Eventide (11 page)

He looked across the room. How do you think he’s doing over there?

Mr. Kephart? All right, I think. He’ll probably recover. Older people get pneumonia and don’t do well sometimes, but he seems pretty strong. Of course I haven’t seen him awake yet. But when we changed shifts they said he was doing okay.

She smoothed the blanket, making sure to keep it free of his casted leg. Try and get some sleep now, she said.

Oh, I don’t sleep much, he said.

People are always coming in and waking you up for one thing or another, aren’t they.

I don’t like that light shining.

I’ll shut the door so it’s darker. Would that be better?

It might. He looked at her face. It don’t matter. I’m getting out of here tomorrow anyhow.

Oh? I hadn’t heard that.

Yeah. I am.

You’d have to ask the doctor.

They’re burying my brother tomorrow. I won’t be in here for that.

Oh, I’m sorry. Still, I think you’ll need to talk to the doctor anyway.

He better get here early then, Raymond said. I’ll be gone before noon.

She touched his shoulder and crossed to the door and closed the door behind her.

Raymond lay in the bed in the darkened room looking out the window at the bare trees in front of the hospital. Two hours later he was still awake when the wind started up, whining and crying in the higher branches. He thought about what the wind would be doing out south of town and he wondered if Victoria and the little girl had been wakened by it. He expected they hadn’t. But out in the south pasture, the cattle would all be standing awake with their backs to the wind, and there would be dry little dust storms blowing up in the corrals, shifting across the dry clumps of manure and the loose dirt around the barn. And he knew if things were as they should be, he and his brother would step outside in the morning to begin work as usual and they would stop to smell the dirt in the air, and then one or the other of them would say something about it, and he himself might comment on the likelihood of rain, and then Harold would say that a blizzard would be more likely, this time of year, given the way things were going of late.

18

W
HEN THE DOCTOR ENTERED THE ROOM IN THE MORNING
he was of a mind not to allow Raymond permission to leave the hospital, but when Raymond said he was going to leave regardless the doctor relented and said he could go for half a day but would have to return after the funeral. Just past noontime at the front desk Raymond signed the papers and they released him into the care of Victoria Roubideaux. She had put Katie with Maggie Jones, and earlier that morning she’d brought him the clean clothes he’d asked for. Now she pushed him in a wheelchair out to where her car was parked at the curb in front of the hospital. One leg of his dark trousers was slit to the knee to accommodate the cast, and he wore a blue shirt with pearl snaps which she had pressed freshly that morning and he had on his plaid wool jacket and the good Bailey hat that he wore only to town. Balanced across his lap were the aluminum crutches the hospital had loaned him.

When he came out of the hospital into the fresh autumn air he looked at the sky and looked all around and breathed in.

Well, goddamn, he said. It feels about as good as church letting out, to get shut of that damn place. Now you’ll have to pardon my language, honey. But by God, it does.

And it’s a good thing to see you come out of there, she said. I believe you look better already.

I feel better already. And I’ll tell you another thing. I ain’t going back in there. Not today, not ever.

I thought you agreed to go back this afternoon. That’s why they let you out.

Oh hell, honey, I’d say anything to get them to release me from that place. Let’s get going. Before they change their minds. Where’s your car at?

Down the street here.

Let’s go find it.

A
T THE METHODIST CHURCH ON GUM STREET TOM
Guthrie was standing at the curb in the bright sun waiting for Raymond and Victoria. They pulled up and Raymond opened the door and Guthrie helped him climb out. He stood up onto the sidewalk, but when Victoria opened the wheelchair behind him he refused to use it, telling them he would walk. And so with Victoria on one side and Guthrie on the other he fit the rubber cushions of the crutches under his arms and hobbled across the wide walkway into the church.

Inside, the organist hadn’t started playing yet and there was no one in the sanctuary. They moved slowly down the carpeted center aisle between the rows of glossy wooden pews toward the altar and pulpit, Raymond stepping carefully with his head down watching his feet, and they reached the front and he shifted sideways into the second pew. Victoria went out to the nursery to see if she could find Maggie and Katie, and Guthrie sat down beside Raymond. Raymond appeared to be exhausted already. He removed his hat and set it next to him on the pew. His face was sweating, his face was even redder than usual, and for some time he only sat and breathed.

You all right? Guthrie said, looking at him.

Yeah. I will be.

You’re not going to keel over, are you? Tell me if you feel like you’re going to.

I ain’t going to keel over.

He sat breathing with his head down. After a while he looked up and began to survey the objects in the high silent sanctuary—the outsized wooden cross attached to the wall behind the pulpit, the colored windows where the sun streamed in—and now he saw that his brother’s casket was resting on a wheeled trestle at the head of the center aisle. The casket was closed. Raymond looked at it for some time. Then he said: Let me out of here.

Where you going? Guthrie said. If you need something, let me go get it for you.

I want to see what they done to him.

Guthrie stepped out of the way and Raymond grabbed the back of the pew ahead of him, pulling himself upright, and fit the crutches in place and hobbled out into the aisle up to the casket. He stood at the long smooth side of it. He set his hands on the dark satiny wood and then tried to raise the top half of the lid but couldn’t manage to move it without dropping his crutches. He turned his head to one side. Tom, he said. Come help me with this damn thing, would you?

Guthrie came forward and raised the upper half of the polished lid and propped it back. There before Raymond was his brother’s dead body, stretched out lying on his back, his eyes sunken in the waxy-looking face, his eyes closed forever under the thin-veined eyelids, his stiff iron-gray hair combed flat across his pale skull. At the funeral home they had called Victoria to ask her to bring them something appropriate for them to put on him, and she had located the old gray wool suit in the back of his closet, the only one he had ever owned, and when she had brought it to them they had had to cut the coat down the back seam to get him into it.

Raymond stood and looked at his brother’s face. His thick eyebrows had been trimmed and they had dabbed powder and makeup on his cheeks over the scratches and bruises, and they had wound a tie around his neck under the shirt collar. He didn’t know where they had gotten the tie, it wasn’t anything he remembered. And they had folded his brother’s hands across his suited chest, as if he would be preserved in this sanguine pose forever, but only the heavy callouses visible at the sides of his hands seemed real. It was only the callouses that appeared to be familiar and believable.

You can shut it again, he said to Guthrie. That ain’t him in there. My brother wouldn’t let himself look like that even for a minute if he was still alive. Not if he still had breath to prevent them from doing him like that. I know what my brother looks like.

He turned and hobbled back to the pew and sat down and laid his crutches out of the way. Then he shut his eyes and never looked at the dead face of his brother again.

P
EOPLE BEGAN FILING INTO THE CHURCH. THE ORGANIST
in the loft at the back of the sanctuary began to play, and Victoria and Maggie came in, with Katie in her mother’s arms. Together they slid in beside Raymond. The mortician and an assistant in a matching black suit seated people in pews on both sides of the aisle, moving everybody up to the front, but there were not a great many mourners at the funeral, and only the first five rows were filled. Before the service began, the mortician came forward very somberly and opened the casket so that during the service people might view his handiwork, and then the minister came in from a side door and crossed to the pulpit and greeted them one and all in the name of Jesus in a voice that was laden with solemnity and import. Then there were prayers to be said and hymns to be sung. The organist played Blessed Assurance, Jesus Is Mine and Abide with Me: Fast Falls the Eventide, and people sang along, but not very loud. When the music was finished the preacher began to talk in earnest and he spoke about a man about whom he knew next to nothing at all, saying to those in attendance that he believed Harold McPheron must have been a good man, a Christian light among his fellows, else why would they be there marking his passing even if they were only a few in number, though they must all remember a man might be loved deeply even if he was never to be loved widely, and no one present should ever forget that. Sitting beside Raymond, Victoria cried a little despite the inadequacy and ignorance of what the man was saying, and Katie at one point grew so fussy that Raymond had to reach over and lift her onto his lap, patting her and whispering in her ear until she quieted down.

Then the service was over and Raymond and Victoria and Katie and Maggie and Guthrie went back up the aisle very slowly. Raymond led them, his hat on his head again as before, limping and hobbling with his crutches. They went outside to the black cars waiting in front at the curb in the sun. After some time, when the mourners had filed past and looked at the body, the mortician and his assistant rolled out the closed casket and slid it into the black hearse. Then they all drove away in a slow procession with the headlights of all the cars turned on in the broad daylight, heading out north and east to the cemetery three miles outside of town. Beside the grave when they were seated in the metal folding chairs under the awning, the preacher said a few words more and read from scripture once again, and he prayed for the safe translation of Harold’s immortal soul into everlasting heaven. Afterward he shook Raymond’s hand. And by that time the wind was blowing so hard that the caretakers had to lean far over to do their work, and they lowered the dark casket into the ground next to the plot in which the senior McPherons had been buried more than half a century before.

Then they all drove back to town and Raymond climbed once more into Victoria’s car. Honey, you can take me home now, he said.

You’re not going back to the hospital? You’re sure?

I’m going back to the house. I won’t be going nowheres else.

So she drove him through town and out south toward the ranch. He dozed off before they had gotten far out of Holt and then he woke when she stopped in front of the wire gate. She helped him into the house, then went back and got Katie. I’ll get supper pretty soon, she said. You need to eat something.

I’m going to rest for a little bit, he said.

She took his arm and led him into the bedroom off the dining room, where Maggie Jones had changed the sheets four days earlier, and he lay down in what had been his parents’ marriage bed so many years before and until recently had been Victoria’s bed. She propped his leg on a pillow and spread a quilt over him. I’ll have supper ready when you wake up, she said. Try to get some rest.

Maybe I can sleep now, he said. Thank you, honey.

She went out to the kitchen and he lay in the old soft bed with his eyes shut but soon he opened them again, sleep would not come to him, and he turned to look out the window and then turned again to look overhead, and he realized that this room he lay in was directly below his brother’s empty bedroom, and he lay under the quilt staring at the ceiling, wondering how his brother might be faring in the faraway yet-to-be. There would have to be cattle present there somehow and some manner of work for his brother to do out in the bright unclouded air in the midst of these cattle. He knew his brother would never be satisfied otherwise, if there were not. He prayed there would be cattle, for his brother’s sake.

19

I
N THE WEEK AFTER HAROLD MCPHERON’S FUNERAL, THE
first-grade teacher in the elementary school on the west side of Holt noticed one morning, within the first hour of classes, that something was the matter with the little boy in the middle of the room. He was sitting peculiarly, almost on his backbone, holding himself slouched far back in his desk, and he was only playing with the worksheet she’d handed out. She watched him for some time. The other children were all working quietly, their heads bent over the sheets of paper like so many miniature accountants. After a while she rose from her desk and walked back between the rows and came to him and stood over him. He looked as undersized and ragged as ever, like some wayward orphan turned up by mere happenstance and misfortune in her class. His hair needed cutting, it stuck out behind against the collar of his shirt, which itself was not clean. Richie, she said, sit up. How can you work like that? You’ll damage your back.

When she put a hand on his shoulder to urge him forward, he winced and jerked away. Why, what’s wrong? she said. She knelt beside him. There were tears filling his eyes and he looked very frightened. What is it? she said. Come out in the hall a minute.

I don’t want to.

She stood and took hold of his arm.

I don’t want to.

But I’m asking you to.

She pulled him to his feet and led him toward the hallway door, but as they passed her desk he grabbed at it, dragging one of her books to the floor with a loud flat crash. The other students were all watching.

Class, she said. Keep working. All of you get back to work. She stood until their heads were bent again over their desks and then took him under the arms and pulled as he struggled against her and kicked and caught at the door. She got him into the hall and knelt in front of him, still holding him.

Richie, what’s wrong with you? she said. Stop it now.

He shook his head. He was looking off along the hallway.

I want you to come with me down here.

No.

Yes, please.

She rose and took him by the hand in the direction of the office along the empty tiled hallway past the other classrooms, their doors all shut to the noises and murmurings rising from behind them. Are you sick? she said.

No.

But something’s wrong. I’m worried about you.

I want to go back to the room, he said. He looked up at her. I’ll do my work now.

I’m not concerned about that, she said. Let’s just see the nurse. I think the nurse should look at you.

She took him into a small room next to the school office where a narrow cot was pushed close to the wall opposite a metal cabinet with locked doors. The nurse sat at a desk against the far wall.

I don’t know what’s wrong with him, the teacher said. He won’t tell me. I thought you better have a look.

The nurse stood and came around and asked him to sit on the cot but he would not. The teacher left and went back to her classroom. The nurse bent over him and felt his forehead. You don’t seem hot to the touch, she said. He looked at her out of his big wet eyes. Will you open your mouth for me, please? She put her arm around him and he squirmed away. Why, what is it? Are you afraid of me? I won’t hurt you.

Don’t, he said.

I need to look at you.

He leaned away but she pulled him close and examined his face and looked briefly in his ears and felt along his neck, and then she lifted his shirt to feel if he was hot and then she found the dark bruises on his back and below the belt of his pants.

She peered into his face. Richie, she said. Did somebody do this to you?

He looked frightened and he wouldn’t answer. She turned him around and drew down his pants and underwear. His thin buttocks were crosshatched with dark red welts. In some of the places the welts had bled and clotted.

Oh, my God, she said. You stay right here.

She left and went next door and came back at once with the principal. She lifted the boy’s shirt and showed the welts to the principal. They began to ask the boy questions but he was crying by now and shaking his head and he wouldn’t say a word. Finally they called his sister out of her fifth-grade classroom and asked her what had happened to her brother. Joy Rae said: He fell off the slide at the park. He had a accident.

Would you go out? the nurse said to the principal.

All right, he said. But you let me know. We have to report this. We’re going to find out what’s going on here.

The principal went out and then the nurse said: Will you let me look at you too, Joy Rae?

I don’t have anything wrong with me.

Then you’ll just let me look, won’t you?

You don’t need to look at me.

Just for a moment. Please.

Suddenly the girl began to cry, covering her face with her hands. Don’t, she said. I don’t want you to. Nothing’s wrong with me.

Honey, I won’t hurt you. I promise. I need to look, that’s all. I have to examine you. Won’t you let me, please?

The nurse turned to her little brother. I want you to step into the hall for a minute, so we can be alone. She led him out and told him to wait there near the door.

Then she came back into the room and took the girl gently by the shoulders. This won’t take long, honey, I promise, but I need to look at you. Slowly she turned her around. Joy Rae stood sobbing with her hands at her face, while behind her the nurse unbuttoned the back of her blue dress and drew down her underpants, and what she saw on Joy Rae’s thin back and thin buttocks was even worse than what she’d seen on her brother.

Oh, honey, the nurse said. I could just about kill somebody for this. Just look at you.

A
N
HOUR
LATER
WHEN
ROSE
TYLER
FROM
THE
DEPARTMENT
of Social Services came into the nurse’s room, the two children were still there, waiting for her. They had been given pop and cookies and two or three books to look at. And soon after Rose arrived a young sheriff’s deputy from the Holt County Courthouse came in and began to set up a tape recorder. The two children watched him in terror. He talked to them but his efforts were of little use, and they watched him without blinking and when he wasn’t looking they glanced at his thick leather belt and revolver and his nightstick. Rose Tyler was more successful in her attempts, the children knew her from before and she talked to them quietly and gently. She explained that they were not in any trouble but that she and the officer and the nurse and their teachers were all worried for their safety. Did they understand that they only needed to ask them some questions? Then she asked the deputy to go out of the room and she took photographs of their welts and bruises, and afterward when the deputy returned they began the interview, with Rose asking most of the questions. These were not meant to be leading questions, so as to avoid planting anything in the children’s minds but to allow them to tell their story in their own words, but it didn’t matter, the children were very reluctant to talk at all. They stood uncomfortably at the edge of the cot, standing side by side, and looked at the floor and played with their fingers, and it was Joy Rae who spoke for both of them, though she herself answered very few of the questions in the beginning. Instead she adopted a kind of bitter defiant silence. Gradually, though, she began to talk a little. And then it came out.

But why? Rose said. What would make him want to do this to you?

The girl shrugged. We didn’t pick up the house.

You mean he expected you to clean the house.

Yes.

Yourselves? The two of you?

Yes.

And did you? The entire trailer house?

We tried to.

And was that all, honey? Was there anything else he was upset about?

The girl looked up at Rose, then looked down again. He said I talked back.

That’s what he said?

Yes.

Do you think you talked back to him?

It don’t make no difference. He says I did.

Rose wrote in her notebook, then finished and looked at the two children and looked at the sheriff’s deputy and suddenly felt she might cry and not stop. She had seen so much trouble in Holt County, all of it accumulating and lodging in her heart. This today made her sick. She had never been able to numb herself to any of it. She had wanted to, but she had not succeeded. She looked at the two Wallace children and watched them for a moment and began again to question the girl. Honey, she said, where were your mother and father at this time, while this was happening?

They were there, the girl said.

They were in the room?

No. We was in the bathroom.

Were they in the room when he began talking to you?

Yes.

But they weren’t in the bathroom when he whipped you?

No.

Where were they then?

In the front room.

What were they doing?

I don’t know. Mama was crying. She wanted him to stop.

But he wouldn’t stop? He wouldn’t listen to her?

No.

Where was your father? Did he try to do anything?

He was hollering.

Hollering?

Yes. In the other room.

I see. And you and your brother were with him in the bathroom at the same time?

No.

He took you in there separately?

Joy Rae looked at her brother. He took him first, she said. Then me.

Rose stared at the girl and her little brother, then shook her head and turned away and looked out into the hallway, imagining how that must have felt, being taken toward the back of the house and hearing the other one screaming behind the closed bathroom door, being afraid of what was to come, and the man’s face all the time getting redder and redder. She wrote in her notebook again. Then she looked up. Do you have anything else you might want to say to us?

No.

Nothing at all?

No.

All right then. I thank you for saying that much, honey. You’re a brave girl.

Rose closed her notebook and stood up.

But you won’t tell him, will you? Joy Rae said.

You mean your mother’s uncle?

Yes.

The sheriff’s office will certainly want to talk to him. He’s in serious trouble. I can promise you that.

But you won’t tell him what we said?

Try not to worry. You’ll be safe now. From now on, you’ll be protected.

R
OSE TYLER AND THE YOUNG DEPUTY DROVE IN SEPARATE
cars to the east side of Holt to the Wallaces’ trailer on Detroit Street. The weeds surrounding the trailer were all dry now and dusty, dead for winter, and everything looked dirty and ragged. Still, the sun was shining. They went up to the door together and knocked and waited. After a while Luther opened it and stood in the doorway shielding his eyes. He was wearing sweatpants and a tee-shirt, but no shoes. Can we come in? Rose said. Luther looked at her. We need to talk privately.

Well. Yeah. Come on in, he said. We’re in a terrible fix here. Dear, he called back into the house. We got company.

Rose and the deputy followed him inside. There was the sweetish-stale smell of sweat and cigarette smoke and of something spoiling.

Betty lay stretched out on the couch, sunken into the cushions and covered by an old green blanket that she kept wrapped about herself. I ain’t feeling very good, she said.

Is your stomach still hurting? Rose said.

It hurts me all the time. I can’t never get rested.

We’ll have to make you another appointment with the doctor. But I wonder, is your uncle here?

No. He ain’t here right now.

He’s over to the tavern, Luther said. He goes over there most days. Don’t he, honey.

He’s over there every day.

We need to talk to him, Rose said. When will he be back, do you think?

You can’t tell. Sometimes he don’t come back till nighttime.

I think I’ll just go find him, the deputy said. We’ll talk later, he said to Rose, then let himself out.

After he was gone Rose sat down on the couch beside Betty and patted her arm and took out her notebook. Luther went into the kitchen for a glass of water and came back and lowered himself into his cushioned chair.

Do you know why the officer and I came here today? Rose said. Do you know why I need to talk to you?

My kids, Betty said. Isn’t it.

That’s right. You know what happened, don’t you.

I know, Betty said. Her face fell and she looked very sad. But we never meant him to do nothing like that, Rose. We never wanted that, ever.

He wouldn’t even listen to us, Luther said.

But you can’t let him mistreat your children, Rose said. You must have seen what he’d done to them. It was very bad. Didn’t you see it?

I seen it afterwards. I tried to put some hand ointment on them. I thought maybe that might help.

But you know he can’t stay here if he does anything like that. Don’t you see? You have to make him leave.

Rose, he’s my uncle. He’s my mother’s baby brother.

I understand that. But he still can’t stay here. It doesn’t matter who he is. You know better.

I was trying to make him stop, Luther said. But he says he’s going to break my back for me. He’s going to take that kitchen table and throw it on me just as soons I turn my head.

Oh, I don’t think he’s going to do that. How could he?

That’s what he says. And you know what I says?

What?

I says I can find me a knife too.

Now you better be careful about that. That would only make matters worse.

What else you want me to do?

Not that. You let us take care of this.

But Rose, Betty said, I love my kids.

I know you do, Rose said. She turned toward Betty and took her hand. I believe that, Rose said. But you’ve got to do better. If you don’t, they’ll have to be taken away.

Oh no, Betty cried. Oh God. Oh God. The blanket fell away from her shoulders and she jerked her hand free and began to snatch at her hair. They already taken my Donna away, she cried, and then she started to wail. They can’t take no more.