Plainsong (7 page)

Well, yeah, Harold said. One time me and Raymond went in to see him about something. A cow sick or something. In his clinic there. When we got inside the front door we heard something that sounded kind of like scuffling or thrashing coming from in back of the front counter there. We couldn’t tell what it was. So we looked over the top of the counter and old Doc had this gal on her back on the floor behind the counter, and she had her arms and legs wrapped around him about like he was a fifty-dollar bill. She looked up and seen us staring at them. She wasn’t scared by that, she wasn’t even took by surprise. She just stopped moving and released her clench on him. Then she tapped him on the head, still looking up at us over his shoulder, and stopped moving and working, and pretty soon Doc did too. What’s a matter? he says. We got company, she says. Do we? Doc says. We do for a fact, she says. So he moves his head so he can look up at us. Boys, he says. Is it any emergency? It can wait, we tell him. All right then, he says. I’ll be with you in a minute.

Guthrie laughed. That sounds like him, he said.

Don’t it? Harold said.

It didn’t take him long, Raymond said. I imagine he was about finished anyway.

Her too, I reckon, Harold said.

What was she doing, Guthrie said, paying a bill?

No, Harold said. I don’t guess so. It was more like they both got excited by the same idea all of a sudden and couldn’t help themselves.

That happens, Guthrie said.

Yeah, Harold said. I guess.

I guess it does, Raymond said. He looked out across the flat open treeless country toward the horizon where there were blue mounds of sandhill.

.  .  .

At last there was only the red-legged cow left to test, the one their father had warned them about. She was worse now. She regarded the two boys steadily with her head lifted as if she were some wild range animal that had never seen a human on foot before. The boys had stayed back from her in the corral. They were afraid of her and didn’t want to be kicked. But now they walked toward her, and she eyed them steadily and began to shift and trot along the fence. They cut her off. She was tall and all four of her legs were red; her eyes were white-rimmed. She dropped her head and whirled around, her stubby tail up, stiffened, and galloped across to the other side. They followed her again and came up behind her once more, where she was trapped in a corner. She faced them, her eyes baleful-looking and her sides heaving, and Ike moved closer and swung the whip and snapped it across her face. This surprised her. She jumped sideways, then she leaped forward. She galloped into Bobby, knocking him back off his feet before he could jump out of the way. He landed on his back and bounced once like a piece of thrown stove wood. She kicked back at him and then leaped and bucked across to the far side of the corral. Bobby lay spilled out on the ground. His stocking cap was at his feet, the electric cattle prod flung out to the side. He lay on the trampled dirt looking up at the empty sky, trying to breathe. But his breath wouldn’t come and he began to gouge his feet in the loose ground, while Ike bent over him in panic, talking to him. Bobby’s eyes looked big and scared. Then all at once his breath came back in a rush and he choked and gave a kind of high sob.

His father had seen what happened and had leaped into the corral and come running, and he was bent over now beside him, kneeling at his head. Bobby. You okay? Son?

The boy’s eyes looked all around. He looked scared and surprised. He peered up at the faces over him. I think so, he said.

Did you break anything, do you think? Guthrie said.

He felt of himself. He tried his arms and legs. No, he said. I don’t guess so.

Can you sit up?

The boy sat up and hunched his shoulders. He moved his head back and forth.

You took a bad one, Guthrie said. But you seem to be all right. I guess you are. Are you? He helped the boy stand up and he brushed the corral dirt off his shoulders and where it was stuck to the back of his head. Here, he said. You need to blow your nose, son. Bobby took the handkerchief and used it and wiped his nose and looked at the handkerchief for blood, but it was only dirt and cow dust, and gave it back. His brother pushed the stocking cap back onto his head.

You boys have been doing a good job, Guthrie said. I’m proud of you.

They looked up at his face, then out across the corral.

You did just fine. You did the best you could, he said.

But what about her? Ike said.

Let me have that whip back, Guthrie said. You can help if you want to. But stay clear of her.

They moved once more toward the red-legged cow. She waited at the far side of the corral standing sideways, watching them. She looked as wild as some alley cat, like she might try to scramble over the six-foot-high corral fence and get free that way. She began to step and shift, sliding away. Guthrie walked steadily toward her, the boys following. Then as she was turning he ran up quick behind her and struck her hard with the whip, and she kicked back at him viciously and missed his face and he followed, running, and slashed her again and then just as she was about to head into the alley she wheeled sharply and ran at the fence, gathered herself and jumped at it. She got only halfway across. She crashed through the top pole and was stuck there. Now she was scissored over the fence and she began to bawl, crazy with terror. She thrashed and kicked.

Goddamn it. Quit it, Harold yelled at her. He and Raymond had come running over. Here now. Stop that. You goddamn crazy old raw-boned bitch.

They gathered around, wanting to stop her, to quiet her, but she was kicking and thrashing in a crazy frenzy, and they couldn’t get close. Finally Guthrie climbed over to face her, to shove her back, to see if she’d come that way, but she had thrashed and kicked so much, rocking, teetering on the corral board, that she managed to tip herself forward, and suddenly she went over headfirst into the holding pen, making a heavy crashing somersault, her old angular head down, her hindquarters following, flopping over with a great thump onto the ground. Then she lay still.

I want you to look at that, Harold said. Go ahead then. Stay there. Maybe that’ll knock some goddamn sense into you.

They watched her. Her sides heaved but nothing else was moving. Her eyes stared. Climbing into the holding pen, Guthrie approached and lifted her head with his foot. That seemed to rouse her. She began to tremble and suddenly she rose up, Guthrie stepped back, and then she stood wobbily, glaring around. There was a gash along one flank where it had torn on the splintered corral board. The torn hide quivered and dripped blood in bright quick drops, and all along the back of her and over the top of her head she was covered with a mantle of dirt. She looked like some kind of beast from a medieval pageant, dirty and gory, threatening. She shook her dirty head sideways and took a couple of steps and then limped, trotting, over to the other cattle and heifers. They seemed leery of her and backed away.

Guthrie said, You want me to bring her back around?

No. Let her go, Harold said. We’d have to about kill her to get her in here now. She either stuck when she was with the bull or she didn’t. She seems to think she did, since she wants over there so bad. He looked at her with the other cattle. Anyhow, she seems to of took a serious dislike to you, Tom.

I’ll sort her out again, he said. If that’s what you want.

No. Let her go. We’ll keep an eye on her.

What about that cut?

She’ll heal up. I reckon she’s too disgusted with us to go off and die. She wouldn’t want to give us the satisfaction.

The two boys helped push the tested cattle out into a nearby pasture. The wild red-legged cow limped along in the middle of them. The two open cows were left in the holding pen and they called after the other cattle, their heads lifted, bawling, and moved over to the fence where they stood looking out through the rails. At the chutes the boys helped collect the medicine and the vaccination guns and put them away in the back of the truck. Then they climbed into the Dodge pickup and sat beside their father with the heater pushing out hot air onto their knees while he talked a little more to Harold. Raymond came around to their side of the truck.

Roll your window down, their father said. He wants to say something to you.

The old man stood in the cold in the sandy gravel beside the pickup and took out a soft leather purse from an inner pocket of his canvas jacket and held the purse in his hands and unzipped it. He poked around and picked out two bills. He handed them in through the opened window to the two boys. I hope that’ll be compensation, he said.

They took the money shyly and said thank you to him.

You boys can come back here any time, he said. You’d be welcome.

Wait now, their father said. That isn’t necessary.

You stay out of this, Raymond said. This is between me and these boys here. This don’t concern you, Tom. You boys, you come again any time.

He stepped back. The two boys looked at him. At his old weather-chafed face and reddened eyes under the winter cap. He looked quiet and kindly. They held the money in their closed fists, waiting, not looking at it until their father had finally said goodbye and not until he had put the pickup in motion and they were turned back away from the cattle chutes and had driven past the house and were rattling on the county road with the gravel banging up under the fenders and then were pointed toward the west where the sky was beginning now to fade. Then they looked at the money. They turned it over. He had given them each a ten-dollar bill.

That’s too much, their father said.

Should we give it back?

No, he said. He took his hat off and scratched the back of his head and put the hat back on. I guess not. That would be an insult. They want you to keep it. They enjoyed having you out there.

But Dad, Ike said.

Yes?

Why didn’t they ever get married? And have a family like everybody else?

I don’t know, Guthrie said. People don’t sometimes.

In the pickup it was warm now, driving along the county road. Beyond the ditch the fenceline passed by, thickened and snarled with tumbleweed and brush. Above, on the cross arm of a telephone pole perched a hawk the color of copper in the lowering sun, and they watched him but his head didn’t turn at all when they passed under him.

I just guess they never found the right girl, their father said. I don’t rightly know.

Bobby looked out the window. He said, I guess they didn’t want to leave each other.

Guthrie glanced at him. Maybe so, he said. Maybe that’s what happened, son.

At the highway Guthrie and the two boys turned north and it was quieter in the pickup now because they were on the blacktop, pointed toward town. Guthrie turned the radio on to receive the evening news.

Victoria Roubideaux.

When she said her name the middle-aged woman sitting on the other side of the window looked at her and said, Yes, Mrs. Jones called, and then she made a check mark on the chart in front of her and handed the girl three sheets of paper on a clipboard to fill out. She took them back across the waiting room to her seat and held the papers on her knees, leaning over them with her hair fallen about her face like a thick dark curtain, until she lifted it deftly in a motion familiar and automatic and settled it behind her shoulders. There were questions she had no answer to. They wanted to know was there cancer in the family, heart disease among her father’s people, syphilis in her mother’s relations. Altogether more than a hundred questions. She answered the ones she could, the ones she had some certain knowledge of, believing it would not be right to guess on the others as it might be if this were some test she was taking at school. When she was finished she took the clipboard and sheets of paper to the woman and handed them through the window.

I didn’t know all of these, she said.

Did you answer what you did know?

Yes.

Then take a seat. We’ll call you.

She sat down again. The waiting room was a long narrow room with potted plants tied upright to sticks and set in front of the four windows. There were three other people in the room waiting too. A woman with a little boy whose face looked as yellow as tablet paper and whose eyes looked too big for his head. The boy leaned listlessly against his mother while she caressed the back of his head, and after a time he put his face down in her lap and shut his eyes and she smoothed her hand over his yellow sick-looking cheek while she herself stared blankly toward the windows. The other person in the room was an old man with a new pearl-gray felt hat that rode squarely on his head like a statement. He sat against the opposite wall and he was holding the thumb of his right hand forward on his knee. The thumb of that hand was wrapped thickly in white bandages and it stuck up like some kind of hastily wrapped exhibit in a freak show. He regarded the girl with merry eyes as if he were going to say something, explain to her all that had happened, but he didn’t. He looked at her, and no one said anything. Presently a nurse called the woman with the sick boy, and then she came back and beckoned the old man with the bad thumb, and after a while they called her.

She rose and followed the woman in the white smock and slacks down the narrow corridor past a number of closed doors. They stopped at a scale and she was weighed and her height was taken, then they went into a little room where there was an examination table and a sink counter and two chairs. The woman took her pulse and checked her blood pressure and temperature, all without talking, and wrote the results of her findings in the file.

Then she said, Now get undressed please. And put this on. He’ll see you in a minute. She went out and shut the door.

The girl felt discommoded but she did what she was told to do. She put on the paper jacket that was open in the front, then she sat on the examination table with a paper sheet over her legs, both the sheet and jacket starkly white and scratchily uncomfortable to her, and waited and looked toward the wall in front of her at the picture of autumn trees growing up in some place that was altogether foreign to Holt, Colorado, since the trees were tall and dense and were of a species of hardwood and were colored so spectacularly that they seemed in the girl’s experience altogether unlikely if not impossible. Then he came in, the old man, the old doctor, stately and formal and elegant and kindly in a dark blue suit and wearing an absolutely white shirt with a maroon bow tie knotted expertly at his starched collar, and after he closed the door he shook her hand cordially and introduced himself.

You saw me once before, she said.

Did I? I don’t recall.

Six or seven years ago.

He looked at her closely and smiled. The eyes behind the rimless spectacles were lighter than his suit. His face was gray but his eyes were very lively. There were age spots at his temples.

That’s a long time, he said. Probably you’ve changed somewhat since then, since the last time I saw you. He smiled again. Now then, Miss Roubideaux, I need to examine you. And after I’m finished with that we’ll have a little talk about what I find out. Have you ever had a pelvic exam before?

No.

I see. Well, it’s not very comfortable. I’m afraid you’ll just have to endure through it, and I’ll try to be careful and not hurt you, and be as quick but as thorough as I need to be. He picked up a silver instrument from the tray on the counter. I’ll be using this speculum. Have you seen one of these before? It opens like this inside you—he showed her, as illustration, by sliding it into the circle made by his finger and thumb, and then opening it—and you may hear me screwing this little nut so that it stays open. Try not to tighten the muscle at the bottom—he indicated the muscle web between his finger and thumb—because that makes it more difficult for me and more uncomfortable for you. This is the light which shines inside you so I can see the cervix, and I’ll also be taking a smear with this swab. Do you have any questions?

The girl looked at him and looked away. She shook her head.

The old man removed his blue suitcoat and folded it over the back of the chair and rolled up his white starched cuffs and went to the sink and scrubbed his hands. Then he came over to her at the examination table.

Now I’ll ask you to lie back, he said, and put your feet up here, please.

She did as he instructed. Her feet were in the stirrups and he draped the paper sheet over her knees and thighs and he put on rubber gloves and took up the speculum and squeezed a little lubricant onto it from a tube. Then he sat down on a stool between her knees and patted down the drape so he could see her face.

This is the uncomfortable part, he said. He adjusted the sheet. Slide all the way forward, please. Thank you. That’s right. This may feel cold. He warmed the instrument for a moment in his hands.

She felt it then and flinched.

Did I hurt you? I’m sorry.

She stared straight up. He was seated low, eye-level between her open legs.

That’s right, he said. Try to relax. Now I’m just going to take a look.

She stared up at the ceiling and felt what he was doing and waited and endured it and listened to his calm voice telling her all the time what examinations he was making and why and what was next, and that everything was fine and he was almost finished. She didn’t say anything. He continued his examinations. Then in a little while he was finished and he removed the discomfort of the metal instrument and said, Yes. That’s fine. Now I just need to do this, and felt the ovaries and the size of the uterus, one hand outside and one inside, again telling her what he was doing, and afterward he took the rubber gloves off and examined her breasts while she was still lying down and told her that she needed to do the same for herself regularly and how she should do it. After that he stood back and moved to the sink and washed his hands again and turned down the cuffs of his stiff white shirt and put his suitcoat on. You may get dressed now, he said. Then I’ll come back and we’ll talk.

The girl sat up and removed the paper jacket and put on her own clothes once more. When he returned she was seated on the table waiting for him.

So, he said. Miss Roubideaux, as I expect you already know, you are pregnant. Something over three months, I’d say. Closer to four. When was your last period?

She told him.

Yes. Well, you can expect to have a baby in the spring. The middle of April, I calculate, give or take two weeks on either side. But I’m wondering, I don’t know whether this is good news to you or not.

I already knew, if that’s what you mean, the girl said. I felt sure of it.

Yes. I thought you must have, he said. But that doesn’t answer my question.

He put her chart out of the way on the counter. He drew a chair up and sat near her in his blue suit and white shirt, looking at her where she sat slightly above him on the examining table, her hands in her lap, waiting, her face flushed and guarded.

I want to be straightforward with you, he said. This doesn’t have to go anywhere but right here. Do you understand? You and I talking. Having a brief conversation in the privacy of this room.

What do you mean? the girl said.

Miss Roubideaux, he said. Do you want this baby?

Quickly she raised her eyes to him. She was frightened now, her eyes dark and intent, waiting.

Yes, she said. I want it.

You feel certain of that, do you? Absolutely certain.

She looked at his face. Do you mean if I want to put it up for adoption?

That too, perhaps, he said. But more, I meant are you going to keep this baby? Carry it full-term and give birth to it?

I plan to.

And you do want it, don’t you.

Yes.

And now that you’ve told me that, you’re not going to do anything foolish such as trying to stop it by yourself by some means.

No.

No, he said. That’s fine then. I believe you. That’s what I need to know. You will have various kinds of trouble, I expect. That’s what happens. Many teenage mothers do. You’re not supposed to be having babies yet. Your body’s not ready. You’re too young. On the other hand, you do seem strong. You don’t appear to be the hysterical kind. Are you the hysterical kind, Miss Roubideaux?

I don’t think so.

Then you should be all right. Do you smoke?

No.

Don’t start. Do you drink alcohol?

No.

Don’t start that either, not now. Do you take any drugs of any kind?

No.

You’re telling me the truth? He looked at her and waited. That’s important. Because everything you take in goes to the baby. You know that, don’t you.

Yes. I know.

You need to eat right. That’s important too. Mrs. Jones can help you with that. I expect she’s a good cook. You need to gain some weight but not too much. Yes, well. All right then. I’ll see you again in a month, and once each month until the eighth month, then I’ll see you every week. Do you have any questions?

For the first time the girl released the hold on herself a little. Her eyes welled up. It was as if what she wanted to ask him was more important and more frightening than anything either one of them had said or done so far. She said, Is the baby all right? Would you tell me that?

Oh, he said. Why yes. So far as I can tell, everything is fine. Didn’t I make that clear? There is no reason why that should change, so long as you take care of yourself. I didn’t mean to frighten you.

She let herself cry silently just a little, while her shoulders slumped forward and her hair fell about her face. The old doctor reached up and took her hand and held it warmly between both of his hands for a moment and was quiet with her, simply looking into her face, serenely, grandfatherly, but not talking, treating her out of respect and kindness, out of his own long experience of patients in examination rooms.

Afterward, when she was calm again, after the doctor had left, she went into the air outside the Holt County Clinic next to the hospital, and the light in the street seemed sharp to her and hard-edged, definite, as if it were no longer merely a late fall afternoon in the hour before dusk, but instead as if it were the first moment of noon in the exact meridian of summer and she was standing precisely under the full illumination of the sun.