Plainsong (5 page)

They watched her doubtfully, sitting on the sofa, the room silent and the air about them smelling of dust and her cigarette smoke.

Will you? she said again.

At last they nodded.

Very well, she said. Hand me my pocketbook so I can pay you. In there in the other room on the table. One of you can get it and bring it to me. Will you do that for me, please? I won’t torment you any longer. Afterward you can go on if you want to.

Victoria Roubideaux.

She was certain of it. In herself, she was.

But Maggie Jones said, It happens. For all kinds of reasons, for reasons you can’t anticipate or expect or know about. It could be something else. You just don’t know always what’s going on. You want to be sure.

Even though she felt in herself that she was sure because for one thing she had never missed before. Until the last months she’d always been as predictable as clockwork, and because for some time she’d been feeling different, not just the way she felt in the morning when she was still at home and could feel it rising even before she was all the way awake, or when her mother came in and made it worse smoking, standing over her in the bathroom watching her, but other times too when she had a private feeling that she didn’t know how to talk about or to explain to anyone. And there were still other things, when she was feeling tired and about to cry, having to cry for no good reason. Or her breasts feeling too tender, she’d noticed that sometimes at night when she got into bed, and look at her nipples, how they were now, all swollen dark.

But Maggie Jones said, Still you want to be sure.

And so she, Maggie Jones, had brought the kit home from the store one evening. They were out in the kitchen. Maggie Jones said, At least try it. Then we’ll know for sure.

You think I should?

Yes, I think you should.

How do I? she said.

It says here, you hold the absorbent tip in the urine stream. Hold it under you while you go. Then you wait for five minutes and if both lines turn red in the viewing window, then you are. Here. Take it.

You mean now? the girl said.

Why not?

But Mrs. Jones, I don’t know. It seems strange. Deciding about it this way, so definite and you here knowing what I’m doing.

Honey, Maggie Jones said. You’ve got to wake up. It’s time for you to wake up now.

So she took the small flat box with the kit in it and the picture on top of the young honey-haired woman with the look of religious exaltation on her face and the sunshiny garden stretched out behind her, full of what could have been roses though that wasn’t clear, took it into the bathroom and locked the door and opened the kit and did what it said, holding it in place under herself while she spread her knees, dribbling a little on her fingers, but she couldn’t be bothered by that now, and afterward she set it out on the counter and waited thinking: What if I am? But I might not be, how would that feel after these weeks believing I was, that could be worse, the loss of that after already beginning to wonder about it and plan on it a little, thinking ahead. But what if I am? Then she knew it was time enough, more than the five minutes required, and she looked inside the window and both lines were colored, so she was. She stood up and looked in the mirror at her face. I knew I was anyway, she said to herself, I felt sure, so why should this be any different, that already it would show in my face, it wouldn’t, it doesn’t, not even in my eyes.

She unlocked the door and took the kit out to the kitchen and showed it to Maggie Jones who looked inside the little window. Well, honey, yes, she said. Now we know. Are you all right?

I think I am, the girl said.

Good. I’ll make you an appointment.

You have to do that already?

It’s better to go right away. You don’t want to be careless. You should’ve gone before this. Do you have somebody you go to?

No.

When was the last time you saw anyone? For any reason.

I don’t know, the girl said. Six or seven years ago. I was sick then.

Who was it?

It was an old man. I don’t remember his name.

That would be Dr. Martin.

But Mrs. Jones, the girl said. Isn’t there a woman doctor I could go to?

Not here. Not in Holt.

Maybe I could go to another town.

Honey, Maggie Jones said. Victoria. Listen to me. You’re here now. This is where you are.

Ike and Bobby.

Midnight. He came back from the bathroom into the glassy room, where his brother slept undisturbed in the single bed against the north wall. Despite windows in three of the walls the room was dark. There was no moon. He looked once toward the west and then stood still, peering out. In the sunken vacant house to the west was a flicker of light. He could see it beyond the back wall of the old man’s house next door. It was indistinct, as if seen through haze or fog, but it was there. A steady faint wavering light. Then he could see somebody was in the room too.

He shoved at Bobby.

What? Bobby turned over. Quit it.

Look at this.

Stop poking.

In that old house, Ike said.

What is it?

Bobby kneeled up in his pajamas and peered out the window. At the dead end of Railroad Street the light flickered and waltzed in the small square of the window in the old house.

What about it?

Somebody’s over there.

Then somebody, whoever it was, passed by the window again, silhouetted against the dim light.

Ike turned away and began to haul on his clothes.

What are you doing?

I’m going over there. He hiked his pants on over his pajamas and bent to pull on his socks.

Can’t you wait? Bobby said. He slid out of bed and dressed rapidly.

They carried their shoes down the hall and stopped at the top landing where they could see into their father’s room, dark at the front of the house; through the open door they could hear him, it was like rattling, then a release then a pause, then like rattling again. They went downstairs one after the other, being quiet, and moved to the porch and sat on the steps to put on their shoes. Outside it was fresh, almost cold. The sky was clear and crowded with stars, the stars looked hard and pure. The last clinging leaves at the tops of the cottonwoods washed and fluttered in the soft nightwind.

They moved away from the house out across the drive onto Railroad Street and under the purple-shining streetlamp purring high on its pole and stayed along the edge of the dirt road, moving out of the pool of light into the increasing dark. The old man’s house next door was silent and pale, like the gray houses of dreams. They went on along the road edge. Then they could see it. Parked at the side of the road one hundred feet ahead in the ragweed was a dark car.

They stopped abruptly. Ike motioned and they ducked into the railroad ditch and walked quiet in the dry weeds. When they came opposite the car they stopped again. They studied it, the faint starlit glint on its round hood and trunk, the silver hubcaps. They couldn’t hear anything, even the wind had stopped. They came up out of the ditch toward the car, feeling exposed now in the open road, but when they rose up and looked past the car windows they found there was nobody and nothing inside, only empty beer cans on the floorboards and a jacket thrown over the backseat. They went on. They rounded to the locust trees in the front yard and stopped, then moved again, stepping into the wild overgrown lot of cheetweed and dead sunflowers, and moved across it and gained the side of the house. They slid along the cold clapboards until they came to the window where the flicker of light spilled out onto the side yard, where it flickered ever more faintly in a kind of illuminated echo on the dirt and the dry weeds.

Then they could hear talking coming from inside. There was no glass in the window since the panes had been smashed in by thrown rocks years ago. But there was still an old lacy yellowed crocheted curtain hanging over the void of the frame, and through the gauze of the curtain when they raised their heads they could see a blond girl lying on the floor on an old mattress. Two candles were set into beer bottles on the floor and in the flickering light they saw that the girl was one of the high school girls they often saw on Main Street, and she was completely naked. An army blanket was spread over the mattress and she was lying on the blanket with her knees raised up and they could see the damp hair glistening between her legs and her soft flattened breasts and her hips and thin arms, and she was the color of cream all over and pink-toned and they looked at her in surprise and something akin to religious astoundment and awe. Lying next to her there was a big hard-muscled red-haired boy who was as naked as she was, only he was wearing a gray tee-shirt that had its sleeves cut off. He was from the high school too. They’d also seen him before. And now he was saying, That’s not it. Because it’s only this once.

Why? the girl said.

I told you. Because he come along with us tonight. Because if he did I told him he could.

But I don’t want to.

Do it for me then.

You don’t love me, the girl said.

I told you I did.

Like hell. If you did you wouldn’t make me do this.

I’m not making you, he said. I’m only saying for a favor.

But I don’t want to.

Okay, Sharlene. Fuck it. You don’t have to.

The high school boy got up from the mattress. The two boys watched him from outside the house. He stood in the candlelight in the sleeveless tee-shirt, bare-legged, muscular, tall. His was big. The hair was red too, but lighter, orange looking, above it; it had a purple head. He bent and picked up his jeans, stepped into them and hauled them up and buckled the belt.

Russ, the girl said. She was looking at him from the mattress, watching his face.

What?

Are you mad?

I already told him, he said. Now I don’t know what I’m going to tell him.

All right, she said. I will, for you. I don’t want him to, though.

He looked at her. I know, he said. I’ll go tell him.

But you better appreciate this, goddamn it.

I appreciate it.

I mean you better appreciate it afterwards too, the girl said.

He went out through the open door and in the dark from outside the house they watched her by herself now. She turned on her side toward them and shook cigarettes from a red pack and lit one leaning forward toward the flame of the candle, her breasts swinging free, cone-shaped, her slender thigh and girl’s flank sleek in the dancing candlelight, and lay back and smoked and blew the smoke straight up above her into the room and flicked the ashes onto the floor. She lifted her other arm and inspected the back of her hand and ran her hand through her blond hair and brushed it back away from her face. Then there was another boy standing in the doorway looking at her. He came into the room. He was a big boy too, from the high school.

The girl didn’t even look at him. This isn’t on account of you, she said. So don’t get any idea that it is.

I know, he said.

Just so you do.

You going to let me set down?

Well I’m not going to stand up, she said.

He squatted on the army blanket and looked at her. After a moment he reached out and with the extended fingers of one hand touched one of her dark nipples.

What are you doing? the girl said.

He said it was all right.

It’s not fucking all right. But I told him. So hurry up.

I’m going to, the boy said.

Take your clothes off, she said. For christsakes.

He kicked his shoes off and unbuckled his belt and dropped his pants and underwear, and from outside the house they watched him now, and they could see he had hair too. The one he had was bigger and it was swollen-looking, sticking straight up, and without saying any word at all to her he stretched out on her, lying between her legs while she had her knees up, spread again, adjusting under his weight. He started moving on her at once. They could see his pale ass cheeks rising and falling. Then quicker and then beginning to pound and after a brief time he shouted something wild and unintelligible as if he were in pain, crying some kind of words into her neck and he jerked and shivered and then he stopped, and all the time she lay wordlessly and still, looking at the ceiling with her arms flat at her sides as if she were in some other place and he was not in her life at all.

Get off, she said.

The big boy raised up and looked in her face and rolled from her body and lay on his back on the blanket. In a little while he said, Hey.

She took up her cigarette from the jar lid where she had placed it when he had come in and she puffed on the cigarette but it had gone out. She leaned toward the candle flame and lit it again.

Hey, he said again. Sharlene?

What?

You’re good.

Well, you’re not.

He lifted up onto his elbow on the mattress to look at her. Why is that?

She didn’t look at him. She was lying back again, smoking, looking straight up toward the spot where the candlelight was flickering on the filthy ceiling. Why don’t you get the hell out of here.

What’d I do that was so bad? he said.

Will you just get the hell out of here. She was almost shouting now.

He stood up and put his clothes on, looking down at her all the time. Then he went out of the room.

The first boy came back in, fully dressed. He was wearing a high school jacket now.

The girl looked at him from the mattress.

How was it? he said.

Don’t be ridiculous. You could at least come here and kiss me.

He squatted down and kissed her on the mouth and fondled her breast and put his hand in the hair between her legs.

Quit, she said. Don’t. Let’s get out of here. It’s starting to give me the creeps in here.

From beyond the window the two boys watched the big high school boy leave the room. Then they watched the girl step into her underpants and pull them up and fasten her white brassiere, her elbows pointed out from her body, her hands working behind her back, then she shook the brassiere, and then she stepped into her jeans and pulled a shirt over her head, and lastly she bent and blew out the two candles. Instantly the room went dark and they heard only her footsteps going out across the bare pinewood floor. Outside they slid forward toward the front of the house and hid in the dark against the cold clapboards and watched without a word when the girl and the two big boys came out into the overgrown lot and crossed under the trees and got into the car and then drove away in the dark on Railroad Street, leaving only the red eyes of the taillights diminishing in the faint dust above the road as the car rushed away toward Main Street and downtown.

That son of a bitch, Ike said.

That other one too, Bobby said. What about him.

They stepped out into the ragweed and dry sunflowers and started home.