Plainsong (15 page)

McPherons.

There was no school between Christmas and New Year’s. Victoria Roubideaux stayed out in the country in the old house back off the county road with the McPheron brothers, and the days seemed slow. The ground was covered in thin dirty patches of ice and the weather stayed cold, the temperature never rising above freezing, and in the night it was bitterly cold. She stayed inside the house and read popular magazines and baked in the kitchen, while the brothers came and went from the house, haying cattle and chopping ice in the stock tanks, paying close attention all the time to the steady advance of pregnancy in the two-year-old heifers, since they would be the most trouble during calving, and returned to the kitchen from the farm lots and pastures, ice-bound and half frozen, with their blue eyes watery and their cheeks as red as if they had been burnt. In the house Christmas had been quiet and there were no particular plans for New Year’s.

By the middle of the week the girl had begun to spend long hours in her room, sleeping late in the morning and staying up at night listening to the radio and fixing her hair, reading about babies, thinking, fiddling in a notebook.

The McPheron brothers didn’t know what to make of this behavior. They had grown accustomed to her school-week routine, when she had gotten up and eaten breakfast with them every morning and then gone to school on the bus and afterward had come home from her classes and was often out in the parlor reading another magazine or watching television when they came in for the evening. They had begun to talk more easily with her and to rehearse together the happenings of the passing days, finding the threads of things that interested them all. So it bothered them now that she’d begun to spend so many hours by herself. They didn’t know what she was doing in her room, but they didn’t want to ask her either. They didn’t think it was their right to ask or query her. So instead they began to worry.

Late in the week, driving back to the house in the pickup in the evening, Harold said, Don’t Victoria seem kind of sorry and miserable to you lately?

Yes. I’ve noted it.

Because she stays in bed too late. That’s one thing.

Maybe they do, Raymond said. Young girls might all do like that, by their natures.

Till nine-thirty in the morning? I went back into the house for something the other day and she was just getting up.

I don’t know, Raymond said. He looked out over the rattling hood of the pickup. I reckon she’s just getting bored and lonesome.

Maybe, Harold said. But if she is, I don’t know if that’s good for the baby.

What isn’t good for the baby?

Feeling lonesome and sorry like that. That can’t be good for him. On top of staying up all manner of hours and sleeping all morning.

Well, Raymond said. She needs her sleep.

She needs her regular sleep. That’s what she needs. She needs regular hours.

How do you know that?

I don’t know that, Harold said, not for a certified fact. But you take a two-year-old heifer that’s carrying a calf. She’s not up all night long, restless, moving around, is she.

What are you talking about? Raymond said. How in hell does that apply to anything?

I started thinking about it the other day. The similarities amongst em. Both of them is young. Both of them’s out in the country with only us here to watch out for em. Both is carrying a baby for the first time. Just think about it.

Raymond looked at his brother in amazement. They had arrived at the house and stopped on the frozen rutted drive in front of the wire gate. Goddamn it, he said, that’s a cow. You’re talking about cows.

I’m just saying, is all, Harold said. Give it some thought.

You’re saying she’s a cow is what you’re saying.

I’m not either saying that.

She’s a girl, for christsakes. She’s not a cow. You can’t rate girls and cows together.

I was only just saying, Harold said. What are you getting so riled up about it for?

I don’t appreciate you saying she’s a heifer.

I never said she was one. I wouldn’t say that for money.

It sounded like it to me. Like you was.

I just thought of it, is all, Harold said. Don’t you ever think of something?

Yeah. I think of something sometimes.

Well then.

But I don’t have to say it. Just because I think of it.

All right. I talked out before I thought. You want to shoot me now or wait till full dark?

I’ll have to let you know, Raymond said. He looked out the side window toward the house where the lights had been switched on in the darkening evening. I just reckon she’s getting bored. There’s nothing to do out here. No school nor nothing else now.

She don’t appear to have many friends to speak of, Harold said. That’s one thing for sure.

No. And she don’t call nobody and nobody calls her, Raymond said.

Maybe we ought to take her in to town to a picture show sometime. Do something like that.

Raymond stared at his brother. Why, you just flat amaze me.

What’s wrong now?

Well, do you want to attend a movie show? Can you see us doing that? Sit there while some Hollywood movie actor pokes his business into some naked girl on the screen while we’re sitting there eating salted popcorn watching him do it—with her sitting there next to us.

Well.

Well.

Okay, Harold said. All right then.

No sir, Raymond said. I didn’t think you’d want to do that.

But by God, we got to do something, Harold said.

I ain’t arguing that.

Well, we do, goddamn it.

I said I know, Raymond said. He rubbed his hands together between his knees, warming them; his hands were chafed and red, cracked. It does appear to me like we just did this, he said. Or something next to it. That night when we was talking to her about the market. I tell you, it seems like you get one thing fixed and something else pops up. Like with a young girl like her, you can’t fix nothing permanent.

I hear what you’re saying, Harold said.

The two brothers looked toward the house, thinking. The house was old and weathered, nearly paintless, the upstairs windows looked down blankly. Next to the house the bare elm trees blew and tossed in the wind.

I’m going to tell you what though, Harold said. I’m beginning to have a little more appreciation for these people with kids nowadays. It only appears to be easier from the outside. He looked at his brother. I think that’s the truth, he said. Raymond was still looking toward the house, not saying anything. Are you listening to me? I just said something.

I heard what you said, Raymond said.

Well? You never said nothing.

I’m thinking.

Well, can’t you think and talk to me at the same time?

No, I can’t, Raymond said. Not with something like this. It takes all my concentration.

All right then, Harold said. Keep thinking. I’ll shut my mouth if that’s what it takes. But one of us had better come up with something pretty damn quick. Her staying in that bedroom all the time can’t be any good for her. Nor for that baby either she’s carrying inside her.

That night Harold McPheron put in a call to Maggie Jones. Harold and Raymond had decided that he should do that. It was after the girl had gone back to her bedroom for the night and had shut the door.

When Maggie picked up the phone Harold said to her, If you was to buy a crib, where would you think to get it?

Maggie paused. Then she said, This must be one of the McPheron brothers.

That’s right. The good-looking smart one.

Well, Raymond, she said. It’s nice of you to call.

That’s not as comical as you think, Harold said.

Isn’t it?

No, it ain’t. Anyhow, what’s your answer? Where would you buy a crib if you was to need one?

I’m to understand that you don’t mean a corn crib. You wouldn’t have to ask me about that.

That’s right.

I believe I’d drive over to Phillips. To the department store. They’d have a baby section.

Whereabouts is it?

On the square across from the courthouse.

On the north side?

Yes.

Okay, Harold said. How you doing, Maggie? You doing all right?

She laughed. I’m doing fine.

Thanks for the information, he said. Happy New Year’s to you, and hung up.

The next morning the McPheron brothers came up to the house from work about nine o’clock, covered up against the cold, stomping their boots on the little porch, taking their thick caps off. They had purposely timed their return to the house so as to find the girl still seated in the dining room at the walnut table, eating her solitary breakfast. She looked up at them where they stood hesitating in the doorway, then they came in and sat down across from her. She was still in her flannel nightgown and heavy sweater and stockings and her hair was shining in the winter-slanted sun coming in through the uncurtained south windows.

Harold cleared his throat. We’ve been thinking, he said.

Oh? the girl said.

Yes ma’am, we have. Victoria, we want to take you over to Phillips to do some shopping in the stores. If that’s all right with you. If you don’t have something else planned for the day.

This announcement surprised her. What for? she said.

For fun, Raymond said. For some diversion. Don’t you want to? We thought you might appreciate getting out of the house.

No. I mean, what are we shopping for?

For the baby. Don’t you think this little baby you’re carrying is going to want some place to put his head down some day?

Yes. I think so.

Then we better get him something to do it in.

She looked at him and smiled. What if it’s a girl though?

Then I guess we’ll just have to keep her anyway and make the best of our bad luck, Raymond said. He made an exaggeratedly grave face. But a little girl’s going to want a bed too, isn’t she? Don’t little baby girls get tired too?

They left the house about eleven that morning after the McPheron brothers had finished the morning feeding. They had come back in and washed up and changed into clean pants and clean shirts, and by the time they had put on the good handshaped silver-belly Bailey hats that they wore only to town the girl was already waiting for them, sitting at the kitchen table in her winter coat with the red purse looped over her shoulder.

They set out in the bright cold day, riding in the pickup, the girl seated in the middle between them with a blanket over her lap, with the old papers and sales receipts and fencing pliers and the hot wire testers and the dirty coffee mugs all sliding back and forth across the dashboard whenever they made any sharp turn, driving north toward Holt, passing through town and beneath the new water tower and carrying on north, the country flat and whitepatched with snow and the wheat stubble and the cornstalks sticking up blackly out of the frozen ground and the winter wheat showing in the fall-planted fields as green as jewelry. Once they saw a lone coyote in the open, running, a steady distance-covering lope, its long tail floating out behind like a trail of smoke. Then it spotted the pickup, stopped, started to move again, running hard now, and crossed the highway and hit a section of woven fence and was instantly thrown back but at once sprang up again and hit the fence again and at last in a panic scrambled up over the wire fence like a human man would, and ran on, loping again in the open, traversing the wide country on the other side of the road without once pausing or even slowing down to look back.

Is he all right? the girl said.

Appears like it, Raymond said.

Until somebody gets after him, Harold said, chasing after him in a pickup with coyote dogs. And shoots him.

Do they do that?

They do.

They drove on. There were farm houses scattered and isolated in the flat sandy country, with barns and outbuildings down below them, and dark windbreaks of trees in the far distances, showing where a farmstead was now or once had been. They drove past one farm beside the highway where there were quarter horses and a red barn and where the man had poked worn-out cowboy boots upside down over the tops of the fence posts along the road for an eighth of a mile, for decoration. At Red Willow they turned west and drove on, past the country schoolhouse at Lone Star and across the high open wheatland, and after a while they topped a rise and could see down into the South Platte River valley, wide and tree-lined, the cliffs far away on the other side, with the town laid out below. They fishtailed down, crossed the interstate highway and entered the outreaches of Phillips.

By now it was about one-thirty. They parked at the curb across from the courthouse and went into a little local café for lunch and sat down at a table with a green tablecloth quartered over it. The noon-hour rush was finished and they were the only customers. In a moment a woman got up from the counter where she’d been smoking and resting and brought them water glasses and menus. The girl ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup. Raymond said to her, You better get you more than that. Don’t you think, Victoria? It’s a long time till supper.

The girl asked for a glass of milk.

Bring her a tall glass, would you, ma’am? Raymond said.

What about you two gentlemen? the woman said.

Both of the McPheron brothers ordered chicken fried steaks which came with mashed potatoes and green beans and canned corn and a carrot Jell-O salad.

Them are good to eat, the woman said.

That so? Harold said.

I like em myself, she said.

That sounds encouraging, if the help eats the food, he said. What kind of gravy comes with it?

Yellow.

Put some of that on the steaks too, would you?

I can tell him. I don’t do it myself.

If you would, he said. And some black coffee too, when you get a decent chance. Thank you kindly.

The woman put in their order and brought their coffee and milk, and in a short while she brought out their platters of food. They sat at the table in the little café and ate quietly, deliberately. When the brothers were finished they ordered themselves and the girl Dutch apple pie with a scoop of ice cream on top, but she could only eat half of hers. They paid the bill and walked up the block to the department store.