Eventide

10

SHE HAD THE AUNT WHO LIVED OUT IN THE COUNTRY east of Holt and she had the uncle who lived in town, who was Hoyt Raines, on her mother’s side.

On a windy afternoon at the beginning of October he was waiting on the front porch of their trailer when they came home from Duckwall’s. He was wearing a black baseball cap with purple trimming and his face was hidden beneath the bill.

He was a tall thin man with the same dark lank hair that Betty had and he had her own pale blue eyes. He worked in town and out in the country on construction outfits and for tree-trimming operations, and in the summer months he joined harvesting crews that began cutting wheat in Texas and finished in Canada. He almost never worked at any one job longer than a single season. He’d work a while and get laid off for one reason or another, or he’d get disgusted and quit on his own. When he was out of work he’d lounge about in his rented rooms on the south side of Holt, living on his last paycheck until the money ran out. The past five or six months he’d been milking cows for a dairy north of Holt, and for him this was almost heroic, the way he kept on. Even so — and this was more like him — every three weeks or so he’d come into the milking parlor at six or seven in the morning, arriving in his own good time, arriving late and still drunk and still wooden-eyed, smelling of the cheap bar whiskey he’d drunk the night before, and in this stupefied state he’d begin milking the expensive Holstein cows, cleaning the milk-dripping udders with a wet rag and attaching the milker-cups in clumsy haste, and the last time this had happened, it was two weeks ago, he had milked one of the sick cows into the fresh tank and the manager had had to empty the entire tank or risk being discovered and fined. Fourteen hundred gallons of fresh milk had had to be run out into the floor drain. The manager fired him on the spot — told Hoyt to go home, said he was never to come back, he didn’t want ever to see his miserable face again. Well goddamn it, Hoyt said, what about my paycheck? You still owe me for this week’s pay.

It’ll be in the mail, you sorry son of a bitch, the manager said. Now get the hell out of here.

That day he went back to town still smelling faintly of whiskey, with also the reek of the milking parlor, that peculiar intense distinct odor which hung on in his clothes and hair and which even soap and water couldn’t remove, and made his first stop at the Holt Tavern on Main Street though it was still only the middle of morning. There he began to drink and to explain to anyone who would listen — three old men and a couple of sad-eyed old women were already there — what had happened.

Now he was sitting on the porch step in the sun, smoking a cigarette, when his niece and Luther walked up across the weedy yard.

Looky who’s here, Luther said.

I wondered when you two would decide to come home, Hoyt said.

We been downtown buying a new phone.

What do you want a phone for? Who’s going to call?

We got to have a phone. I’m starting a business.

What kind of business?

A mail-order one. Home-based.

Hoyt looked at him. Well, he said, if you want to believe that. He stood up and turned to Betty. Aren’t you going to give your uncle a hug?

She stepped toward him and he hugged her hard, then let her go and slapped her sharply on the rear.

Don’t, she said. My husband don’t like people messing with me.

You think Luther cares?

You better mind your manners.

That’s right, Luther said. You ought to mind your manners around here.

What’s crawled up your ass? I come over to see you two. I got something I want to propose. And here you’re already giving me a raft of shit.

Well, Luther said. You shouldn’t say that.

What you want to propose? Betty said.

Let’s get out of this wind, Hoyt said. I can’t talk out here.

THEY MOVED INSIDE THE TRAILER AND SAT AT THE kitchen table after Betty cleared a place for her uncle. He took off his cap and set it on the table and ran his fingers through his hair as he looked around. You need to clean this place up, he said. Good Christ, look at it. I don’t see how a person can live like this.

Well, I ain’t feeling very good, Betty said. My stomach keeps hurting me. I can’t hardly sleep at night.

She been taking pills for it, Luther said. But it don’t seem like it makes no difference. Does it, honey.

It ain’t yet.

That don’t mean you have to live like this, Hoyt said. You could do some of it yourself, Luther.

Luther didn’t respond. He and Betty stared across the room as if there were something hanging on the wall they had failed to notice.

Hoyt was still smoking his cigarette. Betty, he said, get your uncle a ashtray. I wouldn’t want to dirty your nice floor.

We don’t have any. Nobody ever smokes in here.

They don’t? He stared at her, then stood up and ran water from the faucet onto his cigarette and dropped it in the sink among the dirty dishes. He sat down again and sighed, rubbing his eyes elaborately. Well, I guess you heard, he said.

About what? Luther said. We didn’t hear anything.

You didn’t hear I lost my job? That son of a bitch out to the dairy laid me off two weeks ago. And that cow wasn’t even marked good. There’s suppose to be orange crayon smeared on her bag. How was I expected to remember she was sick? So I milked her into the tank like you’re suppose to, and the son of a bitch fired me. Then this morning that other son of a bitch over to the apartment house kicked me out.

What happened with him? Luther said.

Nothing. Maybe I was a day or two behind on the rent, but I was about sick of his shit anyway. And he knows what he can do with that goddamn apartment of his. Hoyt looked at them. They were turned toward him, watching him like oversized children. So what do you think about all that? he said.

I think it’s too bad, Betty said. They shouldn’t of treated you that way.

No sir, Luther said. That ain’t right for people to treat you like that.

Hoyt waved his hand. I know all that, he said. I’m not talking about that. I’ll take care of his fat ass one of these days. And he knows it. That much is understood. What I’m talking about is this here. I want to make you a proposition. I’ll come over here and move in with you two, and I’ll pay you some rent while I get on my feet. It’ll be good for all of us. That’s what I’m talking about.

Luther and Betty glanced at each other over their lunchtime dishes. Outside, the wind was shaking the trailer each time it gusted up.

Go ahead, Hoyt said. Feel free to say something. It’s not that difficult.

I don’t know, Betty said. We only got three bedrooms. Joy Rae and Richie sleeps in their own rooms.

They got to have their own rooms, Luther said. And we got ours. We ain’t got no other space.

Just a minute now, Hoyt said. Think about what you’re saying. Why can’t one of them move in with the other one? What’s wrong with that idea? They’re just little kids.

I don’t know, Betty said. She looked about the room as though she’d misplaced something.

What would your mom say? Hoyt said. You not wanting to take in her own brother, not inviting him to come in out of the cold when he needed some help. What do you think she’d say to that?

It ain’t very cold out right now, Betty said.

Are you trying to be smart? That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about you letting me move in here.

Well, we want to help you, she said. It’s just— She gestured vaguely with her hands.

I’ll tell you what, Hoyt said. At least let me take a look. Let’s see what we’re talking about here. There’s no harm in looking, is there?

Abruptly he stood up. They traded glances and followed him down the hallway past the bathroom. Hoyt looked into the bedrooms as he passed, first Luther and Betty’s bedroom, then Richie’s, before coming to a closed door at the end of the hall; he pushed the door open with his foot and walked into Joy Rae’s room. In all the house it alone was neat and clean. The single narrow bed against the wall. A wooden dresser draped with a thin pink scarf. A meager box of jewelry and a brush and comb displayed over the scarf. The faded oval rug on the floor next to the bed.

This here’ll do, he said. At least it’s cleaned up. She can move in with her brother and I’ll stay in here.

Oh, I don’t know about that, Betty said, standing behind him in the doorway.

It’s just for a little while. Till I get going again. Where’s your charity? Don’t you have no heart?

I got my kids to think about too.

How is me moving in here going to hurt your kids?

Joy Rae fixed it up all by herself.

All right, he said. I’m your uncle, but if you don’t want me moving in all you got to do is say get out. I’m not stupid.

I don’t know what to say, she said. Luther, you say something.

Luther looked up the hallway. Well honey, Uncle Hoyt says it’s just for a little while. He lost his own apartment. He ain’t got no other place to go. Seems like we could help him out a little bit.

There, Hoyt said. That’s somebody that cares.

I know one thing, Betty said. Joy Rae isn’t going to like it.

THEY TOLD HER OF THESE NEW ARRANGEMENTS WHEN SHE got home from school that day, and she went immediately to her room and shut the door and lay on the bed and cried bitterly. But that night, as ordered, she moved her things into Richie’s room and hung up her few dresses in the little closet and set out the box of cheap jewelry on the half of the dresser she’d claimed for herself, then picked up his shoes and toys and clothes and put them away.

When she got into bed that night it was too narrow for two of them, even as small and as thin as they were, and in the night after they’d gone to sleep Richie began to dream violently, thrashing in bed, and she was forced to wake him.

Quit your kicking. Quit it, Richie. It’s just a dream, so be quiet.

Then she looked up from the bed and saw her mother’s uncle standing in the doorway staring at them, only his face visible in the shadow. He was leaning against the door frame. She pretended to be asleep and watched him through the darkness, and she could smell him. He’d been out drinking. She had been sitting at the table after supper when he’d asked her father for five dollars. He couldn’t be expected to stay home at night, he’d said, he was still a young man and nobody was about to tie him down. Her father had looked suddenly afraid, and he’d glanced ceilingward for help but none had come, so he’d handed over five dollar bills out of his wallet. Now she kept watching him across the dark, and after a while he left the doorway and went down the hall to her room.

But even after he’d gone Joy Rae couldn’t fall asleep for an hour or more. Then she woke in the morning to discover she was sleeping in a wet bed. Her brother had wet himself in the night and her gown was soaked with it, her legs cold and damp. It made her want to cry. She got up and wiped at her hips and legs with a dirty tee-shirt and began dressing for school. She woke her brother. He whimpered and complained, standing beside the bed.

Hush up, she said.

She helped him skin off his wet underpants. He was shivering and there were goose bumps running down his legs.

We got to get ready for school. The bus is coming. Hush up that crying, you little baby. I’m the one ought to be crying.

11

FIRST THEY SET TO CLEANING IT, AS PEOPLE DO WHEN they move into a new house. They wanted it clean before they did anything else to it. They brought water from his grandfather’s house, carrying the bucket between them, their hands together on the wire bail, the water sloshing cold against their pants, and in the dark shed beside the alley they washed the dust off the single window and swept out the dirt and the trash with a short stub of a straw broom. Together they hauled out the pieces of scrap iron that were covered with dust and rolled out the whitewalled tire and pushed the old mower and the garden tiller under the mulberry bushes next to the Desoto. Then they swept the dark oily dirt floor a second time and sprinkled water in the corners and scrubbed down the walls of rough-sawn lumber. When they were finished the shed smelled clean, of damp earth and wet wood.

Then they began their search. In the afternoons after school and on succeeding Saturdays they collected things, foraging out into the alleys of Holt. At first they searched only the alleys of their own neighborhood, but after a few days they began to move into the alleys four and five blocks away.

They found a discarded kitchen chair and a wooden table with a splintered leg, then two old china dinner plates together with three silver forks and a serving spoon and a single steel-bladed knife. The next day they discovered a cast-off framed picture of the baby Jesus, with fat legs and fat feet, and a halo shimmering above his brown curls, altogether naked save for a white cloth draped about his hips. There was a sweet look of entreaty on his face, and they carried the picture back and hung it on a nail.

And five blocks away they discovered a rose-patterned carpet beside a trash can in the alley behind a brick house. The carpet was stained the color of coffee at one of its corners. They hauled it out into the alley, studied it, walked on it, then rolled it up and began lugging it home. But it turned out to be too heavy and down the alley they dropped it. I’ll go get something, he said. He went back to his grandfather’s house and returned with the wagon he had received as a present at Christmas when he was a first-grader and they balanced the carpet on the wagon and started back, both ends dragging in the weeds and gravel.

In the next block an old lady was standing at the back of her house in a black scarf and a man’s long black overcoat. When they approached she stepped out into the alley. What are you kids doing? What’s that you have?

It’s just a rug.

You stole it, didn’t you.

They looked at her. One of her eyes was blue and clouded and her nose dripped.

Let’s go, DJ said. They started on around her.

Stop where you are, she said. She began to trot after them, wobbling in the red gravel. Thieves! she cried. Stop now!

Now they ran, the wagon bouncing behind them, the carpet leaping and scraping in the gravel until it finally tipped off. Panting, they looked back. She stood in the middle of the alley far behind. She was calling to them but they couldn’t tell what it was. Just then she removed the black scarf from her head and waved it at them like a flag or warning, and without the scarf they could see her head was as bald as a brass ball.

You better watch out for her, Dena said.

She’ll find you, he said. She’ll come to your house.

They laughed, then lifted the carpet onto the wagon and carried on at a calm pace. At the shed they spread the carpet over the dirt floor, the stained end turned under, and swept it clean. Then they set the table on the carpet and placed the chair beside the table in the exact center of the room where the afternoon sun shone in through the window and the dust motes danced in the air like tiny creatures in dim water.

ON THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED THEY WENT OUT AGAIN. One Saturday morning they found a second chair. Another day they turned up five red candles in a cardboard box and a glass candle holder that was only chipped at one corner. Back in the shed they lit one of the candles and sat down and looked at each other. It was late afternoon, almost evening, and suddenly they heard a car coming up the alley, the tires crunching in the gravel. They sat without breathing, each staring into the eyes of the other, and then the car went by without stopping and they began to talk softly in the flickering candlelight while, outside, the air grew dark around them.

I’ve got to go. Grandpa will be wanting supper.

You don’t have to go yet, she said.

I’ll have to go pretty soon.

12

THEY WERE LATE GETTING IT DONE. IT WAS ALREADY the middle of fall. They had been delayed by helping Victoria Roubideaux get settled in Fort Collins, and afterward by the unaccustomed listlessness that came with her absence, then they had busied themselves selling the yearling steers at the sale barn. So it was the middle of fall, already October, before they got around to moving the range bulls out of the pasture where the cows were.

That would have had something to do with it. Except that afterward, lying in his white bed in the Holt County Memorial Hospital staring out the window at the leafless trees, Raymond couldn’t say for certain if even this much were true — this despite the fact that he and his brother had dealt with cattle all their lives.

There were six of them in the corral, all black Angus bulls. Black cattle were preferred now. Forty years ago it had been whiteface Herefords. Now it was black cattle because they graded out higher at the slaughterhouses. Convention and caprice were about all it was.

They had moved the bulls into the plank corral next to the barn on the morning of this cold crisp day. The sky was overcast and high, not like it wanted to rain or snow, just high and completely covered and cold.

They had been checking each of the bulls, deciding if they wanted to get rid of any, and there was the one bull that was acting up, turning snorty like he was on the fight. He had always been all right before, a little high as black Angus bulls can be, but nothing out of the ordinary. He was five now; they’d bought him three years ago at the sale barn, paying twenty-five hundred dollars for him. They had checked the records beforehand, reading who his sire was, how much milk his dam gave, what his birth, weaning, and yearling weights were, what his fertility check showed. And they’d looked him over thoroughly in the numbered pen before the auction ever started, and they both had approved of his confirmation. He was already thick and heavy as a two-year-old, with thick muscling and a thick neck and a great wide hornless blunt head, and clear black eyes that looked at them from under black eyelashes that were almost like a girl’s, but with something else there too in his eyes as if he knew too well what he was capable of. He was upstanding, long in the body, with a good straight back, and his legs were set under him. He looked as if he could get around and cover the country. His sheath was satisfactory too, high enough that it wouldn’t snag on sagebrush or soapweed and get so lacerated and cut up that the scar tissue would prevent him from being able to cover the cows he was set to.

So they had bid on him when he’d come into the ring and afterward Raymond had written out the check to the woman in the office, then they’d hauled him home in the stock trailer. And in due time his calves had been good ones, all healthy and vigorous, fast gainers, like he was. Yet from the beginning he’d tended to be a little snorty.

Now he was the last of the six bulls they were looking at on this cold and overcast morning in October. The other bulls were already sorted into the next corral. The McPheron brothers were inside the corral with him, studying him, walking around him, the corral dirt under their feet soft and loose, dusty with the wisps of dried manure. They were dressed for the weather and looked almost like twins in their canvas chore jackets and their jeans and boots and leather gloves, their old white dirty hats pulled low over their eyes on their round heads. Their faces were chafed red, their eyes bleary with the dust, and their noses had begun to run a little in the cold.

Well, Raymond said, he looks all right.

He’ll do for another year, Harold said. He’s taken a little gaunt in the flank there. But he’s all right.

While they were talking about him the bull eyed them steadily. He turned to face them head-on as they walked around him.

He don’t look like he wants to quit.

Not today, Raymond said. He looks like he could go on for another five years. He’ll probably outlast the both of us.

All right then, Harold said.

He walked past the bull over to the heavy pipe-iron gate to throw it open so the bull could pass in with the others. Nervous from being kept back by himself, the bull moved up snorting and pawing to go through, but the gate was open only a little when he rushed the narrow opening, and all his weight was carried forward, slamming into the end-post of the gate as he hit it with his shoulder, and he was knocked backward, his feet slid in the dirt, and he went down as the gate clanged shut. He rose up massively and lunged forward, bellowing and snorting, his great head swinging back and forth, his eyes fixing on Harold. He dropped his head and smashed Harold in the chest, knocking him off his feet against the closed gate. You son of a bitch! Harold hollered. He slapped at him, tried to kick at him. But the bull smashed him again, lifting him, burying his head in Harold’s chest and stomach, splaying him out flat against the iron gate. Harold tried to holler but nothing came out. The bull stepped back and Harold slid down in the dirt, and then the bull began to ram at him with his head.

Raymond saw it all and came running up from behind, whipping the bull in the hip with his gloved fist and grabbing his tail to distract him, to turn him away. Goddamn you! he hollered. Hey! Hey! The bull spun around, swinging heavily, all his power and weight, and flung Raymond across the corral, sprawling him out on the ground, and then came after him, his head down, swinging and plunging, and slammed him in the back. Raymond rolled onto his face in the dirt and managed to scramble up. Hey! he hollered. Hey! The bull knocked him down again, smashed him in the leg, Raymond all the time was trying to kick at him, and then he scrambled up once more and limped backward, moving away. The bull stood looking at him.

Then the bull turned again toward Harold, who lay on his face across the corral. The bull trotted across to him and began bumping at him with his thick head. Tumbling in the dirt, kicking and twisting, Harold finally rolled under a short plank panel they’d nailed into the corner of the corral to prevent cattle from climbing into the stock tank. Inside the little enclosure he was out of reach. His face was filthy now, there was blood smeared across his nose and cheeks. He turned his head and vomited into the dirt and tried to breathe. The bull sniffed at him through the fence panel.

Seeing his brother safe for the moment, Raymond hurried limping into the barn and grabbed a hay fork leaning against the wall and stumbled back out in a kind of one-legged hopping motion, and went out and around the fence and climbed into the corral on the far side to shove the gate open again. The bull stepped forward, sniffing at the gate, then plunged through, and seeing Raymond on the other side of the plank fence, the bull snorted and swung around, pawing dirt up over his back. You son of a bitch, Raymond said. Try something now. He hollered and waved his arms, and as the bull turned away he jabbed him in the hip with the hay fork. Bright blood spurted out and the bull bellowed, he spun back to face Raymond again, his head lowered, tossing back and forth, but the old man stood him off, brandishing the long-handled hay fork as if he and the bull had been flung together in some ancient arena, and all the time Raymond was speaking in a low hard mean voice. Come on, goddamn you. Come on. The bull snorted once more and at last moved away.

Raymond fastened the gate and hobbled across the corral to the corner where his brother lay in the dirt. Harold had removed his gloves and he was touching at his chest very carefully.

How bad is it? Raymond said, kneeling over.

Bad, Harold said. He was only whispering, his voice raspy and tight. I can’t get my breath. I’m all busted inside.

I’m going to run up to the house and call somebody.

I ain’t going nowhere.

I’ll just go up and call.

No. Stay here, Harold said. I mean I ain’t going nowhere ever.

I got to call the ambulance.

I won’t last till you get back. They can’t do nothing for me.

You don’t know that.

Yeah, I do, Harold whispered.

He looked up at his brother kneeling beside him across the fence panel. Raymond’s face looked scared and dirty. His own face was chalk white now under the dirt and blood.

Pull me out from under this fence. I don’t want to die cramped up in here.

I don’t dare to move you, Raymond said. I got to call somebody.

No. Start pulling. I can’t wait for you to get somebody else.

Hold on then. Goddamn it anyway.

He took Harold’s canvas jacket at the shoulder and gripped his belt and began dragging him slowly through the loose dirt. His brother grunted and gritted his teeth, tears started up in his eyes, and there was blood trickling from the corner of his clenched mouth. Raymond slid him out from under the fence and Harold lay on his back at the edge of the corral, breathing in shallow gasps, with his hands moving at his chest, squeezing and pushing at his ribs as if this might help him breathe more easily. He opened his eyes and reached a hand up and wiped at his mouth. I’m missing my hat, he said.

I’ll get it. Raymond stood and limped out into the corral and picked up the hat and slapped it against his leg and then limped back and knelt again. When Harold raised his head he fit the hat onto his short iron-gray hair. His hair was filthy. The back of the hat was crumpled so Raymond smoothed it out.

All right, Harold said. Thanks. He shut his eyes and tried to breathe. It’s getting cold, he whispered.

Raymond removed his canvas jacket and spread it over him.

After a while Harold opened his eyes. He shivered and peered around. Raymond?

Yes.

Are you here?

I’m right here, Raymond said. Right next to you.

Harold looked up into his brother’s face and Raymond took hold of his thick calloused hand.

You got to take care of her by yourself now. His voice was just a thin raspy sound. That little girl too. I won’t be here to see how they come out. I was looking forward to it.

You’ll see them, Raymond said. You’re going to come out of this.

No. I’m done here, Harold said. I’m about finished.

He closed his eyes and shivered again, his breaths coming slower and harder. Then he stopped breathing. After a while he breathed once more, a long single rattling suck of air. Then he seemed to settle into the dirt more comfortably. After that he didn’t breathe again. Raymond watched him and his brother’s eyelids fluttered once, that was all, then Raymond began to weep, the tears ran down his face in dirty runnels. He held on to his brother’s hand and looked out through the corral toward the pastures and the blue sandhills beyond. The hills lay far away in the distance on the low horizon. The wind had started up again. He could feel it now. He looked again at his brother and pulled the canvas coat up over his blood-smeared face. He knelt for a long while beside him, not moving, an old man with his old brother scuttled down in the loose dirt of a plank corral under an overcast October sky.

13

IT WAS AN HOUR AND MORE BEFORE RAYMOND ROUSED himself. Then he pulled himself up and limped across the gravel drive to the house and made the call. When the ambulance from Holt drove up in front of the house he told them to go down and collect his brother. The two men in their shiny jackets drove to the corral and gathered Harold up and carried him to the ambulance on a transfer board with a blanket spread over him, and then they drove both McPheron brothers into town to the emergency ward at the hospital. The doctor pronounced Harold dead on arrival.

Raymond lay on the narrow emergency-room bed behind green privacy curtains as the doctor examined him. The nurses had already removed his chore coat and flannel shirt and jeans so he lay now in a thin white cotton gown. The doctor felt his chest, listened to his heart and his lungs and felt tentatively along his leg. Afterward he ordered complete X rays that revealed cracked ribs on the right side of his chest and a broken bone in his lower left leg. They wanted to move him into surgery at once.

Wait now, Raymond told the nurse. Before you run me in there I want to call somebody. I ain’t going to be no good later.

Who do you want to call?

Tom Guthrie and Victoria Roubideaux.

Tom Guthrie, the high school teacher?

Yes.

But I don’t believe school’s let out yet for the day.

For God’s sake, Raymond said.

All right, she said. Never mind. We’ll call and see if we can get him on the phone.

Also I want you to call Fort Collins, Raymond said. Get Victoria Roubideaux for me.

Now who’s she, Mr. McPheron?

A young girl away at college, with her baby. Her name will be amongst the new listings.

But who is she to you? Is she your daughter?

No.

But usually we only make these kind of long-distance calls to relatives.

Just call her on the phone, Raymond said. Can’t you do that?

If she were a relative, a niece, or something like a daughter.

She is like a daughter to me. More than like a daughter. She’s what I’ve got to think of right now.

Well. The nurse looked at him. He was watching her intently, his face washed clean now, the scratches on his cheeks and forehead showing vivid and inflamed. All right, she said. But it’s not the usual procedure. How do you spell it?

Raymond turned away. Good Christ, he said.

Very well, she said. I’ll figure it out. Which one do you want to talk to first?

The girl. She’ll have to know about this.

But you’re sure you feel like talking right now. You must be in a lot of pain.

Just get me the phone once you get connected to her, he said. She’s going to hate this. I’m pretty sure she loved my brother. I sure God know he loved her.

The nurse went out and he lay in the bed with the green curtains drawn around him. They had started an IV already and had strapped a blood pressure cuff to his arm and propped up his leg with a pillow. He lay looking at the white tiled ceiling, then he shut his eyes and despite his best intentions to the otherwise he was weeping again. He reached up out of the bedsheet and wiped his face and waited for the nurse to bring him the phone. He was trying to think how he was ever going to tell Victoria Roubideaux about what had happened.

Then the nurse came in with the phone and he said: Is that her?

Yes. I finally located her. Here, take it.

He held the phone to his ear. Victoria?

What’s wrong? she said. Her voice sounded small and thin. Is something wrong? Has something happened?

Honey, I got something I got to tell you.

Oh no, she said. Oh no. No.

I’m just afraid I do, he said. And then he told her.

14

IN THE LATE AFTERNOON TOM GUTHRIE STOOD IN THE hospital room beside Raymond, who lay in the white bed under the sheet in his hospital gown. They had wheeled him into the room after the surgery and they had started to put him into the bed next to the door but he’d told them he wanted the bed near the window.

Along with Guthrie in the room was Maggie Jones, another teacher from the high school. They’d been together since Guthrie’s wife had moved to Denver, though Maggie still lived in her own house on South Ash Street. Now she was sitting in a chair drawn up close to Raymond’s bed. The doctor had set the bone in his leg and put a cast over the leg below the knee, and there were elastic bandages wrapped around his chest to hold his ribs securely and to ease his breathing. His broken leg was raised onto pillows. He breathed shallowly, with little sharp exhalations, and his face showed what he had suffered. His face was drawn and pale, sallow under the red weathering. He looked old. He looked old and worn-out and sad.

I couldn’t stop him, Raymond said. They’re too big. Too strong. I tried but I couldn’t. I couldn’t save my brother.

Nobody could have saved him, Guthrie said. You did what you could.

Maggie put her hand on the old man’s arm and patted him softly. You did everything you could, she said. We know that.

It wasn’t enough, Raymond said.

It was quiet in the room, the light coming in aslant through the window. Outside the hospital along the street the bare trees looked orange in the late afternoon sun. Down the hall they could hear people talking and then there was some laughter. Someone came walking past in the hallway and they looked up when he went by. It was one of the preachers in town, come to call on the sick and the lame.

Tom, can you look after things for a couple days? Raymond said. I can’t think who else to ask.

Of course, Guthrie said. Don’t even think about it.

You’ll need to let the bulls out and check they got water. And then if you’d check the cows and calves to the south.

Of course.

I still got the calves in there with the cows, and every cow and heifer is suppose to be carrying a new calf. They ain’t due till February but you can’t ever tell what they’ll do. He looked at Guthrie. Well, you know all that.

I’ll go out there right away, Guthrie said. As soon as I leave here. What else do you need me to do?

I don’t know. Well, there’s the horses too. If you don’t mind.

I’ll check them.

And can I check on things in the house? Maggie Jones said.

Oh, Raymond said. He turned to look at her. No. I don’t want you to bother. It’ll be a mess in there.

I’ve seen plenty of messes before, she said.

Well. I don’t know what to say.

Just try to rest. That’s all you have to do.

I can’t, Raymond said. I shut my eyes and every time I see Harold out there in the corral. Laying out there in the dirt and the bull hitting him again.

He was looking at Maggie’s face as he talked, looking up at her as though he were pleading some case that was already lost but one that he couldn’t let go of. There were tears in his eyes.

Yes, Maggie said. I know. You’ll be able to rest pretty soon. She touched his shoulder and smoothed back the stiff iron-gray hair on his round head. He felt ashamed to have her touch him in this manner but he allowed it for a moment. Then he moved his head from under her hand and turned away. Maggie was crying now too. Beside her Guthrie stood watching the old man. He wanted to think of words that would make some difference but there were none in any language he knew that were sufficient to the moment or that would change a single thing. They stayed quiet for some time.

THERE WAS A COMMOTION OUT IN THE HALL AND THEN Victoria Roubideaux came into the room carrying Katie in her arms. She came directly to the bed and looked down at Raymond. He looked up at her and shook his head. Honey, he said.

Yes, she said. I’m here now. She tried to smile.

Let me have Katie, Maggie said. She stood and took the little girl and Victoria sat down in the chair beside the bed and leaned over and kissed Raymond on the forehead. I came as fast as I could.

I hope you didn’t take any risk driving.

No. It was fine.

Thank you for coming. I didn’t know what I was going to do without you.

I’m here now, she said again.

He lifted his hand out of the sheet and she took it. I just couldn’t stop it from happening, he said.

I know you would’ve done everything you could.

He looked into her face. He wanted to tell her one thing more but for a moment he couldn’t speak. He had told her most of what he had to say on the phone. Honey, he said, you know Harold he was talking about you at the end. You and Katie. The last thing he had on his mind was you and that little girl. I think he would of wanted you to know that.

Thank you for telling me, she whispered. The tears ran down her cheeks, and she ducked her head and her dark hair fell about her face. She held his hand and sobbed quietly.

Guthrie said softly: Raymond. Why don’t Maggie and I go on now. We’ll come back later tonight.

I’ll still be here, Raymond said. I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere else for a while.

Maggie returned the little girl to her mother and she and Guthrie went out of the room into the hall.

Victoria settled the child on her lap. Raymond looked at the little black-haired girl in her red coat and long stockings and he reached up and took hold of her foot. She was frightened by him and drew back.

Oh, honey, Victoria said. He won’t hurt you. You know who Raymond is. But the little girl turned and faced away, hiding her head in her mother’s neck. Raymond put his hand back under the sheet.

It’s just that she’s scared to see you this way, Victoria said. She’s never seen anyone in a hospital bed before. We’re all frightened to see you this way.

I don’t imagine I look like much, Raymond said. Nothing you’d care to study.

GUTHRIE AND MAGGIE LEFT THE HOSPITAL AND DROVE first to Guthrie’s house across the tracks on the north side of Holt on Railroad Street. Inside the house he left a note on the kitchen table for his two boys, Ike and Bobby, telling them to do their chores at the barn and then to heat up some soup on the stove, that he’d be home later in the evening. He explained that Raymond McPheron was in the hospital and needed his help but that he’d call them later from the ranch or the hospital lobby. Then he and Maggie drove in Guthrie’s old red pickup back through town and out south on the two-lane blacktop to the McPheron place. The sun was setting now and all the flat country around them was cast in gold, with long shadows fallen out from behind the ordered fence posts above the bar ditch.

They turned off the blacktop onto the gravel road and then south again down the lane going back to the house and stopped at the wire gate. Maggie got out and went up to the house and Guthrie drove on and parked by the barn and got out into the cold evening air. The six bulls stood waiting in the corral, their backs to the wind, and he walked around to the gate to the pasture, climbed over the fence, and shoved the gate open. The bulls looked at him, and first one and then the others began to move heavily out of the corral. He stood back and watched as they trotted through the gate. There was the one that came limping and even in the darkening light he could see the patch of dried blood caked on its hip. Moving into the pasture, the bulls slowed once more to their own heavy unhurried pace, and he shut the gate behind them and checked the water level in the stock tank, then went back to the barn and drove the pickup over to the south and threw open the barbed-wire gate and passed through, rattling and jarring out into the pasture as he looked at all the cows and calves and heifers. The cattle faced him in the headlights, their eyes shining like bright rubies. When he approached they shied away from the pickup, the calves galloping off with their tails up, and he saw nothing of concern. Two old blackbaldy cows followed him but soon they stopped and stood still, staring after the pickup as he came bouncing back across the rough ground, the headlights picking up the clumps of sagebrush and soapweed ahead, and he came through the gate and shut it behind him, and then walked the saddle horses into the barn and forked hay to them from the loft, and once more got into the pickup and drove up to the house.

The lights were all on inside the house now. Maggie Jones had already washed the dishes and had set them to dry on the counter, and she had scrubbed the enameled top of the old stove, tidied the kitchen table and set chairs in place around it and had swept the floor. She was in the downstairs bedroom when Guthrie came in and found her.

You about ready to go? he said.

I thought Raymond had better stay down here, she said. He won’t want to climb the stairs with that cast on his leg.

I hadn’t thought of that, Guthrie said. He watched her draw the sheet tight and tuck it in and spread a quilt over the bed. What about Victoria and Katie? I thought this was their room.

I’m going to move the crib out into the parlor. And make up a bed on the couch for Victoria.

You think she’s going to stay a while.

She’ll want to.

What about her classes?

I don’t know. She’ll want to be here to take care of him. I know that.

He isn’t going to like it, Guthrie said. Raymond won’t want her staying home and missing school on his account.

No. He won’t. But I think he’ll have to accept it. Will you help me take this crib apart so we can get it through the door?

I’ll get my tools.

Guthrie went out to the pickup and found pliers and a couple of screwdrivers and a wrench in the toolbox behind the cab and came back inside. After taking the crib apart and wheeling it into the parlor, they put it back together and stood it against the wall, then made up a bed on the old couch with clean sheets and a pair of green wool blankets and a much-yellowed pillow that Maggie found in the closet. They stood back and looked at this new arrangement. The walls of the room were papered over with an ancient flower pattern that was a good deal faded and showed water stains at the ceiling, and the two plaid recliner chairs were set across from the old console television.

I think we can go now, Maggie said.

They shut the lights off and went out to the pickup. From the outside the paintless clapboard house appeared all the more desolate in the blue glow of the yardlight at the corner of the garage. So insubstantial and paltry that the wind might blow through and find no resistance at all.

WHEN THEY HAD COME OFF THE GRAVELED COUNTY ROAD and had turned north on the blacktop toward Holt, Maggie said: I can’t help but worry about him. What do you think he’s going to do now?

What can he do? Guthrie said. He’ll do what he has to.

You’ll help him, won’t you.

Of course I will. I’ll be out there tomorrow morning before school. And I’ll come out again after school lets out. I’ll bring Ike and Bobby with me. But he’s still going to be alone.

She’ll want to stay with him.

Victoria, you mean.

Yes. And Katie.

But that can’t last forever. You know that.

I know, Maggie said. It wouldn’t be good if it did. Not for him or them either. But I’m still worried about him.

They drove on along the blacktop. The narrow highway looked empty and forlorn ahead in the lights of the pickup. The wind blew across the flat open sandy ground, across the wheat fields and corn stubble and across the native pastures where dark herds of cattle grazed in the night. On either side of the highway farmhouses were set off by faint blue yardlights, the houses all scattered and isolated in the dark country, and far ahead down the highway the streetlights of Holt were a mere shimmer on the low horizon.

Maggie sat next to Guthrie in the cab and stared ahead at the center stripe in the road. I think I’ll ask Victoria if she wants to stay with me, she said. She won’t want to be alone in that house tonight.

She’s going to have to stay in it sometime.

Not tonight, Maggie said. She’s had enough to get used to for one day.

She’s not the only one, Guthrie said. That poor old son of a bitch. Think of him.

Yes, Maggie said. She looked at Guthrie and slid over nearer in the seat and sat close beside him. She put her hand on his thigh and left it there as they rode along in the dark. They passed the small square sign at the side of the road that announced they had entered the limits of Holt.

In town they turned left onto US 34 and turned again onto Main Street and parked in front of the hospital. They got out in the chill air and went inside and found that Victoria was still seated in the chair beside Raymond’s bed. Since they had left two hours earlier she had not moved. It was as if she would not even consider the possibility of moving, as if she thought by sitting beside his bed, refusing to move, she might prevent anything else from happening to him, or to anyone else she loved in this world. She was still holding Katie on her lap, and Raymond and the little girl were both asleep.

Then, hearing Maggie and Guthrie come into the room, Raymond woke. He looked up and it was clear, by what showed in his face, that he had just remembered. Oh Lord, he said. Oh Lord.

15

LATER, GUTHRIE AND MAGGIE LEFT THE ROOM AND WENT out, and Victoria stayed in the hospital and tended to Raymond and told him she would go to Maggie’s house after visiting hours were over.

The orderly brought Raymond a tray of supper but he didn’t want it. It tasted like nothing he cared for and he wasn’t hungry anyway. Victoria fed some of the applesauce to Katie and she took the spoon and ate it herself and afterward sat on the floor with pencils and crayons, drawing pictures until she grew tired, then Victoria put her in the empty bed next to the door and spread the light cotton blankets over her.

She’s all wore out, Raymond said.

I thought she would sleep in the car driving up here but she didn’t, Victoria said. She jabbered all the way.

Victoria was holding Raymond’s hand. She was sitting next to him as before in the chair beside his bed, the door half closed against the noise of people going by and the low murmuring of people talking out in the hallway.

How’s school going? he said. Still doing all right?

It’s okay. It doesn’t seem very important right now.

I know. But you’ll have to keep on.

I’m going to stay home for a while.

You don’t want to miss your school.

It won’t hurt to miss some. This is more important. She straightened the bedsheet at his neck.

Raymond looked at her and then at the tiled ceiling, shifting a little in the bed. I can’t quit thinking about him, he said. He stays at the front of my mind all the time.

Do you want to talk about it?

It happened so fast. You can’t predict what an animal is going to do. You never can. I knew that bull was that way, but he’d never hurt nobody before.

You couldn’t do anything, she said. You have to know that.

But it doesn’t help, just knowing it. I keep going over all of it again in my head. There ought to of been something I could do.

Did he suffer? Victoria said.

Yes. He was awful bad at the end. I’m only glad now it didn’t last too long. I didn’t know how bad it was really. I thought he’d make it, I thought he’d come out of it. We been together all our lives.

You always got along together, didn’t you.

Yes, honey, we did. We never did have much of a fight. We had our disputes sometimes but they never amounted to anything. They was always done the next day. We just agreed on most things. Even without having to talk about them.

Did you ever think of doing anything else?

Like what, honey?

I don’t know. Like getting married, maybe. Or living apart.

Well. There was this one time Harold had him kind of a interest in a woman, but then she got interested in somebody else. That was a long time ago. She still lives here in town, with two grown-up kids. He always figured he was too slow, I guess. It might not of ever got anywhere anyway. Harold was pretty set in his ways.

They were good ways though, Victoria said. Weren’t they.

I think they were, Raymond said. He was a awful good brother to me.

He was good to me too, Victoria said. I keep expecting him to come walking in that door any minute now, saying something funny, and wearing that old dirty hat of his, like he always did.

That was him, wasn’t it, Raymond said. My brother always did have his own way of wearing a hat. You could tell Harold from a distance anywhere. You could tell him two blocks away. Oh hell, I miss him already.

I do too, she said.

I don’t imagine I’ll ever get over missing him, Raymond said. Some things you don’t get over. I believe this’ll be one of them.

16

WHEN HE GOT HOME FROM PLAYING IN THE SHED WITH Dena, his grandfather had already gone to bed in his little room at the back of the house, and when he switched on the light the old man raised up on his elbows in his long underwear, with his white hair disheveled and a wild look in his eyes.

Turn that off, he said.

What’s wrong, Grandpa?

I don’t feel very good.

Do you want supper?

I want you to turn that goddamn light off is what I want.

DJ cut off the light and went out to the kitchen. He made toast and coffee and carried these on a dinner plate back to the bedroom but now the old man was asleep.

In the night he heard him get out of bed. His grandfather stayed in the bathroom a long while before shuffling back to his room. Through the thin wall he could hear the bedsprings creaking under his weight, and then he began to cough. After a while there was the sound of his spitting.

In the morning when he went in to see him the old man was awake. He looked small under the heavy quilt, his white hair sticking out sideways, his thick red hands beyond the cuffs of his underwear lying slack and empty over the blanket.

Are you going to get up, Grandpa?

No. I don’t feel like it.

I made fresh coffee.

All right. Bring that.

He brought the coffee and the old man sat up and drank a little, then set the cup on a chair next to the bed and lay back again. He started coughing as soon as he was stretched out. He twisted around to reach under the pillow and pulled out a filthy handkerchief and spat into it and then used it to wipe his mouth.

You must be sick, Grandpa.

I don’t know. You better get on to school.

I don’t want to.

Go on. I’ll be all right.

I should stay home with you.

No. It ain’t nothing to worry about. I been sicker than this before and always come out of it. I took a fever of a hundred and six one time before you was ever born. Now go on like I told you.

He went unhappily to school and sat all morning at his desk at the rear of the room while his mind wandered back to the house. Through the tedious hours of the morning he paid little attention to his schoolwork. The teacher noticed his lack of attention and came to his desk and stood beside him. DJ, is something wrong? You’ve done nothing all morning. It’s not like you.

He shrugged and stared ahead at the blackboard.

What’s bothering you?

Nothing’s bothering me.

Something must be.

He looked up at her. Then he lowered his head and took up the pencil on his desktop and started to work at the math problems she’d assigned them to do. The teacher watched for a moment and returned to her desk at the front of the room. When she looked at him again a few minutes later, he’d already stopped working.

At noon when they were released from school for the lunch hour he began immediately to run. He raced home through the town park and across the shining railroad tracks and didn’t stop until he got to the house. He paused in the kitchen to catch his breath, then walked down the hall to his grandfather’s room. The old man was still in bed, coughing steadily now and spitting into the dirty handkerchief. He hadn’t drunk any more of the coffee. He looked up when DJ entered the room, his face very red and his eyes wet and glassy.

You look worse, Grandpa. You better go to the doctor.

The old man had lowered the window blind during the morning and the room was dark now. He looked like someone who had been put away in a dim back room and left there to his own devices.

I ain’t seeing no doctor. You can just forget about that.

You have to.

No, you head on back to school and mind your own business.

I don’t want to leave you.

I’m going to get out of this bed. Is that what you want?

DJ left the room and went out in front of the house, looking up and down the empty street. Then he ran across to Mary Wells’s house and knocked on the door. After some time she opened the door wearing an old blue bathrobe, and the pretty grown-up woman’s face he was used to seeing, always made up with pink rouge and red lipstick, was now plain and bare. She looked haggard, as though she hadn’t slept in days.

What are you doing here? she said. Aren’t you supposed to be in school?

Grandpa’s sick. I just came home to check on him. Something’s wrong with him.

What is it?

I don’t know. Could you come over and look at him?

Yes, she said. Come in while I get dressed.

He waited for her near the door but didn’t sit down. He was surprised to see the newspapers on the floor and the various magazines and pieces of mail scattered around. Two half-filled coffee cups were set on the side table next to the couch, and milky coffee from one of the cups had spilled out in a gray pool on the polished wood. In the dining room last night’s dishes were still on the table. It was clear she had troubles of her own. Dena had said so when they were out in the shed, but she wouldn’t talk more about it.

Mary Wells came out of the bedroom in jeans and a sweatshirt, and she had brushed her hair and had put on some lipstick, but that was all. She didn’t say anything and they went outside. They started across to his grandfather’s house.

How long has he been sick? she said.

I don’t know if he is sick for sure. But he seems like it.

How long has he seemed sick?

Since yesterday. He keeps coughing and he won’t get out of bed.

They crossed the vacant lot and went into the little house. She had never been beyond the front door, and he felt embarrassed for her to see the inside, to see how they lived. She looked around. Where is he?

Back here.

He led her through the hall to the dark bedroom that smelled of sweat and stale coffee and his grandfather’s sour bedding. He could smell it now in her presence. The old man lay in the bed, his hands outside the blanket. He heard them come in the room and opened his eyes.

Are you sick, Mr. Kephart?

Who’s that coming in here?

Mary Wells from up the street. You remember me.

The old man started to sit up.

No. Don’t move. She crossed to his bed. DJ says you seem like you’re getting sick.

Well, I don’t feel too good. But I ain’t sick.

You look like you are. She felt his forehead and he looked up at her out of his watery eyes. You’re hot. You feel feverish, Mr. Kephart.

It ain’t nothing to talk about. I’ll get over it.

No, you’re sick.

He began to cough. She stood over him, watching his face. He coughed for a good while. When he was done he cleared his throat and spat into the handkerchief.

I want to take you to the doctor, Mr. Kephart. Let’s see what he says.

No, I ain’t going to no doctor.

Well, you can just stop that now. I’m going home to get the car. And while I’m gone you can get dressed. I’ll be back in five minutes.

She left the room and they could hear the screen door slap shut. The old man stared at the boy. How come you ain’t in school where you belong? Look here what you done. Now you got the neighbors all worked up.

You’ve got to get dressed, Grandpa. She’s going to be here.

I know that, goddamn it. Meddling is what you been doing. Sticking your nose in.

Do you want me to help you get out of bed?

I can still do that myself. Goddamn it, give me a minute.

The old man came slowly out of the bed. The long underwear he wore was yellowed and dirty, the bottoms sagged in the seat and were considerably soiled in the front where he’d fumbled at the fly. He stood while the boy helped him into his blue workshirt and his overalls, pulling them on over the underwear, then he sat down on the bed and the boy brought him his high-topped black shoes and knelt and laced them. The old man stood again and went into the bathroom and swiped a wet comb across his white hair and rinsed his whiskered face and came out.

Mary Wells was honking at the curb. They went out and the old man climbed into the front seat and the boy got in back, and they drove out of the neighborhood over the tracks, going up Main Street. There were half a dozen cars parked at this noon hour at the curb along the three blocks of stores and a few more cars and pickups parked in front of the tavern at the corner of Third. The old man seemed lifted in spirit to be riding in the car on a bright day, heading up Main Street in the fall of the year with a young woman driving him. He seemed almost cheerful now that they were going.

Inside the clinic next door to the hospital they waited for an hour and Mary Wells decided to go home so she’d be in the house when the girls returned from school. She told DJ to call her if they needed a ride home. After she left, he and his grandfather sat without talking to any of the other patients who were waiting, and didn’t talk to each other. They sat without reading or even shifting from their chairs. People came in and left. A little girl was whimpering across the room on her mother’s lap. Another hour went by. Finally a nurse came out to the waiting room and called his grandfather’s name. The boy stood up with him.

What are you doing? his grandfather said.

I’m going with you.

Well, come on then. But keep your mouth shut. I’ll do the talking.

They walked back along the hall behind the nurse and were led into an examination room. They sat down. Across the room a diagram of the human heart was taped to the wall. All its valves and tubes and dark chambers were precisely labeled. Next to it hung a calendar with a picture of a mountain in winter, with snow on the trees and a cabin bearing up under the deep snow on its pitched roof. After a while another nurse came in and took the old man’s pulse and his blood pressure and temperature and wrote the information in a chart, then left and closed the door. A few minutes later Dr. Martin opened the door and came in. He was an old man dressed in a blue suit and starched white shirt with a maroon bow tie and clear rimless spectacles, and he had blue eyes that were paler than his suit. He washed his hands at the little sink in the corner and sat down and looked at the chart the nurse had left. So what seems to be the trouble? he said. Who’s this boy with you?

This here’s my daughter’s boy. He had to come along too.

How do you do, Dr. Martin said. I haven’t seen you before, have I? He shook the boy’s hand formally.

That boy’s the cause of all this, the old man said.

How’s that?

He decided I was sick. Then he goes over and gets the neighbor woman to drive me in here.

Well, let’s see if he’s right. Will you sit up here, please? The old man moved to the examining table and the doctor looked into his eyes and mouth, examined his hair-filled ears, and gently squeezed various spots along his stringy neck. Let me listen to your chest now, he said. Can you undo the tops of your pants there?

The old man unhooked the buttons on the shoulder straps of his overalls and let the bib fall. He sat forward.

Now your shirt, please.

He unbuttoned the blue workshirt and shucked it off, revealing the dirty long underwear top, with the white hairs of his chest showing at the open neck.

Could you pull up your top there? Yes. That’ll do. That’s far enough. Now I’ll just listen for a moment. He pressed the cup end of the stethoscope against the old man’s chest. Take a deep breath. That’s right. And again. He moved to the back and listened there.

The old man sat and breathed with his eyes shut and puffed out his feverish cheeks. The boy stood beside him watching everything.

Well, Mr. Kephart, said Dr. Martin, it’s a good thing your grandson brought you in here today.

Oh?

Yes, sir. You’ve got yourself a good case of pneumonia. I’ll call the hospital and they’ll admit you this afternoon.

The old man peered at him. What if I don’t want to go to the hospital?

Well, you can die, I suppose. You don’t have to do what’s sensible. It’s up to you.

How long would they have to keep me?

Not long. Three or four days. Maybe a week. It depends. You can go ahead and get dressed now. Dr. Martin stood back and gathered up the chart on the counter. He started to walk out, then stopped and looked at the boy. You did well to insist that your grandfather come in, he said. What was your name?

DJ Kephart.

And you’re how old?

Eleven.

Yes. Well, you did fine. You did very well. You have reason to be satisfied that you made him come in to see me. I don’t suppose that was very easy, was it.

It wasn’t too hard, the boy said.

The old doctor went out of the room and shut the door.

The old man began to get dressed, but managed to put one of the buttons of his workshirt in the wrong hole so the front was looped forward. Here, he said. Fix this goddamn thing. I can’t do nothing with it. The boy unbuttoned his grandfather’s shirt and buttoned it again while the old man raised his chin and stared at the diagram of the heart that was taped to the wall.

You better not be getting a swelled head over what he told you, he said.

I’m not.

Well, see that you don’t. You’re a good boy. That’s enough. Now help me get these overalls hooked up and we’ll get out of here. We’ll have to see what they’re saying up front.

The boy fastened the shoulder straps of his grandfather’s pants and the old man rose from the chair.

What’d I do with that handkerchief I was using?

It’s in your back pocket.

Is it?

Yes. That’s where you put it.

The old man took out the dirty handkerchief and cleared his throat and spat, then wiped the handkerchief across his mouth and put it back in his pocket, and then together he and the boy went out of the room down the hall to the front desk, to learn what next would be required of them.

17

IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON WHEN THE NURSE BROUGHT THE old man into the hospital room occupied by Raymond McPheron. She rolled his wheelchair in next to the vacant bed near the door and set the hand brakes and told the old man to get undressed and to put on the hospital gown that was laid out for him at the foot of the bed. It opens in the back, she said. Then I’ll come back and get you settled in. She yanked the curtain partway closed around his bed and left. The boy had followed them into the room and stood now beside his grandfather, accompanying him as he had all the long afternoon.

Across the room Raymond lay in bed under the window, his leg in the cast and raised onto two pillows on top of the thin hospital blankets. Beside him sat Victoria Roubideaux with the little girl in her lap. They could see the old white-haired man and the boy beyond the end of the curtain, but they hadn’t yet said anything to them. The old man had begun to complain in a high whining voice.

I can’t change out of my clothes right here, he said. Do they expect me to take my pants off behind this goddamn curtain like I was in some kind of circus sideshow?

You have to, Grandpa. The nurse will be coming back any minute.

I ain’t about to.

Raymond leaned up in his bed and spoke across the room: Mister, they put a bathroom in yonder through that door there. You can step in there if you’d care to. I don’t guess they put it there just for me.

The old man pulled the curtain back. In there, you say?

That’s right.

I guess I could do that. But look here, don’t I know you? Aren’t you one of the McPheron brothers?

What’s left of them.

I read about you in the paper. I’m sorry to hear about your brother.

The woman that wrote that didn’t even know the half of what she was saying, Raymond said.

My name’s Kephart, the old man said. Walter Kephart. They tell me I got pneumonia.

Is that right.

That’s what they’re telling me.

You look like you got some good help there with you anyway.

Too good, the old man said. This boy here keeps telling me what to do all the time.

Well, it’s nice having a young person around, Raymond said. I got awful fine help myself. This here is Victoria Roubideaux. And her little girl, Katie.

Hello, Mr. Kephart, Victoria said.

How do you do, young lady.

Grandpa, the boy said, you have to get changed.

You see there? the old man said. Right there’s what I’m talking about.

You go ahead and use that bathroom, Raymond said.

The old man stood out of the wheelchair and shuffled slowly around the bed into the bathroom and shut the door. He was inside for ten minutes and beyond the door they could hear him coughing and spitting. When he came out he was wearing the striped hospital gown and carrying his clothes over one arm. The skirts of the cotton gown flapped about his old flanks. He had left the strings at the rear untied and all of his scrawny gray backside was exposed to view. He handed the clothes to the boy and sat down at the edge of the bed and settled the skirts of the hospital gown over his legs like an old lady. Go get that goddamn nurse that was in here, he said. Tell that woman I’m waiting on her.

The boy went out into the hall and they could hear the sound of his rapid steps going away on the tiled floor. The old man looked across at Raymond. It ain’t even decent what they make you wear in this place.

No sir, Raymond said. I’ll have to agree with you on that.

It’s goddamn indecent is what it is.

The boy came back with the nurse. She was carrying a sterile tray that she set on the bedside table and then she looked at the old man. Are you ready, Mr. Kephart?

For what?

To get into bed.

I ain’t planning on just setting here, he said.

No, I didn’t think you’d want to do that.

She helped him swing his legs onto the bed and drew the sheet up and arranged the pillow under his head. Then she opened the sterile tray and wiped the back of his hand with a swab. This may sting, she said.

What’s that you’re doing?

I’m going to start the antibiotics now.

Is that what the doctor said?

Yes.

She poked the needle into the loose skin at the back of his hand and he lay in bed and looked up at the ceiling without moving. The boy watched from the foot of the bed, biting his lip when the needle went in. The nurse taped the needle to his hand, then hung the bags of fluid on a metal stand and connected the tubes and adjusted the steadily dripping fluid in the drip chamber and stood watching for a moment, and then inserted the thin oxygen prongs into the old man’s nose. Now breathe in, she said. Take some deep breaths. I’ll come back to check on you in a little while.

What good’s this thing suppose to do me?

It’ll help fill your lungs. Until you can breathe normally again on your own.

It don’t feel right. His voice sounded high-pitched and unnatural, on account of the nose prongs. It tickles my nose.

Breathe, the nurse said. You’ll get used to it. And when you need to spit, here’s a box of Kleenex. Don’t be spitting in that dirty handkerchief.

After she was gone the boy came forward and stood beside the bed. Did she hurt you, Grandpa? The old man looked at him and shook his head. He went on breathing and lifted his hand to adjust the oxygen tubes.

From across the room Victoria Roubideaux asked the boy if he didn’t want to sit down. There’s a chair over there, she said. You could bring it up next to the bed. But he told her he was all right, he said he wasn’t tired. An hour and a half later when the orderly brought in the dinner trays, he was still standing beside the bed and the old man was asleep.

IN THE EVENING GUTHRIE AND MAGGIE JONES CAME INTO the room together with Guthrie’s two boys, Ike and Bobby. They all stood around the bed and talked quietly with Raymond. Victoria was still in her chair, with Katie sleeping in her lap. Guthrie explained what he and the boys had done out at the ranch that afternoon. The cattle in the pastures out south all seemed fine, and they had checked on the bulls and horses. The water levels were what they should be in the stock tanks.

I thank you, Raymond said. I don’t like to have to bother you.

It’s no bother.

Well I know it is. But I thank you anyway. He looked at Ike and Bobby. Now what about you two boys? How you doing these days?

Pretty good, Ike said.

I’m sorry you got your leg hurt, Bobby said.

I appreciate that, Raymond said. It’s kind of a ugly thing, ain’t it. But it was a bad thing that happened. You boys remember you got to be careful around animals. You won’t never forget that, will you?

No, sir, Ike said.

I’m sorry about your brother, Bobby said softly.

Raymond looked at him and looked at Ike and nodded to them both, then he shook his head once very slowly, and didn’t say anything. Ike gave Bobby a hard poke in the side when no one was looking, but in the awkward silence Bobby was feeling bad enough already and wished he had never said any word at all about the old man’s brother.

Finally Maggie said: But how are you feeling this evening, Raymond? Are you feeling any better? You look a little more like yourself, I think.

I’m all right. He turned slightly under the bedsheet, adjusting his leg.

No he’s not, Victoria said. He won’t tell anybody the truth, not even the nurses. He’s in a lot of pain. He just doesn’t talk about it.

I’m all right, honey, he said. This ain’t the worst of it.

I know it isn’t. But you’re in a lot of physical pain too. I know you are.

Maybe a little, he said.

Across the room DJ stood beside his grandfather’s bed, listening to them all talking. He knew the Guthrie boys and didn’t like them seeing him like this in the hospital room. His grandfather was dozing and he kept making noises in his throat and coughing and mumbling strangely. DJ had said nothing to Ike and Bobby when they came in but stood silently beside the bed, with his back turned to them, and his grandfather kept going in and out of his fitful sleep, with the nose prongs in his nose, the needle still taped to his hand, and then the old man would wake and look around in confusion until he remembered where he was, that he was still in the hospital, and the boy would lean over and ask quietly if he wanted something and the old man would shake his head and look away and drift off to sleep again, then DJ would stand and wait, listening to them talk across the room, waiting for them to leave.

AT EIGHT-THIRTY THE NURSE CAME IN TO ANNOUNCE THAT visiting hours were over. Guthrie and Maggie and the two boys told Raymond good night and went out. Victoria leaned over the bed, holding her thick black hair out of the way, and kissed Raymond on the cheek and gave him a hug, then he patted her hand and she carried the little girl out of the room.

DJ’s grandfather was awake now. You better go too, he said to the boy. You’ll do all right by yourself, won’t you?

Yes sir.

You can come back tomorrow after school.

The boy looked at him and nodded and went out. Victoria was waiting in the hall, with Katie asleep in her arms. Is somebody expecting you at home? she said.

No.

Aren’t you afraid to be by yourself?

No. I’m used to it.

Let me give you a ride anyhow. Will you do that?

I don’t want to take you out of your way.

It’ll only take five minutes. You don’t want to walk home in the dark.

I’ve done it before.

But you don’t want to do it tonight.

They went down the hall and out the front door onto the sidewalk. It was cold outside but there was no wind. The streetlights had come on and overhead the stars winked clean and hard. Victoria strapped the sleeping child into her car seat in the back and they drove off up Main Street. You’ll have to tell me where to go, she said.

It’s across the tracks. Then you turn left.

She looked across at him where he was sitting close to the door with his hand on the handle. I would’ve thought you knew the two Guthrie boys. They’re your age, aren’t they?

I know them a little. I know Bobby anyway. He’s in the same class with me. Fifth grade.

Aren’t you two friends? You didn’t say anything to each other.

I just know him from school.

He seems like a nice boy. Maybe you could get to be friends.

We might. I don’t know.

I hope so. You shouldn’t be alone too much. I know what that’s like, from when I was your age and later on in high school. This can be a hard place to be alone in. Well, I suppose any place is.

I guess, he said.

In the backseat Katie had begun to fuss, reaching her hands out, trying to touch her mother. Just a minute, sweetheart, Victoria said. She watched her daughter in the rearview mirror. It’ll just be a few minutes. The little girl drew her hands back and began to whimper.

The boy turned to look at her. Does she cry all the time?

No, she almost never cries. She’s not really crying now. She’s just tired. There’s nothing for her to do at the hospital. We’ve been there for three days.

Main Street was almost vacant as they drove along past the small individual houses and on north into the brief business district under the bright lights. Only two or three cars were out on the street. All the stores were closed and darkened for the night except the tavern. To the east when they crossed the railroad tracks the whitewashed concrete cylinders of the grain elevator rose up massively out of the ground, shadowy and silent. They drove on north.

Here, the boy said. This is where you turn.

They came into the quiet street and he pointed out the little house.

Is this where you live?

Yes, ma’am.

Really? I used to live near here. Before I had Katie. This was my old neighborhood. Do you like it here?

He looked at her. It’s just where I live, he said. He opened the car door and started to get out.

Just a minute, she said. I don’t know what you’d think of it, but maybe you could come out and stay with us tonight. So you wouldn’t have to be here alone.

Out with you?

Yes. Out in the country. You’d like it out there.

He shrugged. I don’t know.

All right, she said. She smiled at him. I’ll just wait until you’re inside and get the light on.

Thanks for the ride, he said.

He shut the car door and started up the narrow sidewalk. He looked very small and much alone, approaching the dark house with only the streetlamp shining from the corner illuminating the front of the house. He opened the door and went inside and then a light came on. She thought he would come to one of the windows and wave to her, but he didn’t.

AT THE HOSPITAL THE NURSE ON NIGHTSHIFT CAME INTO the room and Raymond was still awake. She was a good-looking woman in her late forties, with short brown hair and very blue eyes. She bent over the old man in the bed next to the door, who was asleep on his side and still breathing the oxygen through the prongs in his nose, his face red and damp. She checked the level of the fluid in the plastic bags hanging from the stand, then came over to Raymond’s bed and looked at him with his head raised up on the pillow, watching her. Can’t you sleep? she said.

No.

Is your leg hurting you?

Not now. I reckon it’ll start again directly.

How about your chest?

It’s all right. He looked up at her. What’s your name? he said. I thought I knew all these nurses in here by now.

I just came back on duty, she said. I’m Linda.

What’s your last name?

May.

Linda May.

That’s right. It’s nice to meet you, Mr. McPheron. Is there anything I can get for you right now?

I could take some of that water there.

Let me get you a fresh pitcher. This isn’t very cold. She left the room and came back with a pitcher filled with ice, and poured water in the glass and held it out to him. He drew on the straw and swallowed, then drew again and nodded and she set the glass on the bedside table.

He looked across the room. How do you think he’s doing over there?

Mr. Kephart? All right, I think. He’ll probably recover. Older people get pneumonia and don’t do well sometimes, but he seems pretty strong. Of course I haven’t seen him awake yet. But when we changed shifts they said he was doing okay.

She smoothed the blanket, making sure to keep it free of his casted leg. Try and get some sleep now, she said.

Oh, I don’t sleep much, he said.

People are always coming in and waking you up for one thing or another, aren’t they.

I don’t like that light shining.

I’ll shut the door so it’s darker. Would that be better?

It might. He looked at her face. It don’t matter. I’m getting out of here tomorrow anyhow.

Oh? I hadn’t heard that.

Yeah. I am.

You’d have to ask the doctor.

They’re burying my brother tomorrow. I won’t be in here for that.

Oh, I’m sorry. Still, I think you’ll need to talk to the doctor anyway.

He better get here early then, Raymond said. I’ll be gone before noon.

She touched his shoulder and crossed to the door and closed the door behind her.

Raymond lay in the bed in the darkened room looking out the window at the bare trees in front of the hospital. Two hours later he was still awake when the wind started up, whining and crying in the higher branches. He thought about what the wind would be doing out south of town and he wondered if Victoria and the little girl had been wakened by it. He expected they hadn’t. But out in the south pasture, the cattle would all be standing awake with their backs to the wind, and there would be dry little dust storms blowing up in the corrals, shifting across the dry clumps of manure and the loose dirt around the barn. And he knew if things were as they should be, he and his brother would step outside in the morning to begin work as usual and they would stop to smell the dirt in the air, and then one or the other of them would say something about it, and he himself might comment on the likelihood of rain, and then Harold would say that a blizzard would be more likely, this time of year, given the way things were going of late.

18

WHEN THE DOCTOR ENTERED THE ROOM IN THE MORNING he was of a mind not to allow Raymond permission to leave the hospital, but when Raymond said he was going to leave regardless the doctor relented and said he could go for half a day but would have to return after the funeral. Just past noontime at the front desk Raymond signed the papers and they released him into the care of Victoria Roubideaux. She had put Katie with Maggie Jones, and earlier that morning she’d brought him the clean clothes he’d asked for. Now she pushed him in a wheelchair out to where her car was parked at the curb in front of the hospital. One leg of his dark trousers was slit to the knee to accommodate the cast, and he wore a blue shirt with pearl snaps which she had pressed freshly that morning and he had on his plaid wool jacket and the good Bailey hat that he wore only to town. Balanced across his lap were the aluminum crutches the hospital had loaned him.

When he came out of the hospital into the fresh autumn air he looked at the sky and looked all around and breathed in.

Well, goddamn, he said. It feels about as good as church letting out, to get shut of that damn place. Now you’ll have to pardon my language, honey. But by God, it does.

And it’s a good thing to see you come out of there, she said. I believe you look better already.

I feel better already. And I’ll tell you another thing. I ain’t going back in there. Not today, not ever.

I thought you agreed to go back this afternoon. That’s why they let you out.

Oh hell, honey, I’d say anything to get them to release me from that place. Let’s get going. Before they change their minds. Where’s your car at?

Down the street here.

Let’s go find it.

AT THE METHODIST CHURCH ON GUM STREET TOM Guthrie was standing at the curb in the bright sun waiting for Raymond and Victoria. They pulled up and Raymond opened the door and Guthrie helped him climb out. He stood up onto the sidewalk, but when Victoria opened the wheelchair behind him he refused to use it, telling them he would walk. And so with Victoria on one side and Guthrie on the other he fit the rubber cushions of the crutches under his arms and hobbled across the wide walkway into the church.

Inside, the organist hadn’t started playing yet and there was no one in the sanctuary. They moved slowly down the carpeted center aisle between the rows of glossy wooden pews toward the altar and pulpit, Raymond stepping carefully with his head down watching his feet, and they reached the front and he shifted sideways into the second pew. Victoria went out to the nursery to see if she could find Maggie and Katie, and Guthrie sat down beside Raymond. Raymond appeared to be exhausted already. He removed his hat and set it next to him on the pew. His face was sweating, his face was even redder than usual, and for some time he only sat and breathed.

You all right? Guthrie said, looking at him.

Yeah. I will be.

You’re not going to keel over, are you? Tell me if you feel like you’re going to.

I ain’t going to keel over.

He sat breathing with his head down. After a while he looked up and began to survey the objects in the high silent sanctuary — the outsized wooden cross attached to the wall behind the pulpit, the colored windows where the sun streamed in — and now he saw that his brother’s casket was resting on a wheeled trestle at the head of the center aisle. The casket was closed. Raymond looked at it for some time. Then he said: Let me out of here.

Where you going? Guthrie said. If you need something, let me go get it for you.

I want to see what they done to him.

Guthrie stepped out of the way and Raymond grabbed the back of the pew ahead of him, pulling himself upright, and fit the crutches in place and hobbled out into the aisle up to the casket. He stood at the long smooth side of it. He set his hands on the dark satiny wood and then tried to raise the top half of the lid but couldn’t manage to move it without dropping his crutches. He turned his head to one side. Tom, he said. Come help me with this damn thing, would you?

Guthrie came forward and raised the upper half of the polished lid and propped it back. There before Raymond was his brother’s dead body, stretched out lying on his back, his eyes sunken in the waxy-looking face, his eyes closed forever under the thin-veined eyelids, his stiff iron-gray hair combed flat across his pale skull. At the funeral home they had called Victoria to ask her to bring them something appropriate for them to put on him, and she had located the old gray wool suit in the back of his closet, the only one he had ever owned, and when she had brought it to them they had had to cut the coat down the back seam to get him into it.

Raymond stood and looked at his brother’s face. His thick eyebrows had been trimmed and they had dabbed powder and makeup on his cheeks over the scratches and bruises, and they had wound a tie around his neck under the shirt collar. He didn’t know where they had gotten the tie, it wasn’t anything he remembered. And they had folded his brother’s hands across his suited chest, as if he would be preserved in this sanguine pose forever, but only the heavy callouses visible at the sides of his hands seemed real. It was only the callouses that appeared to be familiar and believable.

You can shut it again, he said to Guthrie. That ain’t him in there. My brother wouldn’t let himself look like that even for a minute if he was still alive. Not if he still had breath to prevent them from doing him like that. I know what my brother looks like.

He turned and hobbled back to the pew and sat down and laid his crutches out of the way. Then he shut his eyes and never looked at the dead face of his brother again.

PEOPLE BEGAN FILING INTO THE CHURCH. THE ORGANIST in the loft at the back of the sanctuary began to play, and Victoria and Maggie came in, with Katie in her mother’s arms. Together they slid in beside Raymond. The mortician and an assistant in a matching black suit seated people in pews on both sides of the aisle, moving everybody up to the front, but there were not a great many mourners at the funeral, and only the first five rows were filled. Before the service began, the mortician came forward very somberly and opened the casket so that during the service people might view his handiwork, and then the minister came in from a side door and crossed to the pulpit and greeted them one and all in the name of Jesus in a voice that was laden with solemnity and import. Then there were prayers to be said and hymns to be sung. The organist played Blessed Assurance, Jesus Is Mine and Abide with Me: Fast Falls the Eventide, and people sang along, but not very loud. When the music was finished the preacher began to talk in earnest and he spoke about a man about whom he knew next to nothing at all, saying to those in attendance that he believed Harold McPheron must have been a good man, a Christian light among his fellows, else why would they be there marking his passing even if they were only a few in number, though they must all remember a man might be loved deeply even if he was never to be loved widely, and no one present should ever forget that. Sitting beside Raymond, Victoria cried a little despite the inadequacy and ignorance of what the man was saying, and Katie at one point grew so fussy that Raymond had to reach over and lift her onto his lap, patting her and whispering in her ear until she quieted down.

Then the service was over and Raymond and Victoria and Katie and Maggie and Guthrie went back up the aisle very slowly. Raymond led them, his hat on his head again as before, limping and hobbling with his crutches. They went outside to the black cars waiting in front at the curb in the sun. After some time, when the mourners had filed past and looked at the body, the mortician and his assistant rolled out the closed casket and slid it into the black hearse. Then they all drove away in a slow procession with the headlights of all the cars turned on in the broad daylight, heading out north and east to the cemetery three miles outside of town. Beside the grave when they were seated in the metal folding chairs under the awning, the preacher said a few words more and read from scripture once again, and he prayed for the safe translation of Harold’s immortal soul into everlasting heaven. Afterward he shook Raymond’s hand. And by that time the wind was blowing so hard that the caretakers had to lean far over to do their work, and they lowered the dark casket into the ground next to the plot in which the senior McPherons had been buried more than half a century before.

Then they all drove back to town and Raymond climbed once more into Victoria’s car. Honey, you can take me home now, he said.

You’re not going back to the hospital? You’re sure?

I’m going back to the house. I won’t be going nowheres else.

So she drove him through town and out south toward the ranch. He dozed off before they had gotten far out of Holt and then he woke when she stopped in front of the wire gate. She helped him into the house, then went back and got Katie. I’ll get supper pretty soon, she said. You need to eat something.

I’m going to rest for a little bit, he said.

She took his arm and led him into the bedroom off the dining room, where Maggie Jones had changed the sheets four days earlier, and he lay down in what had been his parents’ marriage bed so many years before and until recently had been Victoria’s bed. She propped his leg on a pillow and spread a quilt over him. I’ll have supper ready when you wake up, she said. Try to get some rest.

Maybe I can sleep now, he said. Thank you, honey.

She went out to the kitchen and he lay in the old soft bed with his eyes shut but soon he opened them again, sleep would not come to him, and he turned to look out the window and then turned again to look overhead, and he realized that this room he lay in was directly below his brother’s empty bedroom, and he lay under the quilt staring at the ceiling, wondering how his brother might be faring in the faraway yet-to-be. There would have to be cattle present there somehow and some manner of work for his brother to do out in the bright unclouded air in the midst of these cattle. He knew his brother would never be satisfied otherwise, if there were not. He prayed there would be cattle, for his brother’s sake.

19

IN THE WEEK AFTER HAROLD MCPHERON’S FUNERAL, THE first-grade teacher in the elementary school on the west side of Holt noticed one morning, within the first hour of classes, that something was the matter with the little boy in the middle of the room. He was sitting peculiarly, almost on his backbone, holding himself slouched far back in his desk, and he was only playing with the worksheet she’d handed out. She watched him for some time. The other children were all working quietly, their heads bent over the sheets of paper like so many miniature accountants. After a while she rose from her desk and walked back between the rows and came to him and stood over him. He looked as undersized and ragged as ever, like some wayward orphan turned up by mere happenstance and misfortune in her class. His hair needed cutting, it stuck out behind against the collar of his shirt, which itself was not clean. Richie, she said, sit up. How can you work like that? You’ll damage your back.

When she put a hand on his shoulder to urge him forward, he winced and jerked away. Why, what’s wrong? she said. She knelt beside him. There were tears filling his eyes and he looked very frightened. What is it? she said. Come out in the hall a minute.

I don’t want to.

She stood and took hold of his arm.

I don’t want to.

But I’m asking you to.

She pulled him to his feet and led him toward the hallway door, but as they passed her desk he grabbed at it, dragging one of her books to the floor with a loud flat crash. The other students were all watching.

Class, she said. Keep working. All of you get back to work. She stood until their heads were bent again over their desks and then took him under the arms and pulled as he struggled against her and kicked and caught at the door. She got him into the hall and knelt in front of him, still holding him.

Richie, what’s wrong with you? she said. Stop it now.

He shook his head. He was looking off along the hallway.

I want you to come with me down here.

No.

Yes, please.

She rose and took him by the hand in the direction of the office along the empty tiled hallway past the other classrooms, their doors all shut to the noises and murmurings rising from behind them. Are you sick? she said.

No.

But something’s wrong. I’m worried about you.

I want to go back to the room, he said. He looked up at her. I’ll do my work now.

I’m not concerned about that, she said. Let’s just see the nurse. I think the nurse should look at you.

She took him into a small room next to the school office where a narrow cot was pushed close to the wall opposite a metal cabinet with locked doors. The nurse sat at a desk against the far wall.

I don’t know what’s wrong with him, the teacher said. He won’t tell me. I thought you better have a look.

The nurse stood and came around and asked him to sit on the cot but he would not. The teacher left and went back to her classroom. The nurse bent over him and felt his forehead. You don’t seem hot to the touch, she said. He looked at her out of his big wet eyes. Will you open your mouth for me, please? She put her arm around him and he squirmed away. Why, what is it? Are you afraid of me? I won’t hurt you.

Don’t, he said.

I need to look at you.

He leaned away but she pulled him close and examined his face and looked briefly in his ears and felt along his neck, and then she lifted his shirt to feel if he was hot and then she found the dark bruises on his back and below the belt of his pants.

She peered into his face. Richie, she said. Did somebody do this to you?

He looked frightened and he wouldn’t answer. She turned him around and drew down his pants and underwear. His thin buttocks were crosshatched with dark red welts. In some of the places the welts had bled and clotted.

Oh, my God, she said. You stay right here.

She left and went next door and came back at once with the principal. She lifted the boy’s shirt and showed the welts to the principal. They began to ask the boy questions but he was crying by now and shaking his head and he wouldn’t say a word. Finally they called his sister out of her fifth-grade classroom and asked her what had happened to her brother. Joy Rae said: He fell off the slide at the park. He had a accident.

Would you go out? the nurse said to the principal.

All right, he said. But you let me know. We have to report this. We’re going to find out what’s going on here.

The principal went out and then the nurse said: Will you let me look at you too, Joy Rae?

I don’t have anything wrong with me.

Then you’ll just let me look, won’t you?

You don’t need to look at me.

Just for a moment. Please.

Suddenly the girl began to cry, covering her face with her hands. Don’t, she said. I don’t want you to. Nothing’s wrong with me.

Honey, I won’t hurt you. I promise. I need to look, that’s all. I have to examine you. Won’t you let me, please?

The nurse turned to her little brother. I want you to step into the hall for a minute, so we can be alone. She led him out and told him to wait there near the door.

Then she came back into the room and took the girl gently by the shoulders. This won’t take long, honey, I promise, but I need to look at you. Slowly she turned her around. Joy Rae stood sobbing with her hands at her face, while behind her the nurse unbuttoned the back of her blue dress and drew down her underpants, and what she saw on Joy Rae’s thin back and thin buttocks was even worse than what she’d seen on her brother.

Oh, honey, the nurse said. I could just about kill somebody for this. Just look at you.

AN HOUR LATER WHEN ROSE TYLER FROM THE DEPARTMENT of Social Services came into the nurse’s room, the two children were still there, waiting for her. They had been given pop and cookies and two or three books to look at. And soon after Rose arrived a young sheriff’s deputy from the Holt County Courthouse came in and began to set up a tape recorder. The two children watched him in terror. He talked to them but his efforts were of little use, and they watched him without blinking and when he wasn’t looking they glanced at his thick leather belt and revolver and his nightstick. Rose Tyler was more successful in her attempts, the children knew her from before and she talked to them quietly and gently. She explained that they were not in any trouble but that she and the officer and the nurse and their teachers were all worried for their safety. Did they understand that they only needed to ask them some questions? Then she asked the deputy to go out of the room and she took photographs of their welts and bruises, and afterward when the deputy returned they began the interview, with Rose asking most of the questions. These were not meant to be leading questions, so as to avoid planting anything in the children’s minds but to allow them to tell their story in their own words, but it didn’t matter, the children were very reluctant to talk at all. They stood uncomfortably at the edge of the cot, standing side by side, and looked at the floor and played with their fingers, and it was Joy Rae who spoke for both of them, though she herself answered very few of the questions in the beginning. Instead she adopted a kind of bitter defiant silence. Gradually, though, she began to talk a little. And then it came out.

But why? Rose said. What would make him want to do this to you?

The girl shrugged. We didn’t pick up the house.

You mean he expected you to clean the house.

Yes.

Yourselves? The two of you?

Yes.

And did you? The entire trailer house?

We tried to.

And was that all, honey? Was there anything else he was upset about?

The girl looked up at Rose, then looked down again. He said I talked back.

That’s what he said?

Yes.

Do you think you talked back to him?

It don’t make no difference. He says I did.

Rose wrote in her notebook, then finished and looked at the two children and looked at the sheriff’s deputy and suddenly felt she might cry and not stop. She had seen so much trouble in Holt County, all of it accumulating and lodging in her heart. This today made her sick. She had never been able to numb herself to any of it. She had wanted to, but she had not succeeded. She looked at the two Wallace children and watched them for a moment and began again to question the girl. Honey, she said, where were your mother and father at this time, while this was happening?

They were there, the girl said.

They were in the room?

No. We was in the bathroom.

Were they in the room when he began talking to you?

Yes.

But they weren’t in the bathroom when he whipped you?

No.

Where were they then?

In the front room.

What were they doing?

I don’t know. Mama was crying. She wanted him to stop.

But he wouldn’t stop? He wouldn’t listen to her?

No.

Where was your father? Did he try to do anything?

He was hollering.

Hollering?

Yes. In the other room.

I see. And you and your brother were with him in the bathroom at the same time?

No.

He took you in there separately?

Joy Rae looked at her brother. He took him first, she said. Then me.

Rose stared at the girl and her little brother, then shook her head and turned away and looked out into the hallway, imagining how that must have felt, being taken toward the back of the house and hearing the other one screaming behind the closed bathroom door, being afraid of what was to come, and the man’s face all the time getting redder and redder. She wrote in her notebook again. Then she looked up. Do you have anything else you might want to say to us?

No.

Nothing at all?

No.

All right then. I thank you for saying that much, honey. You’re a brave girl.

Rose closed her notebook and stood up.

But you won’t tell him, will you? Joy Rae said.

You mean your mother’s uncle?

Yes.

The sheriff’s office will certainly want to talk to him. He’s in serious trouble. I can promise you that.

But you won’t tell him what we said?

Try not to worry. You’ll be safe now. From now on, you’ll be protected.

ROSE TYLER AND THE YOUNG DEPUTY DROVE IN SEPARATE cars to the east side of Holt to the Wallaces’ trailer on Detroit Street. The weeds surrounding the trailer were all dry now and dusty, dead for winter, and everything looked dirty and ragged. Still, the sun was shining. They went up to the door together and knocked and waited. After a while Luther opened it and stood in the doorway shielding his eyes. He was wearing sweatpants and a tee-shirt, but no shoes. Can we come in? Rose said. Luther looked at her. We need to talk privately.

Well. Yeah. Come on in, he said. We’re in a terrible fix here. Dear, he called back into the house. We got company.

Rose and the deputy followed him inside. There was the sweetish-stale smell of sweat and cigarette smoke and of something spoiling.

Betty lay stretched out on the couch, sunken into the cushions and covered by an old green blanket that she kept wrapped about herself. I ain’t feeling very good, she said.

Is your stomach still hurting? Rose said.

It hurts me all the time. I can’t never get rested.

We’ll have to make you another appointment with the doctor. But I wonder, is your uncle here?

No. He ain’t here right now.

He’s over to the tavern, Luther said. He goes over there most days. Don’t he, honey.

He’s over there every day.

We need to talk to him, Rose said. When will he be back, do you think?

You can’t tell. Sometimes he don’t come back till nighttime.

I think I’ll just go find him, the deputy said. We’ll talk later, he said to Rose, then let himself out.

After he was gone Rose sat down on the couch beside Betty and patted her arm and took out her notebook. Luther went into the kitchen for a glass of water and came back and lowered himself into his cushioned chair.

Do you know why the officer and I came here today? Rose said. Do you know why I need to talk to you?

My kids, Betty said. Isn’t it.

That’s right. You know what happened, don’t you.

I know, Betty said. Her face fell and she looked very sad. But we never meant him to do nothing like that, Rose. We never wanted that, ever.

He wouldn’t even listen to us, Luther said.

But you can’t let him mistreat your children, Rose said. You must have seen what he’d done to them. It was very bad. Didn’t you see it?

I seen it afterwards. I tried to put some hand ointment on them. I thought maybe that might help.

But you know he can’t stay here if he does anything like that. Don’t you see? You have to make him leave.

Rose, he’s my uncle. He’s my mother’s baby brother.

I understand that. But he still can’t stay here. It doesn’t matter who he is. You know better.

I was trying to make him stop, Luther said. But he says he’s going to break my back for me. He’s going to take that kitchen table and throw it on me just as soons I turn my head.

Oh, I don’t think he’s going to do that. How could he?

That’s what he says. And you know what I says?

What?

I says I can find me a knife too.

Now you better be careful about that. That would only make matters worse.

What else you want me to do?

Not that. You let us take care of this.

But Rose, Betty said, I love my kids.

I know you do, Rose said. She turned toward Betty and took her hand. I believe that, Rose said. But you’ve got to do better. If you don’t, they’ll have to be taken away.

Oh no, Betty cried. Oh God. Oh God. The blanket fell away from her shoulders and she jerked her hand free and began to snatch at her hair. They already taken my Donna away, she cried, and then she started to wail. They can’t take no more.

Betty, Rose said. She pulled at her arms. Betty, stop that and listen to me. Calm down now. We are not taking your kids away. It shouldn’t ever come to anything like that. I’m just trying to get you to see how serious this is. You have to do things differently. You have to change what you’ve been doing.

Betty wiped at her face. Her eyes were wet and miserable. Whatever you say, Rose, I’ll do it. Just don’t take my kids away from me. Please, don’t do that.

What about you, Luther? Are you willing to make some changes too?

Oh yes, ma’am, he said. I’m going to change right now.

Yes. Well, we’ll see about that. In any case you can start taking some parenting classes at night at Social Services. I’ll arrange for it. And I’ll come by here at least once a month to see how you’re doing. I won’t tell you when I’m coming, I’ll just show up. This will be in addition to your coming to my office to collect your food stamps. But the first thing, the most important thing, is that you have to agree not to let him stay here anymore. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you?

Yes ma’am.

Do you promise?

Yes, Betty said. I promise.

I just hope he don’t break my back, Luther said. Quick’s he hears what we been talking about here today.

WHEN THE SHERIFF’S DEPUTY WALKED INTO THE LONG dim stale room at the Holt Tavern on the corner of Main Street and Third, Hoyt Raines was at the back shooting pool for quarters with an old man, and he had already begun drinking for the day. A glass of draft beer stood on the little table near the pool table, with an empty shot glass beside it and a cigarette smoking in a tin ashtray. Hoyt was bent over the table when the deputy walked in.

Raines?

Yeah.

I need to talk to you.

Go ahead and talk. I can’t stop you.

Let’s go outside.

What for? What’s this about?

Come out with me, the deputy said. I’ll tell you at the station.

Hoyt looked at him. He bent over the cue stick, lined up his shot, and knocked the seven in and said to nobody: Hoo boy. Hot dog. He stood and rounded the table and took a sip of his beer and drew on his cigarette.

Let’s go, Raines, said the deputy.

You ain’t told me what for yet.

I said I’d tell you when we get there.

Tell me now.

You don’t want other people to know about what I got to tell you.

What the fuck’s that suppose to mean?

You’ll know when we get there. Now let’s go.

The old man leaned back against the wall, looking from the deputy to Hoyt, and the bartender stood watching from behind the bar.

Well, if this ain’t the goddamn shits, Hoyt said. I’m shooting pool here. He drank from his glass. He looked at the old man. You owe me for this game, and the one before.

It ain’t over yet, the old man said.

Yeah it is. It’s close enough.

I was coming back on you.

You was coming back, my ass.

And this one would of put us even.

Listen, you old son of a bitch. There’s no way you was going to win this game and you still owe me for the last one.

Let’s go, the deputy said. Now.

I’m coming. But he still owes me. You all seen it. He owes me. I’ll see you boys this afternoon.

He downed the rest of the beer and set the glass on the table and sucked on the cigarette once more before stubbing it out. Then he walked out ahead of the deputy. On the sidewalk he said: You got your vehicle?

Waiting on you, around the corner.

They went around to Third Street and got in and the deputy drove two blocks to the reserved parking lot on the east side of the county courthouse. He led Hoyt down the concrete steps to the sheriff’s office in the basement, where they took him behind the front counter to a desk and charged him with misdemeanor child abuse and read him his rights. Then they booked and printed him, and afterward they led him back through a little corridor to a small windowless room. After they sat him down at a table, the deputy who’d picked him up switched on the tape recorder while another sheriff’s deputy leaned back against the door, watching.

He claimed he was teaching them discipline. He did not try to deny it. He thought well of himself for it. He told them it was the right thing. He said he was putting order into their lives. Now when do I get out of here? he said.

There’ll be a bail hearing scheduled within seventy-two hours, the deputy said. What did you whip them with?

What?

You whipped them with something. What was it?

Let me ask you something. You ever seen those kids? Walking around town? They need discipline, wouldn’t you say? And you think their folks are ever going to do it? I don’t think so. They don’t know how. Wouldn’t even know where to start. So I was doing them a favor. All of them. They’re going to thank me someday. You have to have discipline and order in this life, isn’t that right?

That’s what you think? You believe that?

Goddamn right I do.

And you think an eleven-year-old girl and a six-year-old boy need to be physically abused to learn discipline?

It didn’t hurt them. They’ll get over it.

They’re in pretty bad shape right now. They look real bad. We have pictures to prove it. How long have you been doing this?

What are you talking about? That was it. One time. It’s not like I enjoyed it. Is that what you think?

You’re sure about that.

Yeah. I’m sure. What have they been saying about me?

Who?

Those kids. You’ve been talking to them, haven’t you?

What did you hit them with?

You’re still on that.

That’s right. We’re still on it. Tell us what you used.

What difference does it make?

We’re going to know.

All right. I used my belt.

Your belt.

That’s right.

The one you’re wearing right now?

I never used the buckle end. Nobody can say I used the buckle. Is that what they’re saying?

Nobody’s saying anything. We’re asking you. We’re not talking to anybody else right now. We’re talking to you. You used something else too, didn’t you.

I might of used my hands a couple of times.

You hit them with your hands.

I might of.

You used your fists, you mean. Is that what you’re saying?

Hoyt looked at him, then at the other deputy. What if I smoke in here? he said.

You want to smoke?

Yeah.

Go ahead. Smoke.

I don’t have my cigarettes. They’re out there in the front. Let me borrow one off of you.

I don’t think so.

Then let me buy one off you.

You got any money?

You mean on me? What the hell are you talking about? You emptied my pockets when you brought me in here. You know that.

Then I guess you can’t buy any cigarette, can you.

Hoyt shook his head. Jesus Christ. What a asshole.

How’s that? the deputy said, moving toward the table. Did you say something?

Hoyt looked away. I was talking to myself.

That’s a bad habit to get into. You can get into a world of trouble doing that.

WHEN THE SHERIFF’S DEPUTIES AT THE HOLT COUNTY JAIL finished questioning him that day, they led him back through the little corridor to the double row of cells. There were six in all, three on each side, and they were rank with the smell of urine and vomit. Hoyt stepped into the cell they’d indicated and sat down on the cot, and after a while he lay back and went to sleep.

The next day, upstairs in the courtroom, the judge set his bail at five hundred dollars. Hoyt had a little less than five dollars, no more than that. So they walked him back down to his cell in the basement and handed him orange coveralls that had HOLT COUNTY JAIL stenciled on the back in black letters.

It turned out the next docket day in this outlying district was a month away, since there had been one three days before, so Hoyt had to stay in jail waiting until then for his court date. When he heard about this state of affairs he cursed them all and demanded to see the judge.

One of the sheriff’s deputies who was nearby said: Raines, you better shut your goddamn mouth. Or somebody is going to come in there and shut it for you.

Let him try, Hoyt said. We’ll see how far he gets.

Keep it up, you smart son of a bitch, the deputy said. Somebody’s going to do more than just try.