Plainsong (14 page)

Victoria Roubideaux.

In December the girl appeared in the doorway of Maggie Jones’s classroom during the teacher’s planning hour. Maggie was sitting at her desk, marking student papers with a red ink pen.

Mrs. Jones? the girl said.

The teacher looked up. Victoria. Come in.

The girl entered the room and stopped beside the desk. Nobody else was in the room. The girl was heavier now, beginning to show, and her face looked wider, fuller. Her blouse had drawn more tightly over her stomach, making the material appear polished and shiny. Maggie set the papers aside. Come around here, she said. Let me look at you. Well, my yes. You’re getting there, aren’t you. Turn around, let me see you from the side.

The girl did so.

Are you feeling all right?

It’s been moving lately. I’ve been feeling it.

Have you? She smiled at the girl. You seem to be eating enough. Is there something you wanted? You don’t have a class now?

I told Mr. Guthrie I had to be excused to the rest room.

Is something wrong?

The girl glanced around the room and looked back. She stood beside the desk and picked up a paperweight, then put it back. Mrs. Jones, she said, they don’t talk.

Who doesn’t?

They don’t say more than two words at a time. It’s not just to me. I don’t think they even talk to each other.

Oh, Maggie said. The McPheron brothers, you mean them.

It’s so quiet out there, the girl said. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. We eat supper. They read the paper. I go into my room and study. And that’s about it. Every day it’s like that.

Is everything else all right?

Oh, they’re kind to me. If that’s what you mean. They’re nice enough.

But they don’t talk, Maggie said.

I don’t know if they even want me out there, the girl said. I can’t tell what they’re thinking.

Have you tried talking to them? You know you could start a conversation yourself.

The girl looked at the older woman with exasperation. Mrs. Jones, she said, I don’t know anything about cows.

Maggie laughed. She laid the red pen down on the stack of student papers and leaned back in her chair, stretching her shoulders. Do you want me to talk to them for you?

I know they mean well, the girl said. I don’t think they mean any harm.

Two days later that week, in the afternoon, after school was let out for the day, Maggie Jones discovered Harold McPheron standing in front of the refrigerated meat case at the rear of the Highway 34 Grocery Store on the east side of Holt. He was clenching a package of pork roast to his nose. She walked up beside him.

This look recent to you? he said. He held the meat out toward her.

It looks bloody, she said.

I can’t tell if it smells good. They got it wrapped up in all this goddamn plastic. You couldn’t tell the working end of a skunk with this stuff on it.

I didn’t know you ate skunks.

That’s what I’m talking about. I can’t tell what I’m eating with this goddamn plastic wrapped around it. It ain’t like our own beef from the meat locker—when we get it I know what I’m getting. He shoved the pork roast back into the meat case and picked up another package. He held it close to his face, sniffing at it, grimacing, his eyes squinted. He turned it over and peered suspiciously at the underside.

Maggie watched him, amused. I was hoping I’d run into you, she said. But I guess it’ll have to wait. I wouldn’t want to interrupt your shopping.

Harold looked at her. What for? What’d I do now?

Not enough, she said. Neither one of you has.

He lowered the meat package and turned to face her. He was dressed in his work clothes, worn jeans and his canvas chore jacket, and on his head, canted toward one ear, was an old dirty white hat.

What are you talking about? he said.

You and your brother want to keep that girl out there with you, don’t you?

Why yeah, he said. What’s the trouble? He looked surprised.

Because you think it’s kind of nice having a girl in the house, don’t you? You’ve gotten kind of used to having her out there with you?

Where’d we go wrong? he said.

You’re not talking to her, Maggie Jones said. You and Raymond don’t talk like you should to that girl. Women want to hear some conversation in the evening. We don’t think that’s too much to ask. We’re willing to put up with a lot from you men, but in the evening we want to hear some talking. We want to have a little conversation in the house.

What kind? Harold said.

Any kind. Just so you mean it.

Well damn it, Maggie, Harold said. You know I don’t know how to talk to women. You knew that before you ever brought her out there. And Raymond, he don’t know a thing about it either. Neither one of us does. In particular a young girl like her.

That’s why I’m telling you, Maggie said. Because you better learn.

But damn it, what would we talk to her about?

I expect you’ll think of something.

She said no more. Instead she walked away into one of the aisles of the grocery store, pushing her shopping cart ahead of her, her long dark skirt swirling briskly about her legs. Gazing after her, Harold followed her progress with considerable interest, watching from under the dirty brim of his hat. In his eyes there was the look of mystification and alarm.

When he returned to the house it was just before dark. Raymond was still outside. He located him out back of the horse barn and pulled him inside into one of the plank-sided stalls as if there were a need for privacy. With some excitement in his voice he reported to Raymond what Maggie Jones had said to him in the Highway 34 Grocery Store while he stood before the meat case considering pork roast for their supper.

Raymond received the news in silence. Afterward he looked up and studied his brother’s face for a moment. That’s what she said?

Yes. That’s what she said.

That’s all of it? The sum and total?

All I can remember.

Then we got to do something.

That’s what I think too, Harold said.

I’m talking about we got to do something today, Raymond said. Not next week.

That’s what I’m telling you, Harold said. I’m trying to agree with you.

The McPheron brothers made their attempt that same evening. They had decided it was safe to wait until after supper, but believed they could wait no longer. After supper they sallied forth together.

They and the girl had just finished eating a meal of fried meat and red onions, boiled potatoes, coffee, green beans, sliced bread and equally divided portions of canned peaches, bright yellow in their own syrup. It had been the customary nearly silent evening meal, eaten almost formally out in the dining room, and afterward the girl had cleared the square walnut table of their dishes and had taken the dishes to the kitchen and washed them and put them away, and then she was started back to her bedroom when Harold said:

Victoria. He had to clear his throat. He started again. Victoria. Raymond and me was wanting to ask you a question, if you don’t mind. If we could. Before you started back to your studies there.

Yes? she said. What did you want to ask?

We just was wondering . . . what you thought of the market?

The girl looked at him. What? she said.

On the radio, he said. The man said today how soybeans was down a point. But that live cattle was holding steady.

And we wondered, Raymond said, what you thought of it. Buy or sell, would you say.

Oh, the girl said. She looked at their faces. The brothers were watching her closely, a little desperately, sitting at the table, their faces sober and weathered but still kindly, still well meaning, with their smooth white foreheads shining like polished marble under the dining room light. I wouldn’t know, she said. I couldn’t say about that. I don’t know anything about it. Maybe you could explain it to me.

Well sure, Harold said. I reckon we could try. Because the market . . . But maybe you’d like to sit down again first. At the table here.

Raymond rose at once and pulled out her chair. She seated herself slowly and he pushed the chair in for her and she thanked him and he went back to the other side of the table and took his place. For a moment the girl sat rubbing her stomach where it felt tight, then she noticed they were watching her with close interest, and she put her hands forth on the table. She looked across at them. I’m listening, she said. Do you want to go ahead?

Why sure, of course, Harold said. As I was saying. He began in a loud voice. Now the market is what soybeans and corn and live cattle and June wheat and feeder pigs and bean meal is all bringing in today for a price. He reads it out every day at noon, the man on the radio. Six-dollar soybeans. Corn two-forty. Fifty-eight-cent hogs. Cash value, sold today.

The girl sat watching him talk, following his lecture.

People listen to it, he said, and know what the prices are. They manage to keep current that a-way. Know what’s going on.

Not to mention pork bellies, Raymond said.

Harold opened his mouth to say something more, but now he stopped. He and the girl turned to look at Raymond.

How’s that? Harold said. Say again.

Pork bellies, Raymond said. That’s another one of em. You never mentioned it. You never told her about them.

Well yeah, of course, Harold said. Them too. I was just getting started.

You can buy them too, Raymond said to the girl. If you had a mind to. He was looking at her solemnly from across the table. Or sell em too, if you had some.

What are they? the girl said.

Well that’s your bacon, Raymond said.

Oh, she said.

Your fat meat under the ribs there, he said.

That’s right, Harold said. They’re touted on the market too. So anyway, he said, looking at the girl. Now do you see?

She looked from one old man to the other. They were waiting, watching for some reaction, as if they’d been laying out the intricacies of some last will and testament or perhaps the necessary precautions to take against the onset of fatal disease and the contagion of plague. I don’t think so, she said. I don’t understand how he knows what the prices are.

The man on the radio? Harold said.

Yes.

They call them up out of the big salebarns. He gets the market reports from Chicago or Kansas City. Or Denver maybe.

Then how do you sell something? she said.

All right, Raymond said, taking his turn. He leaned forward toward her to explain these matters. Take for instance you want to sell you some wheat, he said. Take, you already got it there in the elevator in Holt next to the railroad tracks where you carried it back in July at harvest time. Now you want to sell some of it off. So you call up the elevator and tell him to sell off five thousand bushel, say. So he sells it at today’s prices and then the big grain trucks, those tractors and trailers you see out on the highway, they haul it away.

Who does he sell it to? the girl said.

Any number of places. Most likely to the milling company. Mostly it goes for your baking flour.

Then when do you get your money?

He writes you out a check today.

Who does that?

The elevator manager.

Except if there’s a storage charge, Harold said, taking his turn again. He takes that out. Plus your drying charge, if there is one. Only, since it’s wheat we’re talking about, there’s never much drying charge with wheat. Mostly that’s with your corn.

They stopped again and studied the girl once more. They had begun to feel better, a little satisfied with themselves. They knew they were not out of the woods yet, but they had begun to allow themselves to believe that what they saw ahead was at least a faint track leading to a kind of promising clearing. They watched the girl and waited.

She shook her head and smiled. They noticed again how beautiful her teeth were and how smooth her face. She said, I still don’t think I understand it. You said something about cattle. What about them?

Oh, well, Harold said. Okay. Now with cattle.

And so the two McPheron brothers went on to discuss slaughter cattle and choice steers, heifers and feeder calves, explaining these too, and between the three of them they discussed these matters thoroughly, late into the evening. Talking. Conversing. Venturing out into various other matters a little too. The two old men and the seventeen-year-old girl sitting at the dining room table out in the country after supper was over and after the table was cleared, while outside, beyond the house walls and the curtainless windows, a cold blue norther began to blow up one more high plains midwinter storm.

Ike and Bobby.

As per agreement they spent Christmas week in Denver with their mother. Guthrie drove them to the city in the pickup and went up with them to the seventh floor of the apartment building on Logan Street where their mother’s sister lived. They took the elevator and followed a runner of carpet in the long bright corridor. Guthrie saw them into the front room and talked briefly to their mother without heat or argument, but he wouldn’t sit down and he left very soon.

Their mother seemed quieter now. Perhaps she was more at peace. Her face looked less pinched and pale, less drawn. She was glad to see them. She hugged them for a long time and her eyes were wet with tears while she smiled, and they sat together on the couch and she held their hands warmly in her lap. It was clear she had missed them. But in some way their mother had been taken over by her sister who was three years older. She was a small woman, precise and particular, with sharp opinions, pretty instead of beautiful, with gray eyes and a small hard chin. She and their mother would contend now and then over little things—the table setting, the degree of heat in the apartment—but in the matters of consequence their mother’s sister had her way. Then their mother seemed remote and passive as though she could not be roused to defend herself. But the two boys didn’t think in such terms. They thought their aunt was bossy. They wanted their mother to do something about the way their aunt was.

The apartment had two bedrooms and the boys stayed with their mother in her room, chatting and telling little jokes and playing cards, and at night they slept on the floor on pallets, with warm blankets folded over them at the foot of her bed. It was like camping. But much of the time they couldn’t be in the bedroom since their mother was having her silent spells again, when she wanted to be alone in a darkened room. The spells started the fourth day they were in Denver, after Christmas. Christmas had been disappointing. The red sweater they’d bought their mother was too big for her, though she said she liked it anyway. They hadn’t thought to buy their aunt anything. Their mother had bought them each a bright shirt, and later, one day when she was feeling better, she took them shopping downtown and bought them new shoes and new pants and several pairs of socks and underwear. When they stopped at the register to pay Ike said, It’s too much, Mother. We don’t need all this.

Your father sent me some money, she said. Should we go back now?

It was very quiet in their aunt’s apartment. Their aunt was a supervisory clerk in the municipal court system with an office in the civic center downtown, and she had been there for twenty-three years and as a result she had developed a stark view of humanity and its vagaries and the multitude of ways it found to commit crimes. She had been married once, for three months, and since that time had never considered marrying anyone again. She was left with two passions: a fat yellow neutered cat named Theodore and the television soap opera that came on at one o’clock every weekday while she was at work, a program she taped religiously and watched without fail every night when she was home again.

The boys were bored right away. Their mother had seemed better, but after the silent spells began she appeared defeated again and went back to bed, and their aunt told them they must be quiet and let her rest. This was after she’d gone into their mother’s room one evening and they’d talked for an hour behind the closed door, and then she had come back out and said, You will have to be quiet and let her rest.

We have been quiet.

Are you arguing with me.

What’s wrong with Mother?

Your mother is not strong.

So their aunt went to work and their mother went back to bed lying with her arm folded over her eyes in a darkened room, and they were left alone in the seventh-floor apartment in Denver and were told strictly not to go outside. They spent their time reading a little and they watched tv until they were blind, while still being careful at the critical hour not to interfere with the taping of their aunt’s soap opera. Their only recourse was the balcony at the front of the apartment, which they entered by sliding back a glass door. It overlooked Logan Street and the sidewalk and there were cars parked all along the curbing and they could see into the tops of the leafless winter trees. They began to go out on the balcony to watch the cars go by in the street and to see people walking their dogs. They put their coats on and stayed for longer and longer periods of time. After a while they took to dropping things off the balcony. They started by leaning over the rail to watch what the wind did with their spittle, then they made up a game to see who could sail scraps of paper the farthest, floating the paper like feathers, and they invented a system of points for distance and placement. But that was too unpredictable. Wind had too much to do with it. They found that dropping things that had weight was better. And eggs were best.

After this had gone on for a couple of days someone in the building told their aunt about it. When she came into the apartment that evening she removed her coat and hung it up, and then she took them both by the wrist and led them into their mother’s room. Do you know what these two have been doing?

Their mother leaned up in bed. No, she said. She looked pale and drawn again. But it couldn’t be very bad, she said.

They’ve been smashing eggs on the sidewalk.

How?

Dropping them off the balcony. Oh, it’s very intelligent.

Have you? she said, looking in their faces.

They stood looking at her impassively. Their aunt was still holding their wrists.

Yes, they have.

Well, I’m sure they won’t do it anymore. There’s too little for them to do up here.

They can’t do that anymore. I won’t have it.

So that was the end of that. They were forbidden to go out onto the balcony.

At the end of the week they woke one night in the dark and discovered that their mother wasn’t in the room. They opened the door and went out into the living room. No lights were on, but the curtain was drawn back from the glass balcony door and the lights of the city came in through the glass. Their mother was sitting on the davenport with a blanket wrapped around her. Though she was awake, so far as they could see, she wasn’t doing anything.

Mother?

What is it? she said. What woke you?

We wondered where you were.

I’m just out here, she said. It’s all right. Go back to bed.

Can’t we sit here with you?

If you want. It’s cool out here though.

I’ll get a blanket, Ike said.

But you won’t like it, their mother said. I’m not very good company.

Mother, can’t you come home again? Bobby said. What good is it here?

No. Not yet, she said.

When?

I don’t know, she said. I’m not sure. Here. Slide closer. You’re getting cold. I should make you go back to bed. They sat for a long time watching out the window.

The boys were glad the next day when their father returned to pick them up. They wanted to go home again, but they felt confused and uneasy about leaving their mother in Denver in the apartment with her sister. Guthrie tried to make them talk on the way back. They wouldn’t say very much of anything, though. They didn’t want to be disloyal to their mother. The trip seemed to take a long time. Once they were in the house upstairs in their own bedroom it was better. They could look out and see the corral and windmill and horse barn.