Kent Haruf - Plainsong

Do you think she’s okay? Raymond said softly to Maggie.

I think so, she said. So far as I can tell. But are you sure you want to try this again?

That girl needs a place.

I know, but. .

Raymond turned abruptly, peering out into the dark where the night was collecting beyond the horse barn and the holding pens. That girl never meant us no harm, he said. That girl made a difference out here for us and we missed her when she was gone. Anyhow, what was we suppose to do with that baby crib of hers?

He turned back and looked once directly at Maggie Jones and carried the girl’s box of clothes up to the house. Maggie called, I’ll be in touch, and then got back in the car and drove away.

Inside the old house, the two brothers and the pregnant girl sat at the kitchen table. Looking around, she could see that the room had fallen into disorder again. The McPheron brothers had let it go. There were heel-bolts and clevises and screweddown Vise-Grips and blackened springs loaded onto the extra chairs and stacks of magazines and newspapers piled against the back wall. The counters held days of dirty dishes.

Harold got up to make her some coffee and canned soup at the gas stove. You want to tell us about it? he said.

Could I wait till tomorrow? she asked.

Yes. We’d like to hear it when you’re ready.

Thank you, she said.

The old house was quiet, just the wind and the sound of the food beginning to heat on the stove.

You had us worried, Raymond said. He was looking at her, sitting beside her at the table. We got worried about it. We didn’t know where you was. We didn’t know what we might of done to cause you to want to leave here like that.

But you didn’t do anything, the girl said. It wasn’t you.

Well. We didn’t know what it was.

It wasn’t you at all, she said. Oh, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. She began to cry then. The tears ran down her cheeks and she tried to wipe them away, but she couldn’t keep up. She didn’t make any sound at all while she was crying.

The two old brothers watched her uncomfortably. Here now, Raymond said. It’s all right. We won’t have any of that now. We’re glad if you come back.

I didn’t mean to cause you any trouble, she said.

Well no, he said. We know. That’s all right. Don’t you mind it now. It’s all right now. He reached across the table and tapped the back of her hand. It was a clumsy act. He didn’t know how to manage it. Don’t you mind it, he said to her. If you come back here we’re glad. Don’t you mind it now anymore.

They sat down front in the first row at the movie theater with the other boys, watching up at the faces turned three-quarters to each other, their outsized mouths talking back and forth while the patrol car was taking the third one away, the red lights rotating flickering light across the faces as the car passed, and behind it all the country gliding past on the screen like it was some manner of dream country that was being blown away by an unaccountable wind. Then the music came up and the house-lights came on and they came back up the aisle into the lobby among the movie crowd and emptied with it out onto the sidewalk in the night. Above the streetlamps the sky was filled with bright hard stars like a scatter of white stones in a river. Cars were waiting double-parked at the curb to pick up kids, fathers waiting and mothers with younger children, while the high school boys and girls broke away and got into their own loud cars and began immediately to drive up and down Main Street, honking at one another as they passed as if they hadn’t seen the passengers in the other cars for weeks and months.

The two boys turned northward on the wide sidewalk. They crossed Third Street and looked in the furniture store window at the velvet couches and the wood rockers, and the Holt Mercury offices and the hardware store, both dark inside, and crossed Second Street and passed the café whose lunch tables were all set in place and the chairs turned up, and the Coast to Coast and the sports store and the sewing shop, and then they stepped over the shiny railroad tracks at the crossing, the grain elevator down the way looming up white and shadowy, as massive and terrific as a church, before turning homeward onto Railroad Street. They went along the empty street under the trees that were beginning to swell though the air was still sharply cold at night, and they were not yet as far as Mrs. Lynch’s house when a car suddenly pulled up in front of them. They recognized the three people inside at once: the big redheaded boy and the blond girl and the second boy, from the room with flickering candles at the end of Railroad Street five months ago in the fall.

You little girls want a ride? the redheaded boy said from behind the wheel.

They looked at him. The side of his face was yellow, lit up by the dashlights.

Bobby, Ike said. Come on.

They tried to walk across the street, but the car rolled ahead in their way.

You never answered my question.

They looked at him. We don’t want a ride, Ike said.

He turned and spoke to the other high school boy. He says they don’t want a ride.

Tell him it’s tough shit. They’re going to get one anyway. Tell him that.

The red-haired boy turned back. He says you’ll get one anyway. So what do you want to do? Want to call your daddy? Does that asshole know where you are?

Russ, the girl said. Let them go. Somebody’s going to see us. Leaning forward, watching what was happening, she sat in the front seat between the two boys, her hair framed like cotton candy about her face. Russ, come on, let’s go.

Not yet.

Let’s go, Russ.

Not yet, goddamn it.

You want me to get em in? the other boy said.

They don’t act like they want to get in by their own selves.

I’ll get em.

The other boy got out of the car on the far side. He stood out in the street and came around, and they began to back up. But now the red-haired boy was out of the car too. He was strong and as tall as their father. He was wearing his high school jacket.

Bobby, come on, Ike said.

They turned to run but the red-haired boy grabbed them by their coats.

Where you think you’re going?

Leave us alone, Ike said.

He held them by their coats and they kicked and swung at him, hollering, trying to turn around, but he held them away at arm’s length and the other boy grabbed Bobby and twisted his arms up behind him and Ike was lifted off his feet, and together they were shoved into the backseat. The big boys got in the car again. Ike and Bobby sat behind them waiting.

You better let us go. You better quit this. We didn’t do anything to you.

Maybe you didn’t, you little shits. But somebody did.

Russ, the girl said, what are you going to do? She was half-turned in the seat, watching them.

Nothing. Take em for a little ride.

She faced forward again, looking at him. Where to?

Just shut up. You’ll find out when they do.

One of them little fuckers kicked me, the other boy said.

Did he get your nuts?

He’d like to.

The redheaded boy put the car in gear and it jumped forward, leaning over as it spun gravel and turned completely around, the wheels squealing, and rushed back up Railroad Street, then squealed again, onto Ash Street and north onto a dirt road heading into flat open country.

Outside through the car windows it was just blue-black. The flare of the headlights pointed forward on the road, fanned out along the ditches on both sides, picking up brush and weeds and fence posts, and beyond, only the blue farmlights in the dark country. In the front seat they were drinking beer. The one boy drank, then turned the window down and flung the can out, hollered and turned the window up again. Ike and Bobby sat in back watching them, as still as country rabbits, waiting, and pretty soon the girl turned around once more and peered at them, then she turned back.