Eventide

33

SHE WAS SIXTEEN NOW AND BETTY NOR LUTHER HAD seen her in the twelve years since she was taken away by court order and placed in a series of foster homes in Phillips. A tall ripe-looking blonde girl with a loose-boned body and blue eyes like her mother’s, she had her father’s long thin nose and square face. Her father was not Luther. She had never known her father and had no desire to. He was living in the Idaho State Prison, serving a ten-year sentence for assault and armed robbery. Betty had met him in that long-ago summer when she was just twenty-two and still loose-boned and ripe herself, and he’d disappeared after spending only a single month with her. No one in Holt County had seen or heard from him since. Betty had given their daughter her maiden name, Lawson, and her own dear dead mother’s two first names, Donna Jean.

The girl showed up one night toward the end of March at Luther and Betty’s trailer house three hours after they’d gone to bed. She stood at the door in the cold until Luther came out in his ragged underpants. What you want? he said.

I’m Donna, she said.

Who?

Donna. Don’t you even know me?

She stood looking at him, wearing only a thin black raincoat against the cold and no scarf or gloves. She smelled of cigarette smoke and cheap wine.

Donna, he said.

Yeah.

How do I know that’s you?

Well fuck yes, it’s me. Who else would it be? Let me in. It’s freezing out here. Isn’t my mama at home?

She’s here. She’s trying to get her sleep.

Wake her up. I ain’t going to do nothing. I got kicked out. I have to find a place to stay for the night.

I guess you can come in.

He stood back and allowed her to pass and the tall blonde girl stepped into the front room and peered about. Luther went back to the bedroom and woke Betty.

What is it? she said.

You better get up and come look.

What for?

Come out here and see.

Betty rose from bed and put on her robe and walked out sleepily to the front room. Don’t tell me, she said, looking at the girl. Is that you?

It’s me, the girl said.

Oh Lord. Oh my little girl. Betty rushed across the room and threw her arms around her and hugged her neck. The girl stood stiffly in her arms. Betty began to sob, patting her head. Oh my God. Oh my God. She leaned back to look at her. I ain’t seen you in so long. And look at you. So growed up. I just been hoping. Praying every day. Ain’t I, Luther.

Yes, ma’am, he said. Sometimes more than once.

What happened? Betty said. I tried calling you but that last woman you was with, she wouldn’t even let me talk to you.

I got kicked out, the girl said. She stepped back away from Betty’s arms.

She got kicked out, Luther said. That’s how come she showed up here. Looking for her mama.

I need a place to stay, the girl said. That’s why I come here.

You still ain’t said what happened, honey.

It’s that woman, the girl said. She’s just a total bitch. It’s all she is. She wouldn’t let me do nothing. I had to go to church with them all the time and then she tried to stop me from seeing Raydell.

Who’s he?

This boy I know.

What’s wrong with him?

There ain’t nothing wrong with him. She’s just prejudiced. He’s half black and half white. She didn’t appreciate his black half.

Where’s he at now? Is he here?

Here? What would he be doing here? He’s back in Phillips. He lives there.

Then how’d you get over here, honey?

I got a ride from this man in a truck. I was out there on the highway waiting for a ride, freezing my ass off.

I don’t think you should be out this time of night. Something could happen to you.

What’s going to happen?

Something.

Oh, he never tried nothing. I wouldn’t even let him get started.

It’s still dangerous like that to be out in the cold this time of night.

What else was I going to do? I thought you’d let me stay for a while.

Oh honey, course you can stay. It’s just so good to see you. Are you hungry? You want me to make you a bite to eat?

I want to smoke one of my cigarettes.

You smoke?

Sure.

Betty looked around. But we don’t usually let nobody smoke in here, she said. On account of Joy Rae and Richie.

Who’re they?

You don’t even know, do you. Your own half sister and half brother.

I never even heard their names before.

Well, that’s who they are. You got family you didn’t even know about.

That’s right, Luther said. You got all kinds of family here. He grinned. But you two going to want to stay up and talk. Me, I’m going back to bed.

When he left the room Betty took the girl’s hand and led her to the kitchen table. Why don’t you sit down here a minute. At least let me make you something hot to drink. I know you got to be thirsty.

The girl looked around the kitchen. This is a mess, she said.

I know that, honey. But you’ll hurt my feelings if you talk like that. I been sick.

Well, it is.

I’m going to clean it up. Betty removed a few dirty dishes to the counter and stacked some in the sink, then she set a jar lid in front of the girl.

What’s that for?

You go ahead and smoke if you only going to smoke a little. It’s your first night, honey. I’m just so glad you come home.

SHE MOVED IN AND SLEPT THAT FIRST NIGHT ON THE couch in the front room. In the morning they introduced her to Joy Rae and Richie. The two children looked at her with suspicion and said nothing to her. After they left for school, she went back to sleep until noon, and then took a shower while Betty made lunch.

The girl soon grew bored in the trailer and went out and walked downtown in the bright cold windy afternoon in her black raincoat and wandered into the stores. She loitered in Weiger’s Drug and at Schulte’s Department Store she looked at clothes hanging from the metal pipe racks. She tried on a long pink evening gown with a low-cut bodice while a nervous clerk watched her. The dress suited her tall body and made her look older and more sophisticated. For a long time she studied herself in the mirrors, turning to see how the dress looked from the side and the back, holding her hands as she had seen women do in magazines, then she took off the dress and put it back on the hanger and handed it to the woman. I changed my mind, she said. I wouldn’t care for it. She went outside again and crossed Second Street and walked up to the middle of the block to Duckwall’s.

In Duckwall’s she wandered back into the aisles and picked up various items and examined them, and after about fifteen minutes, while the salesclerk at the cash register was ringing up a sale, she pocketed a tube of lipstick and a small tin container of mascara and eye shadow, then drifted slowly away to look at hand mirrors and purses and came up to the front of the store to the stands of greeting cards, and stood there for a while reading the messages, and finally walked out of the store onto the broad sidewalk.

The children had come home on the bus by the time she returned to the trailer, and Betty then told Joy Rae to let her big sister move into her bedroom. Both of you can sleep in the same bed. You have to get to know one another sometime.

Joy Rae was upset and frightened but the girl said: I got something to show you.

What is it?

The girl turned to her mother. We’ll be all right, she said.

Because you’re sisters, Betty said.

They went down the hall to Joy Rae’s orderly bedroom. Sit down, the girl said, and shut the door.

What are you going to do?

I ain’t going to hurt you. Sit down. I want to show you something. Joy Rae sat on the bed as the girl took the lipstick and the mascara from Duckwall’s out of her purse. I’m going to show you how to make up your face, she said. How old are you?

Eleven.

Well, shit. I was already kissing boys and wearing Make a Promise lip dew by then. You’re way behind. You’re awful young-looking, aren’t you. Kind of skinny.

Joy Rae looked away. I can’t help it. It’s just the way I am.

Well, don’t worry about it. We’ll fix you up. The boys in this little shit-ass town are going to go nuts over you. They’re going to want to eat you up. She smiled. Or wish they could.

What are you going to do?

I’ll show you. Lift up your face. That’s it. Well shoot, you’re kind of pretty too, did you know that?

No.

You are. I can see it. You’re going to get prettier too. Like me.

The girl bent over her half sister and brushed mascara on her eyelashes and penciled on eyeliner. Stop blinking, she said. You want to fuck this up? You can’t blink your eyes while I’m doing this. She angled the younger girl’s chin a little and brushed on eye shadow, then stood back to inspect her and twisted open the lipstick tube and outlined the top lip and dabbed a quick deft spot on the bottom. Smooch them together, she said. Yeah, like that. But not so much.

How do I?

Like this. She showed her, then stood back again. Don’t you want to see what you look like?

Yes.

She stepped across the room and took a hand mirror from the dresser and held it in front of her. Well?

Joy Rae studied herself in the mirror, lifting her head and turning her face. Her eyes opened wider. It don’t even look like me.

That’s the point.

Can I keep it on?

Why not? I ain’t going to stop you. Girl, you’re ready to go. Then she lit a cigarette and sat down beside her on the bed.

WHEN BETTY CALLED THEM TO SUPPER, JOY RAE CAME out with the makeup still on her face, and she sat down in her customary chair, looking steadily across the room, waiting.

Hey now, Luther said. Who’s this? Look at my little girl.

Betty looked at her and said: Oh, I don’t know if she’s old enough for that.

She’s got to learn, the girl said. Who’s going to teach her if I don’t?

They sat at the table and ate packaged salisbury steak and frenchfried potatoes and bread, with ice cream for dessert, and Joy Rae said very little to anyone while they ate but only looked at them out of her strange new eyes.

After supper when everyone had gone to bed, the girl telephoned Raydell in Phillips and talked to him for a long time. You miss me? she said. Tell me what you’d do if you was allowed to see me. And what he answered her made her laugh.

The next morning Betty allowed Joy Rae to wear the lipstick to school, but it wasn’t until recess that anyone said anything about it. Then three of the girls crowded around her and asked if she had the lipstick tube with her, and she told them it belonged to her big sister. They wanted to know since when had she gotten a big sister and Joy Rae said she had always had one, except she had never seen her before. They wanted to know when they could meet her. Maybe she could do their faces too.

THE FOLLOWING DAY SHE WAS BACK IN DUCKWALL’S wandering the aisles in the late afternoon. When she was satisfied nobody was watching, she slipped a woman’s clasp purse from a display table into the pocket of her raincoat. Then she drifted again through the aisles and after a while she started out of the store. But the lady clerk stepped in front of her. You plan on paying for that?

For what?

That purse in your pocket. I saw you take it. She pulled the purse out and held it up.

Oh. I forgot I put it in there.

You were going to steal it.

Like hell I was.

The hell you weren’t.

The lady called the manager out of his office in the back, a tall stringy man with a hard little paunch. What’s going on? he said.

This girl here stole this purse.

I wasn’t going to steal it.

Yes she was.

Do you know shoplifting’s a crime? the manager said.

I wasn’t shoplifting, you dumb asshole. I forgot I had it in my pocket.

You better just watch that dirty language. And you can sit right there. He pointed to a chair near the door. Call the police, Darlene, he told the clerk.

The lady made the call and the girl sat on the chair and glared and waited. The manager stood over her. After a while a patrol car drew up to the curb in front of Duckwall’s, and a sheriff’s deputy in a dark blue uniform with a leather belt and revolver came inside, where the manager explained what happened. Is that right? the deputy said.

No, the girl said.

What’s your side of it then?

I wasn’t stealing nothing. I forgot to pay, that’s all. I forgot I had it in my pocket.

You have the money to pay for it?

From her coat pockets she drew out cigarettes and matches and a little plastic purse that contained only coins.

He looked at her. I haven’t seen you before, he said. Who are you?

Donna Lawson.

Where do you live?

I’m staying with my mama and her husband on Detroit Street.

Who’s that?

Luther and Betty Wallace.

The deputy studied her. All right, he said. He turned to the store manager. I’ll take care of this.

I don’t want her back in this store.

She won’t be back in this store. Don’t worry.

She better not.

The deputy led her by the arm out to the car and opened the back door and she got in. He came around and got in behind the wheel and backed away from the curb and drove to Detroit Street and stopped in front of the trailer. This is it, isn’t it?

Yeah, the girl said. She started to get out.

Where you going? he said. Did I tell you to get out?

No.

You wait till I tell you. Shut the door.

She pulled it closed. What do you want?

I’m going to tell you something before we go in there. I’ll give you a break this time. But you better watch yourself. You’re going to end up in more trouble than you can even imagine, more trouble than you ever thought there was in this world.

I didn’t do anything.

Yeah. I heard you before about that. That’s just bullshit. But you and me both know that’s what it is. Because I know what a girl like you can do. I’ve seen it over and over again. And I bet you’ve never been in the backseat of a car before either.

What do you mean?

You know exactly what I mean.

Go to hell.

That’s right. Just keep that up. But you better mind me. Hear?

The girl sat looking at his face in the mirror.

I said, did you hear me.

Yes, she said. I heard you. All right? I heard you.

Okay. Let’s get this over.

They got out of the car and walked up the dirt path to the trailer. Inside, the officer told Betty and Luther what the girl had been accused of. He said that she shouldn’t be wandering around the streets and that they had to be more careful and keep better control of her. And why isn’t she in school? he said.

She just got here, Luther said. We ain’t had no time to put her in her classes yet.

Well, she better start going. As it is, she’s got too much time on her hands. I’ll be checking back with you on this.

After he left, Betty and Luther tried to talk with her, but within five minutes she got fed up. Oh, fuck you, she said, and went back and lay down on Joy Rae’s bed. She didn’t come out for supper, but instead took the phone into the room and called Raydell to tell him to come get her. Raydell said it was too late. You better come over here, goddamn it, she said. You better come get me.

She stayed in the bedroom with Joy Rae until eleven that night. Then Raydell drove up in front of the trailer and honked the horn, and she came out to the front room where Betty and Luther were sitting on the couch. Don’t try and stop me, she said.

Betty began to cry and Luther said: You can’t go. Think about your mama.

Fuck you, you fat fucker. And I’m sick of my mama. Look at her. She makes me sick. This ain’t my family. I don’t have no family.

Then she slammed the door and ran out the path to the car. She slid in beside the boy and the car roared away, headed up Detroit Street, pointed toward the highway and out of town.

Hearing the car speed away, Betty threw herself on the floor and began to thrash about and wail and kick. She kicked over the coffee table. Luther bent over trying to quiet her. It’s going to be all right, honey, he said. It’ll turn out okay. She didn’t mean them things she said. The two children Joy Rae and Richie came out of their rooms and stood in the hall, watching their parents, not at all surprised by what they saw, and after a while they turned and went back to bed.

In her bedroom Joy Rae went through the items on her dresser but the lipstick and mascara were gone now. She looked at her face in the hand mirror. Only a faint trace of red still showed on her mouth.

34

IN THE NIGHT SHE WAS LYING IN THE BACK BEDROOM with the blond man from the bank. Dena and Emma were asleep in their room up the hall, and it was a springlike night and the window was open to the fresh air and Mary Wells and Bob Jeter were talking softly in the dark. You don’t have to leave, she said. I don’t care about the neighbors. There’s just the two old widow women next door. They’ll talk anyway.

I better go, he said.

Please, she said. She was lying on her side facing him, her arm across his chest. Isn’t it nice here? Stay with me.

What about your daughters?

They’re beginning to get used to you. They like you already.

No they don’t.

Why do you say that?

They don’t care for me at all. Why would they?

Why wouldn’t they? You’re nice to them.

I’m not their father.

Stay, she said. Just for a while longer.

I can’t.

Why not?

Because.

Because you don’t want to.

That’s not it, he said. He slid out from under her arm and turned away and rose from the bed, and in the dark he began to collect his clothes. Moving about the room he hit his foot against the leg of a chair. He cursed.

What happened? she said.

Nothing.

I’ll turn the light on. She switched on the bedside lamp and watched him dress. Unlike her husband in Alaska, this man was very careful about his dressing. He stepped into his underwear, settling the waistband and drawing out the seat, and pulled on his shirt and pants and stood spreading his knees to support his pants while he tucked in the shirttail, then he buckled the leather belt with its thin brass clasp and afterward sat on the bed and pulled on his dark socks and dark shoes. His hair was disordered and he stood bent-kneed before the mirror at her dresser and combed his thin blond hair neat again and combed through his mustache and goatee. Then he put on his suitcoat and shot his shirt cuffs.

She was lying on her side with the sheet over her, watching him. One of her shoulders was exposed, it gleamed and was very pretty in the light. Give me a kiss before you go, she said.

He stepped to the bed and kissed her, then walked noiselessly down the hall and out through the front room into the cool night air. She got up from bed with the sheet around her and followed him, watching him drive away on the vacant street, seeing him pass under the corner streetlamp, then onto Main and out of sight. Shadows from the lamp were like long stick figures thrown out behind the trees and all along the street were the quiet mute fronts of houses. She sat down in the dark room. An hour later she woke shivering and went back to her bed.

AFTER THAT NIGHT A WEEK PASSED WITHOUT HIS CALLING in the evening as he had before. She waited until the middle of the following week and he still hadn’t called, and then she called him twice in one night from her dark bedroom, but he made excuses about why he couldn’t talk, and the second time she called he hung up without waiting for her to say anything more than his name. The next day at mid-morning she went to see him at the bank.

His office was in the back corner, with a glass window that looked out into the lobby. She could see him sitting at his desk talking on the phone when she stepped inside. A woman at the reception desk asked if she could help but Mary Wells said: No, you can’t help me. I came here to see him. Then he was off the phone and she went into his office and sat down as if she had come to see about a loan or a second mortgage.

What are you doing? he said.

I came to see you.

I can’t talk now.

I know that. But you won’t talk to me on the phone. So I had to come here. You’re through with me, aren’t you.

He took up a long silver pen from his desk and held it in his fingers.

You are, aren’t you. You ought to at least be able to say it.

I think we ought to slow down for a while, he said. That’s all.

Slow down, she said. What chickenshit.

He stared at her and leaned back in his chair.

You’re very timid, aren’t you, she said.

No.

Yes. Yes, you are. I understand that now. You want your fun but you don’t want any complications. You’re still a little boy.

I think you’d better go, he said. I’ve got work to do. I’ll call you later.

You’ll call me later?

Yes.

No you won’t. You won’t call me. You think I’m that stupid? That pathetic? She stood up. And you have work to do now, don’t you.

Of course. This is my office. This is where I work.

That’s very interesting, she said. And you’d like me to leave, wouldn’t you. You’d like me to walk out and not make any fuss. Isn’t that right? She looked at him. He didn’t say anything. Okay, she said. Then she bent over his desk and swept all the papers onto the floor.

He rose up and caught her wrist. What in the hell do you think you’re doing?

She wrenched her wrist free and shoved the phone onto the floor. That’s what I think of you and your work. You little chickenshit. You timid little boy.

Are you going to go now?

You know, I think I am. Because you know what? I’m through with you. I’m dumping you. I’m the one this time. And don’t call me. Some night you’re going to get lonely and start remembering what it was like in bed with me and how nice I was to you and then you’re going to want to call, to see if you can come over for a little while, but don’t do it. I’ll be over you by that time, you scared little chickenshit boy. I won’t answer the phone. I don’t ever want to talk to you again.

She walked out of his glassed office into the lobby. The cashiers and the people in line at the counters and the woman at the reception desk were all watching her, and she looked at them and then she stopped. She stood in the middle of the lobby to address them.

He’s not a very good fucker, she said. I don’t know if any of you knew that. He never was much good in bed anyway. I deserve better. Then she went outside to the street and got in her car and drove home.

And at home she went to pieces. She scarcely got up to make the girls breakfast or to see them off to school in the morning, and she was often still lying in bed in the back room, drinking gin and smoking, when the girls came home in the afternoon. They would come to her room and stand in the doorway and look at her. Sometimes they would lie down on the bed beside her and go to sleep in that place that used to be so pleasant and comfortable. More often now the two sisters would fight with each other when they were at home and she would call to them to stop, but other times she would simply get up and shut the door and light a cigarette and lie down again.

Outside, the trees beyond her window along the alley began to bud into leaf in the warm advancing days of early spring. But she lay in bed, smoking and drinking, staring at the ceiling as the light moved across the white flat surface as evening descended, and all the time she was lost in her troubled thoughts. The only thing she felt proud of herself about was that she had not called Bob Jeter again. She took some satisfaction in that. And she hoped very much that he too was suffering in some important way.

35

WHEN VICTORIA ROUBIDEAUX CAME HOME TO RAYMOND at spring break she had a boy with her. He was a tall thin boy, with wire glasses and close-cropped black hair, and he had a little gold earring hooked through one of his ears. They came up to the house in the evening in the blue shadows under the yardlight and she was carrying Katie in her arms. When they entered the kitchen Raymond moved away from the window where he’d been watching them, and Victoria kissed him as she always did and he hugged her and the little girl. I want you to meet Del Gutierrez, she said.

The boy came forward and shook Raymond’s hand. Victoria’s told me a lot about you, he said.

Is that so? Raymond said.

Yes, she has.

Then you got me at a disadvantage. I don’t believe I’ve heard the first thing about you.

I did too tell you about him, Victoria said. The last time we talked on the phone. You’re just trying to be obstinate.

Maybe you did. I can’t recall. Anyway, come in, come in. Welcome to this old house here.

Thank you. It’s good to be here.

Well, it’s pretty quiet. Not like in town. Where you from, son?

Denver.

From the city.

Yes sir. I’ve been there all my life. Until I went to college.

Well, things are a little different out here. Kind of slow. Anyhow, if you’re a friend of Victoria’s you’re welcome.

They went back to the car and brought their bags in and afterward Victoria made a light supper. It was a quiet awkward meal. Victoria did most of the talking. Afterward Raymond took the little girl into the parlor and sat her on his lap in the recliner chair and read the paper and talked to her a little while her mother and the boy did the dishes. Katie had been shy of him at first, but warmed up over supper and now was asleep, curled against his shoulder. Raymond peered out into the kitchen above the top of his newspaper. He couldn’t make out what they were saying but Victoria looked to be happy. Once the boy leaned over and kissed her, then looked up and saw Raymond was watching them.

Victoria made up the bed for Del Gutierrez in Harold’s old room upstairs, and Raymond watched the ten o’clock news and weather on television, then said good night and went up to bed. He lay awake for a time listening for what he might hear, but he couldn’t hear anything from downstairs and after a while he went to sleep, and then he woke when the boy entered the room across the hall and shut the door. He lay there thinking how long it had been since he’d heard anyone moving about in his brother’s room.

The next morning the boy surprised him. He was drinking coffee at the kitchen table when Raymond came downstairs in the slanted light of early morning. I never expected to see you at this hour, Raymond said.

I thought you might let me help you do something, the boy said.

Do something.

Outside. Whatever you have to do.

Raymond looked around the kitchen. Did you make this coffee?

Yes.

Were you planning on sharing it?

Yes sir. Can I get you a cup?

Oh, I believe I know where we keep the cups. Unless they got moved since last night.

He took down his usual cup and poured some coffee and stood looking out the window with his back to the boy. Then he finished and set the cup in the sink. All right, he said. You can come out with me if that’s what you think you want to do. I’ve got to feed out, then we’ll come back in for breakfast later on.

All right, the boy said.

You have any warm clothes?

I brought a jacket.

You’ll want something warmer than that.

Raymond handed him his brother’s lined canvas chore jacket from the peg by the door. There’s gloves in the side pocket. You got a hat?

I don’t usually wear one.

Here, wear this. He handed the boy Harold’s old red wool cap. I don’t want to think what Victoria would say if I got your ears froze off the first day you got here.

The boy pulled on the old cap. In his wire glasses and with the earflaps hanging loose beside his head, he looked to be some manner of nearsighted immigrant farmhand from an era much earlier.

Well, Raymond said. I guess you’ll do. He put on his coat and cap and gloves and they went outside.

They walked out through the wire gate and crossed to the haylot east of the barn where the ancient red sun-faded Farmall tractor was hooked up to the flatbed hay wagon next to the stack of bales. A cold wind was blowing out of the west, the sky obscured by streams of cloud. Raymond told him to climb onto the stack and throw down the bales while he stacked them on the wagon. We might as well do a good load, since you’re here, he said.

They worked for most of an hour. The boy threw down one bale after another, each one bouncing on the worn plank floor of the wagon, and Raymond set them in place, stacking them in tiers. After a while the boy took his coat off and they went on working. Then Raymond called a halt and climbed down from the wagon and got up into the seat of the tractor. Let’s go to it, he said.

Where should I ride? the boy said.

Stand here on the draw bar. And hang on. You don’t want to get yourself dumped off and mashed under these iron wagon wheels.

The boy put his coat back on and stepped up behind Raymond, holding on to the back of the metal seat, and they went clattering and bouncing out of the haylot into the pasture, rocking across the rough ground on a track through the sagebrush and soapweed, and on out to where the mother cows and calves were milling about and shoving into one another, waiting for their morning feed.

Raymond braked to a stop. You think you can drive this tractor?

I don’t know. I’ve never driven one before.

Climb up here and I’ll show you.

They traded places and Raymond showed him which gear to use so the tractor would creep along, and indicated to him the two foot brakes and the clutch and the hand throttle.

I expect you’ve drove a stick shift before.

I’ve done that much.

There isn’t anything to it. Just keep it in compound and let it crawl. Give it a little gas when you need to, going up any rise.

The boy sat in the metal seat and they started out, the tractor rocking and heaving.

You want to head out this way, Raymond said. Follow that trail of worn ground there where I been feeding.

Along there?

You think you can do that?

Yes.

All right then. Let’s feed these cattle.

Raymond climbed onto the hay wagon and pulled the twine from the first bale, draped the twine over an upright, and broke the bale open and shoved it off the side onto the ground, and they went creeping ahead as he broke and scattered the next bale, and the hungry cattle and calves began to bunch and feed, strung out in a long line behind the lurching wagon, their heads all lowered, a fog of steam and hot breath above them. From the tractor the boy looked back to see how things were going and he saw the old man working steadily, shoving the loose hay out on the ground. Then he looked forward again and noticed a deep dip in the ground ahead of them where the sand was hollowed out. He turned sharply to miss it and the corner of the hay wagon rode up the cleats of the tractor wheel as far as the first stringer, tilting the wagon bed at a sharp dangerous angle and lifting the bed four feet off the ground. Raymond hollered at him. The boy turned to look and slammed on the brakes, then turned back again. Raymond was holding on to the upright.

The boy’s face had turned to ash. Oh shit, he said. What’d I do?

You turned too sharp. You can’t turn that sharp pulling something behind you. Turn it hard the other way now.

Did I hurt the wagon?

Not yet. But turn it hard and go slow.

Maybe you better come up and do it.

No. Go ahead. You’ll do all right. Just take it slow.

I don’t know about this.

Go on now. Try it.

The boy sat forward in the seat and cranked the steering wheel to the left and slowly let out the clutch. The tractor made a sharp turn and the corner of the wagon bumped down the tractor wheel’s big cleats, splintering the wood a little, and then the wheel was free and the hay wagon stood flat on the ground again.

Straighten it out, Raymond hollered. But real slow or you’ll have her up on the wheel again.

The boy drove forward and the wagon swung around behind the tractor, and when he looked back Raymond waved for him to go on. He drove very slowly, staring straight ahead past the exhaust stack as they crossed the cold worn ground. After a while Raymond hollered for him to stop, then stepped down from the wagon and climbed onto the back of the tractor. That’ll do for today. Take us up to the haylot.

I think you better drive.

How come? You’re doing okay. But shift up. We don’t want to stay in grandma all the way home.

What about what I did back there?

That happens. You just don’t have to do it twice. Pay attention next time and it’ll be all right. Let’s go have us some breakfast.

The boy shifted gears and they moved bumping and rocking out of the pasture. Raymond climbed off to shut the gate and the boy parked inside the fence at the haylot and turned the tractor off, and together they walked up to the house under the thin clouds.

I don’t see how you manage to do all this by yourself, the boy said.

You don’t?

No sir. It seems like too much for one person to do.

Raymond looked at him. What else you going to do?

The boy nodded and they went on.

IN THE KITCHEN THE LITTLE GIRL WAS SITTING AT THE table over a coloring book and Victoria was standing at the stove. When she saw Del Gutierrez in Harold’s canvas chore coat and old wool cap, with the earflaps dangling free beside his red cheeks, she said: Now wait. Stand right there till I get my camera.

No you don’t, Raymond said. You leave him alone. Del and me, we been outside working, feeding cattle. We don’t need no pictures.

I got to keep warm, don’t I? the boy said.

You look warm all right, Victoria said. Just look at you. Then she laughed and they stood looking at her, seeing how white and straight her teeth were, how her thick black hair fell across her shoulders, how her black eyes shone, and they both felt at once awkward and speechless in the presence of such beauty, to see her in this way, having themselves come in from the cold and the wind and the blowing dirt, to find her waiting for them, laughing and amused by something they’d done. It made Raymond think suddenly of his brother and he was afraid he might embarrass himself and begin to weep. So he said nothing. He turned away and he and the boy hung up their coats next to the door and washed at the sink.

Victoria had breakfast ready for them. She brought the platters of eggs and bacon and buttered toast and poured out cups of coffee and they all sat down at the pinewood table in the kitchen. The little girl reached her arms out and said: Poppy, so Raymond took her onto his lap and they began to eat.

You think you could make a rancher of him? Victoria said.

Raymond stopped eating. I don’t know, he said. He looked at her. I guess he might make one. He did pretty good this morning.

Did you have him drive the tractor?

Yes, ma’am. He did pretty good at it too. He turned to look at the boy. Course I can’t say much for that earring he’s wearing. I guess that hole in his ear might grow in after a while, but I haven’t had no experience with that kind of thing.

The boy’s face went red and he touched his ear. He grinned across the table at Victoria.

I think he should just keep it the way it is, she said. I like it.

ON FRIDAY OF THAT WEEK VICTORIA AND DEL GUTIERREZ decided to go to the movie in Holt. They didn’t care what was being shown, they wanted only to get out of the house and to do something on their own, and Raymond encouraged them to have dinner at the Wagon Wheel Café before the show, and he gave the boy forty dollars for helping him with the ranch work. Before they went out, he drew Victoria into her bedroom and pulled the door closed. What’s wrong? she said.

Not a thing, he said. Then he told her in an old man’s loud whisper: He’s a pretty good hard worker, isn’t he.

What are you talking about? she said.

That boy’s been doing pretty good this week. Working pretty hard.

Do you think so?

Yes I do.

He told me about the trouble he had driving the tractor that first time.

He didn’t have to tell you that.

He said you weren’t much upset about it. That you didn’t yell at him or anything.

Well, it didn’t break nothing, and everybody has to do that once. He did all right. Anyway, you just might want to think about keeping him around.

Victoria looked at Raymond. He was watching her closely. Now what is it you’re saying? she said.

I just mean you might want to keep this one. He’s okay with me. I kind of like him.

That sounds like you’re trying to rush me, she said.

I’m not rushing you, he said. Hell, I ain’t rushing a thing. He looked a little hurt at such a suggestion. I’m just saying he’s not a bad young fellow. I ain’t saying anything else. Now you two go on out for dinner and I’ll take care of Katie. It’ll be my pleasure. All I’m saying is this boy and me, we might get on together. And I’ll tell you something else. It looks to me like he flat thinks the world of you too.

Maybe he does, she said. But I’ve already made a fool of myself once. I’m in no hurry to do it again.

I know, honey. You’d have to feel that way. Of course you would. But that don’t mean you got to end up like me, either.

What about that woman you were seeing?

What woman?

Linda May. The woman that was here for New Year’s dinner.

That’s what I’m talking about, Raymond said. I don’t know nothing about this kind of thing. Maybe I sort of thought I was seeing her, but she sure as hell had no idea she was seeing me. No, all I want is for you to be happy.

I am happy, she said. Don’t you know that? And so much of that is because of you. Now do you suppose I ought to get ready so Del and I can go out tonight?

Yes, ma’am, I believe you should. I’m just going to get out of here and leave you to it.

VICTORIA PUT ON THE SOFT BLUE CASHMERE SWEATER that set off her black hair and put on a short gray skirt, and the boy was wearing a pair of good black jeans and a plaid shirt, and they drove out in her car to Holt to eat dinner and to attend the movie. After they were gone Raymond and Katie were busy in the kitchen. He warmed up some leftover ham and gravy, with mashed potatoes and creamed corn, and the little girl sat on her box on a chair at the table, and while they ate he looked across at her and listened. She was taking regular bites as she talked, and she went on without stop, talking about whatever came into her mind, with no need for Raymond to remark on any of it at all, though he paid heed to all she said, whether it was about a girl he didn’t know at her day care in Fort Collins or about some black-and-white dog that barked in the yard below their apartment. For dessert he got out a quart container of chocolate ice cream and they ate some of that too while she continued to talk, sitting on her box at the table like some miniature black-haired black-eyed church woman at some basement bazaar, like some tiny Presbyterian female starved for the sound of her own voice. Then they cleaned up the kitchen, and she stood on a chair beside him to help rinse the dishes, still talking, and afterward they went into the bathroom and she climbed onto a little wooden stool in front of the sink and brushed her teeth. Then he took her into the downstairs bedroom and she put on her pajamas and they both lay down in the ancient double bed and Raymond began to read. He didn’t read long. Three pages into the book he was already falling asleep. She poked him and touched his weathered face with her hand, feeling along his stubbled chin and the loose skin at his neck. He woke and turned to look at her, then squinted and cleared his throat, and read another page before drifting off again, and now she lay close beside him and went to sleep herself.

When Victoria and Del Gutierrez came home at midnight, the old man and the little girl were lying in bed under the bright overhead light. Raymond was snoring terrifically, his mouth wide open, and the little girl was burrowed into his shoulder. The book he had started reading lay off to the side among the quilts.

36

EARLY ON SATURDAY EVENING MARY WELLS GOT HERSELF out of bed and she and the girls drove to the Highway 34 Grocery Store at the edge of town to do the shopping that had not been done in days. There was nothing to eat in the house and Mary Wells was indifferent whether she had food or not, but the girls were hungry.

On the highway east of Holt a man from St. Francis Kansas was pulling a gooseneck stock trailer behind his Ford pickup, hauling five purebred Simmental bulls. He’d meant to sell the bulls in the fall, but his wife had been so sick that he had never gotten around to it, because of the daily care and the hurried trips to the hospital and finally the wearying bitter arrangements for her funeral. Now he was hauling the bulls to the sale barn in Brush for the auction on Monday, planning to feed and rest the bulls on Sunday, and make sure they drank enough that their weight was up so he could get all he could for them though it was not an opportune time to sell bulls.

He was not driving fast. He never did drive fast when he was pulling a stock trailer, and he made a particular point of slowing down because of the increase in traffic at that hour and more especially because of the glare of the setting sun shining in the windshield. He entered Holt and then a car suddenly pulled out in front of him from the grocery store parking lot.

Mary Wells was driving the car. Ten minutes earlier she had seen Bob Jeter standing at the refrigerated meat case in the Highway 34 Grocery Store beside a blonde woman, and Bob Jeter had had his arm wrapped around the woman’s waist.

Her older daughter, sitting in the passenger seat beside her, saw the pickup coming toward them and shouted: Mama! Look out!

The man from St. Francis did what he could to stop, but he had all that weight behind him and the pickup crashed into the side of the car and drove it skidding across the highway into a light pole that broke in half and fell over, dragging the wires down.

The younger girl, Emma, sitting in the backseat behind her mother, was thrown against the back door and knocked unconscious. Mary Wells’s head was slammed against the driver’s-side window and when her head cleared she discovered she could not move her left arm. It had already begun to throb. Next to her, Dena had been hurled forward and sideways, and a piece of the windshield had made a long deep gash through her right eyebrow and cheek. When the car rocked to a stop she cupped at her face with her hands. And then her hands filled with blood and she began to scream.

Honey, Mary Wells cried. Oh my God. She brushed the girl’s hair away from her face. Look at me, she said. Let me see. Oh Jesus. Blood was streaming down her cheek onto her shirt, and her mother wiped at it, trying to stop it.

Across the street a man in the parking lot ran back into the grocery store and called for an ambulance, and it came roaring up within minutes and the attendants jumped out and pried open the doors on the one side of the car and lifted Mary Wells and the two girls into the ambulance and raced them to the emergency room at Holt County Memorial Hospital on Main Street, just a few blocks away.

THE PICKUP, THE STOCK TRAILER, AND THE CAR WERE still blocking traffic, and the five tan-and-white bulls had stumbled out of the trailer when the tailgate had crashed open. Men from other cars and pickups were trying to herd them into a makeshift pen of vehicles at the edge of the road, but one of the bulls was lurching about, slipping on the blacktop, bellowing, its left hind leg severed almost in two at the joint, with the lower half flopping and dragging behind. The bull kept stumbling, trying to put his back foot down, while the blood pumped steadily out onto the pavement. The man from St. Francis kept following the bull, shouting: Somebody shoot him. Goddamn it, somebody shoot him. But no one would. Finally a man produced a rifle from the rack in the cab of his pickup and handed the rifle to him. Here, he said. You better do it yourself.

A patrolman who was directing traffic saw the rifle and came running over. What do you think you’re doing? You can’t fire off a gun out here.

By God, I’m going to, the man from St. Francis said. You want to let him suffer like that? I’ve seen all the suffering I’m going to see for a while.

You’re not going to shoot off that gun.

You watch me. Get out of the way.

He walked up to the bull, shouldered the rifle and shoved the end of the barrel point-blank at the bull’s head, then pulled the trigger. The bull dropped all at once to the pavement, rolled over on its side and quivered and finally lay still, its black eyes staring at the streetlamp. The man from St. Francis stood looking down at the dead bull. He handed the rifle back to the man who owned it, then turned to the patrolman. Now go ahead and arrest me, goddamn it.

The officer looked at him sideways. I ain’t going to arrest you. How am I going to arrest you? I’d have a goddamn riot on my hands. But you never should of done that. Not in town.

What would you of done?

I don’t know. Probably the same damn thing you just did. But that don’t make it right. By God, there’s a law against shooting a gun off inside city limits.

AT THE HOSPITAL THE DOCTOR SEDATED THE OLDER GIRL and put seventeen stitches in her face while Mary Wells waited outside in the emergency room with her limp arm hanging painfully, supported in the palm of her hand. She cried quietly and wouldn’t let anyone attend to her arm until they had completed the surgery on her daughter. In the bed near the wall the younger girl was now coming awake. She had a severe headache and there were abrasions on her arm and a blue knob forming on her forehead. Though they would have to watch her through the night, it appeared she would recover well enough.

The doctor finished sewing up the older girl’s face and they wheeled her out and brought her into the emergency room. She was still asleep and her face was bruised and yellow where it wasn’t bandaged. Mary Wells stood looking down at her.

That will all heal, the doctor said. It was a clean cut. She’s fortunate it didn’t involve the eye.

Will it scar? Mary Wells said.

He looked at her. He seemed surprised. Well yes, he said. It usually does.

How much?

We can’t tell that yet. Sometimes it turns out better than we think. She’ll probably want to have a series of treatments with a cosmetic surgeon. That would take some time.

So she’ll have to go through life until then, looking like this?

Yes. The doctor looked down at the girl. I can’t predict how long that will take. She’ll have to heal completely before they can do anything more.

Oh God, what a fool I am, Mary Wells said. What a stupid little fool. She began to cry again and she took up her daughter’s hand and held it to her wet cheek.

THEY KEPT ALL THREE OF THEM IN THE HOSPITAL overnight for observation. In the evening one of the police who had been out on the highway came to the hospital and left a traffic ticket, for reckless driving and the endangerment of life, and he informed Mary Wells that her car had been towed away.

The next morning a nurse drove them home. Mary Wells’s arm was in a sling, and she and the girls each walked up to the house with great care. Inside the house it was quiet. It felt as if they had been gone for days. Will you come out to the kitchen, please? Mary Wells said. Please, both of you. I want you to help me say what we’re going to do now. I don’t know what that will be. But we have to do something.

They sat down at the table. The younger girl sat watching her mother, listening, but the older girl, Dena, sat with her head turned away. She kept touching the bandage on her face with the tips of her fingers, feeling along the edges of the tape, and she refused to look at her mother and would not say anything at all. She had formed an idea already of what was coming for herself.

37

WHEN RAYMOND AND THE BOY CAME UP TO THE HOUSE after working outside all that Saturday afternoon, Victoria said it would be a good idea if they both took a shower and cleaned up before they sat down to supper. Do we smell that bad? Raymond said.

It wouldn’t hurt you to clean up a little.

You go ahead, the boy said. I’ll shower after you.

If that’s what it takes to get any supper around here, Raymond said. All right then.

He went back to the bathroom and showered and scraped off the bristles on his face and came out with his hair wetted down, wearing a freshly laundered pair of work jeans and a worn-out flannel shirt. Victoria said supper was ready and they should sit down and eat.

You’re going to let him eat without cleaning up first? Raymond said. How come?

He’s not as dirty as you were. And you’ve taken so long in the bathroom this food’ll burn up if we don’t eat it now.

Well by God, Raymond said. That don’t seem fair. It sounds like you got favorites, Victoria.

Maybe I do, she said.

Huh, he said.

They sat down together at the table in the kitchen as they had for each of the meals that week, and before they had eaten much of their supper a pickup drove up in the yard and stopped in front of the house. Raymond went out onto the little screened porch to see who it was. Maggie Jones and Tom Guthrie were coming up through the wire gate.

You timed it about right, Raymond said. We just sat down to eat. Come on in.

We’ve already eaten, Maggie said.

Well. Is something wrong?

We came out to see you. There’s something we want to talk to you about.

Come in. I’ll be done eating pretty quick. Can it wait that long?

Yes, of course, Maggie said.

They came inside and Victoria brought chairs from the dining room. Raymond started to introduce Maggie and Guthrie to Del Gutierrez, but Maggie said they had met the night before at the movie theater.

Then I guess we’re all acquainted here, Raymond said. He turned to Victoria. They say they don’t want to eat. Maybe they’ll drink some of your coffee.

Victoria poured them each a cup and Raymond sat down and began to eat again. Victoria and Maggie talked about school and about Katie’s day care in Fort Collins. Then Raymond was finished and he wiped his mouth on a napkin. What did you want to talk to me about? Can you talk about it here, or is it something we better go into the other room for?

We can talk about it here, Maggie said. We just came out to take you into town to the Legion. To the firemen’s ball.

Raymond stared at her. Say that again, he said.

We want to take you out dancing.

He looked at Tom Guthrie. What in hell’s she talking about? he said. Has she been drinking?

Not yet, Guthrie said. But we’ll probably have a few drinks pretty soon. We just thought we’d better get you out for a night.

You did.

Yes. We did.

You want to take me to the firemen’s ball at the Legion.

We figured we’d come out and pry you loose. You wouldn’t go otherwise.

Raymond looked at him and turned and now he looked at Victoria.

Yes, why don’t you? she said. I want you to have some fun.

I thought you kids would want to go into town again yourselves. This is your last night. You have to go back to school tomorrow.

We need to get packed and you can’t do anything to help with that. Why don’t you go? I want you to.

He looked across at the boy and Katie as if they might be of some help. Then he looked at nobody. It just appears to me like this is a goddamn conspiracy, he said. That’s what it appears like.

It is, Maggie said. Now go put on your town clothes so we can get going. The dance has already started.

I might do that, he said. But I’m going to tell you something first. I’ve never been so pushed around in all my life. I don’t know if I care for it, either.

I’ll buy you a drink, Maggie said. Will that help?

It’ll take more than just one drink to wash this down.

You can have as many as you like.

All right, he said. I seem to be outvoted. But it’s not right, to treat a man like this in his own house. In his own kitchen, when he’s just trying to settle his supper.

He stood up from the table and went upstairs to his bedroom and put on his good dark slacks and the blue wool shirt Victoria had given him and got into his brown boots, then he came back downstairs. He told Victoria and Del and Katie good night, then followed Maggie Jones and Guthrie outside. They waited for him to get into Guthrie’s old red pickup, but Raymond said he would drive his own vehicle so he could come home when he wanted to. At least you can’t stop me from doing that, he said.

But we’ll follow you into town, Maggie said. So you don’t get lost on the way.

Well, Maggie, Raymond said. I’m beginning to think you got kind of a mean streak in you. I never noticed it before.

I’m not mean, she said. But I’ve been around you men for too long to harbor any illusions.

You hear that, Tom?

I hear it, Guthrie said. The best thing to do is just go along with her when she gets like this.

I guess so, Raymond said. But I’ll tell you what. She’s going to make me think of a barn-sour horse yet, if she keeps on this way.

THEY DROVE OUT THE LANE AND ALONG THE GRAVEL county road onto the blacktop, the headlights of the two pickups shining into the night one after the other along the barrow ditches. Then they entered town and turned west on US 34. There was a wreck across from the grocery store and the highway patrol routed them around it. They went on through town and parked in the crowded graveled lot outside the white-stuccoed American Legion and went downstairs and paid the cover charge to a woman sitting on a stool at the entrance to the barroom and dance hall. A country band was playing at the back. The music was loud, and the long smoky room was already filled with people standing two and three deep at the bar and sitting in the booths along the walls, and there were more people clustered at the foldout tables in the big side room where the sliding doors had been pushed back. Men in western suits and women in bright dresses were dancing in the thin scatter of sawdust on the floor in front of the band.

Come on, Maggie said. Follow me.

She led Raymond and Guthrie to a dark booth in the far corner that a friend from school had been saving for them. It’s about time, the woman said. I couldn’t have kept it much longer.

We’re here now, Maggie said. Thank you. We’ll take care of it.

They sat down. Raymond peered around in silent amazement and interest. There were other ranchers and farmers he knew, out for a Saturday night of dancing and partying, and a great number of people from town. He turned to look at the band and the people out on the floor dancing in wide circles. Presently a barmaid came up and they ordered drinks, then Guthrie and Maggie got up to dance to a song she said she liked. While they were gone the barmaid brought the tray of drinks and Raymond paid for them, and then the band stopped for a break and stepped down off the riser, and Maggie and Guthrie came back to the booth looking sweaty and red-faced and sat down across from him.

Did you pay for these? Guthrie said.

Yeah. It’s all right.

I still owe you a drink, Maggie said.

I ain’t forgetting.

Good, she said. I’m not either.

Maggie drank deeply from her glass, then she stood up and said she’d be back in a minute. Don’t let him disappear, she said to Guthrie.

He’s not going anywhere, Guthrie said.

The two men drank and talked about cattle, and Guthrie smoked, and Raymond asked him how his boys were doing, and all around them the big room stayed alive with movement and noise.

BEFORE THE BAND STARTED UP AGAIN MAGGIE RETURNED to the booth. With her was a woman Raymond didn’t know. She was short and middle-aged with curly dark hair, and she had on a shiny green dress with a bright floral pattern and short sleeves that revealed her round fleshy arms. Raymond, Maggie said, I want you to meet someone.

Raymond stood up out of the booth.

This is my friend Rose Tyler, Maggie said. And Rose, this is Raymond McPheron. I thought it was time you two got to know each other.

How do you do, Rose said.

Ma’am, Raymond said. They shook hands and he glanced at the booth. Would you care to join us?

Thank you, she said. I would.

She slid in and Raymond sat down beside her on the outside edge of the seat. Maggie sat down beside Guthrie across from them. Raymond put his hands forward on the table. He removed his hands and set them in his lap. Would you care to have a drink? he said.

That would be a very good idea, Rose said.

What would you like?

A whiskey sour.

He turned and peered out into the crowded dance hall. I wonder what you got to do to get that barmaid to come back, he said.

The band was playing a fast song, and Maggie nudged Guthrie and they stood up.

Where you two going? Raymond said. You’re not leaving, are you?

Oh, we’ll be back, Maggie said, then they moved out onto the floor and Guthrie swung her out and they began to dance.

Raymond watched them. He turned toward Rose. Maybe I should move over there to the other side.

You don’t have to, she said.

Well. He drank from his glass and swallowed. I’m sorry, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of you, he said. Do you mind if I ask you about yourself?

I’ve lived in Holt a long time, Rose said. I work for Holt County Social Services.

Welfare, you mean.

Yes. But we don’t call it that anymore. I take care of people who need help. I have a caseload and try to help these people sort out their lives. I distribute food stamps and see that my clients get medical treatment, that kind of thing.

It must be a hard job.

It can be. But what about you? Rose said. I know you live out in the country. Maggie tells me you have a cattle ranch south of town.

Yes ma’am. We have a few cattle.

What kind?

Mostly crossbred blackbaldys.

I think I know that means they’re black with white faces.

Those are the ones. That’s correct.

I’ve heard of you, she said. About you and your brother. I suppose everybody in Holt heard about two men out in the country taking in a pregnant girl to live with them.

It was kind of hot news for a while, I guess, Raymond said. I didn’t much care for it myself. The way people talked. I couldn’t see how it was much of anybody else’s business.

No, Rose said. She looked at him and touched his arm. And I’m so sorry about your brother. I heard about that too. It must have been very hard.

Yes ma’am, it was. It was pretty bad.

He looked out to the dance floor but couldn’t see Maggie and Guthrie. Finally he said: I wonder what become of that barmaid.

Oh, she’ll be here after a while, Rose said. Wouldn’t you care to dance while we’re waiting?

Ma’am?

I said wouldn’t you care to dance.

Well, no ma’am. I don’t dance any. I never have done any dancing.

I have, she said. I can show you.

I’m afraid I’d step all over your toes.

They’ve been stepped on before. Will you try it?

You don’t think we could just sit here.

Let me show you.

Ma’am, I don’t know. You’d be awful sorry.

Let me worry about that. Let’s try.

Well, he said. He stood up and she slid out of the seat and took his hand and led him onto the floor. People were swirling around in what seemed to Raymond a violent and complicated commotion. The band finished the song to a small scattered applause, then began another in slow four-beat time. Raymond and Rose Tyler stood in the middle of the dance floor, and she drew his hand around the soft silky waist of her dress and set one of her hands on the shoulder of his wool shirt. Now just follow me, she said. She clasped his free hand and stepped back, pulling him toward her. He took a little step. Don’t look at your feet, she said.

What am I supposed to look at?

Look over my shoulder. Or you could look at me.

She moved backward and he followed her. She backed again and he stayed with her, moving slowly. Can you hear the beat? she said.

No ma’am. I can’t think about that and not step on you at the same time.

Listen to the music. Just try it. She began to count softly, looking at his face as she did, and he looked back at her, watching her lips. His face was concentrated, almost as if in pain, and he was holding himself back from her, so as not to press too close. They moved slowly around the floor among the other dancers, Rose still counting. They made a complete circuit. Then the song ended.

All right, thank you, Raymond said. Now I guess we better sit down.

Why? You’re doing fine. Didn’t you enjoy it?

I don’t know if you’d say enjoy exactly.

She smiled. You’re a nice man, she said.

I don’t know about that, either, he said.

The band began to play again. Oh, she said. A waltz. Now this is in three-four time.

The hell it is.

She laughed. Yes, it is.

I wasn’t even getting used to that other kind yet. I don’t know a thing about waltzes. Maybe I better take my seat.

No you don’t. You just have to count it out. Like before. I’ll teach you if you let me.

I suppose I can’t do no worse than I already done.

Put your arm around me again, please.

Like before?

Yes. Exactly like before.

He encircled her waist with his arm and she began to count it out for him. They moved slowly, one step, two steps, sliding around the floor, part of the crowd. Rose kept them moving.

LATER THEY WERE SITTING IN THE BOOTH AGAIN WITH Maggie Jones and Guthrie and they had each taken a second drink and were talking, and then a tall heavy man in a string tie and a brown western suit came up and asked Rose if she would care to dance. Raymond looked at her. All right, she said. He stood up and she slid out of the booth and the man led her onto the floor. Raymond watched them. The man knew how to dance, and was light on his feet despite his weight, and he twirled her around and they disappeared among the crowd of dancers.

I guess I’ll go on home now, Raymond said.

Why ever would you do that? Maggie said.

Because I know how this comes out.

No, you don’t. She’s only dancing with him. She’ll be back.

I don’t know that.

He turned toward the floor again as Rose and the man came swinging past.

Just wait, Maggie said. You’ll see.

Then the music ended and the man brought Rose back to the booth and thanked her. Raymond stood as she slid past him onto the seat and then sat back down beside her. There were little drops of sweat at her temples and her hair was damp at the edges of her face, her cheeks bright red. Would you get me another drink, please? she said.

I believe I can do that, Raymond said. He caught the eye of the barmaid and ordered them each another drink and they all began talking where they’d left off. After a while the big man in the string tie came back again to ask if Rose cared to dance, but she said she would sit this one out, that she was happy where she was.

Then Maggie and Guthrie went over to the bar to see some people they knew. Raymond waited until he saw they were talking with the other people, then turned back to Rose. Can I ask you something?

If you want to, Rose said.

I don’t even know how to ask it.

What do you want to know?

Well. I just want you to tell me right now if I got any chance of seeing you again. If you got somebody else hiding in the bushes I wish you’d tell me, so I don’t make a fool of myself.

She smiled. Hiding in the bushes? What bushes?

Any bushes.

There’s nobody hiding in the bushes.

There ain’t.

No. So does that mean you might call me?

Yes ma’am. That’s pretty much what it does mean.

When?

How about some night this coming week? Maybe you’d let me take you out for supper.

I’d look forward to it.

Would you?

Yes, I would.

Then I guess I’ll call you.

Then I guess I’ll be waiting.

Ma’am, I’ll be waiting myself, Raymond said.

THE DANCE ENDED AT MIDNIGHT AND THE LIGHTS CAME on in the dance hall, and the people in attendance at the firemen’s ball got up and moved up the stairs to the parking lot. Raymond walked Rose Tyler to her car and wished her good night, then turned toward home. Out in the country the wind had stopped and the entire vault of the moonless sky was crowded with stars. When he stepped out of the pickup, the house was dark and Victoria and Katie and Del Gutierrez were all in their beds. In the kitchen he turned the light on and got down a glass and drank some water, standing at the window looking out where the yardlight was shining across the outbuildings and over the horse barn and corrals.

Then Victoria came out to the kitchen in her nightgown and robe. She looked sleepy and dark-eyed.

Did I wake you? he said.

I heard you out here.

I thought I was being quiet.

How was it? she said. Did you have a good time?

I did.

What did you do?

Well, I spent most of the night with Tom and Maggie and a woman named Rose Tyler. Are you acquainted with her?

I don’t think so.

She’s a pretty nice woman.

What did she look like?

What did she look like? Well, she had dark hair. And she was about the same size as you, only not so thin.

What was she wearing?

I believe she had on a green dress. Kind of silky to the feel. She looked nice in it too.

And did you dance with her?

Yes ma’am. I was a dancing fool. She got me out there.

What kind of dancing?

Well, for one thing we did the waltz.

I don’t even know how to do that.

All you got to do is count it out. It’s three-four time Rose said.

Show me.

Now?

Yes.

Okay then. He took her hand and she set her other hand on his shoulder.

Go ahead. What’s wrong?

I’m trying to remember. Then he began to count and they danced twice around the kitchen table in a slow swaying movement, the old man with his stiff iron-gray hair and wool shirt and dark slacks, and the black-haired girl just risen from bed, come out to the room in her blue robe.

Thank you, she said when they had stopped.

I had me a good time tonight, he said.

I’m so glad.

And I know one other thing too. There’s a young girl that had her finger mixed up in this.

I might have had something to do with it, Victoria said. But not the dancing. I didn’t know about you and Rose Tyler.

He kissed her forehead. But don’t you do nothing else. I want to think I can manage the next step by myself.

38

ON AN EVENING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WEEK RAYMOND drove into Holt in his pickup. He had shaved and showered and put on cologne, and again was wearing his dark trousers and blue wool shirt and the silver-belly Bailey hat. After Rose invited him inside, he looked around the front rooms of her house, at the good furniture and the lamps and the good pictures on the walls. Raymond, how are you tonight? she said.

I’m doing okay, he said.

Shall we go?

Yes ma’am. Whenever you’re ready.

I’m ready now.

Where would you like to eat?

You decide, Rose said.

Well. Would the Wagon Wheel Café suit you?

That’d be fine, she said.

He walked her out to the pickup and opened the door and she slid onto the seat holding the skirt of her dress in place. In the warm spring night she was wearing a light cotton dress the color of peaches and a thin pale-green sweater.

You look awful nice, Raymond said when he came around and got into the cab. That’s a real pretty dress you’re wearing. It’s a different one from last time.

Yes, she said. Thank you. You look nice too, Raymond.

Oh, I wouldn’t say that.

Why wouldn’t you?

Ma’am. Look at me.

I am looking at you, Rose said.

AT THE WAGON WHEEL CAFé OUT EAST ON THE HIGHWAY there were a great many cars and pickups in the parking lot, and when they got inside the front door of the café people were standing about in groups, waiting to be seated. The hostess wrote Raymond’s name on her list and said it would be about twenty minutes.

Would you rather wait outside? Rose said.

Will she find us out there?

I’m sure she will.

Outside, Rose sat down on the brick ledge of the café’s flower bed. More people were coming in from the parking lot.

I should of made us a reservation, Raymond said. I never thought so many people came out in the middle of the week.

It’s because it’s such a pleasant night, Rose said. It’s finally springtime.

Yes ma’am. But I still didn’t think we’d have so much competition.

A middle-aged couple stopped to speak with Rose, and she said: Do you know Raymond McPheron?

How do you do, the man said.

I’m doing pretty good. If I could get us something to eat, I’d be doing even better.

How long have you been waiting?

We just got here. But the woman said it’d be about twenty minutes.

It better be worth the wait, hadn’t it.

I have nice company to wait with anyhow, Raymond said.

HALF AN HOUR LATER THE HOSTESS STEPPED OUTSIDE THE door and called Raymond’s name and they followed her to a table in the second room, and Raymond held Rose’s chair out, then sat down across from her. The hostess left their menus on the table. The waiter will be with you in a minute, she said.

Raymond looked around the crowded rooms. I was in here with Victoria about a year ago, he said. With her and Katie. But not since. I just thought of this place because this is where she and Del come last week. It’s no telling how soon we’ll get waited on.

Is there any rush? Rose said.

He looked across the table at her and she was smiling at him. Her hair was shining under the light and she had taken her sweater off. You’re right. I better quit talking about it.

Aren’t you having a good time?

I wouldn’t be no other place right now, Raymond said. It’s just kind of late to be eating supper, that’s all I mean. He looked at his watch. It’s getting awful close to seven-thirty.

You wouldn’t do well in New York or Paris, would you.

I wouldn’t even do very good in Fort Morgan, he said.

She laughed. Let’s relax and enjoy ourselves.

Yes ma’am. That’s the right idea.

IN FACT, THE WAITRESS CAME RIGHT THEN, A YOUNG woman whose face was flushed from hurrying back and forth in the crowded rooms. She and Rose knew each other. You’re really busy tonight, Rose said.

Isn’t this crazy, for a Wednesday, she said. I’m about to lose my mind. Can I get you something to drink?

Rose ordered a glass of the house wine and Raymond ordered a bottle of beer, then the young woman rushed away.

It looks like you about know everybody here, Raymond said.

Oh no, not everyone. But quite a few.

While they waited, another couple paused to speak with Rose, then the waitress brought their drinks and they each ordered a steak and a baked potato and salad, and then Rose held up her glass and said: Cheers.

Happy days to you, Raymond said, and they clinked glasses and drank, and Rose smiled at him.

Happy days to you too, Raymond.

Later, after their steaks had been served, an old man on his way out of the café came over wearing his black hat, and Raymond was able to introduce Rose to someone she didn’t know. This here’s Bob Schramm, Raymond said. I want you to meet my friend Rose Tyler. Bob here has a nice place out north of town.

Schramm took his hat off. Not like the McPherons’ place, he said. How you been, Raymond?

Well, I’m doing all right.

You take care then. Ma’am, it was a pleasure meeting you.

Schramm put his hat back on his head and left, and they talked and ordered another round of drinks. Rose explained to Raymond that she had a grown son who lived on the western slope. Her husband had died twenty years ago of a heart attack at the age of thirty. No one expected it, she said. There had been no warning and no one on his side of the family had had heart trouble before. Afterward she had raised their son by herself, and he’d gone on to study at the university in Boulder and now was an architect in Glenwood Springs, and married, with two little boys. I see them as often as I can, she said.

So you’re a grandmother, he said.

Yes. Aren’t I lucky.

Yes ma’am. I’m pretty lucky myself, he said. Having Victoria and Katie in my life.

I knew Victoria’s mother, Rose said. She came in to Social Services one time, but she wasn’t eligible.

Well, she come out to the house one time too, Raymond said, not long after Katie was born. Showed up at the house one afternoon kind of unexpected. I think she had in mind to get close to Victoria again, but her and Victoria didn’t get along. Victoria didn’t want anything to do with her. I didn’t say nothing about it myself, it was up to her to decide. Anyway, I think her mother went off to Pueblo where she come from originally. I ain’t saying anything against the woman. But it was kind of miserable for a while there.

THEY FINISHED THEIR DINNER AND RAYMOND GOT THE check from the waitress and paid it.

Let me leave the tip, Rose said.

You don’t need to.

I know. But I want to.

They went outside to his pickup. The parking lot was half empty now and a soft breeze was blowing. Raymond opened the door for her and she got in.

Would you care to drive out in the country a little ways? she said. It’s such a nice night.

If you’d care to.

Rose rolled the window down and Raymond drove them out east on the highway in the dark night, the fresh air blowing in on them through the opened windows. They drove about ten miles and then he stopped, backed up and turned around and came back. In town the lights of Main Street seemed very bright after the dark on the highway in the flat country. He pulled up to her house and stopped.

Will you come in? she said.

Ma’am, I don’t know. I’m not much good in other people’s houses.

Come in. Let me make you some coffee.

He shut off the engine and came around and opened her door and they walked up to her house. While she went back to the kitchen, he sat down in a large upholstered chair in the front room and looked around at her pictures, everything so clean and carefully arranged and put in order. Rose stepped into the room and said: Do you want sugar and milk with your coffee?

No thank you, ma’am. Just black.

She brought the cups in and handed him one. She took a seat on the couch across from him.

You have a beautiful place here, he said.

Thank you.

They drank their coffee and talked a little more. Finally Raymond had a last sip and stood up. I think it’s time for me to get on home, he said.

You don’t have to go yet.

I better, he said.

She put her cup down and walked over to him. She took his hand. I would like to kiss you, she said. Would you allow me to do that?

Now ma’am, I —

You’ll have to bend down. I’m not very tall.

He bent his head and she took his face in her hands and kissed him thoroughly on the mouth. He held his arms straight at his sides. After she’d kissed him he reached up and touched at his mouth with his fingers.

Wouldn’t you like to come back to the bedroom? she said.

He looked at her in surprise. Ma’am, he said. I’m a old man.

I know how old you are.

I doubt if I could do you any good.

Let’s just see.

She led him back to her bedroom and turned on a low lamp beside the bed. Then she stood in front of him and unbuttoned his blue wool shirt and drew it off his shoulders. He was lean and stringy, with a growth of white hair spread over his chest.

Now will you unbutton me? she said. She turned around.

I don’t know about this.

Yes, you do. I know you know how to undo buttons.

Not on a woman’s dress.

Try.

Well, he said. I suppose it’s kind of like counting out the steps in a waltz dance, ain’t it.

She laughed. You see. It’s not so bad. You’ve made a joke.

A awful little one, he said.

He began awkwardly to unbutton her peach dress. She waited. It took him a long time. But she didn’t say anything, and when he was finished she slipped out of the dress and laid it over the back of a chair and turned to face him. Her slip was peach-colored too, and she looked very pretty in the slip. Her round shoulders were freckled and she had full breasts and wide hips. What would you think of getting out of your pants and boots now? she said.

I’ve come this far.

That’s right. You can’t turn back now.

They finished undressing and got into bed.

In bed Raymond was amazed at how it felt to be next to her. It was past all his experience, to be lying next to a woman, both of them unclothed, her body so smooth and warm and full-fleshed, and she herself so good-hearted. She lay facing him with her arms around him, and he slid his hand across the smooth point of her hip, feeling along the upper reaches of her leg. She leaned close and kissed him. Shut your eyes, she said. Try kissing me with your eyes shut.

Yes ma’am.

She kissed him again. Wasn’t that better?

I like looking at your face too, though. At all of you.

Oh my, she said. Aren’t you a nice man. Aren’t we going to have us some fun together.

I’m having a pretty good time already, Raymond said.

Are you?

Yes ma’am. I am.

There’s more, she said.

LATER SHE LAY WITH HER HEAD ON HIS ARM AND HE SAID: Rose. You’re awful good for a old man like me.

You’re not so old, she said. We’ve just had evidence of that.

You’re going to embarrass me now.

There’s no reason for embarrassment. You’re just a healthy man. And you’re good for me too. There aren’t many men like you available in Holt. I know, I’ve looked.

HE LEFT HER HOUSE AT MIDNIGHT AND DROVE HOME IN the dark on the narrow blacktop highway. Out in the flat treeless country he counted himself more than lucky. Victoria and Katie in his life, and now to have whatever was starting with this generous woman, Rose Tyler. He drove with the windows rolled down, and the night air came in and brought with it the smell of green grass and sage.

39

THE FIRST SATURDAY NIGHT OF APRIL. AND DJ AND HIS grandfather were at the tavern on Main Street and it was not yet late, only about eight-thirty. The old man’s pension check had come and he wanted his monthly night out.

They had been at the tavern for an hour sitting at the table near the wall with the other old men. DJ was seated behind his grandfather, watching the blonde barmaid as she moved around in the crowded smoky room. She had not asked him to come up to the bar and do his homework as she had before, though he had brought his school papers specially with that in mind. She seemed indifferent to him this night and had done no more than smile at him when she’d brought his cup of black coffee. He sat and watched her, while he listened to the old men’s stories.

She was not wearing the low-cut blouse this time. Instead she had on a long-sleeved black blouse that came up to her neck. She was wearing the same pair of tight blue jeans though, with the deliberate hole in the thigh that revealed that much of her tanned skin. While he watched her he noticed that every time she passed along the bar a man turned on his barstool to look at her and say something. DJ had only a vague idea what a grown man like that one would be saying to her. He had seen the man before around town on the streets, but didn’t know anything about him, not even his name. He seemed to be upsetting her. The blonde woman looked tired and unhappy, and appeared to be much bothered by whatever he was saying, and she gave him no response of any kind after the first two times she passed by, but just went on working in the loud crowded room.

AT THE TABLE ONE OF THE OLD MEN BEGAN TO TELL A story about a lawyer living across the state line in Gilbert Nebraska who had recently disappeared. He owed the bank two hundred and fifty thousand dollars on bad loans, and two weeks ago he went home for lunch and took a single bite out of a meatloaf sandwich his wife had set on his plate, then stood up and walked out the door with his wife in tow and disappeared, leaving the house unlocked and the rest of the sandwich uneaten. The coffeepot was still plugged in and the chair was pushed back from the table, as if they’d decided to leave all at once and couldn’t wait a minute longer. The whole town was surprised. Except the bankers, perhaps. Nobody in Gilbert Nebraska had seen or heard from either one of them since.

I bet they disappeared in Denver, one of the old men said.

Maybe. But they looked for them in Denver. They looked all over. They looked in Omaha.

They probably escaped down south somewhere then. He’s probably one of these front-door people-greeters at Wal-Mart someplace. Was he a old man?

Pretty old.

A old lawyer would do that. That’d be just right for a old lawyer. They should look for him down south in Wal-Mart.

THE OLD MEN WENT ON TALKING AND A HALF HOUR LATER DJ stood up and walked back through the tables to the rest room at the rear of the tavern, past the pool tables and the crowded booths. He went into one of the stalls and read the graffiti and used the toilet. Afterward he was washing his hands at the sink when the man from the bar came in. He was glassy-eyed and weaving. What you doing in here, you little shit?

Washing my hands.

Can’t you read that sign on the door? This is for men, not little kids. Get the fuck out of here.

DJ looked at him and went back out and sat down behind his grandfather. His face was hot and red. He looked for the blonde woman. She was out in the room waiting on a table, standing with her back to him, her blonde hair bright against her black blouse. He opened his papers and did a page of homework. His face was burning and he kept thinking what he should have said or done in the rest room.

When he looked up fifteen minutes later he saw the man was bothering the barmaid again. Without considering what he might do, he stood up from his chair and walked to where they stood at the bar. The man had her by the wrist and was talking in a low mean voice.

Don’t, DJ said. You’re going to hurt her.

What? the man said. Why you little son of a bitch. He slapped DJ across the eyes and nose, knocking him into a table behind him, scattering glasses and ashtrays across the floor.

Well, what in the hell, one of the men at the table said. Hoyt, what you think you’re doing?

The boy straightened himself and ran at him with his head down, but again the man slapped him away and he fell against an empty chair and crashed over with it.

Here, the bartender yelled. Raines, goddamn it, quit that.

The boy’s grandfather came hurrying over and grabbed Hoyt by the shirt. I know how to deal with pups like you, he said.

I’m going to knock the shit out of you, Hoyt Raines said. Let go of me.

They commenced to fight. Hoyt slapped at the old man’s white head and they whirled around and suddenly from behind them the blonde barmaid reached in and grabbed a fistful of Hoyt’s hair. Hoyt’s head jerked backward and his eyes rolled up in their sockets, and he swung about with the old man still hanging on to him and grabbed the woman by the throat and hurled her against the bar. Her blouse tore open, uncovering her breasts in the skimpy pink brassiere, and she let go and clutched at her blouse. Then the boy grabbed a bottle from the bar and smashed Hoyt Raines across the face with it. The bottle broke on his temple and tore his ear and he fell sideways, his knees buckling, and he righted himself and bent forward, bleeding from the side of the face onto the barroom floor. The boy waited to see what else he would do. He held the jagged bottle as if he’d stab him with it if he tried anything.

But the bartender had rushed out from behind the bar, and now he and two other men dragged Hoyt by the arms out the front door onto the sidewalk. When he turned and tried to push past them to come back inside, they shoved him violently away and he fell across the hood of one of the parked cars at the curb and lay sprawled. His face was cut and he was bleeding from the ear, the blood streamed down his neck. He rose gasping, weaving. He began to curse them.

Get the hell out of here, the bartender said. You’re not coming back in here. Go on. He shoved Hoyt.

Fuck you, Hoyt said. He stood glaring at them, wobbly on his feet. Fuck every last one of you.

The bartender shoved him again and he stumbled backward off the sidewalk and sat down in the gutter. He looked all around, then rose and staggered southward down the middle of Main Street in the midst of Saturday night traffic. The cars veered around him, honking and blaring, the people inside the cars, high-school kids, shouting at him, whistling, jeering, and he cursed them too, cursed them all, gesturing at each car obscenely as it went by. He staggered on. Then he turned off into a side street and stumbled into the back alley. Halfway into the alley he stopped and leaned against the brick wall at the rear of one of the stores. A patrol car drove by out in the street. He squatted down behind a trash barrel. Blood was dripping from his ear, and the side of his face felt raw and numb. He waited, panting, squatted in the dark. He managed to light a cigarette and he cupped it in his hand. Then he stood and pissed against the brick wall of the store and stepped away in the shadows, headed out toward the street. When he saw no patrol car he turned toward Detroit.

INSIDE THE TAVERN THE BARMAID HAD HURRIED BACK TO the rest room holding her blouse together, and the men were tending to the old man, who’d bumped his head on one of the tables and was sitting awkwardly on the floor. There was a knot above his ear and he kept mumbling something. They lifted him to his feet and one of the men patted the boy on the back, congratulating him for what he’d done, but the boy ducked away from under the man’s hand.

Leave us alone! he cried. All of you, leave us alone! He stood facing the ring of men. He was almost in tears. Leave us alone, goddamn you!

Why, what the hell? one of the men said. You little son of a bitch, we were trying to help you.

We don’t want your help. Leave us alone.

He took his grandfather by the arm and led him back to their table. We got to go home, he said. He helped the old man into his coat and put on his own coat and gathered up his homework papers, and they went outside.

They walked down the sidewalk past the darkened storefronts. Cars drove past in the street. Across the tracks they turned in at their quiet neighborhood, and went on toward the little dark house. He put his grandfather to bed in the back room, helping him remove his overalls and workshirt and covering him with blankets. The old man lay back in his long underwear and shut his eyes.

Will you be all right now, Grandpa?

The old man opened one eye and peered at him. Yes. Go on, get to bed.

DJ turned the light off and went to his room. Once he was undressed he began to cry. He lay across the bed, hitting at the pillow in the dark. Goddamn you, he sobbed. Goddamn you.

After a while he got up and dressed once more and went into the other bedroom to check on his grandfather, then he went outside to wander the night streets. He crossed the railroad tracks and walked into the south side of Holt, out along the shadowed dark sidewalks past the silent houses.

40

IT WAS LATE BUT NOT YET MIDNIGHT WHEN RAYMOND walked out of Rose’s house to his pickup. They had gone again to the Wagon Wheel Café for dinner and the café had been even more crowded this time, but it didn’t matter, they were having a good time, and afterward they had gone back to her house and drunk coffee and made love. Now he was going home. It was a fine spring night and he was feeling full of pleasure, fortunate beyond any accounting. He started the pickup and he was thinking warmly about Rose, then he got to the corner and there was a boy about to cross the street. Raymond slowed down and the boy stood under the light waiting for him to pass. He saw who it was and stopped. Son, is that you?

The boy didn’t say anything.

DJ, that’s you, isn’t it?

Yes, it’s me.

He stood at the edge of the street, his hands in his coat pockets.

What are you doing? Raymond said. Are you all right?

I’m all right.

Where you going to?

I’m just out walking.

Well. Raymond sat looking at him. Why don’t you get in and let me drive you home. It’s late out here.

I’m not going home yet.

I see. Raymond studied him. Then why don’t you get in and we’ll just drive a little.

You probably need to be somewhere.

Son, there’s no place else for me to be right now. I’d be glad for the company. Why don’t you come get in.

The boy stood looking at him. He looked away up the street. He stood for some time looking up the street. Raymond waited. Then the boy came around in front of the pickup and got in on the passenger side.

You’re just out walking. Is that it? Taking the night air.

Yes sir.

Well, it’s a nice night for it.

Raymond started the pickup and drove out of the dark neighborhood onto Main Street and turned south among the high-school kids in their cars, past the closed stores and the movie house, which had already let out for the night. When they passed the tavern the boy stared at the front of the building, and then turned sideways to look out the back window. At the highway Raymond headed west and drove out past the Legion and Shattuck’s Café, where people were parked in cars at the drive-up under the long tin canopy roof, and then on out of town.

You want to just drive on a ways? Raymond said. Would that be all right with you?

Yes sir.

I wouldn’t mind it myself. Crank that window down if you want some air.

The boy rolled down his window and they went on. The yardlights of the farms were scattered out beyond the dark open fields and at every mile a graveled section road ran exactly north and south, and all along the new spring weeds were growing up at the roadside. A rabbit darted across the pavement in front of them, heading off into the weeds, its white scut flashing as it zigzagged away.

Raymond glanced at the boy. What you suppose spooked him out on the highway?

I wouldn’t know.

The boy was looking straight ahead.

Son, is there something bothering you? Raymond said. You seem a little upset to me.

Maybe.

You kind of seem like it. Is it something you’d care to talk about?

I don’t know.

Well, I can sure listen anyhow. If you want to try.

The boy turned to look out the side window, the headlights shining ahead on the dark road. Then all at once he began to talk. It came pouring out of him, about the fight at the tavern and about the man hurting the barmaid and his grandfather. And he was crying now. Raymond drove on and the boy kept crying and talking. After a while he stopped, he seemed to have spent himself. He wiped at his face.

Is that pretty much all of it? Raymond said. Was there anything else you wanted to tell?

No.

Did he hurt you?

He was hurting her. And Grandpa.

But they’re all right now. Is that what you think?

I guess so.

What about him? Did he get hurt?

He was bleeding.

From where you hit him with the bottle?

Yes sir.

How bad was it?

I don’t know. His face was pretty cut up.

Well. He’ll probably be all right. Don’t you think?

I don’t know if he will or not.

RAYMOND DROVE ON A WAYS FARTHER, THEN THEY CAME back into town. At Shattuck’s Café he pulled in under the canopy and without asking he ordered them each a hamburger and a black coffee and then turned to look at him.

Do you reckon he’d do anything else to you or your grandfather?

I don’t even know who he is.

What did he look like?

He was kind of tall. With dark hair.

That could be any number of people.

They called him Hoyt something.

Oh, Raymond said. Hoyt Raines then. I know who he is. Well, you stay clear of him.

I don’t want him to hurt that woman.

I doubt if he’d try again. Did they kick him out?

Yes.

Then he probably won’t be allowed to go back in there. But you let me know if he bothers you again. Will you promise me to do that?

Yes sir.

All right then.

They finished their hamburgers and coffee and the girl came and took away their tray.

You think you’re about ready to go home now?

Yes.

Raymond backed out onto the highway and drove up through town and stopped at the little house where he’d let the boy and his grandfather out months ago. The boy started to get out.

Son, Raymond said. I’m just wondering here, but do you think you would want to help me some? I could use a hand on the weekends.

Doing what?

Doing whatever needs doing. Working around the ranch.

I guess I could.

I’ll give you a call. How about next weekend? How would next Saturday suit you?

It’d suit me fine.

You’d have to get up early.

What time?

Five-thirty. You think you could do that?

Yes sir. I always get up early.

All right. You take care now. Get yourself some sleep. I’ll give you a call next week.

The boy got out and went up to the house. Raymond sat watching him until the door closed, then drove home. He drove out south and by the time he turned off the highway onto the gravel road he was thinking again about Rose Tyler.

41

LUTHER AND BETTY WALLACE WOKE TO A SUDDEN pounding on the front door. Who’s out there? he called.

It’s Donna, Betty said. She come back to us.

Maybe it ain’t her, Luther said.

She climbed out of bed and called: Donna, I’m coming, honey.

They went down the hallway, Luther in his underwear, Betty in her worn yellow nightdress, and when Luther opened the door Hoyt Raines shoved violently into the room.

No! Betty cried. You can’t come in here. Get back.

Shut up, Hoyt said. He stood before them, his face ragged and blood-smeared, his ear still bleeding a little, his eyes glassy. You two are going to help me whether you like it or not. Those sonsabitches over at the tavern—

You get out of here, Luther said. Just get out.

Goddamn you, Hoyt said. He hit Luther in the chest and Luther stepped backward and sat down all at once on the couch. I got no damn place else to go, Hoyt said.

You can’t stay here, Betty said. They won’t allow it.

Shut up. Hoyt took her arm and flung her onto the couch beside her husband. Just sit there, he said. And keep your goddamn mouth shut.

He went across to the kitchen sink and ducked his head under the faucet, soaking his head, the blood running thinly from his face over the dirty dishes, and then he stood blindly, his lank hair dripping, and grabbed a dish towel to wipe at his head and neck. Luther and Betty sat on the couch, watching him.

So, you heard what I said. I’m staying here tonight.

You can’t, Betty said.

I told you to shut up. Now by God, shut your mouth. He glared at her. It won’t be long. Just for tonight. Maybe two nights. I don’t know yet. Now I want both of you to go back to your room and stay there and keep quiet.

What are you going to do? Luther said.

I’m staying in that back room. And you listen to me: I’ll kill you if you try to call somebody. I’ll hear you on the phone. He looked at them. Did you hear what I just said?

They looked back at him.

Did you?

We ain’t suppose to talk, Luther said. You said for us to shut up.

Now I’m saying you can talk. Did you hear what I said would happen if you try and call somebody?

Yes.

What’d I say?

You said you’d kill us.

Remember that, Hoyt said. Now get up from there.

He herded them back to their room and shut the door, then walked down the hall to the last room. When he opened the door Joy Rae was sitting up in bed in her nightgown, one hand cupped over her mouth. He walked across the room and pulled her onto her feet, and when she began to scream he slapped her. Stop that, he said. He pulled her out in the hall and into the next room, where Richie was crouched on the floor in his pajamas, waiting in the dark, as if preparing to run off. But seeing Hoyt with his sister he lost control of himself. The front of his pajamas suddenly went damp.

You stupid little son of a bitch, Hoyt said. He shoved Joy Rae into the room and lifted the little boy by the arm. Look at you. He slapped him. The boy slipped out of his hands and fell on the wet dirty carpet.

Now take those goddamn pants off. Get out of them.

The boy whimpered and pulled off the soaked pajamas. Then Hoyt took out his belt and began to whip him. The boy screamed, squirming wildly on the floor, his thin bare legs kicking, his hands reaching out to catch the belt. His sister began to scream too, and Hoyt turned and caught her by the nightgown, lifting it up, and began to whip her legs and thin flanks. He seemed crazed, whipping at both of them in an indiscriminate fury, his face contorted with drink and rage, his arm rising and falling, flailing at them, until Luther appeared in the bedroom doorway. Stop it, Luther shouted. You can’t do that no more, so just stop it. Hoyt turned and walked at him and Luther stepped back and he lashed Luther across the neck and Luther yelped and retreated hollering down the hall. Then Hoyt turned on the children again and went on whipping them until he was sweating and panting. Finally he slammed the door and walked back to Joy Rae’s bedroom at the end of the hall.

When he was gone the two children crawled into the bed, crying and sobbing, scarcely able to breathe, and rubbed at their legs and buttocks. Their legs burned and throbbed. Some of the welts were bleeding. In the brief silence between their sobs they could hear their parents wailing from the room down the hall.

THE NEXT MORNING HOYT HAD LUTHER AND BETTY AND Joy Rae and Richie sit in the living room on the couch. He switched on the television and pulled the heavy window curtains shut. The light from the TV flickered in the shadowy room.

At noon he told Betty to make something to eat, and when she’d heated the frozen pizza he made them sit together at the table. Nobody said anything, and only Hoyt ate very much. After this silent meal he forced them back into the living room where he could watch them.

Once in the long afternoon a car drove up and stopped out front in Detroit Street. When he heard the door of the car shut Hoyt looked past the edge of the curtains, and a sheriff’s deputy was walking up the path toward the door, then the deputy knocked and Hoyt cursed between his teeth. He motioned Betty and the two children back to the bedrooms and hissed at Luther to answer the door. Get rid of him. And you goddamn better remember what I said.

Luther went out onto the porch and talked and answered a few questions in his slow manner. Finally the deputy left and Luther came back in and shut the door. Hoyt came out of the hall and watched through the curtains as the car drove off. Then he sat them down on the couch again, to watch television. In the evening he forced them to their beds and in this way the second night passed in the trailer.

The next morning in the gray dawn he was gone. They came out of their bedrooms and discovered that he had vanished without a sound.

AT DAYBREAK HOYT HAD WALKED ACROSS TOWN TO ELTON Chatfield’s house. He had waited at the curb beside Elton’s old pickup until he came out, then caught a ride with him to the feedlot east of Holt. At the feedlot he entered the office and stood at the desk where the manager was talking on the phone to a cattle buyer. The manager looked up at him and frowned and went on talking. After a while he hung up. What are you doing in here? he said. You’re suppose to be riding pens.

I quit, Hoyt said.

What do you mean you quit?

I come to draw my pay.

The hell you have.

You owe me for two weeks. I’ll take it now.

The manager pushed his hat back on his head. You don’t give much notice, do you. He took out a checkbook from a middle drawer and started to write.

I’ll take it in cash, Hoyt said.

What?

I want cash. I don’t need a check.

Well, I’ll be goddamned. You expect me to come up with cash on a Monday morning.

That’s right.

What if I don’t have no cash?

I’ll take what you got.

He studied Hoyt closely. Where you running off to, Hoyt?

That ain’t none of your business.

Some woman chasing you? he said. He took out his wallet and removed what few bills there were and dropped them forward onto the desktop. Now get your ass out of here.

Hoyt stuffed the bills in his pocket. How about giving me a lift over to the highway? he said.

You want a ride?

I want to get over to the highway.

You better start in to walking then. I wouldn’t give you a lift to a goddamn dog fight. Get the fuck out of here.

Hoyt stood for a moment, looking at him, thinking if there was something he needed to say, then he turned and stepped out of the office into the fenced yard. It was already beginning to warm up, the sun risen higher in the sky, the sky completely clear and blue. He walked out past the cattle yards, where the fat cattle were all feeding at the plank troughs at the fences, and walked out onto the gravel road, headed south toward the highway two miles in the distance. There were fields of corn stubble along the road, and small birds flew up from the ditches, chittering as he approached. A pheasant cackled from across the stubble. When he reached the highway he stood at the roadside, leaning against a signpost, waiting for a ride to come along.

Half an hour later a man in a blue Ford pickup stopped beside the road. The man leaned across and rolled down the window. Bud, where you headed to?

Denver, Hoyt said.

Well, get in here. You can ride as far as I’m going.

Hoyt climbed in and shut the door and they drove west toward town. The man glanced at him. What you gone and done to your face there?

Where?

Your nigh ear.

I wasn’t looking and snatched it on a tree limb.

Well. All right then. You got to watch that.

They drove on and passed through Holt and went west on US 34. The highway stretched out before them, lined on both sides by the shallow barrow ditches. Above the ditches the four-strand barbed-wire fences ran along beside the pastures in the flat sandy country, and above the fences the line of telephone poles rose up out of the ground like truncated trees strung together with black wire. Hoyt rode with him through Norka and as far as Brush. Then he got another ride and traveled on, headed west on a Monday morning in springtime.

42

IN SCHOOL THAT MORNING THE CHILDREN WERE DISCOVERED almost at once. One of the young girls in Joy Rae’s fifth-grade class, a girl who had been briefly interested in her weeks before when she had appeared at school with lipstick on her mouth, slipped up to the front of the room in the first hour of classes and addressed the teacher in a voice scarcely above a whisper. The teacher at her desk said: I can’t hear you, come here. What is it you want?

The girl leaned next to the woman’s head and whispered in her ear. The teacher studied her and turned to look out into the classroom at Joy Rae. Joy Rae was bent forward over her desktop. Go back to your seat, the teacher said.

The girl returned to her desk at the middle of the room and the teacher rose and walked as if on some routine inspection out among the rows of students, and stopped near Joy Rae and then caught her breath, raising her hand to her mouth, but collected herself immediately and led Joy Rae out into the hall and down to the nurse.

The little boy, her brother, was called in from his classroom.

Then, as before, against their will and despite their protestations they were examined in the nurse’s room. The boy’s pants were lowered, the girl’s dress was raised, and seeing what she saw this time the nurse said angrily: Oh Jesus Christ, where is Thy mercy, and left to bring the principal into the room, and the principal took one look and went back to his office and called the sheriff’s office at the courthouse and then phoned Rose Tyler at Holt County Social Services.

THE CHILDREN WERE QUESTIONED SEPARATELY. PHOTOGRAPHS were taken and a tape was made of their remarks. They each gave the same story. Nothing had happened. They’d been out playing in the alley and had scratched their legs.

Honey, Rose said, don’t lie now. You don’t have to lie for him. Did he threaten you?

We scratched them on the bushes, the girl said.

Her brother was waiting beyond the door in the hall, and she was standing before the cot in the nurse’s room, her hands twisted in the waist of her thin dress, her eyes filled with tears. Her face looked red and desperate. Rose and the sheriff’s deputy sat across from her, watching her.

What did he threaten you with? the deputy said.

He never done nothing to us. The girl wiped at her eyes and glared at them. It was bushes.

That’ll do, honey, Rose said. Never mind now. We know. You don’t have to say anything more. She put her arm around the girl. You don’t have to lie to protect anybody.

The girl jerked away. You ain’t suppose to touch me, she said.

Honey. Nobody’s going to hurt you anymore.

Nobody can touch me.

The deputy looked at Rose and Rose nodded, and he went out to the principal’s office and phoned the judge who was on call that day and got a verbal emergency custody order. Then he phoned Luther and Betty. He told them to stay at the trailer, that he’d want to see them in a few minutes. Then he came back to the nurse’s room, where Rose had both children with her now, sitting with her arms around them, talking to them quietly. The deputy motioned for her to come out to the hall, and they went out and stood below the vivid artwork of schoolchildren taped to the tiled walls and discussed in low voices what to do next. Rose would take the children to the hospital to be examined by the doctor while he drove to the trailer and talked to Luther and Betty. Afterward they would consult again.

THE SHERIFF’S DEPUTY DROVE ACROSS TOWN TO DETROIT Street and parked the car and got out and stood for a moment looking at the trailer. The spring sun appeared to be too bright against the washed-out siding and the sagging roof, the plank porch, the unwashed windows. In the yard redroot and cheatgrass had begun to sprout up in the pale dirt. When he stepped onto the porch Luther let him in.

He sat down in the living room facing the couch where Luther and Betty sat watching him talk, studying his mouth, as if he were some preacher uttering everlasting pronouncements or the county judge himself saying out the law. He began to feel sick. He decided to make this as brief as possible. He told them they already knew about the children, what had been done to them and when and who had done it.

Betty’s pocked face went all to pieces. We never wanted him in here, she said. We told him he couldn’t come in.

You should of called us.

He was going to kill us, Luther said.

Did he say that?

Yes sir. That’s what he said. He wasn’t fooling.

But it’s too late now, isn’t it. He’s already abused your children. You have any idea where he’s run off to?

No sir.

No idea?

He was already gone when we got up this morning.

And he never said anything to you about where he might go.

He never told us nothing about what he was fixing to do.

Except for how he was going to kill us, Betty said.

The sheriff’s deputy looked around the room for a moment, then turned back. Was he still here yesterday when somebody from the sheriff’s office came to the door?

He was back in the hall there, Luther said. Waiting and listening.

He was?

Yes sir.

Well, we’ll find him. He can’t disappear forever.

But mister, Betty said, where’s our kids?

The deputy looked at her. She sat slumped in the couch, her hands in the lap of her dress, her eyes red with tears. Mrs. Tyler has taken them to the doctor, he said. We have to see how bad your uncle hurt them.

When do we get to see them?

That’s up to Mrs. Tyler. But they won’t be allowed to come back here. You understand that, don’t you? Not to live anyhow. There’ll be a hearing about this, probably on Wednesday.

What do you mean?

Ma’am, the judge has issued an emergency custody order and your children are going to be placed in a foster home. There’ll be a hearing about this within forty-eight hours.

Betty stared at him. Suddenly she threw her head back and wailed. You’re taking my children! I knew you was going to! She began to pull at her hair and scratch at her face. Luther leaned toward her and tried to catch her hands but she shoved him away. The sheriff’s deputy stepped across the room and bent over her. Here, he said. He took hold of her hands. Stop that now. That’s not going to do you any good. What good is that going to do anybody?

Betty shook her head, her eyes rolling unfocused, and she continued to wail into the rank and odoriferous air.

ROSE TOOK THE CHILDREN OUT OF SCHOOL AND DROVE TO the hospital and the doctor examined them in the emergency room. The lacerations were bad but he could find no broken bones. He applied antiseptic ointment to the cuts and welts and dressed the worst ones with bandages.

Afterward Rose drove them to her house and gave them lunch, then she took them with her to Social Services at the courthouse and sat them at a table in the interview room with magazines to look at while she went next door to her office. She spoke with the deputy on the phone and then called three different foster homes and finally reached one with a vacancy in a house at the west side of Holt that belonged to a fifty-year-old woman who had two children already in her care. Then she went back to the interview room and told Joy Rae and Richie what was going to happen. We’ll go by your house first to get some clothes, she said. You can see your parents for a moment. Do you want to?

The children looked at her out of their grave eyes and said nothing. They appeared to have retreated to some unassailable place.

She drove them to Detroit Street to the trailer and went with them inside. Betty was calmer now but there were the distinct red scratches on her cheeks, like the excoriations after an attack by some animal. The children went back to their rooms and gathered several changes of clothes into a grocery bag, and Betty followed behind and petted and whispered to them and cried over them, while Luther stood in the front room looking up the hall, waiting as if he had been blunted by a sudden blow.

When they went outside to the car Betty and Luther followed them into the street, and when the car started away Betty trotted beside it, her face close to the rear window, crying and moaning, calling: I’ll see you soon. I’ll see you tomorrow sometime.

Mama! Richie called.

Joy Rae covered her face with her hands and Luther lumbered along beside Betty until the car sped up. It disappeared around the corner. They stood out in the empty street then, watching where the car had gone, watching nothing.

ON THE WEST SIDE OF TOWN THE WOMAN LET THEM IN. She was tall and thin in a flowered apron and she had a bright way of talking. I’m going to have to learn your names, she said. I just think you’ll like it here. Won’t you. I hope you will. We’re going to try anyway. Now I’m going to show you around first. I just always think people want to see how things are located the first thing. Then they feel better.

Rose waited in the living room while the woman showed the children through her house, starting with the bedrooms they’d be using, then the bathroom and the other children’s room. Then they came back out and Rose told them what they could expect over the next few days. She hugged them before she left and said they should call her at home if they needed anything at all, and printed out her number and the one at the office on a piece of paper and gave the paper to Joy Rae.

ON TUESDAY THERE WERE MEETINGS AND INTERVIEWS.

Luther and Betty met for an hour at the courthouse with a lawyer assigned to them by the court.

The two children were interviewed at the foster home by the guardian ad litem, a young attorney appointed to act in their behalf and represent their best interests. He listened to their story and took notes and they did not go to school that day but stayed at the woman’s house.

The county attorney met with Rose Tyler and the investigating sheriff’s deputy in Rose’s office and drew up the Petition of Dependency and Neglect, which would be filed with the court.

But no one who met that Tuesday in these various meetings was pleased by what was decided in any instance.

ON WEDNESDAY THE SHELTER HEARING WAS CONDUCTED in the middle of the afternoon on the third floor of the courthouse in the civil court across the wide hall from the criminal court. It was a dark wood-paneled room with a high ceiling and tall mullioned windows and benches arranged in rows behind the two tables left and right that were reserved for the attorneys and other involved parties. In front of the two tables was the judge’s bench raised on a dais. The two children did not attend.

Luther and Betty entered the courtroom that afternoon dressed for the formal proceedings. Betty wore a brown dress and new sheer hose, and she had rouged her cheeks to cover the scratches. Her hair was freshly washed and brushed, held back on the sides by a pair of Joy Rae’s plastic barrettes. She looked peculiarly childlike. Luther wore his blue slacks and a plaid shirt with a red tie wound under the collar that was not drawn tight under his chin since the collar could not be buttoned. The tie reached only to the middle of his stomach. They entered and sat down behind the table on the right.

Their attorney came in and sat in the bench behind them, across the aisle from the guardian ad litem. After a while Rose came in with the sheriff’s deputy. He sat next to the G.A.L. and Rose slid in beside Betty and Luther, and she leaned over and took their hands and said they must speak the truth and do the best they could.

Rose, what’s going to happen? Betty said.

We’ll have to see what the judge decides.

I don’t want to lose my kids, Rose. I couldn’t bear that.

Yes. I know, dear.

Rose stood and moved to the other side of the aisle and sat at the table with the county attorney who’d entered the courtroom while she had talked to Luther and Betty. Everyone sat and waited. Outside the courthouse the wind was blowing, they could hear it in the trees. Somebody went by in the hallway, the footsteps echoing. Still, they waited. Finally the judge came in from a side door and the clerk said: All rise, and they rose. Be seated, the clerk said, and they sat down again.

There was just the one civil case this Wednesday. The courtroom was largely empty, and it was hot and stale, smelling of dust and old furniture polish.

The judge called the case from the file before him. Then the county attorney stood and spoke briefly. The judge had already seen the Petition of Dependency and Neglect and the county attorney began to review it for the record. The Petition explained why the children had been taken into emergency custody, described what had been done to them by their mother’s uncle, and stated what both the county attorney’s office and Social Services recommended. The Petition stipulated that the children be kept in foster care until such time as the uncle was apprehended and brought to trial. Until then the children should not be allowed to return to the home, since their parents had not shown that they were capable of protecting them from their uncle thus far. The parents should be granted regular visitations with the children under the supervision of Social Services, and the case should be reviewed at some future time and date.

Then the Wallaces’ lawyer rose and said what he could in their defense, telling the court that Luther and Betty Wallace had been good parents, under the circumstances, and had done the best they could.

Are the parents in the room? the judge said.

Yes, Your Honor. They’re here.

The lawyer motioned to Betty and Luther. They came forward and stood beside him at the table.

You’re aware of what injury was done to your children, aren’t you? the judge said.

Yes sir, Luther said. Your Honor.

Did you make any effort to prevent the injury to your children?

He wouldn’t let us.

Your wife’s uncle. You’re referring to him.

Pardon?

You’re talking about Hoyt Raines. You’re referring to Mr. Raines.

Yes. That’s him.

Did you witness what Mr. Raines was doing to your children?

My husband did, Betty said. I never seen it. Afterward I just seen what he done.

What did you do yourself?

You mean me?

Yes.

I told him he couldn’t do it. When he first come in our house I says, You can’t come in here.

Mr. Wallace. What did you do?

I went on in there, Luther said. I seen him using his belt and I says, You can’t do that. You got to stop that.

Did you physically try to stop him?

Well, like I says, I was in there. Then he come and hit me cross the neck. It’s still stinging me. Luther rubbed at his neck beneath the shirt collar.

What did you do after he whipped you with his belt?

I went back to take care of my wife.

What was she doing?

She was laid out bawling about all what was going on.

So in fact you didn’t do anything.

Luther looked at the judge, then he glanced at Betty, then he faced forward again. I went in there to stop him. But he whipped me cross my neck. With that belt of his.

Yes. I heard you tell the court that you did that much. But just entering the room where he was whipping your children didn’t stop him, did it. That wasn’t enough.

He says he’s going to kill us.

Sir?

He says he’s going to kill us if we done anything.

Mr. Raines told you he would kill you?

Yes sir. That’s exactly what he told us.

That he would kill you if you tried to prevent him from whipping your children.

Yes sir.

If we told on him too, Betty said. If we called somebody on the phone.

That’s right, Luther said. If we called somebody, he says he’s going to hear us, and he’s going to kill us like we was dogs.

So he threatened you both.

He put a threat on us both right in our own house, Luther said.

The judge looked at the file on his desk for a moment. Then he raised his head. This is the second time this has occurred. Isn’t that right?

Yes sir, Your Honor. He done it once before, Luther said.

Do you know where he is now?

No.

Where do you think he might be?

He could be about anywhere. He might be in New York City.

New York City. Do you think that’s where he is?

Might be Vegas too. He’s always talking bout making a killing in Las Vegas.

The judge looked at him. Well. I thank you both for your testimony. You may sit down.

The judge then called the guardian ad litem. The young attorney stood and approached the table and reported his interview with the two children. He closed by submitting his own recommendation to the court.

I’m to understand from what you’ve just informed the court that you concur with the recommendation of the county attorney and the Social Services? the judge said.

That’s right, Your Honor.

Thank you, the judge said. He looked out into the courtroom. In a case like this one, he said, I have to make two determinations. First, on the filing of the Petition of Dependency and Neglect. Secondly, I must make a determination about the custody of the two children. The court has heard the various parties involved in this case. Is there anyone who wants to say something more?

Betty stood up from where she sat behind the table.

Yes? the judge said. Do you have something more to say, Mrs. Wallace?

You’re not going to take my children, are you? Betty said. I love my children.

Yes, ma’am. I appreciate that, the judge said. I believe you and your husband do love your children. That’s not in dispute here.

Don’t take them. Please.

But Mrs. Wallace, it’s evident to the court from the testimony we’ve heard today, including your own testimony, that you can’t protect them. Your uncle has abused them twice. For now, they’re better off in foster care.

But don’t take them. Please don’t.

The court has to decide what is in the best interest of the children.

They’re suppose to be with their mama and daddy.

In most instances, that’s right. The court makes every effort to keep the children with their parents. But in this case, it’s the court’s decision that they’re better served by being placed in foster care. At least for the time being. Until your uncle has been found, Mrs. Wallace.

You mean you’re going to take them away?

You may still see them. Under supervision. They won’t be taken out of the local vicinity. They’ll still be in Holt County and you can visit them on a regular basis.

Oh no! Betty cried. Oh no! No! No! Then she screamed something that was not even words. Her voice rang in the room and it echoed shrilly against the dark paneled walls. She fell back into the church bench and banged her head. Her eyes rolled wildly. Luther tried to help her and she bit his hand.

The judge stood up in surprise. Somebody help her there, he said. Somebody bring this woman a glass of water.

43

AFTER HIS SUPPER OF FRIED MEAT AND FRIED POTATOES, sitting alone at the pinewood table in the kitchen, the house so silent and still with just the sough of wind outside, he rinsed off his meager dishes at the sink and moved into the dining room. He took down the phone from the wall and carried it on its long cord to the parlor and sat in his old recliner chair and called Victoria Roubideaux in Fort Collins.

I was just picking up the phone to call you, she said.

Were you, honey? I just figured it was about my turn. I was wondering if you knew when you and Katie was coming home for the summer. I hope you’re still coming.

Oh, yes. Nothing would change that.

I’ll sure be glad to see you. Both of you.

I’ve only got another couple weeks of classes, then finals.

How’s your classes going?

Okay. You know. It’s school.

Well. It’ll be nice to have you home for a while. How’s my little Katie?

Oh, she’s fine. She talks about you all the time. Here, do you want to say something to her?

The little girl came on.

That you, Katie? he said.

She began to talk immediately and her high voice was clear and excited at once, and she was telling him something about day care and some other little girl there with her, and he couldn’t make out much of what she was saying, but he was satisfied just to hear her voice. Then Victoria took the phone again.

I couldn’t get all of that, Raymond said. She’s a talker, ain’t she.

She talks all the time.

Well, that’s good.

Anyway, I plan to be home by Memorial Day, she said. I’ve been thinking I wanted to take some flowers out to the cemetery.

He’d like that.

I think about him just about every day.

I know. I been catching myself talking to him again.

What do you talk about?

Oh, just the work around here. Like we used to do. Making up our minds about what to do concerning one thing or another. I’m just turning old and crazy, I reckon. Somebody ought to take me out back of the barn and shoot me.

I wouldn’t worry about that. You’re not really worried, are you?

No. I guess not, he said. Well. Now how about Del. I guess he’s still in the picture.

Yes. We were out together last night. We took Katie to a movie downtown. That reminds me — do you think you could use him this summer during haying?

Does he want to do that?

He was asking about it. He wanted me to ask you if you thought that would be all right. If he came out for a while this summer.

Well sure, I could always use another hand. He’d be welcome.

Okay, I’ll tell him, she said. But what about you? Have you seen Rose Tyler again?

Well. We been out several times. We been out to eat dinner.

Are you having fun?

Yes ma’am. I believe you could call it that. At least I think so.

I’m glad. I want to meet her. I haven’t even met her yet.

I believe you’re going to like her. She’s a awful fine woman to me. I want to get us all together once you get home.

And have you been taking care of yourself?

Yes. I’d say so.

Have you been eating right?

Pretty good.

I know you haven’t. I know you don’t eat right. I wish you would.

It’s just awful quiet around here, honey. You say you’ll be home by Memorial Day?

Yes. As soon as I can.

That’ll be good, he said. It’ll be good to see you.

They hung up then and Raymond sat in the parlor at the back of the house with the phone in his lap, musing and remembering. Thinking about Victoria and Katie and about Rose Tyler, and about his dead brother, gone on ahead, already this half year and more.

44

IN A BORROWED CAR MARY WELLS DROVE TO GREELEY, out across the high plains two hours west of Holt, and spent all that warm day going around to various places of business applying for work. She finally found a job late in the afternoon in an insurance office downtown in the old part of the city. Afterward she went to a phone booth and called home. She had begun to feel lighter, she believed things were going to be better now. When she called, the girls were home from school and she told them she would be back by nightfall and they’d all have supper together.

In Holt she returned the car to her friend and then walked along the streets to her own small house on the south side of town. The streets were all empty, with everyone inside eating supper. At home the two girls were waiting for her on the front steps when she walked up to the house. Were you worried about me? she said.

You took so long.

I came as fast as I could. But it’s all right now. I’m home.

They went inside and she cooked supper for them, and they sat in the kitchen and she told them about finding a job in Greeley that afternoon. It’ll be better there, she said. We can make a fresh start.

I don’t want to move, Dena said.

I know, honey. But I think we should. I’m sorry. But I can’t stay here and you know I have to work and support us. I can’t do that here. We’ll have to rent an apartment at first. That’s all I can afford for right now. I’ll have a truck rented for three or four days to move us out. And then we’ll stay in a motel and look for an apartment. She looked at both of the girls, their faces so young and dear. Maybe we can find one with a view of the mountains. How would that be?

We won’t have any friends there, Dena said.

Not yet. But you will have. We’ll all make new friends.

What about DJ?

What do you mean?

He’s going to be alone. After we leave.

You can write him. And it’s only two hours away, so he can come visit sometime. And maybe you can come back here to visit him.

It’s not the same.

Oh, honey, I can’t fix everything, she said. She looked at them and both girls were ready to cry.

But I brought you something, she said. She went out to the front room and returned with two packages and set them on the table. One was a yellow dress for Emma, who tried it on and twirled around for them to see. The other package was a little container of concealer. The slogan said: Covers completely. I’ll show you how to use it, their mother said.

What is it?

I’ll show you.

She stood over Dena and squeezed the little tube and caught some of the beige paste onto her finger and dabbed it on the girl’s scar beside her eye and smoothed it in. The scar was still red and shiny and the makeup dulled it a little. The girl went into the bathroom to look at herself in the mirror and then came back out.

What do you think? Mary Wells said. Isn’t that better?

You can still see it, though.

But it’s better, honey. Don’t you think it is? I think it looks a lot better.

It’s okay, Mama.

ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON WHEN MARY WELLS AND THE girls were loading the rental truck, DJ came to the house after school and helped them carry out the last things. Mary Wells had decided she could wait no longer. The manager at the insurance office wanted her to start work by the middle of the next week and she knew if she put off the move she might not be able to move at all. She doubted she would still have the volition and energy. She had listed the house with a realtor, and at school she had spoken to the principal and the girls’ teachers, and the girls would be allowed to withdraw with passing grades since there were only two weeks of classes left and both girls had done satisfactory work throughout the year.

In those last few days, DJ and Dena went to the shed at the back alley every afternoon and sat at the table across from each other in the little dark room and lit the candles. They ate their snacks of crackers and cheese and drank cold coffee and talked.

Mama said I can write you, Dena told him. Will you write me back?

I guess so. I never wrote any letters before.

But you can write me. And Mama said you can visit sometime.

All right.

Don’t you want to?

I said all right.

What do you think of my face?

Your face?

My scar.

It looks okay. I don’t know.

Do you think this makeup helps it not show as much?

It looks okay to me. I didn’t mind it before.

Everybody keeps looking at me. I hate it.

The hell with them, he said. Never mind those other kids. They don’t know anything.

Dena stared at him and touched his hand, and he kept looking at her, then she drew her hand back and he turned away.

Do you want any more of these crackers here? he said.

Do you?

Yes.

Then I do too.

THEN IN THE AFTERNOON THE TRUCK WAS LOADED AND the big overhead door was pulled down at the back. They came out of the house and Mary Wells locked up for the last time. DJ was standing at the curb waiting and she came out to the street and suddenly took him in her arms. Oh, we’re going to miss you, DJ, she said. We’re going to miss you so much. You take care of yourself now. She released him and looked in his face. Will you do that?

Yes ma’am.

I mean it. You have to take care of yourself.

I will.

All right. We need to go. She went around and climbed into the cab. The two girls stood facing him and Emma was already crying. She hugged him quickly around the waist and ran and climbed up into the truck and buried her face in her mother’s lap.

I’ll write you, Dena said. Don’t forget.

I won’t.

She stepped forward and kissed him on the cheek, then stood back and looked at him, and he stood watching her, his hands in his pockets, looking forlorn and desolate already, and then she turned and got into the truck. The truck started up and she sat at the window, lifting her hand, waving slightly, whispering good-bye to him, and he stood on the curb until they had pulled away and had turned the corner and disappeared.

After they were gone he went up on the porch and looked through the front window. All empty inside, it looked strange to him now. He walked around behind into the alley past the widows’ houses and the vacant lot and his grandfather’s house.

THE LITTLE WOODEN SHED WAS DIM AND FILLED WITH shadows. He lit one of the candles and sat down at the table, looking around at the dark back wall and the shelf. The candlelight was flickering and dancing on the walls. There was little to see. The framed picture of the baby Jesus hanging on the wall. Some of their board games. Old plates and pieces of silverware in a box. It didn’t feel good in the shed without her. Nothing there was the same. He whistled through his teeth, softly, a tune he thought of. Then he stopped. He stood and blew out the candle and went outside and fastened the latch. He stood looking for a long time at the old abandoned house across the backyard grown up in weeds, the old black Desoto rusting among the bushes. Then he entered the alley once more. Night was falling. He’d have to go home and make supper. His grandfather would be waiting. It was already past the hour at which his grandfather wanted his supper.

45

ON A WARM WINDLESS AFTERNOON ROSE TYLER STOPPED at the trailer on Detroit Street and honked and waited, and after a while Luther and Betty Wallace stepped out onto the porch. Luther lifted his hand to shade his eyes, then he removed a washrag from the pocket of his sweatpants and dabbed at his eyes, and afterward put the rag away and took Betty by the arm and led her down the porch steps out along the dirt path to the car at the edge of the weeds. They got in and Rose drove them across town. Everything’s going to be all right, she said. Try not to worry.

The woman was wearing an apron when she let them in. Hello, Rose said. We’re here.

Come in, the woman said.

This is Mr. and Mrs. Wallace.

I’ve been expecting you. How do you do.

How do you do, ma’am, Luther said. He shook her hand. Betty shook hands, but said nothing.

Please come in. I’ll go get Joy Rae and Richie.

The Wallaces entered her house as if they were entering some formal place where circumspection was the custom. They sat together on the couch. She got a nice house here, don’t she, Luther said. Real nice.

Rose sat down across from them, and presently the woman brought their children out from the back room. They stood beside her and glanced once shyly at their parents, then looked away. Their clothes appeared to have been freshly washed and ironed, and Joy Rae’s bangs were trimmed in a straight line across her forehead.

You can sit there with your mother and father, the woman said. She gave them a little push.

The children sat down on the couch next to Betty. They didn’t say anything. They seemed to be much embarrassed by the occasion. Betty took Joy Rae’s hand and pulled her close and kissed her face and then leaned across and kissed Richie. Both children sat back and wiped at their faces and looked out into the room.

The woman excused herself to go into the kitchen, and Rose stood up. I’m going to leave you too. You’ll want to catch up a little, by yourselves, won’t you. Then she followed the woman into the kitchen.

You look so nice, honey, Betty told Joy Rae. Did you get your hair cut?

Yes.

It looks so nice. Did she cut it for you?

She cut it last week.

Well, it looks real nice on you. And how you been doing, Richie?

Okay.

What you been doing with yourself?

Reading.

Is it a book from school?

No, it’s from church. They said I could keep it.

And I guess you been playing with other kids?

Sometimes we have.

Then the front door opened. Two young girls in bright dresses came in and stopped and stood looking at the Wallace family and then went on to the back of the house.

Who’s that? Betty whispered.

Her other ones.

Her other foster kids?

We don’t see them much, Joy Rae said. They don’t want nothing to do with us.

ROSE CAME BACK IN AND THE WOMAN FOLLOWED HER WITH a plate of cookies and set the plate on the side table.

Joy Rae, the woman said, why don’t you ask your parents if they would like a cookie. And Richie, would you pass around these napkins.

The children rose and did as they were asked.

Would you care for some tea? the woman said.

Oh, no thank you, ma’am, Luther said. We’re doing pretty good just the way we are.

They all sat and ate the cookies and tried to think what there was to say.

Finally Luther leaned forward on the couch toward the woman. My eyes been burning me some, he said. I reckon I got me some kind of eye infection. Might be pinkeye. I don’t know what it is. He took a bite of his cookie and set what was left of it on a napkin on the arm of the couch and pulled out the washrag from his pocket and dabbed at his weepy eyes. And my wife, he said, her stomach’s been acting up again on her too. Ain’t it, dear? Acting up bad.

It’s been acting up real bad, Betty said. She laid her hand over her stomach and massaged at a place under her breasts.

We’ll make appointments for both of you to see the doctor, Rose said. It’s time again, isn’t it.

When you think that’ll be? Luther said.

As soon as I can get you in. I’ll call yet today.

I don’t want to see that same doctor I seen the last time, Betty said. I don’t want to see him again ever.

He ain’t never done you no good, has he, Luther said.

He give me some pills. That’s bout all he ever did.

We’ll see, Rose said. I’ll try to get you in to see Dr. Martin. You’ll like him better.

Then they fell again into an awkward silence.

Joy Rae, the woman said, why don’t you see if your parents are ready for another cookie.

I could stand me another one, Luther said. How bout you, dear?

If it don’t grip my stomach too much, Betty said.

Joy Rae stood in front of each of them offering the plate of cookies and then set it down and returned to the couch and sat beside her brother and put her arm around him. The little boy moved closer to her and laid his head on her shoulder, as if there were nothing else to do in such circumstances.

46

SHE CALLED RAYMOND IN THE LATE AFTERNOON AND HE was still outside. She called him again an hour later and he had come up from the horse barn by that time in the lowering afternoon sun, and he picked up the phone. I want to go out for dinner, she said.

When would you want to do that?

Now. This evening. I want you to take me out for dinner right now this evening.

It’ll be my pleasure, he said. I’ll have to clean up first.

I’ll be waiting for you, Rose said, and hung up.

He showered and changed into his town clothes and drove into Holt in the pickup. It was still light outside and would be yet, now that daylight savings had started, for another two hours.

He went up to the door and she came out at once and he walked her to the pickup. She seemed disturbed by something. They went out to the Wagon Wheel Café on the highway as before, and over dinner she told him about taking the Wallaces to see their children at the foster home at the west side of town. He asked questions when he needed to, but mostly he only listened, and afterward he drove her back to her house.

Will you come in for a while? she said. Please.

Of course. If you want me to.

They stepped inside and she said: Why don’t you have a seat and I’ll make coffee.

Thank you, he said. He sat in his accustomed chair and looked around, studying a painting of hers he particularly liked, a watercolor of a stand of trees with their leaves all gone, just the bare trunks remaining, a windbreak on a hill, and brown grass on the hill against a winter sky. She had other pictures on the walls, but they seemed too bright to him and he didn’t like them as well. He could hear her out in the kitchen. You want any help? he called.

No, she called back. I’m coming.

She came in and set his cup on the side table next to his chair and she sat down on the couch across the room and placed her cup on the coffee table before her. Then, without warning, she began to cry.

Raymond set his cup down and looked at her. Rose. What is it? Have I done something wrong?

No, she said. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hands. It’s not you. It’s not you at all. I’ve just felt sad all afternoon. Ever since we went to the foster home. It was okay really, but it just seemed sad to me.

There wasn’t nothing else to be done about it, was there? he said.

No. But I’ve felt like weeping all afternoon. I told them everything would be all right. That was a lie. I didn’t tell them the truth. This isn’t any kind of a priority for the police. The police aren’t going to find her uncle and they won’t get their children back. Those kids will be kept in foster homes till they’re eighteen or till they just run away. Everything is not going to be all right.

Probably not, Raymond said.

Her eyes filled with tears again and she took out a handkerchief, and Raymond sat watching her, then he stood and crossed to the couch and sat down and put his arm around her shoulder.

She wiped at her tears and turned to face him. I’ve done this kind of thing so many times, she said. And today they could only mention their physical ailments. I don’t blame them for that. That’s all they know how to talk about. So I called the doctor and made them an appointment. But what good can any doctor do?

Not enough, Raymond said. A doctor couldn’t of done nothing for my brother, either.

She looked up at him. His iron-gray hair was so stiff on his head, his face so red from all the years of fierce weather he’d worked in. Still, she could see the kindness there. She settled into his shoulder.

I’m sorry to go on so, she said. Thank you for listening. And coming over here to sit next to me without my having to ask. It means a lot to me, Raymond. You mean a lot to me.

Well, Raymond said. He drew her slightly closer to him. That goes both ways, Rose.

Then she began to weep again, against his shoulder while he held her. They sat for a long time in this way, without moving, without talking.

AND NOW, OUTSIDE THE HOUSE, BEYOND THE SILENT ROOM they sat in, the dark began to collect along the street.

And soon now the streetlamps would come on, flickering and shuddering, to illuminate all the corners of Holt.

And farther away, outside of town, out on the high plains, there would be the blue yardlights shining from the tall poles at all the isolated farms and ranches in all the flat treeless country, and presently the wind would come up, blowing across the open spaces, traveling without obstruction across the wide fields of winter wheat and across the ancient native pastures and the graveled county roads, carrying with it a pale dust as the dark approached and the nighttime gathered round.

And still in the room they sat together quietly, the old man with his arm around this kind woman, waiting for what would come.