Plainsong (2 page)

Victoria Roubideaux.

Even before she was awake she felt it rising in her chest and throat. Then she rose rapidly from bed in the white underpants and the outsized tee-shirt she wore at night and rushed into the bathroom where she crouched on the tile floor, holding her streaming hair away from her face and mouth with one hand and gripping the rim of the bowl with the other while she retched and gagged. Her body was wracked by spasms. Afterward a spit-string swung from her lip, stretched, elongated, then broke off. She felt weak and empty. Her throat burned, her chest hurt. Her brown face was unnaturally pale now, sallow and hollow beneath the high cheekbones. Her dark eyes looked larger and darker than ordinary, and on her forehead was a fine film of clammy sweat. She stayed kneeling, waiting for the gagging and paroxysms to pass.

A woman appeared in the doorway. She at once flipped the light on, filling the room with harsh yellow light. What’s all this? Victoria, what’s the matter with you?

Nothing, Mama.

Something is. You think I don’t hear you in here?

Go back to bed, Mama.

Don’t lie to me. You’ve been drinking, haven’t you.

No.

Don’t lie to me.

I’m not.

What is it then?

The girl rose from the floor. They looked at each other. The woman was thin, in her late forties, haggard of face, washed-out, still tired though she’d just risen from sleep, wearing a stained blue satin robe she clutched together over her sagging chest. Her hair had been dyed, but not recently; her hair was maroon, like no human natural color anywhere, the white roots showing at the temples and above her forehead.

The girl moved to the sink and ran water onto a washcloth and held the cloth to her face. The water dripped into the front of her thin shirt.

The woman watched her and removed cigarettes from her robe pocket and took out a lighter and lit the cigarette and stood in the door smoking. She scratched one naked ankle with the toes of the other foot.

Mama, do you have to smoke in here now?

I’m here, aren’t I? This is my house.

Please, Mama.

Then she was sick again. She could feel it rising. She was kneeling again at the bowl, gagging, her shoulders and chest wrung by dry spasms. Her dark hair was caught as before in one hand, automatically.

The woman stood over her, smoking, surveying her. Finally the girl was finished. She stood up and returned to the sink.

You know what I think, little miss? the woman said.

The girl applied the wet washcloth to her face once more.

I think you got yourself knocked up. I think you got a baby in you and it’s making you puking sick.

The girl held the cloth to her face and looked at her mother in the mirror.

Didn’t you.

Mama.

That’s it, isn’t it.

Mama, don’t.

Well you stupid little slut.

I’m not a slut. Don’t call me that.

What do you want me to call it? That’s the name for what you done. I told you before. And now look at you. Look here at what’s happened. I told you, didn’t I.

You told me a lot of things, Mama.

You better not get smart with me.

The girl’s eyes filled. Help me, Mama. I need you to help me.

It’s too late for that, the woman said. You got yourself into this, you can just get out of it. Your father wanted me to hold his head too. All them mornings when he’d come home feeling sick and sorry for himself. I won’t hold yours too.

Mama, please.

And you can just leave this house. Like he did finally. You’re so smart, you know everything. I won’t have you in here like this.

You don’t mean that.

See if I don’t. You just try me, miss.

In the back bedroom she dressed for school in a short skirt and white tee-shirt and put on a jeans jacket, the same clothes she’d worn the day before, and looped a red shiny purse on a long strap over her shoulder. She left the house without eating anything.

She walked to school in a kind of dream, walking out of the meager street onto the pavement of Main, across the tracks and then up onto the wide vacant early-morning sidewalks past the display windows of the stores, watching her reflection, how she walked and carried her body, and as yet she could see no change. There was nothing she could discern outwardly. She went on in her skirt and jacket with the red purse swinging at her hip.

Ike and Bobby.

They mounted their bikes and rode out of the drive onto the loose gravel on Railroad Street and east toward town. The air was still cool, with the smells of horse manure and trees and dry weeds and dirt in the atmosphere and something else they couldn’t name. Above them a pair of magpies swung on a cottonwood branch screaming, and then one of the birds flew off into the trees beyond Mrs. Frank’s house and the other cried four times, harsh and rapid, before it too flapped away.

They rode along the gravel road and passed the old vacated light plant, its high windows boarded over, and turned onto the pavement at Main Street and then bounced over the railroad tracks onto the cobblestone platform at the depot. It was a single-story redbrick building with a green tile roof. Inside was a dim waiting room smelling of dust and being closed up, and three or four highbacked pewlike wood benches set in rows facing the train tracks and a ticket office with a single window set behind black grillwork. An old green milk wagon on iron wheels stood outside on the cobblestones beside the wall. The wagon was never used anymore. But Ralph Black, the depot agent, admired the way it looked on the platform and he left it there. He didn’t have a lot to do. The passenger trains only stopped in Holt for five minutes, coming and going, long enough to allow the two or three passengers to board or get off and for the man in the baggage car to drop the
Denver News
onto the platform beside the tracks. The papers were there now, bound in twine in a single stack. The bottom papers had torn on the rough cobblestones.

The two boys leaned their bikes against the milk wagon, and with a jackknife Ike cut the twine. Then they knelt and counted the stack of papers into two piles and began to roll and rubber-band them.

When they were almost finished Ralph Black walked out of the ticket office and stood over the boys, his long shadow hanging across them, obscuring them while he watched them work. He was a gaunt old man with a paunch, he was chewing a cigar.

How come you little boys are late this morning? he said. The papers been there almost a hour.

We aren’t little boys, Bobby said.

Ralph laughed. Maybe not, he said. But you’re still late.

They didn’t say anything.

Ain’t you, Ralph said. I said, Ain’t you still late.

What’s it to you? Ike said.

What’s that?

I said . . . He didn’t finish but went on rolling papers, kneeling on the cobbles beside his brother.

That’s right, Ralph Black said. You don’t want to say something like that again. Or somebody might just paddle your little behind. How would you like me to do that for you? I will, by God.

He stared down at the tops of their heads. They refused to say anything or even to acknowledge him, so he looked out along the train tracks and spat brown tobacco over their heads toward the rails.

And stop leaning those bikes against that wagon there. I told you that before, he said. Next time I’ll call your dad.

The boys finished rolling the papers and stood up to put them into the canvas bags on their bikes. Ralph Black watched them with satisfaction, then spat again onto the nearest track and returned to his office. When the door was shut Bobby said, He never told us that before.

He’s just an old dogfart, Ike said. He never told us anything before. Let’s go.

They separated and began their individual halves of the route. Between them they had the entire town. Bobby took the older, more established part of Holt, the south side where the wide flat streets were lined with elm trees and locust and hackberry and evergreen, where the comfortable two-story houses were set back in their own spaces of lawn and where behind them the car garages opened out onto the graveled alleys, while Ike, for his part, took the three blocks of Main Street on both sides, the stores and the dark apartments over the stores, and also the north side of town across the railroad tracks, where the houses were smaller with frequent vacant lots in between, where the houses were painted blue or yellow or pale green and might have chickens in the back lots in wire pens and here and there dogs on chains and also car bodies rusting among the cheetweed and redroot under the low-hanging mulberry trees.

To deliver the
Denver News
took about an hour. Then they met again at the corner of Main and Railroad and rode home, pedaling over the washboards in the gravel. They passed the line of lilac bushes in the side yard of Mrs. Frank’s house, the fragrant blooms long dead now and dry and the heart-shaped leaves dusty with the traffic, and rode past the narrow pasture, the tree house in the silver poplar in the corner, and turned in onto the drive at home and left their bikes beside the house.

Upstairs in the bathroom they combed their hair wet, drawing it up into waves and fluffing it with their cupped hands so it stood up stiffly over their foreheads. Water trickled down their cheeks and dribbled behind their ears. They toweled off and went out into the hallway and stood hesitant before the door until Ike turned the knob and then they entered the hushed half-lit room.

She lay in the guest bed on her back now with her arm still folded across her face like someone in great distress. A thin woman, caught as though in some inescapable thought or attitude, motionless, almost as if she were not even breathing. They stopped inside the door. There were the brief lines of light at the edges of the drawn window shades and from across the room they could smell the dead flowers in the vase on the tall chest of drawers.

Yes? she said. She did not stir or move. Her voice was nearly a whisper.

Mother?

Yes.

Are you all right?

You can come over here, she said.

They approached the bed. She removed her arm from over her face and looked at them, one boy then the other. In the dim light their wet hair appeared very dark and their blue eyes were almost black. They stood beside the bed looking at her.

Do you feel any better? Ike said.

Do you feel like getting up? said Bobby.

Her eyes looked glassy, as if she were suffering from fever. Are you ready for school now? she said.

Yes.

What time is it?

They looked at the clock on the dresser. Quarter of eight, Ike said.

You better go. You don’t want to be late. She smiled a little and reached a hand toward them. Will you each give me a kiss first?

They leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek, one after the other, the quick embarrassed kisses of little boys. Her cheek felt cool and she smelled like herself. She took up their hands and held them for a moment against her cool cheeks while she looked at their faces and their dark wet hair. They could just bear to glance at her eyes. They stood waiting uncomfortably, leaning over the bed. At last she released their hands and they stood up. You’d better go on, she said.

Goodbye, Mother, Ike said.

I hope you get better, Bobby said.

They went out of the room and closed the door. Outside the house in the bright sunlight again they crossed the drive and went across Railroad Street and walked down in the path through the ditch weeds and across the railroad tracks and through the old park toward school. When they arrived at the playground they separated to join their own friends and stood talking with the other boys in their own grades until the first bell rang and called them into class.

Guthrie.

In the high school office Judy, the secretary, stood over a desk talking on the telephone and making notes on a pink pad of paper. The short skirt of her dress was stretched tight over her hips and she was wearing hose and spike-heeled shoes. Guthrie stood behind the front counter watching her. After a while she looked up at him and for his benefit rolled her eyes at what she was hearing.

I understand that, she said into the phone. No. I will too tell him. I know what you’re saying. She put the phone back roughly in its cradle.

Who was that? Guthrie said.

That was a mother. She made another note on the pad of paper.

What’d she want?

About the school play last night.

What about it?

Didn’t you see it?

No.

You ought to. It’s pretty good.

What’s the matter with it? Guthrie said.

Oh, there’s this place where Lindy Rayburn walks out in a black slip and sings a solo by herself. And this person on the telephone doesn’t happen to think a seventeen-year-old girl ought to be doing that kind of thing in public. Not in a public high school.

Maybe I should go see it, Guthrie said.

Oh, she had everything covered. You couldn’t see anything that counts.

What’d she want you to do about it?

Not me. She wanted to talk to Mr. Crowder. But he isn’t available.

Where is he? I came in early to see him.

Oh, he’s here. But he’s across the hall. She nodded in the direction of the rest rooms.

I’ll wait for him in his office, Guthrie said.

I would, she said.

He went into the office and sat down facing the principal’s desk. Photographs of Lloyd Crowder’s wife and his three children in hinged brass picture frames stood on the desk and on the wall behind it was a photograph of him kneeling in front of Douglas firs holding up the antlered head of a mule deer. Against the adjacent wall were gray filing cabinets. A large school-district calendar hung over them. Guthrie sat looking at the photograph of the deer. Its eyes were half-open, as though it were only sleepy.

After ten minutes Lloyd Crowder entered the office and sat down heavily in the swivel chair behind the desk. He was a big florid man with wisps of blond hair drawn in exact strands across his pink scalp. He set his hands out in front of him and looked across the desk. So, Tom, he said. What’s this about?

You said you wanted to see me.

That’s right. I did. He began to consult a list of names on a paper on his desktop. Under the light his scalp shone like water. How’s the boys? he said.

They’re fine.

And Ella?

Fine.

The principal raised the sheet of paper. Here it is. Russell Beckman. According to what I see here you’re failing him this first quarter.

That’s right.

How come?

Guthrie looked at the principal. Because, he said. He hasn’t done the work he’s supposed to.

That’s not what I mean. I mean how come you’re failing him.

Guthrie looked at him.

Because hell, Lloyd Crowder said. Everybody knows Mr. Beckman isn’t any kind of student. Unless he gets struck by lightning he never will be. But he’s got to have American history to graduate. It’s what the state mandates.

Yes.

Plus he’s a senior. He don’t belong in there with all those juniors. He should of taken it last year. I wonder why he didn’t.

I wouldn’t have any idea about that.

Yes, well, the principal said.

The two men studied each other.

Maybe he ought to try for the GED, Guthrie said.

Now, Tom. Right there we got a problem. That kind of thinking, it makes me tired.

The principal leaned heavily forward onto the hams of his forearms.

Look here. I don’t believe I’m asking too much. I’m just saying go a little easy on him. Think about what it means. We don’t want him back next year. That wouldn’t be good for anybody involved. Do you want him back next year?

I don’t want him this year.

Nobody wants him this year. None of the teachers want him. But he’s here. You see my point. Oh hell, give him a downslip if you want to. Scare the young son. But you don’t want to fail him.

Guthrie looked at the framed pictures on the desktop. Did Wright put you up to this?

Wright? the principal said. How come? On account of basketball eligibility?

Guthrie nodded.

Why hell, he’s not that good of a player. There’s others can bring the ball down. Coach Wright never mentioned a thing about this to me. I’m just saying to you, as someone who has to consider the whole school. You think about it.

Guthrie stood up.

And Tom.

Guthrie waited.

I don’t need somebody else to put me up to something. I can still do my own thinking. You try and remember that.

Then you better tell him to do the work he’s supposed to do, Guthrie said.

He left the office. His classroom was at the far end of the building and he went down the wide hallway that was lined with student lockers that had sheets of colored paper taped to the metal doors with names and slogans written across them, and above the lockers attached to the walls were long paper banners bearing extravagant claims about the athletic teams. This early in the morning the tiled floors were still shiny.

He entered the classroom and sat down at his desk and took out the blue-backed lesson book, reading through the notes he’d made for the day. Then he removed an examination ditto from a desk drawer and went back out into the hallway, carrying the ditto.

When he entered the teacher’s lounge Maggie Jones was using the copy machine. She turned and looked at him. He sat down at the table in the center of the room and lit a cigarette. She stood at the counter watching him.

I thought you quit that, she said.

I did.

How come you started again? You were doing okay.

He shrugged. Things change.

What’s wrong? she said. You don’t look good. You look like hell.

Thanks. You about done with that?

I mean it, she said. You look like you haven’t even slept.

He pulled an ashtray closer, tapped the cigarette into it and looked at her. She turned back to the machine. He watched her working at the counter, her hand and arm turning rapidly with the crank of the machine, her hips moving at the same time and her skirt jumping and swaying. A tall healthy dark-haired woman, she was dressed in a black skirt and white blouse and wore considerable silver jewelry. Presently she stopped cranking the machine and put in another master.

What brings you here so early? she said.

Crowder wanted to talk to me.

What about?

Russell Beckman.

That little shit. What’d he do now?

Nothing. But he’s going to if he wants to get out of American history.

Good luck, she said. She cranked the machine once and looked at the paper. Is that all that’s bothering you?

Nothing’s bothering me.

Like hell it isn’t. I can see something is. She looked into his face, and he looked back without expression and sat smoking. Is it at home? she said.

He didn’t answer but shrugged again and smoked.

Then the door opened and a muscular little man in a shortsleeve white shirt came in. Irving Curtis, who taught business. Morning one and all, he said.

He moved up beside Maggie Jones and put his arm around her waist. The top of his head came up to her eyes. He stood up on his toes and whispered something into her ear. Then he squeezed her hard, drawing her toward him. She removed his hand.

Don’t be such an ass, she said. It’s too early in the morning.

It’s only a joke.

And I’m just telling you.

Oh now, he said. He sat down at the table across from Guthrie and lit a cigarette with a silver lighter and snapped it shut and then played with the lighter on the tabletop. What’s the good word? he said.

There isn’t any, said Guthrie.

What’s wrong with everybody? Irving Curtis said. Jesus. It’s the middle of the week. I come in here feeling good and now look what you’ve done to me. I’m depressed already and it’s not even eight o’clock in the morning.

You could shoot yourself, Guthrie said.

Ho, Curtis said. He laughed. That’s better. That’s funny.

They sat and smoked. Maggie Jones stopped the machine and gathered up her papers. Your turn, she said to Guthrie, and left the room.

Bye-bye, Irving Curtis said.

Guthrie rose and fed the ditto master into the slot on the drum and closed it and cranked the machine once and once more to see how the exam looked.

No shit, though, Curtis said. Just once I’d like to get her in a dark room.

You want to leave her alone, Guthrie said.

No. I mean, think about it.

Guthrie cranked the machine and turned the damp exams out into the tray. There was the sharp smell of spirits.

I told you what Gary Rawlson said about her.

You told me, Guthrie said.

Do you believe it?

No. And neither does Rawlson when he hasn’t been drinking. When it’s in the daylight.