Kent Haruf: Plainsong

“If the novelist invents a world, then Mr. Haruf has shaped a place of enormous goodness. . The story itself — spare, unsentimental, rooted in action — honors the values of the community.”

— The Wall Street Journal

“Resonant, kind and generous.”

— The Boston Globe

“Compelling. . A lyrical meditation on community and family, and about how the former increasingly becomes the latter as traditional ties don’t prove binding.”

— Detroit Free Press

“A marvel of a book.”

— The Baltimore Sun

“Haunting, virtuostic writing. Inimitable, it is both spare and descriptive, as painstaking in capturing vagueness as it is precise in detailing the concrete.”

— San Francisco Chronicle

“ Plainsong is nothing short of a revelation.”

— Richard Russo

“I read Plainsong in one sitting, unwilling — unable — to look up until I’d finished. Kent Haruf has given us a pure blessing of a book: a novel of such sweet amplitude, grace and humility.”

— Beverly Lowry

“Kent Haruf has written an American masterwork.”

— Howard Frank Mosher

A loud noise rumbles from this quiet novel. . a deep language, like the rumble before an earthquake.”

— Los Angeles Times

“A balladeer’s vision of small-town America.”

— Entertainment Weekly

“ Plainsong is like authentic Quaker furniture: Beautiful in its plainness.”

— USA Today

“Spare and beautifully effective. . A style as natural and unassuming as the world it describes.”

— National Public Radio

“Haruf has a keen eye for the devastatingly casual acts of cruelty that punctuate daily life. He’s simply convinced that decency is ultimately its own reward, and it’s this optimism, along with the quiet sophistication of his technique, that allows him to look into the hearts of his characters while still respecting their privacy.”

— Salon

“ Plainsong is a lovely read, illuminated by sparks of spare beauty.”

— Time

“The voices of the characters ring so true that you expect to encounter them in your own life — and feel a little sad when you don’t.”

— San Antonio Express News

“Generously imagined and precisely rendered.”

— The Miami Herald

“ Plainsong is a sweet novel. Not cloying, but kind and gracious, and enamored with the simplicity of a story based on human decency.”

— The Indianapolis Star

“ Plainsong is written in fine, spare prose, and it’s generous in spirit. By the end, Plainsong is a moving look at our capacity for both pointless cruelty and simple decency.”

— Newsweek

The author wishes to acknowledge the generous support and encouragement of:

Mark Haruf, Verne Haruf, Edith and Bryan Russell, Sorel Haruf, Whitney Haruf, Chaney Haruf, Rodney and Gloria Jones, Richard Peterson, Laura Hendrie, John Walker, Jon Tribble, Ken Keith, Peter Matson, Gary Fisketjon, Dr. Tom Parks, Dr. Douglas Gates, Greg Schwipps, Alissa Cayton, Sue Howell, Karen Greenberg, Southern Illinois University, the Illinois Arts Council, and most particularly, Cathy Haruf.

Plainsong — the unisonous vocal music used in the Christian church from the earliest times; any simple and unadorned melody or air

Here was this man Tom Guthrie in Holt standing at the back window in the kitchen of his house smoking cigarettes and looking out over the back lot where the sun was just coming up. When the sun reached the top of the windmill, for a while he watched what it was doing, that increased reddening of sunrise along the steel blades and the tail vane above the wooden platform. After a time he put out the cigarette and went upstairs and walked past the closed door behind which she lay in bed in the darkened guest room sleeping or not and went down the hall to the glassy room over the kitchen where the two boys were.

The room was an old sleeping porch with uncurtained windows on three sides, airy-looking and open, with a pinewood floor. Across the way they were still asleep, together in the same bed under the north windows, cuddled up, although it was still early fall and not yet cold. They had been sleeping in the same bed for the past month and now the older boy had one hand stretched above his brother’s head as if he hoped to shove something away and thereby save them both. They were nine and ten, with dark brown hair and unmarked faces, and cheeks that were still as pure and dear as a girl’s.

Outside the house the wind came up suddenly out of the west and the tail vane turned with it and the blades of the windmill spun in a red whir, then the wind died down and the blades slowed and stopped.

You boys better come on, Guthrie said.

He watched their faces, standing at the foot of the bed in his bathrobe. A tall man with thinning black hair, wearing glasses. The older boy drew back his hand and they settled deeper under the cover. One of them sighed comfortably.

Ike.

What?

Come on now.

We are.

You too, Bobby.

He looked out the window. The sun was higher, the light beginning to slide down the ladder of the windmill, brightening it, making rungs of rose-gold.

When he turned again to the bed he saw by the change in their faces that they were awake now. He went out into the hall again past the closed door and on into the bathroom and shaved and rinsed his face and went back to the bedroom at the front of the house whose high windows overlooked Railroad Street and brought out shirt and pants from the closet and laid them out on the bed and took off his robe and got dressed. When he returned to the hallway he could hear them talking in their room, their voices thin and clear, already discussing something, first one then the other, intermittent, the early morning matter-of-fact voices of little boys out of the presence of adults. He went downstairs.

Ten minutes later when they entered the kitchen he was standing at the gas stove stirring eggs in a black cast-iron skillet. He turned to look at them. They sat down at the wood table by the window.

Didn’t you boys hear the train this morning?

Yes, Ike said.

You should have gotten up then.

Well, Bobby said. We were tired.

That’s because you don’t go to bed at night.

We go to bed.

But you don’t go to sleep. I can hear you back there talking and fooling around.

They watched their father out of identical blue eyes. Though there was a year between them they might have been twins. They’d put on blue jeans and flannel shirts and their dark hair was uncombed and fallen identically over their unmarked foreheads. They sat waiting for breakfast and appeared to be only half awake.

Guthrie brought two thick crockery plates of steaming eggs and buttered toast to the table and set them down and the boys spread jelly on the toast and began to eat at once, automatically, chewing, leaning forward over their plates. He carried two glasses of milk to the table.

He stood over the table watching them eat. I have to go to school early this morning, he said. I’ll be leaving in a minute.

Aren’t you going to eat breakfast with us? Ike said. He stopped chewing momentarily and looked up.