Eventide

1

THEY CAME UP FROM THE HORSE BARN IN THE SLANTED light of early morning. The McPheron brothers, Harold and Raymond. Old men approaching an old house at the end of summer. They came on across the gravel drive past the pickup and the car parked at the hogwire fencing and came one after the other through the wire gate. At the porch they scraped their boots on the saw blade sunken in the dirt, the ground packed and shiny around it from long use and mixed with barnlot manure, and walked up the plank steps onto the screened porch and entered the kitchen where the nineteen-year-old girl Victoria Roubideaux sat at the pinewood table feeding oatmeal to her little daughter.

In the kitchen they removed their hats and hung them on pegs set into a board next to the door and began at once to wash up at the sink. Their faces were red and weather-blasted below their white foreheads, the coarse hair on their round heads grown iron-gray and as stiff as the roached mane of a horse. When they finished at the sink they each in turn used the kitchen towel to dry off, but when they began to dish up their plates at the stove the girl made them sit down.

There’s no use in you waiting on us, Raymond said.

I want to, she said. I’ll be gone tomorrow.

She rose with the child on her hip and brought two coffee cups and two bowls of oatmeal and a plate of buttered toast to the table and then sat down again.

Harold sat eyeing the oatmeal. You think she might of at least give us steak and eggs this once, he said. On account of the occasion. But no sir, it’s still only warm mush. Which tastes about like the back page of a wet newspaper. Delivered yesterday.

You can eat what you want after I’m gone. I know you will anyway.

Yes ma’am, probably so. Then he looked at her. But I’m not in any rush for you to leave here. I’m just trying to joke you a little.

I know you are. She smiled at him. Her teeth were very white in her brown face, and her black hair was thick and shiny and cut off neat below her shoulders. I’m almost ready, she said. First I want to feed Katie and get her dressed, then we can start.

Let me have her, Raymond said. Is she done eating?

No, she isn’t, the girl said. She might eat something for you though. She just turns her head away for me.

Raymond stood and walked around the table and took up the little girl and returned to his seat and sat her on his lap and sprinkled sugar on the oatmeal in his bowl and poured out milk from the jar on the table and began to eat, the black-haired round-cheeked girl watching him as if she were fascinated by what he was doing. He held her easily, comfortably, his arm about her, and spooned up a small portion and blew over it and offered it to her. She took it. He ate more himself. Then he blew over another spoonful and gave that to her. Harold poured milk into a glass and she leaned forward over the table and drank a long time, using both hands, until she had to stop for breath.

What am I going to do in Fort Collins when she won’t eat? Victoria said.

You can call on us, Harold said. We’ll come see about this little girl in about two minutes. Won’t we, Katie.

The child looked across the table at him, unblinking. Her eyes were as black as her mother’s, like buttons or currants. She said nothing but took up Raymond’s calloused hand and moved it toward the cereal bowl. When he held out the spoon she pushed his hand toward his mouth. Oh, he said. All right. He blew over it elaborately, puffing his cheeks, moving his red face back and forth, and now she would eat again.

When they were finished Victoria carried her daughter into the bathroom off the dining room to wash her face and then took her back to their bedroom and changed her clothes. The McPheron brothers went upstairs to their rooms and got into town clothes, dark trousers and pale shirts with pearl snaps and their good white hand-shaped Bailey hats. Back downstairs they carried Victoria’s suitcases out to the car and set them in the trunk. The backseat was already loaded with boxes of the little girl’s clothes and blankets and bedsheets and toys, and a child’s padded car seat. Behind the car was the pickup and in its bed, together with the spare tire and the jack and a half dozen empty oil cans and dry wisps of brome hay and a piece of rusted barbed wire, were the little girl’s high chair and her daybed, its mattress wrapped in a new tarp, all of it lashed down with orange binder twine.

They returned to the house and came out with Victoria and the little girl. On the porch Victoria paused for a moment, her dark eyes welling with sudden tears.

What’s the matter here? Harold said. Is something wrong?

She shook her head.

You know you can always come back. We’re expecting you to. We’re counting on it. Maybe it’ll help to keep that in mind.

It isn’t that, she said.

Is it because you’re kind of scared? Raymond said.

It’s just that I’m going to miss you, she said. I haven’t been gone before, not like this. That other time with Dwayne I can’t even remember and I don’t want to. She shifted the little girl from one arm to the other and wiped at her eyes. I’m just going to miss you, that’s all it is.

You can call if you need something, Harold said. We’ll still be here at the other end.

But I’m still going to miss you.

Yes, Raymond said. He looked out from the porch toward the barnlot and the brown pastures beyond. The blue sandhills in the far distance low on the low horizon, the sky so clear and empty, the air so dry. We’re going to miss you too, he said. We’ll be about like old played-out workhorses once you’re gone. Standing around lonesome, always looking over the fence. He turned to study her face. A face familiar and dear to him now, the three of them and the baby living in the same open country, in the same old weathered house. But you think you can come on? he said. We probably ought to get this thing started if we’re going to.

RAYMOND DROVE HER CAR WITH VICTORIA SITTING BESIDE him so she could reach into the back and tend to Katie in her padded chair. Harold followed them in the pickup, out the lane onto the gravel county road, headed west to the two-lane blacktop, then north toward Holt. The country both sides of the highway was flat and treeless, the ground sandy, the wheat stubble in the flat fields still bright and shiny since its cutting in July. Beyond the barrow ditches the irrigated corn stood up eight feet tall, darkly green and heavy. The grain elevators in the distance showed tall and white in town beside the railroad tracks. It was a bright warm day with the wind coming hot out of the south.

In Holt they turned onto US 34 and stopped at the Gas and Go where Main Street intersected the highway. The McPherons got out and stood at the pumps, gassing up both vehicles as Victoria went in to buy them cups of coffee and a Coke for herself and a bottle of juice for the little girl. Ahead of her in line at the cash register a heavy black-haired man and his wife were standing with a young girl and a small boy. She had seen them walking at all hours along the streets of Holt and she had heard the stories. She thought that if it weren’t for the McPheron brothers she might be like them herself. She watched as the girl moved to the front of the store and took a magazine from the rack at the plateglass windows and flipped through it with her back turned away as if she were not related in any manner to the people at the counter. But after the man had paid for a box of cheese crackers and four cans of pop with food stamps, she put the magazine back and followed the rest of her family out the door.

When Victoria came out, the man and the woman were standing in the tarred parking lot deciding something between themselves. She couldn’t see the girl or her brother, then turned and saw they were standing together at the corner under the traffic light, looking up Main Street toward the middle of town, and she went on to where Raymond and Harold were waiting for her at the car.

IT WAS SHORTLY AFTER NOON WHEN THEY DROVE DOWN the ramp off the interstate and into the outskirts of Fort Collins. To the west, the foothills rose up in a ragged blue line obscured by yellow smog blown up from the south, blown up from Denver. On one of the hills a white A was formed of whitewashed rocks, a carryover from when the university’s teams were called the Aggies. They drove up Prospect Road and turned onto College Avenue, the campus was all on the left side with its brick buildings, the old gymnasium, the smooth green lawns, and passed along the street under the cottonwoods and tall blue spruce until they turned onto Mulberry and then turned again and then located the apartment building set back from the street where the girl and her daughter would now live.

They parked the car and the pickup in the lot behind the building, and Victoria went in with the little girl to find the apartment manager. The manager turned out to be a college girl not unlike herself, only older, a senior in sweatshirt and jeans with her blonde hair sprayed up terrifically on her head. She came out into the hallway to introduce herself and began at once to explain that she was majoring in elementary education and working as a student teacher this semester in a little town east of Fort Collins, talking without pause while she led Victoria to the second-floor apartment. She unlocked the door and handed over the key and another one for the outside door, then stopped abruptly and looked at Katie. Can I hold her?

I don’t think so, Victoria said. She won’t go to everybody.

The McPherons brought up the suitcases and the boxes from the car and set them in the small bedroom. They looked around and went back for the daybed and high chair.

Standing in the door, the manager looked over at Victoria. Are they your grandfathers or something?

No.

Who are they? Your uncles?

No.

What about her daddy then? Is he coming too?

Victoria looked at her. Do you always ask so many questions?

I’m just trying to make friends. I wouldn’t pry or be rude.

We’re not related that way, Victoria said. They saved me two years ago when I needed help so badly. That’s why they’re here.

They’re preachers, you mean.

No. They’re not preachers. But they did save me. I don’t know what I would’ve done without them. And nobody better say a word against them.

I’ve been saved too, the girl said. I praise Jesus every day of my life.

That’s not what I meant, Victoria said. I wasn’t talking about that at all.

THE MCPHERON BROTHERS STAYED WITH VICTORIA Roubideaux and the little girl throughout the afternoon and helped arrange their belongings in the rooms, then in the evening took them out to supper. Afterward they came back to the rented apartment. When they were parked in the lot behind the building they stood out on the pavement in the cool night air to say good-bye. The girl was crying a little again now. She stood up on her toes and kissed each of the old men on his weathered cheek and hugged them and thanked them for all they had done for her and her daughter, and they each in turn put their arms around her and patted her awkwardly on the back. They kissed the little girl. Then they stood back uncomfortably and could not think how to look at her or the child any longer, nor how to do much else except leave.

You make sure to call us, Raymond said.

I’ll call every week.

That’ll be good, Harold said. We’ll want to hear your news.

Then they drove home in the pickup. Heading east away from the mountains and the city, out onto the silent high plains spread out flat and dark under the bright myriad indifferent stars. It was late when they pulled into the drive and stopped in front of the house. They had scarcely spoken in two hours. The yardlight on the pole beside the garage had come on in their absence, casting dark purple shadows past the garage and the outbuildings and past the three stunted elm trees standing inside the hogfencing that surrounded the gray clapboard house.

In the kitchen Raymond poured milk into a pan on the stove and heated it and got down a box of crackers from the cupboard. They sat at the table under the overhead light and drank down the warm milk without a word. It was silent in the house. There was not even the sound of wind outside for them to hear.

I guess I might just as well go up to bed, Harold said. I’m not doing any good down here. He walked out of the kitchen and entered the bathroom and then came back. I guess you’ve decided to sit out here all night.

I’ll be up after a while, Raymond said.

Well, Harold said. All right then. He looked around. At the kitchen walls and the old enameled stove and through the door into the dining room where the yardlight fell in through the curtainless windows onto the walnut table. It feels empty already, don’t it.

Empty as hell, Raymond said.

I wonder what she’s doing now. I wonder if she’s all right.

I hope she’s sleeping. I hope her and that little girl are both sleeping. That’d be the best thing.

Yes, it would. Harold bent and peered out the kitchen window into the darkness north of the house, then stood erect. Well, I’m going up, he said. I can’t think what else I’m suppose to do.

I’ll be up shortly. I want to sit here a while.

Don’t fall asleep down here. You’ll be sorry for it tomorrow.

I know. I won’t. Go ahead on. I won’t be long.

Harold started out of the room but stopped at the door and turned back once more. You reckon it’s warm enough in that apartment of hers? I been trying to think. I can’t recollect a thing about the temperature in them rooms she rented.

It seemed like it was warm enough to me. When we was in there it did. If it wasn’t I guess we’d of noticed it.

You think it was too warm?

I don’t guess so. I reckon we’d of noticed that too. If it was.

I’m going to bed. It’s just goddamn quiet around here is all I got to say.

I’ll be up after a bit, Raymond said.

2

THE BUS CAME FOR THEM ON THE EAST SIDE OF HOLT AT seven-thirty in the morning. The driver waited, was turned sideways in the seat staring at the front of the trailer house. She honked the horn. She honked a second time, then the door opened and a young girl in a blue dress stepped out into the untended yard of cheatgrass and redroot, walking toward the bus with her head down, and climbed the metal steps and moved to the middle where there were empty seats. The other students watched her pass in the narrow aisle until she sat down, then started talking again. Now her mother came out of the trailer holding her younger brother by the hand. He was a small boy dressed in blue jeans and a shirt that was too big for him buttoned up to his chin.

After he had climbed aboard the bus the driver said: I shouldn’t have to wait for these kids like this. There’s a schedule I got to follow, if you didn’t know.

The mother looked away, peering through the row of windows until she saw the boy was seated beside his sister.

I’m not going to tell you again about this, the driver said. I’ve had it with you people. There’s eighteen kids I got to pick up. She swung the door closed and released the brake and the bus jerked down Detroit Street.

The woman stared after her until the bus turned the corner onto Seventh and then looked all around as if someone along the street might come to her aid and tell her what to say in reply. But there was no one else outside at this time of morning and she went back to the trailer.

Old and dilapidated, it had once been bright turquoise but the color had faded to a dirty yellow in the hot sun and the blasting wind. Inside, clothes were piled in the corners and a trash bag of empty pop cans was leaning against the refrigerator. Her husband sat at the kitchen table drinking Pepsi from a large glass filled with ice. Before him on a plate were the leftovers of frozen waffles and fried eggs. He was a big heavy black-haired man in outsized sweatpants. His enormous stomach was exposed below his maroon tee-shirt and his huge arms dangled over the back of his chair. He was sitting back resting after breakfast. When his wife came inside he said: What’d she do? You got that look on your face.

Well, she makes me mad. She isn’t suppose to do that.

What’d she say?

She said she got eighteen kids to pick up. She said she don’t have to wait for Richie and Joy Rae like that.

I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, I’m calling the principal. She isn’t allowed to say nothing to us.

She isn’t allowed to say nothing to me never, the woman said. I’m telling Rose Tyler on her.

IN THE WARM MID-MORNING THEY LEFT THE TRAILER AND walked downtown. They crossed Boston Street and followed the sidewalk to the back of the old square redbrick courthouse and entered a door with black lettering spread across the window: HOLT COUNTY SOCIAL SERVICES.

Inside on the right was the reception room. A wide window was set above the front counter, and hollowed into the wood under the glass was a security pocket through which people passed papers and information. Behind it two women sat at desks with files stacked on the floor beneath their chairs, with telephones and more files on the desktops. Pinned to the walls were large calendars and official bulletins issued by the state office.

The man and woman stood at the window, waiting as a teenaged girl ahead of them wrote on cheap yellow tablet paper. They leaned forward to see what she was writing and after a moment she stopped and gave them an annoyed look and turned away so they couldn’t see what she was doing. When she was finished she bent and spoke into the gap beneath the window: You can give this note to Mrs. Stulson now.

One of the women looked up. Are you talking to me?

I’m finished with this.

The woman rose slowly from her desk and came to the counter as the girl slipped the paper under the glass. Here’s your pen back, she said. She dropped it into the hollow.

Is there any message with this?

I put it all on that paper, the girl said.

I’ll give it to her when she comes in. Thank you.

As soon as the girl was gone the woman unfolded the paper and read it thoroughly.

The couple stepped forward. We’re suppose to see Rose Tyler now, the man said. She got an appointment with us.

The woman behind the window looked up. Mrs. Tyler is with another client at the moment.

She was suppose to see us at ten-thirty.

If you’d care to have a seat I’ll tell her you’re here.

He looked at the clock on the wall beyond the glass. The appointment was ten minutes ago, he said.

I understand that. I’ll tell her you’re waiting.

They looked at the woman as if expecting her to say something else and she looked steadily back at them.

Tell her Luther Wallace and Betty June Wallace is here, he said.

I know who you are, the woman said. Take a seat, please.

They moved away from the counter and sat down in chairs against the wall without speaking. Beside them were boxes of plastic toys and a little table with books and an open carton of crayon stubs and broken pencils. No one else was in the room. After a while Luther Wallace removed a jackknife from his pocket and began to scrape at a wart on the back of his hand, wiping the knife blade on the sole of his shoe and breathing heavily, beginning to sweat in the overheated room. Beside him Betty sat looking at the far wall. She appeared to be thinking about something that made her sad, something she could never forget in this world, as if she were imprisoned by the thought of whatever that was. She held a shiny black purse on her lap. She was a large woman not yet forty, with a pockmarked face and limp brown hair, and every minute or two she drew the hem of her loose dress modestly over her knees.

An old man came out from a door behind them and limped across the room with his metal cane. He pushed the door open and went out into the hall. Then the caseworker, Rose Tyler, stepped into the waiting room. She was a short square dark-haired woman in a bright dress. Betty, she said. Luther. Do you want to come back?

We just been sitting here waiting, Luther said. That’s all we been doing.

I know. I’m ready to talk to you now.

They stood up and followed her down the hall and entered one of the little windowless interview rooms and sat down at a square table. Betty arranged the skirt of her dress as Rose Tyler closed the door and seated herself across from them. She set a file on the table and opened it and turned through the pages, reading each one rapidly, and at last looked up. So, she said. How have you been this month? Is everything going the way you want it to?

Oh, we been doing pretty good, Luther said. I guess we don’t have to complain. Do we, dear.

I still got this pain in my stomach. Betty laid a hand gently over her dress as if something was very tender there. I don’t hardly sleep at night, she said.

Did you see the doctor like we talked about? We made an appointment for you to see him.

I went to him. But he didn’t do me no good.

He give her a bottle of pills, Luther said. She been taking them.

Betty looked at him. But they don’t do me no good. I still hurt all the time.

What are they? Rose said.

I give the doctor’s slip to the man at the counter and he filled it out. I got them at home on the shelf.

And you don’t remember what they are?

She looked around the bare room. I don’t remember right now, she said.

Well, they come in a little brown bottle, Luther said. I tell her she got to take one every day.

You do need to take them regularly. They won’t help you unless you do.

I been, she said.

Yes. Well, let’s see how you feel when you come in next month.

They better start doing something pretty soon, Betty said. I can’t take much more of this.

I hope they will, Rose said. Sometimes it takes a while, doesn’t it. She took up the file once more and looked at it briefly. Is there anything else you want to talk to me about today?

No, Luther said. Like I say, I guess we been doing all right.

What about that bus driver? Betty said. I guess you’re forgetting about her.

Oh? Rose said. What’s the trouble with the bus driver?

Well, she makes me mad. She said something to me she isn’t suppose to say.

Yeah, Luther said. He sat forward and put his thick hands on the table. She told Betty she don’t have to wait on Richie and Joy Rae. She said she got fifteen kids to pick up.

Eighteen, Betty said.

It ain’t right for her to talk to my wife that way. I got a mind to call the principal about it.

Just a minute, Rose said. Slow down and tell me what happened. Did you have Richie and Joy Rae out at the curb on time? We’ve talked about that before.

They was out there. They was dressed and ready.

You need to do that, you know. The bus driver’s doing the best she can.

They come right out after she honked.

What’s the bus driver’s name? Do you know?

Luther looked at his wife. Do we know her name, honey?

Betty shook her head.

We never did hear her name. The one with the yellow hair is all we know.

Yes, well. Would you like me to call and find out what’s going on?

Call that principal too. Tell him what she been doing to us.

I’ll make a phone call for you. But you have to do your part too.

We already been doing our part.

I know, but you need to try to get along with her, don’t you. What would you do if your children couldn’t ride the bus?

They looked at Rose and then across the room at the poster taped on the wall. LEAP — Low-Energy Assistance Program, all in red letters.

Let’s see then, Rose said. I’ve got your food stamps here. She produced the stamps from the file on the table, booklets of one, five, ten, and twenty-dollar denominations, each in a different color. She slid the packets across the table and Luther gave them to Betty to put in her purse.

And you received your disability checks on time this month? Rose said.

Oh yeah. They come in the mail yesterday.

And you’re cashing the checks like we talked about and putting the money in separate envelopes for your various expenses.

Betty’s got them. Show her, dear.

Betty removed four envelopes from her purse. RENT, GROCERIES, UTILITIES, EXTRAS. Each envelope with Rose Tyler’s careful printing in block letters.

That’s fine. Now is there anything else today?

Luther glanced at Betty, then turned toward Rose. Well, my wife keeps on talking about Donna. Seems like she always got Donna on her mind.

I just been thinking about her, Betty said. I don’t see why I can’t call her on the phone. She’s my daughter, isn’t she.

Of course, Rose said. But the court order stipulated that you have no contact with her. You know that.

I just want to talk to her. I wouldn’t have no kind of contact. I just want to know how she’s been doing.

Calling her would be considered contact, though, Rose said.

Betty’s eyes filled with tears and she sat slumped in her chair with her hands open on the table, her hair fallen about her face, a few strands stuck to her wet cheeks. Rose extended a Kleenex box across the table, and Betty took one and began to wipe at her face. I wouldn’t bother her, she said. I just want to talk to her.

It makes you feel bad, doesn’t it.

Wouldn’t you feel bad? If it was you.

Yes. I’m sure I would.

You just got to try and make the best of it, dear, Luther said. That’s all you can do. He patted her shoulder.

She isn’t your daughter.

I know that, he said. I’m just saying you got to get on the best way you know how. What else you going to do? He looked at Rose.

What about Joy Rae and Richie? Rose said. How are they doing?

Well, Richie, he’s been fighting at school, Luther said. Come home the other day with his nose all bloody.

That’s cause them other kids been picking fights with him, Betty said.

I’m going to teach him how to fight them back one of these days.

What’s causing this, do you think? Rose said.

I don’t know, Betty said. They just always been picking on him.

Does he say anything?

Richie don’t say nothing to them.

That’s because I been teaching him: Turn the other cheek, Luther said. When they smite thee on one cheek, turn him the other one. It’s out of the Bible.

He only has two cheeks, Betty said. How many cheeks is he suppose to turn?

Yes, Rose said, there are limits, aren’t there.

We come to the limits, Betty said. I don’t know what we’re going to do.

No, Luther said, otherwise I guess we don’t got too much to complain about. He sat upright in his chair, apparently ready to leave, to move on to whatever came next. I guess we been doing pretty good for ourselves. You get what you get and don’t have a fit, what I always tell people. Somebody told that to me one time.

3

HE WAS A SMALL BOY, UNDERWEIGHT FOR HIS AGE, WITH thin arms and thin legs and brown hair that hung over his forehead. He was active and responsible, and too serious for a boy of eleven. Before he was born his mother decided not to marry the man who was his father, and when he was five she died in a car wreck in Brush Colorado on a Saturday night after she’d been out dancing with a redheaded man in a highway tavern. She had never said who his father was. Since her death he had lived alone with his mother’s father on the north side of Holt, in a dark little house with vacant lots on both sides and a gravel alley out back that had mulberry trees grown up beside it. At school he was in the fifth grade and he was a good student but spoke only when called on; he never volunteered anything in the classroom, and when he was let out of school each day he went home by himself or wandered around town or occasionally did yardwork for the woman who lived up the street.

His grandfather, Walter Kephart, was a white-haired man of seventy-five. For thirty years he’d been a gandy dancer on the railroad in southern Wyoming and northeastern Colorado. When he was almost seventy he got pensioned off. He was a silent old man; he would talk a good deal if he’d been drinking, but he was not a drunk and generally would take a drink at home only if he were sick. Each month when his pension check came he’d cash the check and spend an evening drinking at the Holt Tavern on the corner of Third and Main, where he would sit and visit with other old men in town and tell stories that were not exaggerated so much as they were simply enlarged a little, and then he’d remember for an hour or two what he had been able to do in the long-ago oldtime when he was still young.

The boy’s name was DJ Kephart. He took care of the old man, walking him home along the dark streets in the night when his grandfather was finished talking at the tavern, and at home he did most of the cooking and cleaning, and once a week washed their dirty clothes at the Laundromat on Ash Street.

One day in September he came home from school in the afternoon and the old man said the neighbor woman had been over, asking for him. You better go see what she wants.

When did she come?

This morning.

The boy poured out a cup of cold coffee from the pot on the stove and drank it and started toward the woman’s house. It was still hot outside, though the sun had begun to lean to the west, and the first intimations of fall were in the air — that smell of dust and dry leaves, that annual lonesomeness that comes of summer closing down. He walked past the vacant lot with its dirt path leading to a row of mulberry trees at the alley and then the two widows’ houses, both set back from the quiet street behind a dusty stand of lilac, and came to her house.

Mary Wells was a woman just past thirty with two young girls. Her husband worked in Alaska and returned home infrequently. Slim and healthy, a pretty woman with soft brown hair and blue eyes, she could have done all the yardwork herself but she liked helping the boy in this small way and always paid him something when he worked for her.

He knocked on the door of her house and waited. He thought he should not knock a second time, that it would be impolite and disrespectful. After a little while she came to the door wiping her hands on a dish towel. Behind her were the two girls.

Grandpa said you came over this morning.

Yes, she said. Will you come in?

No, I guess I better get started.

Don’t you want to come in first and have some cookies? We’ve been baking. They’re just fresh.

I drank some coffee before I left home, he said.

Maybe later then, Mary Wells said. Anyway I wondered if you had time to work in the backyard. If you don’t have something else you need to be doing right now.

I don’t have anything else right now.

Then I can use you. She smiled at him. Let me show you what I have in mind.

She came down the steps, followed by the two girls, and they went around the corner of the house to a sun-scorched garden beside the alley. She pointed out the weeds that had come up since he’d last been there and the rows of beans and cucumbers she wanted him to pick. Do you mind doing that? she said.

No, ma’am.

But don’t let yourself get too hot out here. Come sit in the shade when you need to.

It’s not too hot for me, he said.

I’ll send the girls out with some water.

They went back inside and he began to weed in the rows between the green plants, kneeling in the dirt and working steadily, sweating and brushing away the flies and mosquitoes. He was accustomed to working by himself and used to being uncomfortable. He piled the weeds at the edge of the alley and then began to pick the bushbeans and cucumbers. An hour later the girls came out of the house with three cookies on a plate and a glass of ice water.

Mama said for you to have these, said Dena, the older girl.

He wiped his hands on his pants and took the glass of water and drank half of it, then he ate one of the big cookies, eating it in two bites. They watched him closely, standing in the grass at the edge of the garden.

Mama said you looked hungry, Dena said.

We just baked these cookies this afternoon, Emma said.

We helped, you mean. We didn’t bake them ourselves.

We helped Mama bake them.

He drank the rest of the water and handed them the glass. There were muddy prints and streaks on the outside.

Don’t you want these other cookies?

You eat them.

Mama sent them for you.

You can have them. I’ve had enough.

Don’t you like them?

Yes.

Then why won’t you eat these?

He shrugged and looked away.

I’ll eat one, Emma said.

You better not. Mama sent them out for him.

He doesn’t want them.

I don’t care. They’re his.

You can have them, he said.

No, Dena said. She took the two cookies from the plate and put them down in the grass. You can eat them later. Mama said they’re yours.

The bugs’ll get them first.

Then you better eat them.

He looked at her and then went back to work, picking green beans into a white-enameled bowl.

The two girls watched him work, he was on his knees again crawling, his back to them, the soles of his shoes turned up toward them like the narrow faces of some strange being, his hair dark with sweat at the back of his neck. When he reached the end of the row the girls left the cookies in the grass and went back inside.

AFTER HE WAS FINISHED HE TOOK THE BEANS AND THE cucumbers to the back door and knocked and stood waiting. Mary Wells came to the door with the two girls.

My, look at all you found, she said. I didn’t think there were that many. You keep some of them yourself. Now, let me get you some money.

She turned back into the house and he stepped away from the open doorway and looked out across the backyard toward the neighbors’ yard. There were patches of shade under the trees. Where he stood on the porch the sun shone full on his brown head and on his sweaty face, on the back of his dirty tee-shirt and the corner of the house. The girls were watching him. The older one wanted to say something but couldn’t think what it should be.

Mary Wells came back and handed him four dollars folded in half. He didn’t look at the money but put the bills in his pants pocket. Thank you, he said.

You’re welcome, DJ. And take some of these vegetables with you. She handed him a plastic bag.

I better go then. Grandpa’ll be getting hungry.

But you take care of yourself too, she said. You hear me?

He turned and went around to the front yard and started up the empty street in the late afternoon. He had the money in his pocket and the bag of green beans and two of the cucumbers.

When he was gone the girls walked out to the edge of the garden to see if he’d eaten the cookies, but they were still in the grass. There were red ants crawling on them now and a line of ants moving away in the grass. Dena picked up the cookies and shook them hard, then threw them out into the alley.

AT HOME HE FRIED HAMBURGER IN AN IRON SKILLET AND boiled some red potatoes and the green beans Mary Wells had given him and set out bread and butter on the table together with the sliced cucumbers on a plate. He made a new pot of coffee and when the potatoes and beans were ready he called his grandfather to the table and they began to eat.

What’d she have you doing over there? the old man said.

Pulling weeds. And picking vegetables.

Did she pay you?

Yes.

What’d she give you?

He drew the folded bills from his pocket and counted them out on the table. Four dollars, he said.

That’s a lot.

Is it?

It’s too much.

I don’t think it is.

Well, you better hang on to it. You might want to buy something someday.

After supper he cleared the table and washed the dishes and set them to dry on a towel on the counter while his grandfather went into the living room and turned on the lamp beside the rocker and read the Holt Mercury newspaper. The boy did his schoolwork at the kitchen table under the overhead light and when he looked in an hour later the old man was sitting with his eyes shut, their paper-thin lids crosshatched by tiny blue veins and his dark mouth lapsed open, breathing harshly, and the newspaper spread across the lap of his overalls.

Grandpa. He touched his arm. You better go to bed.

His grandfather woke and peered at him.

It’s time for bed.

The old man studied him for a moment as if trying to think who he was, then folded the paper together and set it on the floor beside the chair and, pushing against the arms of the rocker, rose slowly and walked into the bathroom, and afterward went back to his bedroom.

The boy drank another cup of coffee at the kitchen sink and dumped the dregs in the drain. He rinsed out the pot and turned off the lights and went back to bed in the little room next to his grandfather’s, where he read for two hours. Through the wall he could hear the old man snoring and coughing and muttering. At ten-thirty he cut the light out and fell asleep and the next morning he got up early to make their breakfast and afterward went to school across the tracks to the new building on the south side of Holt, and at school he did willingly and skillfully all that was required of him but didn’t say much of anything to anybody throughout the day.

4

THEY HAULED THE BLACKBALDY YEARLING STEERS TO town in the gooseneck trailer and jumped them out into the alley at the load-in dock behind the sale barn and the yard crew sorted them into a pen. The veterinarian inspected them and found none of the respiratory diseases he looked for in yearlings, nor the cancer eyes nor Bang’s nor the occasional malformed jaw he might expect in older cattle, and the brand inspector cleared them without question. Afterward they were handed the chit saying the steers were theirs and how many of them there were, and then they drove home again and ate in the kitchen in the quiet and went up to bed, and the next morning in the stilldark they rose from bed and chored out.

Now at noon they were seated at a square table in the little dirty sale barn diner ordering lunch. The waitress came with a pad and stood over them, sweating and red-faced. What are you two going to have today?

You look about like you was flat wore out, Harold said.

I’ve been at this since six this morning. Why wouldn’t I be?

Well, you might just bust something. You better take it easy.

When would I do that?

I don’t know, Harold said. That’s the question. You got any specials going on?

Everything’s special. What have you got in mind?

Well, he said, I’ve been considering the noble pig. I’ve seen about enough of these blackbaldy steers the last couple days to put me off beef for a week.

We have ham steak and there’s bacon if you want that. We could make you up a ham sandwich.

Bring me a ham steak. And mashed potatoes and brown gravy and whatever else comes with it. And black coffee. And some punkin pie if you would.

She wrote rapidly in her pad and looked up. Raymond, what about you?

That sounds about right, he said. Just bring me the same as Harold. Only what other brand of pie you got?

I have apple blueberry butterscotch lemon. She glanced over at the counter. I think I got one piece of chocolate meringue.

Blueberry, Raymond said. But take your time. There isn’t any rush about this.

I just wish he’d hire another girl, she said. That’s all it’d take. You think Ward’s ever going to do that?

I can’t see it happening.

Not in my lifetime, she said, and walked toward the kitchen and said something to two men at another table as she passed by.

She returned balancing two cups of coffee and a bowl of lettuce salad for each of them and a plate of white bread with little pats of butter and set it all down and went away again. The McPheron brothers took up their forks and began to eat. While they were eating, Bob Schramm came over. Anybody sitting here? he said.

You, Harold said. Set down.

Schramm pulled out a chair and sat and took off his black hat and placed it crownside down on the vacant chair and put a finger to each ear and turned up the plastic dials in his hearing aids, then smoothed the hair on the top of his head. He looked around the crowded room. Well, I just heard old John Torres died.

When was this? Harold said.

Last night. Over to the hospital. Cancer, I guess. You knew him, didn’t you.

Yeah.

He was something, old John was. Schramm looked at them, watching them eat. Here he was, what, about eighty-five, he said, and the last time I seen him he’s bent over so bad his chin about catches on his belt buckle and I says how you doing, John, and he says oh, pretty good for a old fucker. That’s good, I say, at least you’re still fuckin, and he says yeah, but I been having trouble splitting this cottonwood, it’s soft in the middle, kind of spongy and you can’t get it to split right. You shove the wedge in and it’s like sticking a fork in a pan of this caliche mud. Well, you can see where I’m going with this, Schramm said. Here’s old John still trying to split firewood at his age of life.

Sounds about like him. Harold reached for a piece of bread and buttered and folded it and bit a large half moon out of the middle.

Well, he smoked two packs of Lucky Strikes every day, Bob Schramm said, and he never mistreated a human being in this world. I always set down with him and when I poured my coffee I poured him one too. This one time he come in and he says how you doing, and I says oh not too good, I got something on my mind, some people upsetting me. And he says who is it, you want me to take care of them, and I says oh no, that’s all right, I’ll take care of things, because I knew what he’d do or have somebody else do for him. They’d wake up with their throats cut, is what I’m talking about. Well, he come out of San Luis Valley. You didn’t want to fool with him. Even if he never hurt nobody before, it don’t mean he couldn’t arrange for it to happen this time, even if he wasn’t going to be the one doing it himself.

The waitress arrived at the table carrying two big platters of ham steak and mashed potatoes and gravy and green beans and apple sauce. She placed them in front of the McPherons and turned to Schramm. What about you, what are you going to have?

I haven’t even give it any thought yet.

I’ll have to come back, she said.

Schramm watched her leave and looked around, gazing over at the next table. Don’t they give you menus here no more?

It’s above the counter, Raymond said. On the wall there.

I thought they used to give you menus.

It’s up there now.

Is menus that expensive?

I don’t know how expensive menus are, Raymond said. You mind if we go ahead and eat?

No. Hell. Don’t wait on me. He studied the menu printed on pasteboard above the counter while the McPheron brothers leaned forward over their plates and began to eat. He reached in the hip pocket of his pants and withdrew a blue handkerchief and blew his nose, shutting his eyes all the while, then folded the handkerchief and put it away.

The waitress came back and refilled the coffee cups. Schramm said: Oh, just bring me a hamburger and fries and some coffee, why don’t you.

If you want any dessert you better say so now.

I don’t guess so.

She walked off to another table and poured coffee there and went on.

When’s the funeral going to be? Harold said.

I don’t know. I don’t even know if they was able to locate his kinfolk yet, Schramm said, to tell them he died. But there’ll be a lot that wants to attend.

People liked him, Raymond said.

Yeah, they did. But here you go. I wonder if you ever heard this one. There was this time old John was carrying on with Lloyd Bailey’s wife. I seen them myself once, they was in her new Buick hid out down in the bar ditch alongside the tracks out at the Diamond T crossing, the car lights all shut off, that Buick bouncing on its springs a little and the radio turned down low playing something Mexican out of Denver. Well, mister, they was having theirselves a good time. Well, so that fall old John and Lloyd’s missus jumped up and run off to Kremmling across the mountains there and holed up in a motel room. Shacked up, living like man and wife. But it wasn’t nothing to do there unless you was a hunter and wanted to take a potshot at a deer or a bull elk. It’s just a little place, you know, along the river, and ruttin in a kingsize motel bed can get tiresome after a while, even if you can lay the room off on somebody else’s credit card. So after a while they come back home and she went back to Lloyd and says to him you going to let me come back or do you want to divorce me? Lloyd, he slapped her so hard it spun her head around, and he says all right then, I guess you can come back. Then Lloyd and her went off on a running drunk. They got about as far as Steamboat Springs, I guess, and turned around. When they come back they was still together. I believe they still are. Lloyd, he said it took him all of a two-week drunk to wash old John Torres out of his system.

How long did it take to wash him out of the wife’s system? Harold said.

That I don’t know. He never said. But that’s one thing about him for sure. Old John could get to you.

I don’t guess he’s getting to nobody now, is he.

No sir. I reckon his day is over.

Still, I guess he had his fun, Raymond said. He had himself a good run.

Oh, he did that, Schramm said. None much better. I always thought a lot of old John Torres.

Everybody did, Raymond said.

I don’t know, Harold said. I don’t imagine Lloyd Bailey thought that much of him. Harold put his fork down and looked around the crowded diner. I wonder what become of that punkin pie she was going to bring me.

WHEN THEY HAD FINISHED LUNCH AND LEFT MONEY ON the table for the waitress the McPherons moved next door into the sale barn for the one o’clock start. They climbed up the concrete steps into the middle of the half circle of stadium seats and sat down and looked around. The pipe-iron corral of the sale ring lay below, with its sand floor and the big steel doors on either side, the auctioneer already in place behind his microphone sitting next to the sale barn clerk in the auctioneer’s block above the ring, both of them facing the ranks of seats across the ring, and all the animals sorted in pens out back.

The seats began to fill with men in their hats or caps and a few women in jeans and western shirts, and at one o’clock the auctioneer cried: Ladies and gentlemen! Well all right now! Let’s get to going!

The ringmen brought in four sheep, all young rams, one with a horn that had splintered in the waiting pen and the blood was trickling from its head. The sheep milled around. Nobody much wanted them and they finally sold the four rams for fifteen dollars each.

Next they brought in three horses one after the other. A big seven-year-old roan gelding came first that had white splashes on its underbelly and more white running down the front of its hind legs. Boys, the older of the ringmen hollered, he’s a well-broke horse. Anybody can ride him but not everybody can stay on him. Boys, he’ll get out there and move. And he understands cattle. Seven hundred dollars!

The auctioneer took it up, chanting, tapping the counter with the handle end of his gavel, keeping time. A man in the front row allowed that he would give three hundred.

The ringman looked at him. You’ll give five hundred.

The auctioneer took that up, and the roan horse sold finally for six hundred twenty-five, bought back by its owner.

They sold an Appaloosa next. Boys, she’s a young mare. Not in foal. Then they sold a black mare. She’s a young thing now, boys. About two years old, not broke. So we’re just going to sell her that way. Three hundred fifty dollars!

After the horses were done the cattle sale began, and it was this that most people had come for. It went on for the rest of the afternoon. They sold the old stuff first, then the cow-calf pairs and the butcher bulls and finally the lots of calves and yearlings. They pushed the cattle in from one side, held them in the ring for the bidding, and moved them about to show them to best advantage, the two ringmen stepping out or tapping them with the white prod-sticks, then pushed them through the other metal door into the outback for the pen-back crew to sort out. Each pen was numbered with white paint to keep the animals separate, and all of them had yellow tags on their hips saying which lot they belonged to. On the wall above the metal doors electronic boards blinked TOTAL LB. and HEAD CT. and AVERAGE WT. There were advertisements on the walls for Purina and Nutrena feeds and Carhartt equipment. And below the auctioneer’s booth this sign: NOTICE ALL GUARANTEES ARE STRICTLY BETWEEN BUYER & SELLER.

The McPheron brothers sat high up in their seats and watched. They had to wait until late in the afternoon for the sale of their yearlings. Around three in the afternoon Raymond went down into the diner and brought back two paper cups of coffee, and sometime later Oscar Strelow sat down in front of them and turned sideways in his chair to talk, remarking on a pen of his cattle that one time sold so poorly he’d driven out and got drunk afterward and when he got home in that sorry state his wife was so mad she wouldn’t talk to him but went straight into town the next morning and bought a brand-new Maytag washing machine, writing out a check for the entire amount right there, and Oscar said he didn’t think it was a good idea to offer any comment about it to his wife just then and he still never had.

They kept running the cattle through. The younger of the ringmen was the one watching the bidders and they looked at him purposefully, making a nod or raising a hand, and he’d holler Yup! looking back and forth from one bidder to the other, Yup! and when the last bidder gave up and looked away the auctioneer up in the block cried: I sold them out at one hundred sixteen dollars to number eighty-eight! and the young ringman released the cattle out of the ring. Then the older ringman in a blue shirt with a big hard belly hanging down above his belt buckle let the next lot in through the steel door on the left and began to holler.

Boys, they’re a nice pair of steers. I’m going to let you all in for ninety-five dollars!

Boys, she’s a long-haul calf. She looks a little like a milk cow. Seventy-four dollars!

The only thing wrong with this one is she’s got a short tail and that’s stupid!

Boys, she’s got a little knot on her jaw. Dry it, it won’t amount to nothing.

A heifer girl and a good one!

All right. Seventy-seven dollars! Let’s not play games.

The cattle sale went on. And one time there was a big lot, eighty head of them, that the ringmen ran through fifteen and twenty at a time until they came to the last bunch and these they kept back in the ring as representative of the whole lot, and all the while the older ringman was hollering: Boys, they’re a good outfit. Take a good look at them, you’re not going to see them again. They’re a good feeding outfit, boys. Eighty cows. Eighty dollars. Come on!

And there was one other time in the afternoon when Harold, sitting up in his seat above the sale ring, began to bid on a pen of butcher cows. After he bid a second time Raymond turned to look at him. Was that you? He thought that was you trying to bid on them.

It was.

Well what the hell are you doing?

Nothing. Having a little fun.

We don’t need no more cattle. We’re trying to sell some here today.

I ain’t going to buy any. I’m just having some fun raising the price for somebody else.

What if you get stuck with them?

I won’t.

Yeah. But what if you do.

Then I reckon you’ll just have to get your pocketbook out and pay for them.

Raymond turned away. You know something, he said. You’re starting to get a little mushy in the head in your advanced years, did you know that?

Well, we got to have some fun, don’t we? Victoria’s not here no more.

But we don’t need no more cattle.

You already said that.

I’m saying it so you’ll hear me.

I hear you. But I still say we got to have some kind of enjoyment in life.

I know we do. I ain’t arguing with you about that.

AT LAST THE AUCTIONEER CAME TO THE BLACKBALDY yearlings the McPherons had hauled in. The steers came into the sale ring in a swirling mass, their heads down, all moving, trying to turn back into themselves to hide.

The ringman hollered: Boys, they come right off the grass. They’ll do everything you want them to do. Good stretchy steers. These are yearling kind of cattle, boys. And good ones they are!

Ninety dollars!

The auctioneer started his chant. Well all right now. You got to like them. Fifteen steers weighing a average of eight-oh-eight. They’ll hang a good carcass for you, boys. Here we go now. Hey I got a bid now, ninety-dollar bid now, ninety-na-quarter now, now a half, now a half, got seventy-five, now ninety-one, now one-na-quarter now, now half, bid’s one-na-half, now one-na-half the bid now, now seventy-five.

The McPherons watched the fifteen steers milling about in the ring below, frightened and uncertain in this great commotion and noise, their eyes rolled back, one bawling into the dust-filled air and another taking it up, the men and women in the stadium seats all looking on through the pipe-iron bars of the ring, the brothers watching from above, viewing their own cattle with a strange emotion, having brought them in to sell but knowing too well what effort they’d put into them and what trouble there’d been over the past year and with which one or two there’d been the trouble and even knowing for four or five of them which mother cow they’d come out of. But watching the two brothers, you could not have told anything by what showed on their faces. They looked on impassively at the sale of the fifteen steers as if they were attending an event of no more significance than the rise and fall of a dry little wind.

We all in now? the auctioneer cried. We all done here? Ninety-one seventy-five, ninety-two? ninety-two? ninety-two? He flipped the gavel around, taking it by the handle, banged it sharply on the wood block on the counter and sang into the microphone: I sold them out at ninety-one seventy-five to — he looked at the bidder across the ring in the fifth row, a fat man in a straw hat, a cattle buyer for a feedlot, who flashed four fingers twice — to number forty-four!

Sitting beside the auctioneer the sale clerk wrote it down in her ledger, and the ringmen released them and ran in the next lot.

Well, Harold said, looking straight ahead. That’ll do.

It’ll serve, Raymond said, looking as though he too were talking to no one, talking about not even yesterday’s news, but about last week’s, last month’s.

They stayed on in their stadium seats to watch the present lot of cattle being sold, and the next lot, then they rose and moved stiffly down the steps and out of the sale barn. The yard crew and the pen-back crew had done their work and they received the cashier’s check — less the selling commission and the charges for the brand inspection, the feed, the health inspection, the insurance, and the fee that went to the meat board. The woman in the office handed the check to Raymond and congratulated them both. Raymond looked at the check briefly and folded it once, put it in his old leather purse and snapped it shut, poking the purse away in the inner pocket of his canvas chore jacket. Then he said: Well, it wasn’t too bad, I guess. At least we never lost no money.

Not this time, Harold said.

Then they shook the woman’s hand and went home.

AT HOME UNDER THE FADING SKY THEY WALKED DOWN TO the horse barn and cow lots and out to the loafing shed to check on things, and the cattle and horses looked all right. So they came back up across the gravel drive to the house. But the day’s excitement was gone now. They were tired and bleary now. They heated up canned soup on the stove and ate at the kitchen table and afterward set the dishes to soak and then removed themselves to the parlor to read the paper. At ten o’clock they turned on the old console television to catch whatever news there might be showing from somewhere else in the world before they climbed up the stairs and lay down tired in their beds, each in his own room across the hall from the other, consoled or not, discouraged or not, by his own familiar time-worn memories and thoughts.

5

THEY CAME DOWN THE PLANK STEPS OUT OF THE TRAILER into the bright sun in the middle of morning and rounded the corner in the packed dirt and arrived at the rusted shopping cart that waited like something patient and abiding among the dry cheatgrass and pigweed. They shoved it rattling away from the trailer out into Detroit, walking the cart ahead of them, headed downtown, Luther pushing, panting steadily, Betty coming along quiet beside. They walked paired up under the trees, with one of the front wheels of the cart flapping loose whenever it hit a crack in the concrete or a stone of any size, and passed through the intersection in front of a car delayed behind a stop sign and came one block more and crossed against traffic and entered at last the store at the corner of Second and Main.

The grocery was a long narrow brick-faced building running back to the alley with wood floors formed of old-fashioned tongue-and-groove oak boards that were oiled and darkened, a place fragrant and dusty and a little dim, with narrow aisles between shelves and tiers of foodstuffs.

Luther pushed the cart past the bins of apples and oranges, the cabbage heads and leaf lettuce next to the wall, his wife following behind in her loose dress. In the next aisle, beyond the fresh-butchered meat in the cooled trays, the frozen foods were displayed behind the tall glass doors. He stopped now and began to hand the cold boxes to Betty, who stacked them in the cart, and they moved forward and he took down more. Frozen spaghetti, cold pizza, boxes of burritos and meat pies and waffles and berry pies and chocolate pies and lasagna. Salisbury steak dinners. Meals of macaroni and cheese. All frozen in their bright hard vivid boxes.

He pushed on and she followed him up the next aisle, where they stopped to study the canned pop. He turned to her. You going to want something else this time? Or you going to stay with that same old strawberry?

I can’t make up my mind.

How bout some of this black cherry?

You’re getting me confused.

Maybe you want some of both of them.

Yes, she said, whyn’t you do that.

He lifted two cases of the pop from the shelf and stooped over to slide the cases onto the undershelf of the cart, his great hindquarters exposed above his gray sweatpants, and stood panting, red-faced, and yanked his shirt down.

You all right, dear?

Yeah. But them’s heavy when you got to bend over like that.

You better not have no cardiac arrest on me.

No ma’am. Not here. Not today.

They pushed on. Around the corner among the paperware and detergent, a plump woman was blocking the aisle, making up her mind about dish soap. Oh I’m sorry, she said, then looked up and saw who it was. She said no more but shoved her cart only a little out of the way.

That’s fine, missus, Luther said. I can make it okay. He squeezed his cart through, and Betty turned sideways, shuffling by. The woman stared after them until they had disappeared around the end and then stood fanning the air in front of her face.

In the next aisle they looked for some time among the various cereals. One of the store employees came by, a boy in a green apron, and Luther stopped him. Bud, what happened to that cereal with raisins in it? All them raisins in it.

Isn’t it here?

We been looking all over.

The boy searched among the shelves, bending over and looking up high. We might have some in back, he said finally.

We’ll wait for you, Luther said. Go ahead.

The boy glanced at him and pushed through the swinging doors into the back of the store. Then the plump woman rolled her cart up behind them.

Luther moved their cart to the side. He’s went out back to look for that cereal, he said.

What? she said. Did you say something to me?

He’s went out in back there to get our cereal. We’re just waiting on him.

She stared at him, she turned to look at Betty, then she walked rapidly away.

Cause they ain’t none of it on the shelf here, Luther called after her.

The boy came back and told them he couldn’t find any of the cereal they wanted.

Did you look everywhere pretty good? Luther said.

Yeah, I looked. If we have any it’ll be out here on the shelves.

But they ain’t none of it out here. We know that already. You got to have some of it in the back.

No. I looked. We must of sold it all.

Luther turned to Betty. He says they don’t have none, dear. Says they’re out of it.

I heard him.

What you want to do about it?

I was counting on a box of cereal to carry home.

I know. Only he says they must of sold it all.

The boy was watching them talk, his head going back and forth. You could buy a box of this other cereal, he said, and buy a box of raisins and put that in it. It’d be about the same thing.

Put raisins in the box, Luther said.

Put raisins in one of these other cereals, the boy said.

Right here, you mean?

No. When you get home. After you buy them and take them home.

Huh. Luther looked around. You want to do that, honey?

You decide, Betty said.

Well, the cereal’s here, the boy said. The raisins are over in aisle two in the middle on the right. If that’s what you want to do. It doesn’t make any difference to me. He turned and walked toward the checkout.

They studied the boxes of cereal. In the old rusted cart their cartons had begun to defrost, water condensing on the cardboard in the warm air.

I can’t see how that’d be any good, Luther said. Can you?

I don’t want none of that, Betty said.

No ma’am.

It wouldn’t taste the same.

It wouldn’t taste the same in a hundert years, Luther said.

They went on and picked up a plastic jug of milk and two dozen eggs in the next aisle and came to the bakery and took three loaves of the cheap white bread, and at last came to the front of the store and lined up behind the register, waiting for their turn. Luther pulled a magazine from the rack in front of them and looked at pictures of half-naked women in the glossy pages.

Who you looking at? Betty said. You better keep your eyes saved for me. She took the magazine out of his hands and put it back. I’m your wife.

They’s too skinny anyhow, he said. Not enough meat on them for what I like. He pinched Betty’s hip.

You better stop that too, she said, and smiled at him and looked away.

The checkout lane cleared and they began to set their groceries on the belt and Luther bent over and lifted up the cases of pop with a grunt.

The woman at the register was working briskly. How’re you folks doing today? she said.

We’re doing pretty good, Luther said. You?

I’m still above ground, the woman said. Every day above ground is a good day, isn’t it.

Yes ma’am. I believe you got that right.

We’re doing pretty good, Betty said, except for that cereal we couldn’t find.

Didn’t we have any?

No ma’am, said Luther. You’re all out.

Well. I’m sorry.

When their charges were totaled Betty took the booklets of food stamps from her purse and handed them to Luther and Luther presented them to the woman. Behind them a man with cans of beans and stew and a carton of cigarettes in his cart stood watching them. The clerk tore out the stamps and rang up and slipped the stamps under the tray in the register and made the last dollar’s change in actual coins. The boy in the green apron sacked their groceries and loaded them back in the cart.

You have a good day, Luther said, and they pushed out through the electric door onto the sidewalk.

The man behind them shook his head at the checkout woman. Would you look at that. They’re eating better than you and me and they’re on food stamps.

Oh, let them be, the woman said. Are they hurting you?

They’re eating a steak dinner and I’m eating beans. That’s hurting me.

But would you want to be them?

I’m not saying that.

What are you saying?

I’m not saying that.

On the sidewalk Luther and Betty started back toward the east side of Holt with their grocery cart. It was hotter now, the sun risen higher in the blue sky. They kept to the shade under the trees and once or twice in every block they stopped to rest, and then shoved on, homeward.

6

THEY WERE COLLECTED IN A CIRCLE ON THE PLAYGROUND when he came out at noon recess. Even from a distance he could see they were from his own grade, with a few of the younger ones from the lower grades there too, gathered inside the chain-link fence beyond the end of the school building. Now and then one of them hollered something brief and excited, and he went down to see what it was about.

Two little boys from the first grade were facing each other across five feet of red gravel, and the older boys were trying to make them fight, saying things, goading them. One boy they taunted more than the other, the one whose lank brown hair appeared as if it had been cut by someone barbering with his eyes shut. He knew who it was — his classmate Joy Rae’s little brother — and inside the ring he looked ragged and scared. His outsized shirt was buttoned to his chin and had holes at the elbows, and his jeans had a purple tint as though someone had washed them together with something red. He seemed ready to cry.

One of the boys next to DJ was yelling at him: Go ahead. Why won’t you fight?

He’s a chickenshit, a boy across the ring hollered. That’s why. He flapped his arms and crowed and hopped up and down. The kids next to him hooted.

The other boy in the ring was somewhat bigger, a blond boy in jeans and red shirt.

Go on. Hit him, Lonnie.

They don’t want to fight, DJ said. Let them go.

Stay out of this. The boy next to him stepped out and shoved the blond boy forward, and he swung and hit Joy Rae’s brother on the side of the face and then stepped back to see what he’d done and her brother put his hand up to his cheek.

Don’t, Joy Rae’s brother said. He spoke very softly.

Hit him again. You better hit him.

He doesn’t want to fight, DJ said. He’s had enough.

No he hasn’t. Shut up.

The boy shoved the blond boy again, and he hit her brother and grabbed him around the neck and they went down in the gravel. The blond boy rolled over on top of him, their faces close to each other, and hit him in the face and throat, and her brother tried to cover his face with his hands. His eyes looked frightened and his nose was bleeding. He began to wail.

Then the circle was broken by a girl rushing into the ring, Joy Rae, in a blue dress too short for her. You’re hurting him, she cried. Stop it. She ran over and pulled the blond boy off her brother, but the first big boy, the loudmouthed one, shoved her and she tripped over the little boys and fell on her hands and knees in the gravel. One knee was cut but she jumped up and pulled at the blond boy crying: Let go, you little son of a bitch.

The big loudmouthed boy grabbed her and this time hurled her backward into the ring of onlookers, and two boys grabbed her by the arms.

She twisted and kicked at them. Let go of me, she screamed.

DJ stepped into the ring and pulled the blond boy off and stood her brother on his feet. He was crying hard now and his face was smeared with blood. The ringleader grabbed DJ by the arm. What do you think you’re doing, asshole?

He’s had enough.

I’m not done with him yet.

Then a boy cried: Oh shit. Here comes Mrs. Harris.

The sixth-grade teacher came striding into the circle. What’s this? she said. What’s going on here?

The boys and girls began to walk off fast with their heads down.

Every one of you come back here, she called. Come back here.

But they all went on, some of them running now. The two boys holding Joy Rae let her go and sprinted off as Joy Rae hurried over to her brother.

What’s this about? the teacher said. She put her arm around the little boy and lifted his chin to see in his face. Are you all right? Talk to me. She wiped at the blood with a handkerchief. His eyes were red and there were bruises starting on his cheeks and forehead and the front of his shirt was ripped open. What’s this about? She turned to DJ. Do you know?

No, he said.

Who started it?

I don’t know.

You don’t know, or you’re not telling me?

He shrugged.

Well, you’re not helping anybody by not telling.

I know who it was, Joy Rae said, and named the big boy who’d been out in the ring.

He’s in very serious trouble then, the teacher said.

She led Joy Rae and her brother into the school building, but DJ lingered on the playground until the bell rang.

AFTER SCHOOL HE WAS WALKING HOME THROUGH THE park next to the railroad tracks when two boys appeared from behind the rusted WWII tank that served as a monument. They rushed up at him across the newly mown grass. How come you told old lady Harris on me? the big loudmouthed boy said.

I didn’t.

You told her I made those little kids fight.

I never told her anything.

Then how come I caught hell from her and Mr. Bradbury? Now I have to bring my mom to school tomorrow. Because of you.

DJ looked at him, then at the other boy. They were both watching him.

I’m going to kick your ass, the first boy said.

Yeah, how’d you like to get your ass kicked, the other one said. He gave a signal with his hand and a third boy came out from behind the tank, and they took turns shoving him until one of them grabbed him around the neck while the other two hit him in the head and sides, then they threw him down and held his face in the grass.

The first boy kicked him in the ribs. You lying sack of green shit. You better learn to keep your mouth shut.

Living with a old man.

Yeah. They probably fuck each other. The boy kicked him again. You been warned, he said, then they walked off toward downtown.

He lay in the grass looking at the spaced and orderly trees in the park and the clear sky through the trees. Blackbirds and starlings were pecking in the grass around him.

After a while he got up and went home. In the little dark house his grandfather was sitting in his rocking chair in the living room.

Is that you? he called.

Yes.

I thought I heard somebody out there.

It’s only me.

Come in here.

In a minute, he said.

What are you doing?

I’m not doing anything.

7

WHEN THE PHONE RANG IT WAS HALF-PAST SIX IN THE evening on a Saturday and Raymond got up from the kitchen table where he and Harold had been eating a supper of beef steak and pan-fried potatoes and took up the phone in the dining room where it hung on the wall on a long cord, and on the other end it was Victoria Roubideaux.

Well now, is that you? he said.

Yes. It’s me.

We just was finishing supper.

I hope I didn’t interrupt you. I could call later if you want.

You didn’t interrupt a thing. I’m just glad to hear from you.

How’s the weather there? she said.

Oh, you know. About like always this time of year. Starting to turn off cold at night but it’s still nice in the daytime. Most days it is.

He asked her how the weather was for her, there in Fort Collins next to the mountains, and she said it was dry and cold at night there too but that the days were still warm, and he said that was good, he was glad she was still getting some warm days. Then there was silence until she thought to say: What else is going on at home?

Well. Raymond looked out through the curtainless windows toward the barnlots and pens. We took those yearling steers into the sale barn last week.

The ones from over south?

That’s right.

Did you get your price?

Yes ma’am. Ninety-one seventy-five a hundredweight.

Isn’t that good. I’m glad.

It wasn’t too bad, he said. Well anyway, now how about you, honey? What’s going on up there?

She told him about her classes and professors and about an exam coming up. She told him one professor said albeit so often in his lectures that the students all counted the times.

Albeit? Raymond said. I don’t even know what that means.

Oh, it means something like although. Or even so. It doesn’t really mean anything. He’s just talking.

Huh, Raymond said. Well, I never heard of it. So have you been making any friends up there?

Not too many. I talk with this one girl some. And the apartment manager, she’s always around.

No young boys?

I’m too busy. I’m not interested anyway.

And how about my little girl. How’s Katie?

She’s fine. I put her in the university day care while I’m in class. I think she’s starting to get used to it. At least she doesn’t complain anymore.

Is she eating?

Not like at home.

Well. She needs to eat.

She misses you, Victoria said.

Well.

I miss you too, she said.

Do you, honey?

Every day. You and Harold both.

It isn’t the same around here, I can tell you. Far from it.

Are you all right? she said.

Oh yeah. We’re doing okay. But here, now I better put Harold on. I know he wants to say hello. And you take care of yourself now, honey. Will you do that?

You too, she said.

Harold came out from the kitchen and took up the phone while Raymond went back to start the dishes. Harold and Victoria talked about the weather and her classes again, and he asked why she wasn’t out having fun since it was Saturday night, she should be doing something to enjoy herself on a Saturday night, and she said she didn’t feel like going out, maybe she would some other weekend, and he said weren’t there any good-looking boys at that college, and she said maybe there were but she didn’t care, and he said well, she better keep her eyes open, she might see one she liked, and she said well, she doubted that, and then she said: But I hear you did all right at the sale barn last week.

Not too bad, Harold said.

I hear you got almost ninety-two. That’s really good, isn’t it.

I’m not going to complain. No ma’am.

I know how much it means to you.

Well, he said. Now what else about you? You need any money yet?

No. That’s not what I was calling for.

I know. But you be sure to say so. I got a feeling you wouldn’t tell nobody even if you did.

I’m all right for money, she said. It’s just good to hear your voice. I guess I was feeling a little homesick.

Oh, he said. Well. And since Raymond was making enough noise doing dishes that he couldn’t hear what Harold was saying on the phone, he told Victoria how much his brother missed her and how he talked about her every day, speculating on what she was doing there in Fort Collins and making suggestions as to how the little girl was faring, and as he went on in this vein it was clear to the girl that he was talking as much about himself as he was his brother and she felt so moved by this knowledge she was afraid she was going to cry.

After they hung up Harold went back to the kitchen where Raymond was just emptying the dishpan, pouring the water out into the sink. The clean dishes were drying in the rack on the counter. How’d she sound to you? Raymond said.

She sounded to me, Harold said, like she was kind of lonesome.

I thought so. She didn’t sound quite right to me.

No sir, she didn’t sound quite like herself, Harold said. I reckon we better send her some money.

Did she say something about that?

No. But she wouldn’t, would she.

That wouldn’t be like her, Raymond said. She never would say anything about what she wanted even when she was here.

Except for the baby sometimes. She might of said something about her once in a while.

Except for Katie. But it wasn’t just money, was it.

It wasn’t even about money, Harold said.

The way she sounded. The way her voice was.

No, it wasn’t money that made her voice sound that way. It was the rest of it too.

Well, I reckon she’s kind of lonesome, Raymond said. I’m going to say she kind of misses being here.

I guess maybe she does, said Harold.

Then for the next half hour they stood in the kitchen, leaning against the wooden counters drinking coffee and talking about how Victoria Roubideaux was doing a hundred and twenty-five miles away from home, where she was taking care of her daughter by herself and going to classes every day, while here they themselves were living as usual in the country in Holt County seventeen miles out south of town, with so much less to account for now that she was gone, and a wind rising up and starting to whine outside the house.

8

WHEN ROSE TYLER CAME OUT FROM THE KITCHEN TO THE front door of her house on a weekday night in the fall, the sky above the trees was heavily clouded and there was the smell in the air of rain coming, and on the doorstep under the yellow porch light stood Betty Wallace with the two children and out in the yard in the dry grass in the shadow of a tree was Luther Wallace looking big and hulking and dark.

Betty, Rose said. Is something the matter?

I didn’t want to bother you this time of night, Betty said. But I got an emergency. Could you drive me and my kids over to my aunt’s house? She looked out at Luther in the front yard. He’s being mean to me.

Do you want to come inside?

Yes. But he don’t have to. I’m mad at him.

Perhaps he better come too so we can all talk this over.

Well, he better behave hisself.

Rose called to Luther and he came up on the porch. He looked sad and disturbed. Even in the cool night air he was sweating, his great wide face as red as flannel. I never done nothing to her, he said.

You ain’t at home now, Betty said. You better behave yourself at Rose’s house.

Well, you better be quiet and shut your mouth and not tell no lies to people.

I ain’t telling no lies. What I tell is the truth.

There’s things I can tell too.

You don’t have no reason to tell something on me.

Yes sir, I do.

Here now, Rose said. We’re going to be civil. Or you can both go on back home.

You hear? Betty said. You better mind Rose.

Well, she ain’t just talking to me.

Hush, Rose said.

They entered the house through the front hall and went into the living room, and Joy Rae and her brother Richie looked at everything with a kind of awe and surprise, as if they were seeing a set display of furniture and paintings arranged for view in a city museum. They sat down with their mother on the flowered couch and were very quiet and still — only their eyes moved, looking at everything. Luther had started to sit in a wood rocker but it was too small and Rose brought him a chair from the kitchen. He sat down carefully, testing with his hand for the seat of the chair.

Betty, why don’t you start, Rose said. You said you wanted to go to your aunt’s house. What was that about?

That was about he’s being mean to me, Betty said. He just slapped me for no reason. I never did nothing to him.

I never either slapped her, Luther said.

Oh, he’s the one lying now.

I just pushed her a little. Because she did something to me. Well, she said I was eating too much.

When was this? Rose said.

Bout a hour ago, Betty said. Joy Rae wasn’t eating her dinner and he tells her you better—

I said you better eat if you want to keep your strength up.

No. He says you better eat or I’m going to eat it for you. Joy Rae, she said she didn’t want it. Said she was sick of this same old food all the time. So then he took her macaroni-cheese dinner off her plate and ate it looking right at her. I guess you’ll eat it next time, he says. I don’t care, she says. You going to learn to care, he says, and that’s when I come between them and he says watch out, and I says no, you watch out.

Then what happened? Rose said.

Then nothing happened, Luther said.

Then he slapped me, Betty said.

That’s a lie. I only just pushed her a little.

You slapped me in the face. I can still feel it. I feel it right now. Betty lifted her hand and caressed her cheek and Luther looked at her from across the room with slit eyes.

The children sat on the couch and appeared to be uninterested in what was being said, as if they were not involved in these matters or couldn’t affect their outcome even if they were. Studying the furniture and the pictures on the walls, they sat next to each other without so much as glancing at the three adults.

Rose stood and went to the kitchen and came back with a plate of chocolate fudge and held the plate in front of the children before offering it to Betty and Luther. She sat again. I think we all need to cool down, she said.

I just want to go to my aunt’s house, Betty said. I can cool down over there.

Does she want you to come?

We been there before.

But does she want you now?

I think she does.

Didn’t you call her?

No. Our phone ain’t working.

What’s wrong with it?

It don’t have no dial tone.

Rose looked at her. Betty sat slumped beside the children, her lank hair fallen about her pocked face, her eyes reddened. Rose turned to Luther. What do you think about this, Luther?

I think she ought to come home like she’s suppose to.

But she says she doesn’t want to be in that house right now.

I’m her husband. The Bible says man is lord of his own castle. He builds up his house on a rock. She’s suppose to mind what I say.

I don’t have to mind him, do I, Rose.

No. I think Luther’s wrong about that.

I want to go to my aunt’s house, Betty said.

WHEN THEY BACKED OUT FROM THE DRIVEWAY LUTHER was standing forlornly in the headlights, the beams sweeping across him while he looked back at them with his hands in his pockets. Overhead, above Holt, the rain seemed nearer. Betty sat in the front seat with Rose, the children in back, staring out the window at all the houses and the intersecting streets and the tall trees. The houses all had lights burning beyond the window shades, and there were bushes and narrow little sidewalks leading around back to the dark alleys. The streetlamps glowed blue at the corners and the trees were evenly spaced along the sidewalks. Rose drove them through the quiet streets and at the highway she turned east.

As they approached the Highway 34 Grocery Store Betty said: Oh, I forgot my napkins.

What do you mean? Rose said.

It’s my time of month come round again. I don’t have my napkins. I’ll have to change sometime.

Do you want to stop and buy some?

If you please. I better.

They pulled in and parked among the cars near the front doors. Beyond the plateglass windows the store was brightly lit and there were women standing at the checkout. Go ahead, Rose said.

Betty looked toward the store but didn’t get out.

What is it now?

I don’t have no money. I didn’t bring my pocketbook. Could you loan me some? I’ll pay you back first of the month.

Rose gave her some bills and Betty went inside. When she disappeared into the aisles, Rose turned in the seat to look at the children. Are you two all right back there?

She’s not going to want us, Joy Rae said.

Who isn’t?

Mama’s aunt.

Why do you say that?

Last time she said not to come back again. I don’t see why we have to go out there.

Maybe you won’t have to stay very long. Just until your parents can calm down a little.

When’s that going to be?

Soon, I hope.

I don’t want to go out there either, Richie said.

Oh? Rose said.

I don’t like it out there.

Cause you wet the bed the last time and she got mad, Joy Rae said. He wets the bed.

So do you.

Not no more.

Betty came back with a paper bag and Rose drove east from town on the highway out into the flat open treeless country, then turned north a mile to a little dark house. A light came on above the front door as the car stopped. Okay, Rose said. Here we are.

Betty looked at the house and got out and climbed the steps to the door and knocked. After some time a woman in a red kimono opened the door. Her hair was flat on one side, as if she’d been in bed already. She was smoking a cigarette and she looked past Betty at the car. Well, she said. What do you want now?

Can me and my kids stay here tonight?

Oh lord, what happened this time?

Luther slapped me. He’s being mean to me again.

I told you the last time I wasn’t going to do this again. Didn’t I.

Yes.

I don’t know why you two even stay together.

He’s my husband, Betty said.

That doesn’t mean you have to stay with him. Does it.

I don’t know.

Well I do. I got to get up in the morning and go to work. I can’t be running you all over town.

But he’s being mean. I don’t want to stay with him tonight. Betty looked back toward the car. Rose had turned the engine off.

Then suddenly the rain started. It came down slanted brightly under the yardlight next to the garage and glinting and splashing under the yellow porch light. Betty began to get wet.

Oh, all right, the aunt said. But you know you’ll just go back to him. You always do. But you listen to me now, it’s just for tonight. This ain’t going to be anything permanent.

We won’t make no trouble, Betty said.

You already have.

Betty looked away and put her hand up over her face, shielding her face from the rain.

Well, tell them to come in, the aunt said. I’m not standing out here all night.

Betty waved toward the car for the children to come.

I think you better go on, Rose told them. I think it’ll be all right.

Joy Rae took the bag from the front seat and she and her brother got out and hurried through the rain up onto the porch, then followed their mother inside. The aunt looked again at the car. She flipped her cigarette out into the wet gravel and shut the door behind her.

THE WIND WAS BLOWING THE RAIN SIDEWAYS IN GUSTS when Rose pulled into the driveway at her house, and when she stopped she got a sudden fright. Luther was leaning against the garage door. She turned off the ignition and the headlights and got out, watching all the time to see what he might do. She walked around to the side door and he followed a few steps behind. Rose, he said, can I ask you something?

What do you want to ask?

Could you borrow me a quarter?

I think so. Why?

I want to call Betty and say I didn’t mean her no kind of hurt. I want to tell her to come back home.

You could call from here.

No, I better go downtown. I been rained on already.

She took a quarter from her purse and handed it to him, and he thanked her and told her how he’d pay her back, then walked off toward Main Street. She watched as he passed under the streetlamp at the corner, a great dark figure splashing through the shining puddles in the wet night; his black hair was plastered over his head and he went on in the rain, bound for a public phone booth on a corner.

9

ON A SATURDAY AFTER BREAKFAST, AFTER HE HAD DONE up the dishes, he came outside and without specific intention or any direction in mind started up the street in the bright cool morning and passed the vacant lot and the houses where the old widows lived in individual silence and isolation. Dena and Emma were out in front of their mother’s house, and they had a new bicycle that they’d bought with the money their father in Alaska had sent. Dena knew how to ride already but Emma was only learning. Dena was on the bicycle now, riding on the sidewalk, and she stopped in front of DJ and stepped down, straddling the bike. Her little sister ran up beside them. You want to ride? she asked him.

No.

Why not? Don’t you know how?

No.

You could learn, Dena said. Look at me, I’m already riding.

I don’t know anything about it.

Haven’t you ever tried before?

I don’t have a bike, he said.

Why don’t you? Emma said.

I never bought one.

Don’t you have any money?

Be quiet, Emma.

But he said —

Never mind, Dena said. You want to ride this one?

It’s a girl’s bike. I ought to learn on a boy’s bike.

You want to or not? She got off and held the handlebar out to him and he looked at her and took hold of the rubber grip and stepped over the low crossbar. When he tried pushing the bike forward the pedal came around and hit him in the back of the leg.

How do you? he said.

Get this one pedal to come up. Now step down on it.

The bike went forward and wavered and stopped.

Do it again.

He went ahead a little farther.

Get your other foot up at the same time on the other pedal.

He went forward once more and wobbled and put both feet down.

You have to keep pedaling. You don’t stop.

He pedaled down the block on the sidewalk and the two girls trotted beside until he veered off into a bush and tipped over. He got up and pulled the bike upright. How do you stop it?

Dena put her foot up. Like that, she said.

Don’t you have hand brakes?

No. Just the pedals.

He started again and rode down the driveway into the street and rode along pedaling steadily as they ran beside him. The bike stammered and wobbled and he almost hit them once. They screamed in delight, their faces pink as flowers, and he pedaled away. Dena called: Try and stop, try and stop. He stood up on the pedals and braked suddenly, then put his feet down to catch himself. They ran up beside him.

It’s easy, Dena said. Isn’t it?

I know.

He rode up and back in the street and turned and rode toward them and lifted one hand from the handlebar to wave and put his hand back quickly and rode past and came back once more, but he was too fast this time and drove the bike into the two sisters in the middle of the street and hit the older girl hard and they crashed over, sprawling out in the pavement, the bike over them. He had torn the skin from his elbow and knee and the girl was hurt in the hip and chest. She was crying a little, holding her hip. He felt sick to his stomach. Blood trickled down his arm and the knee of his pants was ripped. He got up feeling sick and lifted the bike off her, then took her hand and helped her to her feet. I’m sorry, he said. Are you all right? I’m sorry.

She looked at him and crossed her arms over her chest where she felt bruised. Why didn’t you put the brakes on? Didn’t you remember that?

No.

You can’t forget that.

I better go home, he said. He was inspecting his elbow. I need to wash this off.

Mama will fix it for you. Come in the house.

You’re dripping on your shoes, Emma said.

He looked down. I know, he said. There were bloody spots on the toes and laces.

Let Mama fix it for you, Dena said.

They walked the bicycle out of the street onto the grass and let it flop down. Before they got up to the house Mary Wells came out and stood in the front door. She had seen them from the window coming toward the house and for some reason her eyes were red. She took them into the house.

Inside, he cupped his hand under his elbow so he wouldn’t drip on the carpet and she led him back to the bathroom. The two girls followed and watched while he held his arm over the sink and their mother rinsed his arm, the blood thinning and dripping into the basin while she washed tenderly, touching the cut place with the tips of her fingers, brushing the grit away. When his elbow was clear, the blood seeped out like little red berries. She told him to hold a washcloth to it, then had him put his foot up on the toilet seat and she lifted his pants and his knee was bleeding too. The blood had run into his sock. She cleaned off his knee with another washcloth. The two girls peered over her shoulder, their faces serious and absorbed, wondering. And while their mother was tending him, her eyes suddenly filled with tears and the tears ran down her cheeks onto her chin. DJ and the two girls looked at her in astonishment, and they felt a kind of fear at seeing a grown-up cry.

It’s all right, DJ said. It’s not that bad.

It’s not that, she said. I was thinking of something else.

Mama? Dena said.

She went on cleaning his knee, squeezing antiseptic ointment from a tube and taping a bandage over it, and then did the same to his elbow. All the time she kept wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand.

Mama. What’s wrong?

Don’t bother me, she said.

But will you look at me too?

Why? Are you hurt?

Yes.

Where?

Here. And here.

Her mother turned to DJ and Emma. You two go on out. Now, she said to Dena, let me see.

DJ and the younger sister went out to the front room and stood beside the piano where the light came in from the front window. The little girl looked up at his face as if she expected him to do something.

What’s wrong with her? he said. What’s making her cry like that?

Daddy.

What do you mean?

He called last night and she’s been crying. He said he’s not coming home.

Why not?

I don’t know why not.

Didn’t he say?

I don’t know.

Mary Wells came out with Dena from the bathroom. You kids go outside now, she said.

I don’t want to, the little girl said.

Why don’t you?

I want to stay with you.

All right. But you two go out. I’m not feeling very well, she said. She had begun to cry again. They watched her out of the corners of their eyes. Go on, she said. Please.

I want to stay too, Dena said.

No. One’s enough in here. Go on now. You and DJ do something outside.

OUTSIDE, THEY PUSHED THE BIKE AROUND THE CORNER of the house to the backyard and stood by the garden looking at the alley. Let’s go someplace else, Dena said.

I don’t want to go downtown. I don’t feel like seeing anybody right now.

We don’t have to see anybody, she said.

They walked out into the alley in the tire tracks running on either side of the weeds that grew down the center of the gravel like a low hedge and passed the backyards of the old widow women and the vacant lot next door and then his grandfather’s house and the vacant lot beyond. At the street they crossed over and entered the alley in the next block. On the left was an old blue wooden house, its backyard overgrown with lilac bushes and mulberry trees. Nobody had lived in the house for years. The porch screen was hanging loose and there were scraps of metal scattered under the bushes. An old black Desoto had been shoved under a mulberry and its pale-green windows had been starred and shot through by boys with pellet guns. All the tires were flat. At the alley was a small unpainted shed.

They peered in through the little window, the panes old and wavy, coated with dirt and brown cobwebs. They could only make out a push mower and a garden tiller. The door creaked open when they lifted the metal latch and they went in through long strings of cobwebs. The shed was dark and shadowy inside, with a dirt floor black with oil. There was a shelf along the back wall. Beneath it a whitewall tire. There were woven baskets with wire handles stacked one inside the other, and a rusted hand saw, and a carpenter’s hammer, both its claws broken off. Below the window was a dead house sparrow, dry as dust on the dirt floor, weighing nothing. They looked at everything, lifting the tools and setting them back in their outlines of dust.

We could make something of this, Dena said.

He looked at her.

This place here.

It’s just dirty in here. It’s dark.

We could clean it out, she said.

He looked at her and she seemed dim and shadowy in the thin light coming through the window. He couldn’t see her eyes. She had lowered her face. She was holding something in her hands, but he couldn’t see for sure what it was. We could bring things here, she said.

Like what?

I don’t know, she said. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.

She was looking down at whatever it was she had in her hands.

Maybe I do, he said.

It was an old red coffee can. He could see that now and she was poking around to see what was inside. In the dim light he studied her soft unknowable face, a girl’s face. Didn’t you hear me? he said.

What.

I said maybe I do.

I heard you, she said.