Plainsong

by Kent Haruf

  Later, when the girl was lying in the old soft double bed that had once been the elder McPherons’ marriage bed, she lay awake for a while and looked with pleasure and satisfaction at the crib. It gleamed against the faded pink-flowered wallpaper. The varnish shone. She imagined looking at a little face lying there, what that would feel like. At ten-thirty she heard the brothers mounting the stairs to their bedrooms and heard them overhead on the pinewood floorboards.

  The next morning she stayed asleep in her room until midmorning, as she had the previous six days of vacation, but it was different now. It was all right now. The McPheron brothers had decided that seventeen-year-old girls did that. It didn’t matter. They couldn’t say what they would do about it even if they still wanted to do something, and now they didn’t care to.

  Two days later it was New Year’s, and school started again the day afterward.

  Guthrie.

  It appeared to him there were ruffles everywhere. Ranged around both bedroom windows, sewn on the bedcover, tacked on the pillows. Still more surrounding the mirror over the chest of drawers. Judy must get something out of it, he thought. She was in the bathroom doing something to herself, inserting something. He smoked a cigarette and looked at the ceiling. A pool of light was showing directly above the bedside lamp on the pink plaster.

  Then she came out of the bathroom wearing a little nightgown and nothing under it and he could see the dark medallions of her nipples and the outlines of her small breasts and the dark vee of her hair below.

  You didn’t need to do that, he said. I’ve been cut.

  How do you know what I’ve been doing?

  I assumed.

  Don’t assume too much, she said. Then she smiled. Her teeth shone in the light.

  She got into bed with him. It had been a long time. Ella and he hadn’t slept together for almost a year now. Judy felt warm beside him in the bed.

  Where’d you get this scar? she said.

  Where?

  This one on your shoulder here.

  I don’t know. Fence wire, I guess. Don’t you have any scars?

  Inside.

  Do you?

  Of course.

  You don’t act like it.

  I don’t intend to. It doesn’t do much good, does it?

  Not in my experience, he said.

  She was lying on her side looking at him. What made you come over here tonight?

  I don’t know. I was lonely, I guess. Like you said at the Chute the other night.

  Aren’t we all, she said.

  She raised up higher and leaned forward and kissed him and he brushed her hair away from her face, and then without saying anything more she moved over on top of him and he could feel her warm against himself and he felt up under the back of her nightgown with both hands, feeling her small waist and her smooth hips.

  What ever became of Roger? Guthrie said.

  What? She laughed. You’re asking about him at this time?

  I got to wondering about him while you were in the bathroom.

  He left. It was better for everybody.

  So what was his story?

  How do you mean? she said.

  Well, how did you meet? Guthrie said.

  She pushed herself up and looked at him. You want to talk about that right now?

  I was just wondering.

  Well. I was at this bar in Brush. It was a long time ago. A Saturday night. I was younger then.

  You’re still young. You said that the other night too.

  I know. But I was even younger then. I was at this bar and I met this guy who turned out to be my husband. He was a sweet talker. Old Roger sweet-talked me into seeing things his way.

  Did he?

  Then after a while it wasn’t sweet anymore.

  She looked sad suddenly and he was sorry he’d said anything. He brushed her hair away again. She shook her head and smiled, bent to kiss him. He held her for a while and she felt very warm and smooth. In the bathroom she had put on cologne in addition to the nightgown. She kissed him again.

  What if I was to ask you something else? Guthrie said.

  What is it?

  How about taking your nightgown off?

  That’s different. I don’t mind that.

  She raised up again and pulled the nightgown over her head. She looked very good in the lamplight.

  That better?

  Yes, Guthrie said. I believe it is.

  Two hours earlier that evening he had driven past Maggie Jones’s house and all the lights had been turned off. So he’d driven around Holt awhile and had stopped and bought cigarettes and a six-pack of beer and afterward he’d driven out of town a ways, and about five miles south of town on the narrow highway he had made up his mind and turned around and driven back and stopped at her house, at Judy’s, the secretary from school. When she opened the door and let him in she smiled and said, Well, hello. Do you want to come in?

  Now, afterward, as he was leaving, she said, You going to come back?

  Maybe.

  You know you don’t have to. But I’d like it if you did.

  Thank you, Guthrie said.

  For the rest of that night and the following day he believed it was just between the two of them. But other people in Holt knew too. He didn’t know how Maggie Jones knew, but she did. At school on Monday she came into his room in the afternoon after the last class.

  Is this the way it’s going to be now? she said.

  Is what the way it’s going to be, Guthrie said, looking at her face.

  Don’t do this, damn you. You’re too old to play dumb.

  He looked at her. He took his glasses off and wiped them and put them back on. His black hair looked thin under the light. He said, How did you know?

  How big of a town do you think this is? Do you think there is somebody in Holt who doesn’t know your pickup?

  Guthrie turned in the chair and looked out the window. The same winter trees. The street. The curbing across the way. He looked back at her. She was standing just inside the door watching him. No, he said, it’s not going to be like this.

  So what was that, last night?

  That, he said, was somebody that was turned out free for a night and didn’t know what to do with it.

  You could have come over to see me. I would’ve been glad to see you.

  I drove by. The lights were all off.

  So you decided to go over to her house, is that it?

  Something like that.

  She stared at him for a long time. So is this something that’s going to be permanent? she said finally.

  I don’t think so. No, he said. It isn’t. She wouldn’t want it to be either.

  All right, Maggie said. But I will not compete for you. I won’t get into some kind of contest for you. I will not do that. Oh, goddamn you anyway, you son of a bitch.

  She walked out of the room and down the hallway, and for the remainder of that day and on into the night Guthrie felt mixed up and wooden in all his movements and thoughts.

  Victoria Roubideaux.

  She was in the hallway at the high school in the afternoon when Alberta, the small blond girl from history, came up to her bearing something in her hand and said, He’s outside. He said to give you this. Here.

  Who said?

  I don’t know his name. He just stopped me and said give this to you when I saw you. Here, take it.

  She opened the note. It was a folded scrap of cheap yellow tablet paper, with pencil writing scrawled on it. Vicky. Come out to the parking lot. Dwayne. She turned it over, there was nothing on the other side. Though she had never seen any of his handwriting before she believed this was what it would look like, this pencil-scrawl slanted backward. She didn’t think it was a joke. It was from him, no one else. She didn’t even feel much surprised. So he’d come back now. What did that mean? For most of the fall she had wanted that. Now late in the winter it had happened when she no longer believed in it or expected it. She looked at Alberta. Alberta’s eyes were wi
de and excited as if she were engaged in some daytime soap opera and some new shocking pronouncement was about to be made and she was only waiting for the cue to react to it.

  She reached past Alberta matter-of-factly and opened the metal door of the student locker and took out her winter coat. She put it on and drew out her red shiny purse.

  Vicky, what are you going to do? Alberta said. You better be careful. That’s him, isn’t it.

  Yes, she said. That’s him.

  She left Alberta and walked down the hall and out of the school building into the cold afternoon air, walking without rush, without hurry, in a kind of numbed trance, moving toward the icy parking lot behind the school. When she passed the last corner of the building she saw his black Plymouth waiting at the edge of the paved lot. He had the motor running and there was the familiar low muttering of the muffler, a sound that took her back to the summer. He was sitting slumped down in the front seat, smoking a cigarette. She could see the smoke drifting thinly out of the half-opened window. She walked up to him. He was watching her as she approached, then he sat up.

  You don’t look too pregnant, he said. I figured you’d be bigger.

  She said nothing to him yet.

  Your face got rounder, he said. He studied her, looking at her steadily, a little critically as he always did, as he regarded everything. That calmness, a kind of distance he had, that you couldn’t touch. She remembered that now. It looks okay on you, he said. Turn sideways.

  No.

  Turn sideways. Let me see if it shows that way.

  No, she said again. What do you want? What are you doing here?

  I haven’t made up my mind yet, he said. I come back to see how you’re doing. I heard you were pregnant and living out in the country with two old men.

  Who told you that? Haven’t you been in Denver all this time?

  Sure. But I still know people here, he said. He sounded surprised.

  Well, what of it? she said.

  You’re mad now. I can see that much, he said.

  Maybe I have a reason to be.

  Maybe you do, he said. He seemed to be considering something. He reached forward and stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. His motions seemed unhurried and calm. He looked at her again. Don’t be like this, he said. I come back to see you, is what I’m saying. To see if you’d want to go to Denver.

  With you?

  Why not?

  What would I do in Denver?

  What does anybody do in Denver? he said. Live in my apartment with me. We could take up our lives together. We could take up where we left off. You’re carrying my baby, aren’t you?

  Yes. I have a baby in me.

  And I’m the father, aren’t I?

  Nobody else could be.

  That’s why, he said. That’s what I’m talking about.

  She looked at him in the front seat of the car. The motor was still running. She felt cold standing out in the open air in the parking lot. Six months had passed since he’d left and things had happened to her, but what had changed for him? He looked no different. He was thin and dark and his hair was curly and she still thought he was very good looking. But she didn’t want to feel anything at all for him anymore. She had thought she was over those feelings. She believed she was. He had left without telling her he was leaving and she was already pregnant then, and afterward her mother wouldn’t let her in the house and then she couldn’t stay any longer with Mrs. Jones because of her old father, so she had gone out into the country with the two McPheron brothers and as unlikely as that had seemed that was turning out all right, and lately it was better than all right. Now, unexpectedly, here he was again. She didn’t know what to feel.

  Why don’t you get in? he said. At least you could do that. You’re going to freeze like a hunk of ice standing out there. I didn’t come back to make you get cold, Vicky.

  She looked away from him. The sun was bright. But it didn’t feel warm. It was a bright cold winter day and nothing was moving, no one else was even outside, the other high school kids were in their afternoon classes. She looked at their cars in the parking lot. Some had frost forming inside the windows. The cars had been there since eight in the morning. They looked cold and desolate.

  Aren’t you even going to talk to me? he said.

  She looked at him. I shouldn’t even be here, she said.

  Yes you should. I come back for you. I should of called during these months, I know. I’ll apologize for that. I’ll say I was wrong. Come on, though. You’re getting cold.

  She continued to look at him. She couldn’t think. He was waiting. From across the pavement came a gust of wind; she felt it on her face. She looked out toward the patches of snow on the football field and toward the empty stands rising up on either side. She looked back at him once more. He was still watching her. Then, without knowing she was going to, she walked around the rear of the car and got in on the other side and closed the door. It was warm inside. They sat facing each other. He didn’t try to touch her yet. He knew that much. But after a while he turned forward and put the car in gear.

  I missed you, he said. He was speaking straight ahead, talking over the steering wheel of the black Plymouth.

  I don’t believe you, she said. Why don’t you tell me the truth.

  That is the truth, he said.

  . . .

  They left Holt driving west on 34, driving out into the winter landscape. When they got out past Norka after half an hour they began to see the mountains, a faint jagged blue line low on the horizon a hundred miles farther away. They didn’t talk very much. He was smoking and the radio was playing from Denver and she was looking out the side window at the brown pastures and the dark corn stubble, the shaggy cattle and the regular intervals of telephone poles, like crosses strung beside the railroad tracks, standing up above the dry ditch weeds. Then they arrived in Brush and turned up onto the interstate and went on west, going faster now on the good road, and passed Fort Morgan where in the freezing air the fog from the sewage plant drifted across the highway, and about then she decided to say what she had been thinking for the last five minutes. I wish you wouldn’t smoke in the car.

  He turned toward her. You never cared before, he said.

  I wasn’t pregnant before.

  That’s a fact.

  He rolled the window down and flicked the burning cigarette outside into the rushing air and turned the window up again.

  How will that be? he said.

  Better.

  How come you have to sit so far away? he said. I never bit you before, did I?

  Maybe you’ve changed.

  Why don’t you come a little closer and find out. He showed his teeth and grinned.

  She slid across the seat toward him and he put his arm over her shoulders and kissed her cheek and she set her open hand on his thigh, and they rode as they had ridden in the summer when they had driven out in the country north of Holt before stopping at the old homestead house under the green trees in the evening, and they were still riding that way when they drove into Denver at dusk in the midst of city traffic.

  After that she didn’t know what to do with herself. She had made a sudden turn. She was seventeen and carrying a baby and she was alone most of every day in an apartment in Denver while Dwayne, this boy she had met last summer and wasn’t sure she knew at all, went to work at the Gates plant. His apartment was two rooms and a bathroom, and she had it completely cleaned and swept in the first morning. And his cupboards rearranged on the second morning, and the laundry done, the single set of sheets he owned and his dirty jeans and work shirts, all done in the first three mornings, and the only person she had met so far was a woman in the laundry room in the basement who stared at her the whole time, smoking and not speaking to her even once so that she thought the woman must be mute or maybe angry at her for some reason. In the first few days in Denver she did what she could, washed the clothes and cleaned the apartment and had something cooked for supper in the evening, and on the first
Saturday afternoon when he got off work she went out with him to a shopping mall and he bought her a few things, a couple of shirts and a pair of pants, to make up for what she had left in Holt. But there wasn’t enough for her to do, and she was more alone than she had ever been.

  That first night when they had arrived at the apartment they had gotten out of the car in the parking lot with its rows of dark cars and he had led her up the stairs and down a tiled hallway to the door and unlocked it. You’re home, he said. This is it. It was two rooms. She looked around. And in a little while he took her into the bedroom and they had never been in bed together before, not an actual bed, and he undressed her and looked at her stomach, the round smooth full rise of it, and he noted the blue veins showing on her breasts, and her breasts swollen and harder now, and her nipples larger and darker too. He shaped his hand over the hard ball of her stomach. Is it moving yet? he said.

  It’s been moving for two months.

  He held his hand there, waiting, as if he expected it to move now, for him, then he bent and kissed her navel. He rose and took his clothes off and got back in bed where she was and kissed her and stetched out beside her, looking at her.

  You still love me?

  I might, she said.

  You might. What does that mean?

  It means it’s been a long time. You left me.

  But I missed you. I told you that already. He began to kiss her face and to caress her.

  I don’t know if you should do this, she said.

  Why not?

  Because. The baby.

  Well, people still do this after she has a baby in her, he said.

  But you have to be careful.

  I’m always careful.

  No, you’re not. Not always.