Kent Haruf - Plainsong

May I see some identification, please?

He took out his old wallet from the inner pocket of his coat and picked out his driver’s license. She read it, then she looked up at him.

I didn’t know they would allow you to have your picture taken with your hat on, she said.

They do in Holt, he said. What’s the trouble? Don’t it favor me?

Oh, there’s a clear resemblance, she said.

She handed the license back to him and he put it away. Then she finished ringing up their purchases and gave them the receipt. And we thank you very much, she said.

The stock boy started toward the front of the store, dollying the new mattress and the new crib in the flat cardboard boxes printed with the bright factory lettering, moving out into the main aisle in a flourish. He advanced only a short way.

Son, Harold said. You can hold up there. That won’t be necessary.

I was going to take them out for you.

That’s all right.

The McPheron brothers hefted the two boxes and together carried them ladder-fashion under their arms, one old man in his good hat following directly behind the other, out onto the sidewalk and up the block toward the pickup. The girl came after, with the store bag of sheets and blankets. Together they made a kind of parade. People on the square, shoppers, women and teenage girls and old retired men, watched them pass, turning to stare as the two old men and the pregnant girl went by. Out in the winter air it was colder now and the sun was already starting to lean toward the west, while across the street the granite-block courthouse loomed up gray and solid under its green tiled roof. At the curb they set the boxes in the bed of the pickup and lashed them down with yellow binder twine from the toolbox. Then they backed out into the street and drove slowly out of town, riding up out of the South Platte River valley onto the cold winter flatlands of the high plains.

It was evening when they got home. The early dark of late December. That low sky closing down. As they drove up over the last little rise before the turnoff to the house they saw that there were cattle out on the gravel road. Their eyes glinted red as rubies in the headlights — one of the old mother cows and three of the heavy-bodied two-year-old heifers. Wait up, Raymond said.

I see em, Harold said.

The cow stood broadside in the middle of the road, her head lifted in the lights, staring as the pickup came closer, then she wheeled and dropped down into the ditch and the heifers dropped down with her.

You make it four?

Harold nodded.

They drove past them slowly, watching them, and took the girl back to the house and went inside with her and put on their work boots and coats and warm caps, and then they went back into the cold and located the cows and headed them trotting in the ditch alongside the road until they passed the gate. Raymond got out and swung the gate open and Harold gunned the pickup ahead and turned the cattle back. They whirled back along the fence in the bright headlights of the truck, moving in the ditch weeds, their bellies swinging, their flanks swaying, their feet thrown out sidways in that awkward bovine manner and kicking up clots of snow. Raymond stood out in the road waiting. When the cattle got up to the gate he hollered and flapped his arms and without any trouble they trotted in. He climbed into the cab and they pushed the cattle farther into the pasture away from the fence. They watched for a while to see which way they’d go. By now it was completely dark and hardcold. They drove out of the pasture and when they got up to the house the yardlight had come on, shining purplish-blue from the lightpole next to the garage.

They mounted the porch steps and scraped their feet. But as soon as they entered the kitchen they stopped. They discovered that the girl had the room warm and brightly lighted, and on the stove she had supper already heated up and ready to be served and the square wooden kitchen table was set for the three of them with the old plates and the old silverware already ranged in order about the table.

Well, by God, Harold said. I want you to look at here.

Well, yes, Raymond said. It makes me think of the way Mother used to do.

If you want to sit down, the girl said. She stood next to the stove with one of the white dish towels tied about her thickening waist. Her face looked flushed from the cooking, but her black eyes shone. It’s all ready, she said. Maybe we could eat out here tonight. If that’s all right. It seems homier.

Well, surely, Harold said. I don’t see why not.

The brothers washed up and the three of them ate together in the kitchen and talked a little about the trip to Phillips, about the woman in the store with the brown dress and the boy with the dolly, the look on his face, and after supper the girl read the page of directions while the two McPherons assembled the crib. When it was finished they stood it up against a warm interior wall in the girl’s bedroom with one of the new sheets stretched tight on the mattress and the warm blanket folded down neatly. Afterward the brothers went out back to the parlor and watched the ten o’clock news while the girl washed the supper dishes and cleaned up in the kitchen.

Later, when the girl was lying in the old soft double bed that had once been the elder McPherons’ marriage bed, she lay awake for a while and looked with pleasure and satisfaction at the crib. It gleamed against the faded pink-flowered wallpaper. The varnish shone. She imagined looking at a little face lying there, what that would feel like. At ten-thirty she heard the brothers mounting the stairs to their bedrooms and heard them overhead on the pinewood floorboards.

The next morning she stayed asleep in her room until midmorning, as she had the previous six days of vacation, but it was different now. It was all right now. The McPheron brothers had decided that seventeen-year-old girls did that. It didn’t matter. They couldn’t say what they would do about it even if they still wanted to do something, and now they didn’t care to.

Two days later it was New Year’s, and school started again the day afterward.

It appeared to him there were ruffles everywhere. Ranged around both bedroom windows, sewn on the bedcover, tacked on the pillows. Still more surrounding the mirror over the chest of drawers. Judy must get something out of it, he thought. She was in the bathroom doing something to herself, inserting something. He smoked a cigarette and looked at the ceiling. A pool of light was showing directly above the bedside lamp on the pink plaster.

Then she came out of the bathroom wearing a little nightgown and nothing under it and he could see the dark medallions of her nipples and the outlines of her small breasts and the dark vee of her hair below.

You didn’t need to do that, he said. I’ve been cut.

How do you know what I’ve been doing?

I assumed.

Don’t assume too much, she said. Then she smiled. Her teeth shone in the light.

She got into bed with him. It had been a long time. Ella and he hadn’t slept together for almost a year now. Judy felt warm beside him in the bed.

Where’d you get this scar? she said.

Where?

This one on your shoulder here.

I don’t know. Fence wire, I guess. Don’t you have any scars?

Inside.

Do you?

Of course.

You don’t act like it.

I don’t intend to. It doesn’t do much good, does it?

Not in my experience, he said.

She was lying on her side looking at him. What made you come over here tonight?

I don’t know. I was lonely, I guess. Like you said at the Chute the other night.

Aren’t we all, she said.

She raised up higher and leaned forward and kissed him and he brushed her hair away from her face, and then without saying anything more she moved over on top of him and he could feel her warm against himself and he felt up under the back of her nightgown with both hands, feeling her small waist and her smooth hips.