Plainsong (11 page)

What?

This ain’t going to be no goddamn Sunday school picnic.

No, it ain’t, Raymond said. But I don’t recall you ever attending Sunday school either.

Ella.

When he drove to Chicago Street to her little house after she had called him at school it was late in the afternoon. He parked and walked up the sidewalk past the three elm trees, the one with the sap still showing the dark stain but no longer so raw nor fresh this late in the year, and then when he stepped onto the porch he discovered that she was already waiting for him at the door. She opened it even before he could knock. She let him in and he entered the little front room of the place and saw at once that she had been packing. Her two suitcases were set out on the floor and the room itself was clean and spruce and neat again, as it had been when she’d moved in. Dustfree and anonymous again, it was returned once more to its former state: a little rental house on Chicago Street on the east side of Holt.

When he had a good look at Ella he could see that she too was better now. Not as good as she had looked once, but her hair was pretty again, just washed and brushed back from her face, and she was dressed in wool slacks and a good white blouse. She had lost weight since he’d last seen her, but it didn’t appear that she would lose any more.

He gestured toward the suitcases. Are you going somewhere?

I’m going to tell you about it, she said. That’s why I called you.

So tell me, he said.

She looked at him. Her eyes still bore a kind of wounded fierceness, as though the sadness and the anger were both just below the surface. I hoped you weren’t going to be that way today, she said.

What way?

I didn’t want it to be like this, not this time.

Why don’t you go ahead and tell me what you have in mind, he said. You called school and I came.

Can we at least sit down? she said. Will you do that?

Yes.

She seated herself on the couch and he sat opposite her on one of the wooden chairs. On the couch she looked small, almost frail. He picked out a cigarette from his shirt pocket. Are you going to object if I smoke?

I’d prefer that you didn’t.

He looked at her. He held the cigarette but didn’t light it. Go ahead and talk, he said. I’m listening.

Well, she said, I wanted you to know that I’ve decided to go to Denver to my sister’s. To stay with her for a while. I called her and it’s all set. She has an extra bedroom and I can have the use of that. I won’t be in the way and it’ll give me time to think. We both think it’ll be for the best.

For how long?

I don’t know. I can’t tell that yet. For as long as it takes.

When?

You mean when am I going?

Yes, when do you plan to leave?

Tomorrow. In the morning. I’ll be taking the car.

You’ll be taking the car. That’s news.

You don’t need it. You have the pickup.

He looked around, out into the little dining room and through the arched doorway into the kitchen. He turned back. And you think this’ll be the answer? Taking off like this?

She regarded him steadily. You know, you make me really tired sometimes.

I guess that goes both ways, he said.

They looked at each other, and it seemed obvious to Guthrie that she was thinking hard, trying to get back to how she wanted this to be. But it wasn’t going to happen. Too much had gone on.

She spoke again. I’m sorry about that for both of us, she said. I’m sorry about a lot of things. And I’ve decided I’m finally tired of being sorry.

He started to speak, but she cut him off.

Let me finish, please.

I was only going to say—

I know. Let me finish. I don’t want to forget this. I want something more than this. I understand that now. I’ve been submerged and abstracted. I wanted something more from you all these years. I wanted someone who wanted me for what I am. Not his own version of me. It sounds too simple to say it that way, but that’s what it is. Someone who wanted me, for myself. You don’t.

I used to, he said. I did once.

What happened to it?

Lots of things. It wore out. He shrugged. I didn’t get back what I gave you, what I wanted in return.

What you wanted? She flared up now, speaking heatedly. What about me? What about what I want?

What do you want? he said. He was angry now too. I don’t think you know. I wish you did but I don’t think you do. This is just another example of it.

You can’t say that, she said. That’s not for you to say. I’ll take care of that.

They sat facing each other across the room, and Guthrie thought, So they had reached this point again. It hadn’t taken them long. They’d arrived at this place one more time despite whatever good intentions they’d started with. It didn’t matter, this is where they would end up. It had been this way for the past three or four years. He looked at her. They were waiting, both trying privately to regain some calm in themselves. At the back of the little house the heater clicked on and the fan blew warm air into the room.

What about the boys? he said.

I’ve been thinking about that. You’ll just have to keep them.

You mean as opposed to what I’ve already been doing.

I know you’ve been taking care of them by yourself, she said. I can’t do anything else right now. But I want them to come stay with me here tonight. Then I’ll leave in the morning. I’ll bring them back to the house before I leave.

They still have their papers in the morning.

They’ll be home in time.

What about money? he said.

I’m going to take half of our savings.

The hell.

It’s half mine, she said. It’s only fair.

He took out matches and lit the cigarette he’d been holding. He blew smoke toward the ceiling light and looked across at her. All right, he said. Take the money.

I already have, she said. And you’ll be good to the boys, won’t you. And you’ll pay attention to them. And I want them to call me and for you to let me talk to them. I want you to promise you won’t make that a problem.

You can call any time, he said. They can call you any time.

And I want them to come and see me too. After a while. After I’ve gotten settled.

I think they should, he said. They’ll want to. They already miss you now. It’ll be worse after you leave.

He smoked and looked around for an ashtray but there wasn’t any and she didn’t get up to find him one. He tapped ashes into his cupped palm.

So that’s it?

Yes, I think so.

All right. I think I’ll go.

He rose without saying anything more and he walked out onto the front porch and she followed him and shut the door. Outside, he brushed the ashes off his hand and that evening he drove the two boys back to their mother’s house, driving across town in the old pickup with a grocery bag containing their clean pajamas on the seat between them, with the blue streetlights turned on at all the street corners and the town itself looking quiet and serene. He pulled up and stopped in front of the house. The lights were on inside.

Mom’ll bring you home in the morning, he said. And you’ve got your pajamas.

They nodded.

You’re all set then.

Can we call you if we need anything? Bobby said.

Of course. But you’ll be all right. I know you will. You’re going to have a good time here.

Guthrie and the two boys sat in the heated cab, looking at the little stucco house with the lights showing in the windows. Once they saw her pass before the window carrying something. Patches of snow under the bare trees in the yard were shining in the house light.

All right? Guthrie said. That’ll be good. You’ll have a fine time. Who knows, maybe you won’t even want to come home again. He patted them on the legs. A joke.

But they didn’t smile. They didn’t say anything.

Well. You better go. Your mom’s waiting. I’ll see you in the morning.

Good night, Dad.

Good night, he said.

They climbed out of the pickup and walked one after the other up the sidewalk and knocked on the door and stood waiting without turning to look back at him, and then she opened the front door. She had changed clothes since the afternoon and now was wearing a handsome blue dress. He thought she looked slim and pretty framed in the doorway. She let them in and closed the door, and afterward he drove up Chicago past the little houses set back from the street in their narrow lots, the lawns in front of them all brown with winter and the evening lights turned on inside the houses and people sitting down to dinner in the kitchens or watching the news on television in the front rooms, while in some of the houses some of the people too, he knew well, were already starting to argue in the back bedrooms.

When they entered the house Ike and Bobby found that she had already set the table in the little dining room. It was pleasant, with lighted candles and the flames reflecting in the glasses and silverware, and out in the kitchen she had hamburger chili ready to dish up and a round chocolate cake, which she had made specially for them. She wanted it to be festive.

Well come in, come in, she said. Don’t be strangers. Take off your coats. I have everything ready.

We ate at home, Bobby said, looking at the table. We didn’t know you’d have supper.

Oh. Didn’t you? She looked at him. She had both hands on the back of a chair. She looked at his brother. I thought you would eat here. I thought that was understood.

We can eat some more, Ike said.

Don’t be foolish. You don’t have to make yourselves sick.

No. We’re still hungry, Mother.

Are you?

Yes, we are.

I am, Bobby said.

They sat down and ate the supper she had prepared. They were able to eat quite a lot while she told them about her decision to go to Denver. They listened to her without saying anything since Guthrie had already told them about it. She said she wanted them to come visit her soon and that her leaving was going to be better for everyone, including the two of them, even if they couldn’t see it yet, because soon she’d be able to act like their mother again, and then when she was feeling completely better they would all decide what to do next, didn’t they think that would be all right? They didn’t know, they said. Maybe, they said. She said she guessed that would have to do, that it was about as much as she could hope for right then.

After supper they played a game of blackjack which she had taught them a year ago. She went to the closet and opened her purse and took out some coins and they used these to bet with, determining for the sake of the game that the coins were all the same worth, even the quarters and pennies. During the card game she sat across from them on the carpet with her stockinged legs folded back to the side and her dress covering her knees. She acted as though she were happy, as though they were having a real party, and made little jokes to tease them, and once she stood up and brought each of them more cake from the kitchen and they ate it sitting on the floor together. They watched her with their heads down and smiled when she said things.

Later they put on their pajamas in the bathroom and then went into her bedroom and got into the bed that she used.

She undressed in the bathroom too. She brushed her hair and washed her face and put on a long nightgown, then came into the bedroom. She said she’d made up the bed in the other room for them. But they asked to sleep in this room with her. Couldn’t they, this once? They were already in the bed. She stood beside the bed looking at them. They wanted to sleep one on each side of her but she said that would be too hot. She got in on the outside and Bobby lay in the middle with Ike next to him. The ceiling light down the hallway shone in through the half-open door. They settled down and lay quietly. Occasionally a car went by outside on Chicago Street. They talked a little in the dim light.

Mother, are you going to be all right in Denver? Ike said.

I hope so, she said. I want to be. I’ll call you when I get there. Will you call me back sometimes?

Yes, he said. We’ll call you every week.

Does Dad have your number? Bobby said.

Yes, he does. And you know how much I love you, don’t you. Both of you. I want you always to remember that. I’m going to miss you so much. But I know you’re going to be all right.

I wish you didn’t have to go, Ike said.

I don’t understand why you are, Bobby said.

It’s hard to explain, she said. I just know I have to. Can you try to accept that, even if you don’t understand it?

They didn’t say anything.

I hope you can.

After a while she said, Do you have any more questions?

They shook their heads.

Do you think you can go to sleep?

In the night after they were asleep she got up and looked out the window at the front yard and the empty street, at the stark trees that stood in the lawn like arrested stickfigures. She went out to the kitchen. She made coffee and took it to the front room and lay down on the sofa and after an hour or more she went to sleep. But she woke early, in time to wake them and set out cereal, and then she drove them in the car back to the house in the early cold winter morning. She leaned across in the front seat of the car and kissed them both, and Guthrie came out on the porch to meet them, and then she turned the car around and went out the drive onto Railroad Street and drove through Holt, which didn’t take long, and then she was in the country on US 34 driving west to start her next life in Denver.

Victoria Roubideaux.

The second time she drove out there she had the girl with her, beside her in the front seat of the car. The girl looked frightened and preoccupied, as if she were going to confession or jail or some other place that was so unpleasant that she was willing to go only under force of circumstance and nothing else. It was Sunday. A cold and bright day and the snow still as brilliant as glass under the sun, with the wind blowing as usual in sudden but regular gusts so that outside when they got beyond the town limits it was the same as before except that the wind had turned west in the night. The cattle, the same shaggy black baldy cattle spread out in the corn stubble as the day before, were still there. It was only as if the cattle had made a collective rightface in the night when the wind had changed and had then gone on slicking up the spilled corn, wrapping their tongues around the dry corn husks, raising their heads and staring off into the distance, all the time chewing steadily.

Maggie Jones had driven more than halfway to the McPherons before the girl said any word at all. Then she said:

Mrs. Jones. Would you stop the car?

What is it?

Please, would you pull over?

Maggie slowed and steered the car off onto the rutted shoulder. A bank of snow alongside was packed into the barrow ditch and from behind the car the white smokelike exhaust tore away in the gusting wind.

What is it? Are you sick?

No.

What then?

Mrs. Jones, I don’t know if I can do this.

Oh. Well honey, yes you can.

I don’t know, the girl said.

Maggie turned to face her. The girl was looking straight ahead with one hand on the door handle, sitting up rigid and tense in the seat as though she were waiting for the right moment to jump out and run.

All right, I’ll tell you again, Maggie said. I can’t guarantee anything about this. Don’t ask that. But you need to regard this as an opportunity. They called last night and said they would take you, that they’d try it. That’s a great deal for them to say. I think it will be all right. You don’t have to be at all afraid of them. They’re about as good as men can be. They may be gruff and unpolished but they don’t mean anything by that, it’s only they’ve been alone so much. Think of living your life alone for half a century and more, like they have. It would do something to you. So you can’t let their gruffness bother you or deter you. Yes, they are rough around the edges, of course they are. They haven’t been rounded off. But you’ll be safe out here. You can still come in to school, ride the bus back and forth and complete your course work as usual. But you have to try to remember what it’s been like for them. Both their folks died in a highway truck wreck when these old men were younger than you are now. Afterward they just quit attending school, if they’d ever gone very much anyway, which I don’t think they did, and they stayed at home and went to work ranching and farming, and that’s about all they’ve known in the world or had to know. Up to now that’s been enough.

She stopped. She studied the girl’s face to see what effect her talking had had.

The girl was looking out over the nose of the car toward the straight two-lane highway. After a while she said, But Mrs. Jones. Do you think they’ll like me?

Yes, I do. If you give them a chance they will.

But it seems crazy to be going out here to live with two old men.

That’s right, Maggie said. But these are crazy times. I sometimes believe these must be the craziest times ever.

The girl turned her head to look out the side window at the native pasture beyond the ditch and fenceline. The flower spikes of the soapweed stuck up like splintered sticks, the seed pods dry and dark-looking against the winter grass. Do they have a dog? she said.

There’s an old farm dog.

Do they have any cats?

I didn’t see any. But I would guess they do. I’ve never heard of a farm yet without at least one or two stray cats around to keep down the mice and rats.

I’d have to quit my job at the Holt Café. I’d have to tell Janine.

Yes. But you wouldn’t be the first one to quit washing dishes for Janine. She expects that.

Does she?

Yes.

The girl continued to look out the window. Maggie Jones waited. Whenever there was a gust of wind the car was rocked on its wheels. After a while the girl turned back and faced forward again. You can go on if you want to, she said. I’m okay now.

Good, Maggie said. I thought you would be. She steered the car back onto the blacktop and they drove down the narrow highway. After a time they turned east onto the gravel county road and then onto the track which led back to the old house with the rusted hogwire strung around it and the stunted elm trees standing up leafless inside the rusted wire. Maggie stopped the car in front of the gate. She and the girl got out.

The McPheron brothers had been watching for them. They came out of the house at once onto the little screened porch and stood waiting for the women to come up to the house. But they neither spoke nor made any gesture. They looked as stiff and motionless as if they’d been shaped out of plaster and then stood up on the porch like two lifelike statues of minor saints.

When she got out of the car the wind had wrapped the girl’s hair across her face so that her first view of the McPherons was obscured by her own thick dark hair. But the old men had dressed for the occasion. They wore new shirts with pearl snaps and had on clean Sunday trousers. Their red faces were clean-shaven and their iron-gray hair was combed down flat on their heads with a considerable excess of hair oil, leaving it so heavy and stiffened that even the gusting wind couldn’t move it. The girl followed Maggie Jones up onto the porch.

Maggie made the introductions. Harold and Raymond McPheron, she said, this is Victoria Roubideaux. Victoria, this is Harold. This is Raymond.

The two brothers stepped forward one after the other in a kind of vaudeville drill, without yet looking directly into the girl’s face, and both shook her hand, each in his own turn, giving her one quick brisk hard-clenched squeeze and release, feeling her hand so small and soft and pliable in their own big hard callused hands, and then stepped back. Then they did look at her. She stood silently beside Maggie Jones in her winter coat and blue jeans, a young girl with long black hair and black eyes, carrying a red purse over the shoulder of her dark coat. But they couldn’t tell whether she was pregnant or not, she seemed so young and slight.

Well, Harold said. I guess you better come on in the house. It’s a booger out here.

They let the girl enter the kitchen ahead of them. Then Maggie followed and they followed her. Inside, it was apparent at once that the McPheron brothers had made an effort. The sink was empty of dishes, the table was scrubbed clean, the kitchen chairs were free of the mechanics’ rags and the pieces of machinery they had held the day before, and the floor looked as hard-swept as if an immigrant woman had used her broom on it.

This here is the kitchen, Harold said, what you’re looking at. Over here’s the sink. Next to it there is the gas range. He stopped. He looked about him. I reckon all that’d be more or less obvious to anybody. It don’t require me to tell you. In here’s the dining room and parlor.

They moved farther into the house, into two larger rooms which were intersected by shafts of daylight since the cracked brown shades bracketed above the windows had been rolled up at some point years ago, leaving both rooms filled with unshaded light as in a country schoolhouse or a rural train depot. In the first, the dining room, positioned under a hanging light fixture was an old square walnut table supported by a heavy pedestal, with four wood chairs gathered about it. The table had been cleared only very recently and the sunbleached outlines of books and magazines were still visible on its surface. Beyond, in the next room, were two worn-out plaid recliner chairs placed like housebroken outsized animals in front of a television set, with a floor lamp located at exact equidistance between the chairs and piles of newspapers and
Farm Journals
spread on the linoleum at the chairs’ feet. The girl turned and looked, taking it all in.

I expect you’d like to have a idea where your bedroom’s at, Harold said. He motioned toward the small room off the dining room. They entered it. It was almost completely filled by an old soft double bed covered by an ancient quilt, and standing against the inside wall was a heavy mahogany chest of drawers. The girl walked around the foot of the bed and opened the closet door. Inside were dusty cardboard boxes and the dark clothes of a man and woman hanging from a silver rod, the clothes so old that they were no longer black but almost purple.

All this here was theirs, Harold said. They used to sleep in here in this room.

Your mother and father? Maggie said.

After they was gone, he said, I expect we got use to thinking of it as storage space. He glanced at the girl. Course, you move things around however you want.

Thank you, the girl said.

Because we don’t come in here, Raymond said. This’ll be just yours alone. Our bedrooms is upstairs.

Oh, she said.

Yes, he said.

Well, Harold said. And out here’s where you step out.

The girl turned toward him, questioning.

Right next door to you. Convenient.

The girl looked puzzled yet. She turned to Maggie Jones.

Don’t look at me, Maggie said. I don’t know what he’s talking about.

What? Harold said. Why hell. You know. The commode. The indoor outhouse. Well, what do you call it?

That’ll do fine, Maggie said.

Our mother always called it where you step out.

Did she?

That’s what she always called it, he said. He scratched his head. Well, damn it, Maggie, I’m just trying to be proper. I’m just trying to get us started off on the right chalk. I don’t want to scare her off already.

Maggie patted his smooth-shaven cheek. You’re doing just fine, she said. Keep going.

They went out of the bedroom. And while the others waited in the dining room the girl stepped into the bathroom. Another small room, it had a sink and toilet and a freestanding enameled tub with a red hose and showerhead coiled under the faucet at one end. On the shelves above the sink were various half-used jars of liniment and salve and Cornhuskers handbalm, and tubes of back-rub and sore-muscle ointment, and there was also tooth powder and denture adhesive and shaving equipment, and hanging over one of the drying rods next to the bathtub, together with two old towels, was a single fresh new pink towel that still had the store tag stapled to it. The girl came back out of the room. Should I get my suitcase now? she said.

I think that would be a good idea, Maggie Jones said.

You need any assistance? said Raymond.

No thank you. I think I can do it, the girl said, then went out through the kitchen to the car.

When she had gone Harold said, She ain’t very big, is she. Why, she’s just a little thing. She don’t even show the baby any that I can see.

Not much yet, Maggie said. Some of her clothes are beginning to get tight. You’ll notice it more when she takes her coat off.

Is she scared of us? Raymond said. She don’t say much.

What do you think? Maggie Jones said.

Raymond looked out the window toward the car where the girl stood at the trunk gathering her belongings. She don’t have to be, he said. We wouldn’t hurt her. We wouldn’t do her a harm for anything in this world.

I know that, Maggie said. But she doesn’t know it yet. You’ll have to give her time.

The girl returned to the house carrying a single cardboard suitcase and dragging a plastic trash bag. These she took into the bedroom. They could hear her in the room, moving about on the wood floor, temporarily arranging things, then she came back out.

I’m afraid this is a hard trial for you, Raymond said to the girl. He was not looking at her, but peering past her into some distance of his own. But we want to hope . . . What I want to say is, Harold and me, we want to think that you might come to feel a little at home out here. In time, I mean. Not right away, I don’t guess.

She looked at him, then at his brother. Thank you, she said. Thank you for letting me stay here with you.

Well, you’re welcome, Raymond said. You sure are.

They stood awkwardly inspecting the floor.

Very well then, Maggie said. I believe I’ve done my part. So I think I’ll just go home and let you three souls get acquainted.

The girl looked startled. On the McPheron brothers’ faces there was the look of panic. Do you have to leave already? the girl said.

I think so, Maggie said. I think I better. It’s time.

We thought you might stay to supper, Harold said. Wouldn’t you care to do that?

Another time, she said. I’ll be back.

She went outside and the McPheron brothers and the girl followed her out and stood on the little screened porch in the wind, watching until she had driven away in the car. Then they turned and came back inside and stood looking at one another from across the bare wooden table in the kitchen.

Well, Harold said. I reckon—

The house was quiet. From outside came the faint sound of birdsong, coming up from the red cedar trees next to the garage, and there was the rising and falling noise of the wind.

—I reckon Raymond and me better go out and feed before it gets full dark, he said. Then we’ll come back in. We’ll have to see about getting some supper.

The girl looked at him.

It won’t take us long, he said.

What is it you’re feeding?

Cattle.

Oh.

Mother cows and heifers, Raymond said.

Oh.

The McPheron brothers and the girl stood looking at one another.

I guess I can get unpacked, the girl said.