Plainsong (16 page)

The shop windows out front had sets of bedroom furniture and living room sofas and lamps on display. They went inside the store and were met at once by a brisk short middle-aged woman in a brown dress. May I help you? she said.

We’re looking for the crib section, Harold said.

Baby cribs?

Yes, ma’am. We’re in the market for one. He winked at the girl. We want to consider your selection.

If you will follow me, the woman said.

They followed her back through the store aisles to a far corner. Here you see what we offer, she said. There were a dozen new baby cribs assembled and set up, fitted with mattresses and baby blankets, displayed among matching chests of drawers and changing tables. The brothers surveyed them and were astonished. They glanced at the girl. She stood aside, not saying anything at all.

Maybe you better just tell us about em, Harold said.

I’d be happy to, the woman said. The features you look for in a baby crib include this nontoxic easy-care finish. This plastic teething rail. This one side which raises and lowers for easy access. These hooded casters. This one-piece mattress support here. The brackets like these on this model so the mattress can be adjusted to various levels. This one offers a rail which lowers by knee pressure while the rail on this one lowers when you release these two catches. This model here permits you to convert it to a toddler’s daybed by removing the rail altogether.

She stopped and waited, her hands behind her back. Did you have any questions?

Why ever would you want hooded casters? Harold said.

For decoration.

Ma’am?

It looks better.

I expect that’s important, how the wheels look.

It’s an added attraction, she said. Some people prefer it.

I see, he said.

The McPheron brothers approached the baby cribs and began to inspect them closely. They manipulated the moveable sides, raising them and lowering them, and walked around each of the cribs and adjusted the height of the supports and peered underneath, and they pushed them and rolled them forward and backward. Raymond leaned over and punched down on one of the crib mattresses, causing it to bounce.

What do you think, Victoria? he said. How about this one?

It’s too expensive, she said. Every one of them is.

You let us worry about that. Which one of these do you like best?

I don’t know, she said. She looked around. This one, maybe. She indicated the least costly one.

That’s a nice one, Raymond said. I kind of like this one here, myself. They went on looking.

Finally the McPheron brothers chose the crib which converted to a daybed, the most expensive of the lot. It had carpenter-turned spindles and actual wood headboards. It seemed substantial to them and the side that was adjustable moved easily on its slides. They believed the girl would have no difficulty with it.

You have this in stock, I guess, Harold said.

Surely, the woman said.

Why don’t you bring one of em out.

But you understand it doesn’t include the mattress.

Doesn’t?

No. Mattresses are not included. Not at this price.

Well, ma’am, Harold said. We need a crib. And we’d rather to have a mattress to go with it. This girl’s going to have a baby and it can’t sleep on a board. Even if the board can be adjusted to three different levels.

Which one would you care to have? the woman said. They come in these possibilities.

She began to show them the mattresses. They chose a solid one which felt sufficiently firm when they squeezed it and turned it over, and afterward they selected several crib sheets and warm blankets.

The girl watched it all from a kind of abject distance. She had grown increasingly quiet. At last she said, Can’t you wait? It’s too much. You shouldn’t be doing all of this.

What’s the matter? Harold said. We’re having us some fun here. We thought you was too.

But it’s too expensive. Why are you doing this?

It’s all right, he said. He started to put his arm around her, but stopped himself. He looked down into her face. It’s all right, he said again. It is. You’ll just have to believe that.

The girl’s eyes filled with tears, though she made no sound. Harold took out a handkerchief from the rear pocket of his pants and gave it to her. She wiped at her eyes and blew her nose and handed it back to him. You want to keep it? Harold said. She shook her head.

The woman said, You do still want these?

Harold put the handkerchief away and turned to face her. That’s right, ma’am. We haven’t changed our minds. We still want em.

Very well. I just wanted to be positive.

We’re positive.

She called a stock boy and sent him back to the storeroom and he came out wheeling two large flat cardboard boxes on a dolly. He drew up at the counter.

The woman rang up their purchases. She said, Will this be cash or charge?

I’ll sign you a bank check, Raymond said. He bent over the counter, leaning on his elbow, and wrote stiffly into his checkbook. When he had finished he inspected what he had written, then he folded it once and tore it off and blew back and forth over it and handed the check to the woman. She looked at it.

May I see some identification, please?

He took out his old wallet from the inner pocket of his coat and picked out his driver’s license. She read it, then she looked up at him.

I didn’t know they would allow you to have your picture taken with your hat on, she said.

They do in Holt, he said. What’s the trouble? Don’t it favor me?

Oh, there’s a clear resemblance, she said.

She handed the license back to him and he put it away. Then she finished ringing up their purchases and gave them the receipt. And we thank you very much, she said.

The stock boy started toward the front of the store, dollying the new mattress and the new crib in the flat cardboard boxes printed with the bright factory lettering, moving out into the main aisle in a flourish. He advanced only a short way.

Son, Harold said. You can hold up there. That won’t be necessary.

I was going to take them out for you.

That’s all right.

The McPheron brothers hefted the two boxes and together carried them ladder-fashion under their arms, one old man in his good hat following directly behind the other, out onto the sidewalk and up the block toward the pickup. The girl came after, with the store bag of sheets and blankets. Together they made a kind of parade. People on the square, shoppers, women and teenage girls and old retired men, watched them pass, turning to stare as the two old men and the pregnant girl went by. Out in the winter air it was colder now and the sun was already starting to lean toward the west, while across the street the granite-block courthouse loomed up gray and solid under its green tiled roof. At the curb they set the boxes in the bed of the pickup and lashed them down with yellow binder twine from the toolbox. Then they backed out into the street and drove slowly out of town, riding up out of the South Platte River valley onto the cold winter flatlands of the high plains.

It was evening when they got home. The early dark of late December. That low sky closing down. As they drove up over the last little rise before the turnoff to the house they saw that there were cattle out on the gravel road. Their eyes glinted red as rubies in the headlights—one of the old mother cows and three of the heavy-bodied two-year-old heifers. Wait up, Raymond said.

I see em, Harold said.

The cow stood broadside in the middle of the road, her head lifted in the lights, staring as the pickup came closer, then she wheeled and dropped down into the ditch and the heifers dropped down with her.

You make it four?

Harold nodded.

They drove past them slowly, watching them, and took the girl back to the house and went inside with her and put on their work boots and coats and warm caps, and then they went back into the cold and located the cows and headed them trotting in the ditch alongside the road until they passed the gate. Raymond got out and swung the gate open and Harold gunned the pickup ahead and turned the cattle back. They whirled back along the fence in the bright headlights of the truck, moving in the ditch weeds, their bellies swinging, their flanks swaying, their feet thrown out sidways in that awkward bovine manner and kicking up clots of snow. Raymond stood out in the road waiting. When the cattle got up to the gate he hollered and flapped his arms and without any trouble they trotted in. He climbed into the cab and they pushed the cattle farther into the pasture away from the fence. They watched for a while to see which way they’d go. By now it was completely dark and hardcold. They drove out of the pasture and when they got up to the house the yardlight had come on, shining purplish-blue from the lightpole next to the garage.

They mounted the porch steps and scraped their feet. But as soon as they entered the kitchen they stopped. They discovered that the girl had the room warm and brightly lighted, and on the stove she had supper already heated up and ready to be served and the square wooden kitchen table was set for the three of them with the old plates and the old silverware already ranged in order about the table.

Well, by God, Harold said. I want you to look at here.

Well, yes, Raymond said. It makes me think of the way Mother used to do.

If you want to sit down, the girl said. She stood next to the stove with one of the white dish towels tied about her thickening waist. Her face looked flushed from the cooking, but her black eyes shone. It’s all ready, she said. Maybe we could eat out here tonight. If that’s all right. It seems homier.

Well, surely, Harold said. I don’t see why not.

The brothers washed up and the three of them ate together in the kitchen and talked a little about the trip to Phillips, about the woman in the store with the brown dress and the boy with the dolly, the look on his face, and after supper the girl read the page of directions while the two McPherons assembled the crib. When it was finished they stood it up against a warm interior wall in the girl’s bedroom with one of the new sheets stretched tight on the mattress and the warm blanket folded down neatly. Afterward the brothers went out back to the parlor and watched the ten o’clock news while the girl washed the supper dishes and cleaned up in the kitchen.

Later, when the girl was lying in the old soft double bed that had once been the elder McPherons’ marriage bed, she lay awake for a while and looked with pleasure and satisfaction at the crib. It gleamed against the faded pink-flowered wallpaper. The varnish shone. She imagined looking at a little face lying there, what that would feel like. At ten-thirty she heard the brothers mounting the stairs to their bedrooms and heard them overhead on the pinewood floorboards.

The next morning she stayed asleep in her room until midmorning, as she had the previous six days of vacation, but it was different now. It was all right now. The McPheron brothers had decided that seventeen-year-old girls did that. It didn’t matter. They couldn’t say what they would do about it even if they still wanted to do something, and now they didn’t care to.

Two days later it was New Year’s, and school started again the day afterward.

Guthrie.

It appeared to him there were ruffles everywhere. Ranged around both bedroom windows, sewn on the bedcover, tacked on the pillows. Still more surrounding the mirror over the chest of drawers. Judy must get something out of it, he thought. She was in the bathroom doing something to herself, inserting something. He smoked a cigarette and looked at the ceiling. A pool of light was showing directly above the bedside lamp on the pink plaster.

Then she came out of the bathroom wearing a little nightgown and nothing under it and he could see the dark medallions of her nipples and the outlines of her small breasts and the dark vee of her hair below.

You didn’t need to do that, he said. I’ve been cut.

How do you know what I’ve been doing?

I assumed.

Don’t assume too much, she said. Then she smiled. Her teeth shone in the light.

She got into bed with him. It had been a long time. Ella and he hadn’t slept together for almost a year now. Judy felt warm beside him in the bed.

Where’d you get this scar? she said.

Where?

This one on your shoulder here.

I don’t know. Fence wire, I guess. Don’t you have any scars?

Inside.

Do you?

Of course.

You don’t act like it.

I don’t intend to. It doesn’t do much good, does it?

Not in my experience, he said.

She was lying on her side looking at him. What made you come over here tonight?

I don’t know. I was lonely, I guess. Like you said at the Chute the other night.

Aren’t we all, she said.

She raised up higher and leaned forward and kissed him and he brushed her hair away from her face, and then without saying anything more she moved over on top of him and he could feel her warm against himself and he felt up under the back of her nightgown with both hands, feeling her small waist and her smooth hips.

What ever became of Roger? Guthrie said.

What? She laughed. You’re asking about him at this time?

I got to wondering about him while you were in the bathroom.

He left. It was better for everybody.

So what was his story?

How do you mean? she said.

Well, how did you meet? Guthrie said.

She pushed herself up and looked at him. You want to talk about that right now?

I was just wondering.

Well. I was at this bar in Brush. It was a long time ago. A Saturday night. I was younger then.

You’re still young. You said that the other night too.

I know. But I was even younger then. I was at this bar and I met this guy who turned out to be my husband. He was a sweet talker. Old Roger sweet-talked me into seeing things his way.

Did he?

Then after a while it wasn’t sweet anymore.

She looked sad suddenly and he was sorry he’d said anything. He brushed her hair away again. She shook her head and smiled, bent to kiss him. He held her for a while and she felt very warm and smooth. In the bathroom she had put on cologne in addition to the nightgown. She kissed him again.

What if I was to ask you something else? Guthrie said.

What is it?

How about taking your nightgown off?

That’s different. I don’t mind that.

She raised up again and pulled the nightgown over her head. She looked very good in the lamplight.

That better?

Yes, Guthrie said. I believe it is.

Two hours earlier that evening he had driven past Maggie Jones’s house and all the lights had been turned off. So he’d driven around Holt awhile and had stopped and bought cigarettes and a six-pack of beer and afterward he’d driven out of town a ways, and about five miles south of town on the narrow highway he had made up his mind and turned around and driven back and stopped at her house, at Judy’s, the secretary from school. When she opened the door and let him in she smiled and said, Well, hello. Do you want to come in?

Now, afterward, as he was leaving, she said, You going to come back?

Maybe.

You know you don’t have to. But I’d like it if you did.

Thank you, Guthrie said.

For the rest of that night and the following day he believed it was just between the two of them. But other people in Holt knew too. He didn’t know how Maggie Jones knew, but she did. At school on Monday she came into his room in the afternoon after the last class.

Is this the way it’s going to be now? she said.

Is what the way it’s going to be, Guthrie said, looking at her face.

Don’t do this, damn you. You’re too old to play dumb.

He looked at her. He took his glasses off and wiped them and put them back on. His black hair looked thin under the light. He said, How did you know?

How big of a town do you think this is? Do you think there is somebody in Holt who doesn’t know your pickup?

Guthrie turned in the chair and looked out the window. The same winter trees. The street. The curbing across the way. He looked back at her. She was standing just inside the door watching him. No, he said, it’s not going to be like this.

So what was that, last night?

That, he said, was somebody that was turned out free for a night and didn’t know what to do with it.

You could have come over to see me. I would’ve been glad to see you.

I drove by. The lights were all off.

So you decided to go over to her house, is that it?

Something like that.

She stared at him for a long time. So is this something that’s going to be permanent? she said finally.

I don’t think so. No, he said. It isn’t. She wouldn’t want it to be either.

All right, Maggie said. But I will not compete for you. I won’t get into some kind of contest for you. I will not do that. Oh, goddamn you anyway, you son of a bitch.

She walked out of the room and down the hallway, and for the remainder of that day and on into the night Guthrie felt mixed up and wooden in all his movements and thoughts.