.

No. Now look out, Ike said. We’re leaving. Wait a minute.

The boys went out of the house back through the weeds onto Railroad Street. The old man came out onto the porch and watched them. They turned and looked at him one time and he was still there on the porch standing in the lowering sun in his dirty overalls and blue shirt, still holding the gun up. When he saw them stop in front of the house he pointed the gun at them again, like he was taking aim. They went on.

When they had walked far enough down the road so that the old man couldn’t see them clearly, the other boy said, I got this much anyhow. He stopped and withdrew a candle stub from his back pocket.

You took that? Bobby said. You shouldn’t even of touched that.

What’s wrong with you? It’s a candle.

That doesn’t matter, Ike said. It wasn’t yours. You didn’t see her.

I never had to see her. I don’t care a turd about her.

You didn’t see the way she was that night.

Oh, I seen lots of them without their clothes on. I seen their pink titties, lots of times.

You never saw her, Ike said.

What of it.

She was different. She was pretty, wasn’t she, Bobby?

I thought she was pretty, Bobby said.

I don’t give a rat’s ass. I’m keeping this candle.

They started back along the dirt road toward the house. At the gravel drive the other boy went on by himself toward town, but the two brothers turned and went back past their empty house toward the lot where the two horses were standing dozing by the barn. They went out to the corral to be in the place where there were horses.

One night when she had finished washing dishes at the Holt Café and afterward had eaten her own supper sitting at the café counter, she didn’t go back to Maggie Jones’s house immediately. Instead she walked about town by herself with her coat buttoned up to her chin and her hands pulled up into the sleeves.

She made the call from a pay phone on the highway out at the town limits of Holt where there was a short turnout for cars and where a summer picnic table was set out under four scrubby and leafless Chinese elm trees. Cattle buyers used the phone during the day, leaning over the hoods of their dusty pickups while they talked, carrying the phone out on its cable as far it would allow them and writing their figures on pads of paper. Now it was dark. The sun had gone under two hours ago and a sharp cold winter wind was blowing dirt across the highway in brown skeins, pushing it into ridges along the gutters at the curbing. The new yellowish streetlamps were burning all along the empty blacktop, showing the entrance into town. She called for information in Norka, where he came from, the next town going west from Holt. The operator gave the number that was listed for his mother.