The Virgin of Small Plains

  “Did we lose any cows?”

  “No, just the one calf, but we didn’t get around to every pasture.”

  “You didn’t?” She coughed repeatedly, grabbed a tissue from a box on the floor, blew her nose a few times, and then said, “You’ve been gone a long time. Why are you holding your arm like that? Is something the matter with your hand?”

  “Nothing. I hit it—”

  “Come here, let me see it.”

  “Mom, it’s okay—”

  “Come here, Rex.”

  He went and sat down on the edge of her bed, and showed her his fist. In the glow of the bedside light that she had turned on, it looked viciously discolored. He saw he had cut it, right across the top of his knuckles, and there was blood. The snow and cold had limited the ooze, and kept the swelling down so far.

  “Good grief. What did you do, hit your brother with it?”

  He stared at her. How did she always know?

  She sighed. “I won’t even ask why. The two of you don’t need a reason, do you? I want you to ice that down before you go to bed.” She kept small plastic bags full of ice at the ready in the freezer, for tending the wounds of athletic sons and a husband who did physically dangerous work. But then she looked up from his hand, directly into his face. “What’s the matter, Rex?” She frowned, cocked her head, as if listening for something. “Did you come in by yourself? Where’s your brother? Where’s your father?”

  His dad had told him not to tell her. He was supposed to wait for his father to do it. But he hurt, and he was exhausted, wound-up, confused, and upset, and she was his mom, the best listener of any person he’d ever known.

  Rex started at the beginning, and told her everything.

  He didn’t stop until his hand began to ache so bad that it was either go get some Tylenol for the pain, or start to cry.

  Chapter Four

  Mitch and Abby kissed and tortured each other until the coast was clear.

  “Now?” he asked her.

  Feeling equal parts shy, sure, scared, and excited, Abby nodded.

  Mitch slipped out of her bed, and got back into his jeans and undershirt, leaving his boxers, sweater, shoes, socks, and winter coat behind in the room. When Abby saw how he had to struggle—carefully!—to get his half-cocked penis back into his pants, she giggled, and when he saw why she was laughing, he flushed as red as the valentine she had taped to the wall above her bed. “Very funny,” he said with mock sarcasm, and they both laughed. He made a comedy out of walking bowlegged to the door. They both flinched when he turned the lock and it clicked open. After a tense moment of waiting to see if anybody else had heard it, Mitch sneaked through, turning around just long enough to flash her a grin.

  She blew him a kiss, and mouthed, “I love you!”

  Mitch left her door ajar, so he could slip back in later.

  Abby quietly jumped out of bed and pushed all evidence of him under her bed, just in case. She slipped on his red-and-white football jersey that she slept in every night, inhaled the scent of him that clung to it, and let it slide down her body. Then she got back into bed to wait for him.

  She didn’t feel any guilt about lying to her mother. In her family, they lied to each other all the time, and only laughed about it when they got caught. “Don’t tell your mother I ate that second piece of pie,” her father might say. “Abby, don’t tell your dad I threw his old tie out with the trash,” Margie might say. Abby lied for her older sister, Ellen, and Ellen, when she was home from KU, lied for her. They were tiny lies, Abby thought, the lies that made it possible to live life without feeling totally chained down to other people’s expectations, the lies that gave ordinary days a little spice and adventure. There was nothing wrong with it, in her opinion, though it boggled Mitch’s mind when he heard them do it. His tiny family—the judge, Nadine, Mitch—lied to each other, too, Abby knew, but there was hell to pay if they got caught, which made them extra careful around one another. “That’s the whole difference between our families,” Abby had once told Mitch. “You guys are so formal, and you take everything so seriously, and we don’t. And that’s weird, because my dad’s the one who’s a doctor, where a lot of things really are life and death, but we don’t act like it. Every time you do anything wrong, it seems like it’s a capital offense.”

  “Well, my dad is a judge,” Mitch had pointed out. “Guilt, innocence…”

  He had drawn a finger across his neck, and made a sound like having his throat slit.

  Abby had shivered, moved his finger out of the way, and kissed his Adam’s apple.

  But that was also the good news—the little white lies came easy to her, but no lies at all came easily to Mitch. Even listening to him ask Rex to cover for him, she’d heard how tense he had sounded, how quickly he’d hung up, as if he didn’t want to dwell on it. Abby figured she would be able to tell if Mitch ever lied to her. She took it for granted that he was as loyal as he was honest. What he said he’d do, he’d do. And if he didn’t, he’d tell her the truth about why not. Which also meant, however, that if her mom or dad caught him on the stairs and asked him what he was doing there at this hour, in his bare feet, poor Mitch might blurt, “I’m going to get a rubber so I can screw your daughter for the first time!” At the thought of it, Abby felt contented laughter bubbling up from her heart, and before she knew it, she had to bury her face in her pillow to hide her giggles again.

  Then she heard a phone ring, but not in her room, and her giggles died abruptly.

  It was her father’s medical emergency line, ringing on that phone in their bedroom.

  “No!” Abby whisper-yelled into her pillow. “Please, please, please! Not tonight, please, please don’t anybody need him tonight!”

  Thank God the Reynoldses had wall-to-wall carpeting everywhere, Mitch thought, as he crept down the second floor landing, and then down the carpeted stairs to the first floor. And thank God Margie Reynolds believed in night-lights, so there was at least some illumination for his trek. As well as he knew this house, which was nearly as well as he knew his own, he still didn’t know it well enough to move blindfolded in the dark.

  He made himself think about what he could do or say if either of Abby’s parents woke up and discovered him sneaking through their house in the dark. Mrs. Reynolds might forgive him, but Mitch had a feeling Doc Reynolds might not be so easy on him.

  “Mitch?” he’d say in that bass, raspy, rumbling voice of his that made everything he said sound well-thought-out and important, even if he only said hello or good-bye or pass the pie. When Quentin Reynolds told people they were cancer-free, they took it as a pronouncement of Gospel truth; if he told them they had three months to live, they believed it, and tended to follow orders by folding their mortal tents on or about three months later. It was well known in town that you wanted to be real careful about what kind of information you asked Doc to give you, and make sure you could handle hearing it. Mitch’s father said that when dealing with Quentin Reynolds, it was best to be a person of independent mind. Quentin also had a dry sense of humor that confused people who lacked one. Mitch could just imagine him saying, “I could have sworn that I got out of bed and that I’m not dreaming. But there you are, sneaking down my front stairs…”

  Mitch crept through the kitchen toward the door that led into Doc’s office and examining rooms. He’d eaten two pieces of Mrs. Reynolds’s cherry pie in that kitchen that very afternoon while Abby’s father worked on the other side of the wall, but it seemed a lot longer ago than that now.

  Doc Reynolds kept to the old-fashioned tradition of conducting his medical practice at home, instead of at an office downtown, and so Mitch walked in the dark through a compact addition that had been built onto the house before he was born. Padding silently in his bare feet, he passed through a small waiting room, a reception and nurse’s office, and then down a short hall where there were five doors leading to Doc’s office, two examining rooms, one bathroom, and a large supply closet.

  If
he thought that explaining what he was doing in the house would be difficult, explaining what he was doing in the medical quarters was going to be impossible.

  “Oh, just stealing amphetamines, Doc. Why, is that a problem?”

  Mitch pushed open the door to the supply closet, and offered up a prayer to the god of young virgins. On second thought, he changed that line of defense, too. The god of virgins might not be too pleased that he was about to lose two of his best disciples.

  That thought made Mitch’s knees go so weak that he nearly sank down onto the tile floor.

  When the phone rang like a tornado siren going off, he jumped as if a doctor had poked a needle in his ass.

  For a few blessed moments after the phone rang, Abby didn’t hear anything from the direction of her parents’ bedroom. She let herself imagine that she and Mitch were still safe. But then she heard their door quietly open, and her heart managed to both sink and to race at the same time. She heard her father hurry down the hallway toward the stairs, and all she could do was hide her face in her hands. Her dad was being quiet, but not that quiet, so maybe Mitch would hear him coming and find a place to hide—

  Galvanized by the need to warn Mitch, she sprang out of bed and raced to her door.

  “Dad!” she called out. “What’s going on?”

  He barely glanced back over his shoulder long enough to say, “Shhh. Go back to sleep.”

  “Is somebody having a baby? There hasn’t been a car wreck, has there?”

  He didn’t even bother to turn around to shush her, but just kept on going.

  Abby retreated to her bed. At least she had tried to warn Mitch. He had to have heard her!

  Holding her breath in suspense, Abby squeezed her eyes shut and prayed, Please!

  When she saw light through her closed eyes, she opened them. But then, when she realized it was headlights coming up their driveway, she knew they’d lost their chance. The only good news was that she wasn’t also hearing anything to indicate that Mitch had been caught by her dad. He must be hiding in the house. Or maybe he was already running home.

  Oh, no! Through the snowstorm, without his shoes or coat…

  Abby turned her face toward the ceiling, feeling horrible. She felt disappointed, mad, sad, scared, nervous, worried about Mitch, guilty, every bad feeling she could possibly have. Why did love have to be so difficult?

  Mitch dived into the dark medical supply closet seconds before Abby’s dad pushed open the door from the kitchen. Light from approaching headlights flooded the dark rooms as somebody drove up to the entrance to the doctor’s office. For several moments, Mitch stood frozen in the dark, trying to catch his breath without anybody hearing him gulp it into his lungs. Abby’s voice, calling “Dad!” had scared the hell out of him. Now, he cringed at the sight of the long sliver of light that came in at the edge of the supply closet door. He hadn’t dared to close it all the way, since that might make noise. Would Doc notice it was ajar?

  Oh, God, he thought, what if Doc had to get something in the supply closet?

  Desperately, he stared around, but saw only open shelves, including the one with the box of condom packets. They looked like a bad joke now. Ha ha. Not tonight, sucker.

  Mitch’s heart pounded so hard in his ears that he felt deaf. As through a percussive din, he heard doors slam outside, then the outside door to the office opened, and then he heard the voices of men. With a shock that felt like a kick to his stomach, he recognized them. Jesus H. Christ, it was Rex’s dad and Patrick. Oh, great! Was his own dad coming next?

  Feeling as if he had little left to lose, since they were bound to catch him, Mitch inched closer to the crack of light. He might as well take a look. But what he saw shocked him more than his own predicament did: Preceded by Doc Reynolds, Rex’s dad and brother were carrying a naked girl down the hallway, coming right toward him.

  Doc stopped in front of the supply closet door and then flung open the door of the examining room opposite it.

  “Put her in here,” he told them.

  The father and son turned into the first examining room.

  As they did, they turned their burden so that her long hair hung down over their arms, and her face was revealed to Mitch.

  His breath caught in his throat, and he thought, My God, she’s dead!

  Instinctively, he stepped back to get away from what he was seeing, but he could still see her. Her eyes open, she seemed to stare right at Mitch for an instant before they moved her face from his line of vision.

  And then, belatedly, a jolt went through him, and he thought, I know her.

  Through the blood pounding in his ears, he heard Quentin Reynolds say, “Lay her down on the floor, Nathan.”

  “The floor, Quentin?”

  Rex’s dad sounded angry, aggressive, but then, he almost always did.

  “You’ve got to put her someplace,” Abby’s dad said with a kind of heavy patience. “Lay her down.”

  “Why not on the examining table?”

  “Put her on the goddamned floor, Nathan!”

  In the supply closet, Mitch’s whole body jerked in surprise at the doctor’s tone. He had never, never heard Abby’s dad curse, or even talk like that to anybody.

  “Keep your shirt on, Quentin,” Nathan Shellenberger said.

  There was a pause, and then Mitch heard Doc say, “Patrick, go wait in the truck.”

  When the asshole didn’t move, as Mitch knew he wouldn’t, because that was the kind of jerk Patrick was, his father shoved at his shoulder and said, “You heard him. Go.”

  Patrick didn’t argue, just shrugged and slowly did as he was told, slamming the office’s outside door behind him. It was only after he was gone that Mitch realized he was surprised to see that Patrick was in town at all. Why wasn’t he in Manhattan, where he was supposed to be at college? Rex hadn’t said anything about his asshole older brother being home.

  It didn’t seem important, especially not when Mitch heard Nathan Shellenberger say to the physician in a low voice, “What now?”

  Abby’s dad didn’t answer him with any words. Instead, he surprised Mitch—and, from the expression on his face, the sheriff—by walking out of the examining room and back inside the house. He left the examining room door open. Mitch stood in the dark supply closet staring across the hall at a frightening tableau: The sheriff stood silently, a sentinel, seeming to guard the girl’s body on the floor.

  Doc returned within a few moments, carrying several plastic grocery bags in his left hand, and something else in his right hand. He walked back into the examining room. Still without speaking, the most respected and popular general practitioner in the county looked the county sheriff in the face briefly, and then squatted down and proceeded to place the girl’s head carefully inside three of the bags. He then took some kind of twine from one of the drawers in his office and tied it tightly around her neck, securing the bags.

  “What the hell are you doing, Quentin?” Rex’s father demanded of him.

  “What has to be done.”

  He left the office again, going back into the house one more time.

  While he was gone, Mitch again watched Rex’s dad stare down at her.

  Slowly, almost not wanting to look, Mitch let his own gaze slide down to her body. They had put her on her left side. She was curled up as if she were asleep, and she wasn’t moving.

  When Abby’s dad came back, he had a couple of sofa pillows in his hands. He squatted down again, only this time he lifted the girl’s covered head, and placed the pillows under it, as if he were trying to make her comfortable on the hard, tiled floor.

  Then Abby’s father moved back a couple of feet, though he still squatted on the tile. He reached for the other object he had brought in along with the plastic bags. He lifted the girl’s softball bat that he had carried with him into the office, and he brought it down on the plastic-covered face. Nathan Shellenberger cried out. So did Mitch, in the supply closet. But nobody heard him; their attention was rivete
d on the bat that just kept going up and coming down. The plastic bags contained the splattered flesh and blood. The pillows muffled the sound to thuds, though in the doctor’s office they all heard the repeated and terrible cracking of bone.

  The sheriff turned away, fumbled toward a plastic wastebasket, and vomited into it.

  “Jesus Christ,” he whispered, as he wiped his mouth off on the sleeve of his coat. “Jesus, God, Quentin!”

  “Go home,” Abby’s father said, in a harsh voice. “We’ll talk when Pat’s not waiting for you.”

  The sheriff fled, letting a blast of snow and cold air in behind him before he shut the door.

  In the closet, Mitch sank down onto the floor and stared wide-eyed into the light.

  He watched Quentin Reynolds examine the surface of the bat, and then bend down to examine the floor. He seemed satisfied that the bags had contained the gore, because he didn’t attempt to wash anything. Gently, he leaned the bat against a wall. He picked up the plastic wastebasket into which his old friend had thrown up and carried it down the hall to the bathroom. Mitch heard the sounds of a toilet flushing, of water running, and after a while Doc came back down the hall with the wastebasket in his hands and walked back into the examining room again. After putting the wastebasket back down, he put his hands on his hips and gazed around, as if checking to see if he had missed anything. And then, without any warning, he began to weep, a weeping made more violent by his efforts to contain the sounds of it. For several moments, the stocky man’s shoulders shook as sobs wrenched him. Finally, he dragged the sleeves of his shirt across his eyes. Then he removed the cushioning pillows. He checked them, too. He left the girl with the destroyed face on the floor, and carried the bat and pillows back into his house, turning off the office light and quietly closing the door behind him.

  Mitch waited until he thought he could stand up again.

  Barefoot and coatless, without even a sweater to pull over his T-shirt, and on nerveless legs that trembled as he moved, he emerged from the closet. He paused for a moment in the hallway and stared into the examining room, but he couldn’t bring himself to look down. Averting his eyes from the horror of it, he ran into the waiting room and then stumbled out into the snow. He could barely feel the cold. It was only when he inhaled sharp, painful air that he realized he had been holding his breath. As he shuffled down the driveway, he looked up at the windows in Abby’s room. There was no light up there. Mitch felt as if all the light had gone out everywhere.