Plainsong

  She unlocked the door and took the kit out to the kitchen and showed it to Maggie Jones who looked inside the little window. Well, honey, yes, she said. Now we know. Are you all right?

  I think I am, the girl said.

  Good. I’ll make you an appointment.

  You have to do that already?

  It’s better to go right away. You don’t want to be careless. You should’ve gone before this. Do you have somebody you go to?

  No.

  When was the last time you saw anyone? For any reason.

  I don’t know, the girl said. Six or seven years ago. I was sick then.

  Who was it?

  It was an old man. I don’t remember his name.

  That would be Dr. Martin.

  But Mrs. Jones, the girl said. Isn’t there a woman doctor I could go to?

  Not here. Not in Holt.

  Maybe I could go to another town.

  Honey, Maggie Jones said. Victoria. Listen to me. You’re here now. This is where you are.

  Ike and Bobby.

  Midnight. He came back from the bathroom into the glassy room, where his brother slept undisturbed in the single bed against the north wall. Despite windows in three of the walls the room was dark. There was no moon. He looked once toward the west and then stood still, peering out. In the sunken vacant house to the west was a flicker of light. He could see it beyond the back wall of the old man’s house next door. It was indistinct, as if seen through haze or fog, but it was there. A steady faint wavering light. Then he could see somebody was in the room too.

  He shoved at Bobby.

  What? Bobby turned over. Quit it.

  Look at this.

  Stop poking.

  In that old house, Ike said.

  What is it?

  Bobby kneeled up in his pajamas and peered out the window. At the dead end of Railroad Street the light flickered and waltzed in the small square of the window in the old house.

  What about it?

  Somebody’s over there.

  Then somebody, whoever it was, passed by the window again, silhouetted against the dim light.

  Ike turned away and began to haul on his clothes.

  What are you doing?

  I’m going over there. He hiked his pants on over his pajamas and bent to pull on his socks.

  Can’t you wait? Bobby said. He slid out of bed and dressed rapidly.

  They carried their shoes down the hall and stopped at the top landing where they could see into their father’s room, dark at the front of the house; through the open door they could hear him, it was like rattling, then a release then a pause, then like rattling again. They went downstairs one after the other, being quiet, and moved to the porch and sat on the steps to put on their shoes. Outside it was fresh, almost cold. The sky was clear and crowded with stars, the stars looked hard and pure. The last clinging leaves at the tops of the cottonwoods washed and fluttered in the soft nightwind.

  They moved away from the house out across the drive onto Railroad Street and under the purple-shining streetlamp purring high on its pole and stayed along the edge of the dirt road, moving out of the pool of light into the increasing dark. The old man’s house next door was silent and pale, like the gray houses of dreams. They went on along the road edge. Then they could see it. Parked at the side of the road one hundred feet ahead in the ragweed was a dark car.

  They stopped abruptly. Ike motioned and they ducked into the railroad ditch and walked quiet in the dry weeds. When they came opposite the car they stopped again. They studied it, the faint starlit glint on its round hood and trunk, the silver hubcaps. They couldn’t hear anything, even the wind had stopped. They came up out of the ditch toward the car, feeling exposed now in the open road, but when they rose up and looked past the car windows they found there was nobody and nothing inside, only empty beer cans on the floorboards and a jacket thrown over the backseat. They went on. They rounded to the locust trees in the front yard and stopped, then moved again, stepping into the wild overgrown lot of cheetweed and dead sunflowers, and moved across it and gained the side of the house. They slid along the cold clapboards until they came to the window where the flicker of light spilled out onto the side yard, where it flickered ever more faintly in a kind of illuminated echo on the dirt and the dry weeds.

  Then they could hear talking coming from inside. There was no glass in the window since the panes had been smashed in by thrown rocks years ago. But there was still an old lacy yellowed crocheted curtain hanging over the void of the frame, and through the gauze of the curtain when they raised their heads they could see a blond girl lying on the floor on an old mattress. Two candles were set into beer bottles on the floor and in the flickering light they saw that the girl was one of the high school girls they often saw on Main Street, and she was completely naked. An army blanket was spread over the mattress and she was lying on the blanket with her knees raised up and they could see the damp hair glistening between her legs and her soft flattened breasts and her hips and thin arms, and she was the color of cream all over and pink-toned and they looked at her in surprise and something akin to religious astoundment and awe. Lying next to her there was a big hard-muscled red-haired boy who was as naked as she was, only he was wearing a gray tee-shirt that had its sleeves cut off. He was from the high school too. They’d also seen him before. And now he was saying, That’s not it. Because it’s only this once.

  Why? the girl said.

  I told you. Because he come along with us tonight. Because if he did I told him he could.

  But I don’t want to.

  Do it for me then.

  You don’t love me, the girl said.

  I told you I did.

  Like hell. If you did you wouldn’t make me do this.

  I’m not making you, he said. I’m only saying for a favor.

  But I don’t want to.

  Okay, Sharlene. Fuck it. You don’t have to.

  The high school boy got up from the mattress. The two boys watched him from outside the house. He stood in the candlelight in the sleeveless tee-shirt, bare-legged, muscular, tall. His was big. The hair was red too, but lighter, orange looking, above it; it had a purple head. He bent and picked up his jeans, stepped into them and hauled them up and buckled the belt.

  Russ, the girl said. She was looking at him from the mattress, watching his face.

  What?

  Are you mad?

  I already told him, he said. Now I don’t know what I’m going to tell him.

  All right, she said. I will, for you. I don’t want him to, though.

  He looked at her. I know, he said. I’ll go tell him.

  But you better appreciate this, goddamn it.

  I appreciate it.

  I mean you better appreciate it afterwards too, the girl said.

  He went out through the open door and in the dark from outside the house they watched her by herself now. She turned on her side toward them and shook cigarettes from a red pack and lit one leaning forward toward the flame of the candle, her breasts swinging free, cone-shaped, her slender thigh and girl’s flank sleek in the dancing candlelight, and lay back and smoked and blew the smoke straight up above her into the room and flicked the ashes onto the floor. She lifted her other arm and inspected the back of her hand and ran her hand through her blond hair and brushed it back away from her face. Then there was another boy standing in the doorway looking at her. He came into the room. He was a big boy too, from the high school.

  The girl didn’t even look at him. This isn’t on account of you, she said. So don’t get any idea that it is.

  I know, he said.

  Just so you do.

  You going to let me set down?

  Well I’m not going to stand up, she said.

  He squatted on the army blanket and looked at her. After a moment he reached out and with the extended fingers of one hand touched one of her dark nipples.

  What are you doing? the girl said.

  He said it was all rig
ht.

  It’s not fucking all right. But I told him. So hurry up.

  I’m going to, the boy said.

  Take your clothes off, she said. For christsakes.

  He kicked his shoes off and unbuckled his belt and dropped his pants and underwear, and from outside the house they watched him now, and they could see he had hair too. The one he had was bigger and it was swollen-looking, sticking straight up, and without saying any word at all to her he stretched out on her, lying between her legs while she had her knees up, spread again, adjusting under his weight. He started moving on her at once. They could see his pale ass cheeks rising and falling. Then quicker and then beginning to pound and after a brief time he shouted something wild and unintelligible as if he were in pain, crying some kind of words into her neck and he jerked and shivered and then he stopped, and all the time she lay wordlessly and still, looking at the ceiling with her arms flat at her sides as if she were in some other place and he was not in her life at all.

  Get off, she said.

  The big boy raised up and looked in her face and rolled from her body and lay on his back on the blanket. In a little while he said, Hey.

  She took up her cigarette from the jar lid where she had placed it when he had come in and she puffed on the cigarette but it had gone out. She leaned toward the candle flame and lit it again.

  Hey, he said again. Sharlene?

  What?

  You’re good.

  Well, you’re not.

  He lifted up onto his elbow on the mattress to look at her. Why is that?

  She didn’t look at him. She was lying back again, smoking, looking straight up toward the spot where the candlelight was flickering on the filthy ceiling. Why don’t you get the hell out of here.

  What’d I do that was so bad? he said.

  Will you just get the hell out of here. She was almost shouting now.

  He stood up and put his clothes on, looking down at her all the time. Then he went out of the room.

  The first boy came back in, fully dressed. He was wearing a high school jacket now.

  The girl looked at him from the mattress.

  How was it? he said.

  Don’t be ridiculous. You could at least come here and kiss me.

  He squatted down and kissed her on the mouth and fondled her breast and put his hand in the hair between her legs.

  Quit, she said. Don’t. Let’s get out of here. It’s starting to give me the creeps in here.

  From beyond the window the two boys watched the big high school boy leave the room. Then they watched the girl step into her underpants and pull them up and fasten her white brassiere, her elbows pointed out from her body, her hands working behind her back, then she shook the brassiere, and then she stepped into her jeans and pulled a shirt over her head, and lastly she bent and blew out the two candles. Instantly the room went dark and they heard only her footsteps going out across the bare pinewood floor. Outside they slid forward toward the front of the house and hid in the dark against the cold clapboards and watched without a word when the girl and the two big boys came out into the overgrown lot and crossed under the trees and got into the car and then drove away in the dark on Railroad Street, leaving only the red eyes of the taillights diminishing in the faint dust above the road as the car rushed away toward Main Street and downtown.

  That son of a bitch, Ike said.

  That other one too, Bobby said. What about him.

  They stepped out into the ragweed and dry sunflowers and started home.

  McPherons.

  They had the cattle in the corral already, the mother cows and the two-year-old heifers waiting in the bright cold late-fall afternoon. The cows were moiling and bawling and the dust rose in the cold air and hung above the corrals and chutes like brown clouds of gnats swimming in schools above the cold ground. The two old McPheron brothers stood at the far end of the corral surveying the cattle. They wore jeans and boots and canvas chore jackets and caps with flannel earflaps. At the tip of Harold’s nose a watery drip quivered, then dropped off, while Raymond’s eyes were bleary and red from the cow dust and the cold. They were almost ready now. They were waiting only for Tom Guthrie to come and help, so they could finish this work for the fall. They stood in the corral and looked past the cattle and examined the sky.

  I reckon it’s decided to hold off, Raymond said. It don’t appear like it wants to snow anymore.

  It’s too cold to snow, Harold said. Too dry, too.

  It might snow tonight, Raymond said. I’ve seen it happen.

  It’s not going to snow, Harold said. Look at the sky over there.

  That’s what I’m looking at, Raymond said.

  They turned back to surveying the cattle. Then without saying anything more they left the corral and drove to the horse barn where they backed the pickup into the wide sliding door of the bay and began to load the vaccination guns, the Ivermec, the medicine vials and the cattle prods into the back end. They lifted the smudge pot in with the other gear and wired the tall blackened smokestack to the sideboards, and returned to the corral to the squeeze chute and set the equipment out on the upended wooden telephone spool they used for a table. The smudge pot they stood upright on the ground near the chute and Harold bent over stiffly and held a match to it. When it ignited he adjusted the flue so it gave off heat, and its smoke rose black and smelling of kerosene into the wintry air, mixing with the cattle dust.

  They looked up at the sound of a truck out beyond the house: Guthrie’s pickup just turning off the county road. It came on around the house and the few outbuildings past the stunted trees and pulled up where they stood waiting. Guthrie and the two boys climbed out in their winter coats and caps.

  Now who’s these hired men? Harold said. He looked at Ike and Bobby standing beside their father.

  I brought them along, Guthrie said. They said they wanted to come.

  Well I just hope they’re not too costly, Harold said. We can’t afford any city wages. Tom, you know that. He was speaking soberly, in a kind of mock quarrelsome voice. The two boys stared back at him.

  I can’t say what they’ll charge, Guthrie said. You’ll have to ask them.

  Raymond stepped up. What say, you boys. What’s this going to put us back today?

  They turned toward this second old man, younger than the other one, his face raw looking and grizzled in the cold air and his dirty cap pulled down low above his dust-bleared eyes. How much you going to charge us to join this escapade? he said.

  They didn’t know what to say. They shrugged their shoulders and looked at their father.

  Well, Raymond said. I reckon we’ll have to negotiate it later. After we see how you manage.

  He winked and turned away and then they understood it was all right. They walked over to the chute and stood at the makeshift table and looked at the vaccination guns and the boxes of medicine vials. They inspected it all and felt cautiously of the dehorner, its sharp cupped blood-encrusted ends, and they edged up to the smudge pot and held out their gloved hands to its gassy heat. Suddenly one of the cows bawled from inside the corral and they ducked to see through the boards to tell which one it was, and the cattle were milling around waiting for what was to come.

  The men went to work. Guthrie climbed into the corral and immediately the cattle eyed him and began to shove back against the far side of the lot. He walked steadily toward them. The cattle started to herd and shift along the back fence, and he ran up swiftly, cutting off the last two animals, a black heifer and an old speckle-faced cow, and turned them back out across the trampled dirt. They tried to double back, but each time he flapped his arms and yelled at them, and finally they trotted suspiciously into the narrow alley that fed into the chute. From outside the alley, Raymond jammed a pole though the fence behind them so they couldn’t back out and then he jabbed the heifer with the electric prod and it made a sizzling sound against her flank, and she snorted and leaped into the squeeze chute. He caught her head in the head-catch and she kic
ked and crashed until he squeezed the sidebars against her ribs. She lifted her black rubbery muzzle and bawled in terror.

  Meanwhile Harold had taken off his canvas jacket and pulled on an old orange sweatshirt that had one of its sleeves scissored off, and he had greased his bare arm with lubricant jelly. Now he stepped up behind the chute and twisted the heifer’s tail over her back. He fit his hand inside her and pawed out the loose green warm manure and shoved in deeper, feeling for a calf. His face was turned skyward against her flank, his eyes squinted shut in concentration. He could feel the round hard knot of the cervix, the larger swelling beyond. He rotated his hand over it. The bones were already forming.

  Yeah. She’s got one, he hollered to Raymond.

  He withdrew his arm. It was red and slick, spotted with mucus and flecks of manure and little threads of blood. He held his arm away from his body and it steamed in the cold air, and while he waited for the next one to come in he stood near the smudge pot beside the two boys to warm himself. They looked at his arm in fascination and then looked up into his old reddened face and he nodded at them, and they turned to watch the heifer in the chute.

  While his brother had felt inside her for a calf Raymond had checked her eyes and mouth, and now he shot her in the hip, high up with the two vaccination guns, injecting her with Ivermec against lice and worms, and lepto against aborting. When he was done he opened the chute and she jumped out crow-hopping, kicking up loose dirt and hard clods of manure, and she came to a stop in the middle of the holding pen where she swung her head around, bawling forlornly into the wintry afternoon, and slung a long silver rope of slaver across her shoulder.