Kent Haruf - Plainsong

That’s why, he said. That’s what I’m talking about.

She looked at him in the front seat of the car. The motor was still running. She felt cold standing out in the open air in the parking lot. Six months had passed since he’d left and things had happened to her, but what had changed for him? He looked no different. He was thin and dark and his hair was curly and she still thought he was very good looking. But she didn’t want to feel anything at all for him anymore. She had thought she was over those feelings. She believed she was. He had left without telling her he was leaving and she was already pregnant then, and afterward her mother wouldn’t let her in the house and then she couldn’t stay any longer with Mrs. Jones because of her old father, so she had gone out into the country with the two McPheron brothers and as unlikely as that had seemed that was turning out all right, and lately it was better than all right. Now, unexpectedly, here he was again. She didn’t know what to feel.

Why don’t you get in? he said. At least you could do that. You’re going to freeze like a hunk of ice standing out there. I didn’t come back to make you get cold, Vicky.

She looked away from him. The sun was bright. But it didn’t feel warm. It was a bright cold winter day and nothing was moving, no one else was even outside, the other high school kids were in their afternoon classes. She looked at their cars in the parking lot. Some had frost forming inside the windows. The cars had been there since eight in the morning. They looked cold and desolate.

Aren’t you even going to talk to me? he said.

She looked at him. I shouldn’t even be here, she said.

Yes you should. I come back for you. I should of called during these months, I know. I’ll apologize for that. I’ll say I was wrong. Come on, though. You’re getting cold.

She continued to look at him. She couldn’t think. He was waiting. From across the pavement came a gust of wind; she felt it on her face. She looked out toward the patches of snow on the football field and toward the empty stands rising up on either side. She looked back at him once more. He was still watching her. Then, without knowing she was going to, she walked around the rear of the car and got in on the other side and closed the door. It was warm inside. They sat facing each other. He didn’t try to touch her yet. He knew that much. But after a while he turned forward and put the car in gear.

I missed you, he said. He was speaking straight ahead, talking over the steering wheel of the black Plymouth.

I don’t believe you, she said. Why don’t you tell me the truth.

That is the truth, he said.

. . .

They left Holt driving west on 34, driving out into the winter landscape. When they got out past Norka after half an hour they began to see the mountains, a faint jagged blue line low on the horizon a hundred miles farther away. They didn’t talk very much. He was smoking and the radio was playing from Denver and she was looking out the side window at the brown pastures and the dark corn stubble, the shaggy cattle and the regular intervals of telephone poles, like crosses strung beside the railroad tracks, standing up above the dry ditch weeds. Then they arrived in Brush and turned up onto the interstate and went on west, going faster now on the good road, and passed Fort Morgan where in the freezing air the fog from the sewage plant drifted across the highway, and about then she decided to say what she had been thinking for the last five minutes. I wish you wouldn’t smoke in the car.

He turned toward her. You never cared before, he said.

I wasn’t pregnant before.

That’s a fact.

He rolled the window down and flicked the burning cigarette outside into the rushing air and turned the window up again.

How will that be? he said.

Better.

How come you have to sit so far away? he said. I never bit you before, did I?

Maybe you’ve changed.

Why don’t you come a little closer and find out. He showed his teeth and grinned.

She slid across the seat toward him and he put his arm over her shoulders and kissed her cheek and she set her open hand on his thigh, and they rode as they had ridden in the summer when they had driven out in the country north of Holt before stopping at the old homestead house under the green trees in the evening, and they were still riding that way when they drove into Denver at dusk in the midst of city traffic.

After that she didn’t know what to do with herself. She had made a sudden turn. She was seventeen and carrying a baby and she was alone most of every day in an apartment in Denver while Dwayne, this boy she had met last summer and wasn’t sure she knew at all, went to work at the Gates plant. His apartment was two rooms and a bathroom, and she had it completely cleaned and swept in the first morning. And his cupboards rearranged on the second morning, and the laundry done, the single set of sheets he owned and his dirty jeans and work shirts, all done in the first three mornings, and the only person she had met so far was a woman in the laundry room in the basement who stared at her the whole time, smoking and not speaking to her even once so that she thought the woman must be mute or maybe angry at her for some reason. In the first few days in Denver she did what she could, washed the clothes and cleaned the apartment and had something cooked for supper in the evening, and on the first Saturday afternoon when he got off work she went out with him to a shopping mall and he bought her a few things, a couple of shirts and a pair of pants, to make up for what she had left in Holt. But there wasn’t enough for her to do, and she was more alone than she had ever been.

That first night when they had arrived at the apartment they had gotten out of the car in the parking lot with its rows of dark cars and he had led her up the stairs and down a tiled hallway to the door and unlocked it. You’re home, he said. This is it. It was two rooms. She looked around. And in a little while he took her into the bedroom and they had never been in bed together before, not an actual bed, and he undressed her and looked at her stomach, the round smooth full rise of it, and he noted the blue veins showing on her breasts, and her breasts swollen and harder now, and her nipples larger and darker too. He shaped his hand over the hard ball of her stomach. Is it moving yet? he said.

It’s been moving for two months.

He held his hand there, waiting, as if he expected it to move now, for him, then he bent and kissed her navel. He rose and took his clothes off and got back in bed where she was and kissed her and stetched out beside her, looking at her.

You still love me?

I might, she said.

You might. What does that mean?

It means it’s been a long time. You left me.

But I missed you. I told you that already. He began to kiss her face and to caress her.

I don’t know if you should do this, she said.

Why not?

Because. The baby.

Well, people still do this after she has a baby in her, he said.

But you have to be careful.

I’m always careful.

No, you’re not. Not always.

When wasn’t I?

I’m pregnant, aren’t I?

He looked in her face. That was a accident. I didn’t mean to do that.

It still happened.

You could of done something yourself too, you know, he said. It wasn’t just up to me.

I know. I’ve thought about that a lot.

He looked into her face, her dark eyes. You seem different some way now. You’ve changed.

I’m pregnant, she said. I am different.

It’s more than that, he said. But you’re not sorry, are you?

About the baby?

Yeah.

No, she said. I’m not sorry about the baby.

You going to let me kiss you, then?