Plainsong (8 page)

Guthrie.

In the last period of the day he sat at his desk at the front of the room, listening to their speeches and glancing out the window toward the place where the sun shone aslant on the few bare trees risen up along the street. It looked cold and bleak outside.

The tall girl talking at the head of the class was just finishing. Something to do with Hamilton. She had spent half of her speech on the duel with Burr. What she was saying was scarcely coherent. She finished and glanced at Guthrie and approached his desk and handed over her notes. Thank you, he said. She turned and sat down at her desk near the west windows, and he made a note about what to say to her in conference and again consulted the list before him and looked out at their faces. They looked as if they were waiting for some inevitable doom and disaster. Unless they had already given their speeches. Then they were bored and indifferent. Glenda, he said.

A girl in the middle row said, Mr. Guthrie?

Yes.

I’m not ready today.

Do you have your notes?

Yes. But I’m not ready.

Come ahead. You’ll have to do what you can.

But I don’t know about this, she said.

Come ahead.

She got up and walked to the front and began to read rapidly from her papers without ever once looking up, a stream of uninflected talk that would have bored even her, even as she uttered it, if she weren’t so terrified. About Cornwallis, evidently. The Battle of Yorktown. She didn’t get as far as the surrender. Suddenly she was finished. She turned her paper over and there was nothing on the other side. She looked at Guthrie. I told you I wasn’t ready, she said.

She stood facing him, then she advanced and handed him her papers and went back in a rush to her seat in the middle of the room, her face hotly red, and sat down and peered into the palms of her hands as though she might discover some explanation or at least some form of consolation and succor there, and then she looked at the girl next to her, a large brown-haired girl who gave her a little nod, but it didn’t seem to be enough because lastly she hid her hands under her skirt and sat on them.

At the front of the room at his desk Guthrie made a note and consulted the list of names before him. He called the next one. A big boy in black cowboy boots rose up and stomped forward from the back of the room. Once he got started he talked haltingly for something less than a minute.

That’s it? Guthrie said. You think that just about covers it?

Yeah.

That was pretty short.

I couldn’t find anything, the boy said.

You couldn’t find anything about Thomas Jefferson?

No.

The Declaration of Independence.

No.

The presidency. His life at Monticello.

No.

Where did you look?

Everywhere I could think of.

You must not have thought very long, Guthrie said. Let me see your notes.

I just got this page.

Let me see that much.

The big boy handed over the single sheet of tablet paper and stomped back and sat down. Guthrie watched him. The boy had sulled up now. He was staring straight ahead. The room was quiet, the students all waiting and watching him. He looked away and stared out the window. The trees along the curb in front of the school still showed sunlight at the tops; in the slanting afternoon sun the trees cast the thinnest of shadows as though they had been sprayed onto the street and the brown grass. For weeks it had been very dry and in the nights there were hard freezes. He turned back and called Victoria Roubideaux to make her speech.

When she came forward she was in a black skirt and a soft yellow sweater and her coal black hair fell down her back, and he noticed that her hair was cut off squarely and neatly at the bottom in a straight thick line. She looked better now, better kept. She stopped in front of the class and turned slowly and began at once to speak very softly. He could barely hear her.

Could you talk a little louder, please? Guthrie said.

From the beginning? she said.

No. From where you are.

She began to read from the notes again in a voice that had scarcely more volume. He watched her in profile. The girl was staying in Maggie Jones’s house now. Maggie had told him about it. That was better. She already looked better. Probably Maggie had been the one to trim her hair that way.

Then there was a commotion in the room. Abruptly she stopped reading because somebody had said something from the back of the room and now all of the girls were turned in their seats looking at Russell Beckman. He sat at the very back corner, his red curly hair combed down over his forehead, a big boy wearing a tee-shirt under his red and white Holt County Union High School jacket.

She wouldn’t start reading again. She was still staring out at their faces, holding her papers before her. She looked as though she were in a kind of panic.

What’s wrong? Guthrie said.

She turned her head and looked at him, her eyes guarded and dark.

What’s wrong here?

She would not speak nor make any complaint, but turned back toward the class, the rows of suddenly blank faces staring back at her, and looked over their heads toward the Beckman boy who sat at the back row cramped in his desk and who gazed forward blankly, his hands folded on his desk as though he were no more responsible for any disturbance than he was for the setting of the sun. At the front of the classroom the girl watched him. Then without saying any word at all she started walking across the front of the room. By the time she reached the door she was running. Behind her the door crashed against the wall and rebounded and they could hear her rapid steps diminishing in the tiled hallway.

The students sat looking at the door, which was still shuddering. Guthrie rose from his desk. Alberta, he said. Go catch up with her and see what you can do.

A small blond girl in front stood up. But what if I can’t find her?

Go look for her. She can’t be far.

But I don’t know where she went.

Just go look for her. Go on now.

She hurried out of the room into the hall.

Guthrie walked back in the aisle between the desks toward Russell Beckman who still sat with his hands folded. The other students turned to watch as Guthrie passed. He stopped and stood over the boy. What did you say to her?

I didn’t say nothing to her. He made a gesture with his hand. He was brushing something away.

Yes you did. What was it?

I wasn’t even talking to her. I was talking to him. He ducked his head sideways toward the boy next to him. Ask him.

Guthrie looked at the boy in the black cowboy boots in the next desk. The boy stared straight ahead with a sullen look on his face. What’d he say?

I never heard it, the boy said.

You never heard it.

No.

How come everybody else did?

I don’t have any idea. Ask them.

Guthrie looked at him. He turned back to Russell Beckman. I’ll see you out in the hallway.

I never did nothing.

Let’s go.

Russell Beckman glanced at the boy in the next desk. There was a faint expression on the other boy’s face now. Beckman gave a little snort and the expression on the other boy’s face got slightly bigger, and now something was showing in his eyes too. Russell Beckman sighed loudly, as if he were greatly oppressed, and stood up and walked very slowly down the aisle between the other students and out into the empty hall. Guthrie followed him and shut the door. They faced each other.

You said something to Victoria that hurt her. I want to know what’s going on here.

I didn’t do nothing to her, the boy said. I wasn’t even talking to her. I already told you that.

And I’m going to tell you something, Guthrie said. You’re already in serious trouble in this class. You haven’t done anything for weeks. I’m not going to pass you until you do.

You think I care about that?

You will.

No I won’t. You don’t know a goddamn thing about me.

I know more about you than I want to know.

You can go to hell.

Guthrie grabbed the boy’s arm. They struggled and the boy fell back against the metal lockers. He jerked his arm away. His jacket was halfway off his shoulder and he pulled it straight.

The fuck you think you’re doing? he said. You can’t touch me. Keep your fucking hands off me. He stood up straight. His face was dark red now.

You shut your filthy mouth, Guthrie said. And you keep it shut. Whatever you said to her, don’t you ever say something like that again.

Fuck you.

Guthrie grabbed him once more but he jerked away and then the boy swung and hit Guthrie at the side of the face, and then he whirled and ran away down the hallway and on outside, headed toward the parking lot. Guthrie watched him through the hallway windows. The boy got into his car, a dark blue Ford, and drove off, screeching across the parking lot and out of sight. Guthrie stood in the hallway and made himself breathe until he was calm again. The side of his face felt numb. He supposed he would feel it more later on. He took out a handkerchief and wiped it across his mouth and felt something on his tongue and spat it into the handkerchief and looked at it. A bloody piece of a tooth. He put it in his shirt pocket and wiped his mouth again and put the handkerchief away. Then he opened the door to the classroom and entered in on an immediate unnatural quiet. The students were all watching him.

Take out your books, he told them. Read until the bell. I don’t want to hear anything more from any one of you today. You can finish your speeches tomorrow.

The students began to open their books. Just before the bell rang, the door opened and Alberta came back into the room. She came in and stood beside his desk. She wouldn’t look at him.

Did you find her?

She must of went home, Mr. Guthrie.

You looked in the rest rooms?

Yes.

And outside? Out front?

I didn’t want to go out of the building. You’re not suppose to leave the building without a pass.

You could have this time.

But you’re not suppose to.

All right. Take your seat.

The girl sat down in her desk. He looked out at the students and none of them was reading. They were all watching him and just waiting. Then the bell rang and they began to rise and Guthrie looked outside across the street again where the sunlight was red now against the trees.

Ike and Bobby.

Just once they took another boy with them to the vacant house and the room where it had happened. They wanted to see it again themselves, to walk in it and feel what that would feel like and what it might be to show it to somebody else, and afterward they were sorry they had ever wanted to know or do any of that at all. He was from Ike’s class in the school, a tall skinny boy with thick hair. Donny Lee Burris.

It was after school was released for the day. They had come through the town park and crossed the railroad tracks already. Then they were out in the road in front of their house, a little past it, out on Railroad Street, and Ike stopped and squatted in the fine dirt. It was a bright cool windless day in November, far enough along in the afternoon that their shadows reached out behind them like dark rags stretched in the dirt road. The road was as dry as powder. Here. This might be his car tracks, he said. Leave them alone.

Bobby and the other boy, Donny Lee, squatted down beside him and studied the double tracks of the high school boy’s car in the dust. They looked up the road toward the place where the tracks must have originated, where the car had been stopped that night in front of the old vacant house at the end of Railroad Street a hundred yards away, and beyond, where the trafficless road ended in sagebrush and soapweed. The other boy stood up. How come they are? he said. They’re probably somebody else’s.

They’re his, Ike said.

The boy looked up the road; he turned and looked back the other way. Then he scraped the toe of his shoe across the tire track, obliterating a piece of it.

What are you doing? Ike said. Quit that.

I thought we was going to look at that old house, the boy said.

All right, Ike said.

They started west toward the vacant building. Alongside the road the old man’s house in the lot adjacent to their own house was quiet and pale as usual, behind the overgrown bushes and the tall ragweed, and there was no sign anywhere of the old man himself.

When they were in front of the empty house at the end of the road they stopped to study it and everything around it. The broken-down neglected locust trees, shaggy barked, the overgrown yard, the dead sunflowers grown up everywhere with their heads loaded and drooping, everything dry and brown now in the late fall, dust-coated, and the sunken house itself diminished and weathered, with the front door swung open carelessly and the windows broken out over the years, and the sole square intact window in the attic bearing a fly screen that was turned down loose from one corner in a way that looked peculiar, like it was sleepy-eyed.

What you waiting on now? the boy said.

Nothing. We’re just looking at it.

I’m going in.

There were tracks still showing at the road edge, where the car had been parked, and shoe prints in the dirt where the two high school boys and the girl with them had climbed in and out of the car. Ike and Bobby were bent over inspecting the tracks.

I’m going, the boy said.

You wait, Ike said. You have to follow me. They stepped around the footprints and entered the lot through the weeds on the path and climbed onto the porch, the old boards dry as kindling and absolutely paintless, and passed through the open door. A broken chair stood in the middle of the room like something crippled that the last tenants had left behind because it couldn’t keep up, and high up on the north wall the plaster was stained by long runs of rainwater. The chimney showed a soot-blackened hole where a stovepipe had vented into it, and on the floor were yellowed newspapers. Also old cigarette butts and sharp pieces of green-looking glass. A rusted can.

They done it in here? the other boy said.

Ike and Bobby looked around the room.

She was in the bedroom, Ike said.

Let’s see that, the boy said.

They moved into the next room. The mattress lay on the bare floor with the candle stubs fitted into the beer bottles on either side. The jar lid still had her cigarette butts, the ends of them stained red from her lipstick. The army blanket was spread out on the mattress. Ike and Bobby moved across the room toward the window through which they’d seen the girl and the two high school boys taking use of her in the night, and leaned out and noted the trampled grass where they themselves had stood in the night, watching.

The other boy knelt next to the mattress. I guess she bout screamed her head off, he said.

Ike looked at him. Why?

Cause that’s how they always do. Holler their heads off when they take it in the pussy. On account of how big it is and how much they like it.

The two brothers studied him with suspicion. Where’d you ever hear something like that? Ike said.

That’s the way they do.

That’s a lie. I don’t believe that.

It don’t matter what you believe.

Well, she didn’t do any of that, Ike said.

She was just on her back, Bobby said. She was just laying on her back looking up and waiting for him to quit bothering her.

Sure, the other boy said. All right. He bent over the rough army blanket and put his face to it and sniffed and raised his eyes dramatically.

What’s that? What are you doing now? Ike said.

Smelling if she’s still here, the boy said.

They watched what he was doing, his antics. He was holding parts of the blanket up to his face and shifting it about, sampling it. They didn’t want him to be acting in such a way in this room. They didn’t approve of it.

You better stop that, Bobby said.

I’m not hurting nothing.

You better leave that alone, Bobby said.

You better stand up from there, Ike said. You quit that.

The boy made a face as if the blanket were too dirty to touch, and he dropped it. He reached and pulled out one of the candle stubs from the throat of a beer bottle. Then I’ll just take me one of these, he said.

You leave them alone too, Ike said.

You don’t own this place. It’s just junk. Old-time shit. What’s wrong with taking something?

They were going to tell him what was wrong with taking something but suddenly there was someone outside on the front porch. They could hear him distinctly. The hard soles of the shoes on the floorboards and then the footsteps coming into the house.

Who’s in here?

It was the old man’s voice, high and whining, crazy. They didn’t answer. They glanced wildly at the window.

Here now, he called. You hear me? Who’s in this goddamn house?

They could hear him coming across the front room and then he stood in the doorway looking at them, the old man from next door in his dirty overalls and high-topped black shoes and his worn-out blue work shirt, his eyes red and maddened, watery-looking, and his cheeks covered with a two-days’ growth of whiskers. In his hands he was waving a rusty shotgun.

You little sonsabitches, he said. What you think you’re doing in here?

We were looking, Ike said. We’re leaving now.

You got no business coming in here. You goddamn kids coming in here breaking things.

We’re not doing nothing, the other boy said. It’s not your place either, is it? This don’t belong to you, mister.

Why, you little smart sonofabitch. I’ll blow your head off. He raised the gun up and leveled it at the boy. I’ll blast you to hell.

No, wait now, Ike said. It’s all right. We’re going. You don’t have to worry. Come on, he said.

He pushed Bobby out ahead of him and pulled the other boy by the arm. When they passed the old man he smelled of kerosene and sweat and of something sour like silage. He turned as they passed, following them with the shotgun raised up in his shaking hands.

Don’t you little shitasses ever come back in here, he said. I’ll come in a-shootin next time. I won’t ask no questions first.

We weren’t doing a thing in there, the other boy said.

What’s that? the old man said. By Jesus, I got a mind to blow your shittin little head off right now. He raised the gun again, dangerously, waving it.

No. Now look out, Ike said. We’re leaving. Wait a minute.

The boys went out of the house back through the weeds onto Railroad Street. The old man came out onto the porch and watched them. They turned and looked at him one time and he was still there on the porch standing in the lowering sun in his dirty overalls and blue shirt, still holding the gun up. When he saw them stop in front of the house he pointed the gun at them again, like he was taking aim. They went on.

When they had walked far enough down the road so that the old man couldn’t see them clearly, the other boy said, I got this much anyhow. He stopped and withdrew a candle stub from his back pocket.

You took that? Bobby said. You shouldn’t even of touched that.

What’s wrong with you? It’s a candle.

That doesn’t matter, Ike said. It wasn’t yours. You didn’t see her.

I never had to see her. I don’t care a turd about her.

You didn’t see the way she was that night.

Oh, I seen lots of them without their clothes on. I seen their pink titties, lots of times.

You never saw her, Ike said.

What of it.

She was different. She was pretty, wasn’t she, Bobby?

I thought she was pretty, Bobby said.

I don’t give a rat’s ass. I’m keeping this candle.

They started back along the dirt road toward the house. At the gravel drive the other boy went on by himself toward town, but the two brothers turned and went back past their empty house toward the lot where the two horses were standing dozing by the barn. They went out to the corral to be in the place where there were horses.