Plainsong

by Kent Haruf

  Dad, you know Tom Guthrie. You’ve met him before.

  What’s he want? We don’t need another car. Is he trying to sell you a car?

  Guthrie told her goodbye and went home and traded his boots for gym shoes and went back out and drove over to the depot where a ragged stack of Sunday Denver News lay sprawled out beside the tracks, wrapped in twine. He sat down at the edge of the cobblestone platform with his feet out in the ballast and rolled the papers, and then rose and loaded them into the pickup cab and drove through Holt along early morning streets almost empty yet of traffic or any commotion at all, and hurled the papers from the pickup window in the approximate direction of the front doors and porches. He climbed the stairs over Main Street to the dark apartments above the places of business, and about midmorning he finished the boys’ paper routes and returned home and went out to the barn and fed the one horse and the cats and the dog. At the house he fixed himself some eggs and toast and drank two cups of black coffee, sitting in the kitchen with the sunlight slanted across his plate. He sat smoking for a while. Then he lay down on the davenport to read the paper. Three hours later he woke with the newspaper folded across his chest like a bum’s blanket. He lay still for a while, alone in the silent house, remembering the night before, what that had been like, wondering what might be starting. Thinking did he want it to start, and what if he did. Late in the afternoon he called her. You doing all right? he said.

  Yes, aren’t you?

  Yes, I am.

  Good.

  I enjoyed myself, he said. You think you’d like to get together again sometime?

  You’re not suggesting an actual date, are you? Maggie said. In broad daylight?

  I don’t know what you’d call it, Guthrie said. I’m just saying I’d be willing to take you out for supper at Shattuck’s and invest in a hamburger. To see how that would go down.

  When were you thinking of doing that?

  Right now. This evening.

  Give me fifteen minutes to get ready, she said.

  He hung up and went upstairs and put on a clean shirt and entered the bathroom and brushed his teeth and combed his hair. He looked at himself in the mirror. You don’t deserve it, he said aloud. Don’t ever even begin to think that you do.

  Victoria Roubideaux.

  The next week he came home and informed her that he wanted to go to another party. But she wouldn’t go again. She was afraid of what would happen and how she’d feel afterward, because of the threat to the baby. She knew she shouldn’t take anything bad into herself, and she didn’t want to go anyway. She wasn’t happy with him. It wasn’t what she had expected or thought of, dreaming about it. They seemed to have gone straight into the problems and middle years of marriage, missing, passing the honeymoon, the fun and youthful times.

  When she wouldn’t go to the party he got mad and went out alone, slamming the door. After he was gone she watched television for a while and retired to bed early. In the middle of the night, about three in the morning, she heard him knock over something in the kitchen and it broke, a jar or glass, and he cursed viciously and kicked the pieces away, and afterward she heard him in the bathroom next door, then he was in the bedroom taking off his clothes. When he got into bed beside her he smelled of smoke and beer, and even with her eyes shut she could feel him looking at her. You awake? he said.

  Yes.

  You missed a good time.

  What happened?

  You missed it. I’m not going to tell you.

  He slid closer and began to touch her hip and thigh, feeling under her nightgown. He was breathing close to her face now, his breath coming hot on her cheek, moving her hair.

  No, she said. I’m too sleepy.

  I’m not.

  He lifted the gown, passed his hand over her swollen stomach, and felt of her sore breasts.

  Don’t, she said. She turned to move away.

  He kissed her, pulling close again, he smelled strong and hot, then he drew down her pants.

  I can’t, she said. It’s not good for the baby.

  Since when.

  Since now.

  What about what’s good for me?

  He was already hard against her. He pushed her hand so she felt him, pressing her hand over it, that live feel of muscle.

  Then you can do something else, he said.

  It’s too late.

  Tomorrow’s Sunday. Come on.

  He lay back. She hadn’t moved yet. Come on, he said. She pushed her nightgown down over her heavy stomach and past her hips and then she kneeled up in bed next to him with the blanket around her like a shawl and took him in her hand and began to move it.

  Not that, he said.

  So she had to bend over him, leaning over her stomach. Her long hair swung forward and she collected it and lifted it to one side. He lay back, his legs stiffened out and his toes turned up, and because he was drunk it seemed to her that it took a very long time. While she bent over him she made her mind go blank. She wasn’t thinking about him, she wasn’t even thinking about the baby. Finally he groaned and throbbed. Afterward she rose and went into the bathroom, brushed her teeth and looked at her eyes in the mirror and scrubbed her face, taking time, wanting him to be asleep now, and he was, when she went back into the room. She lay down beside him again in the bed but she didn’t sleep herself. She lay awake for two hours thinking and wondering, watching the dim presence of light in the room move gradually to faint gray on the high blank ceiling, and all the time she was deciding what she should do. Around six-thirty she slowly got out of bed and eased the door shut and went out to the front room. She called for information and got the number in Holt. Maggie Jones sounded sleepy.

  Mrs. Jones?

  Victoria, is that you? Where in the world are you?

  Mrs. Jones, can I come back? Do you think they would let me come back?

  Honey, where are you?

  I’m in Denver.

  Are you all right?

  Yes. Can I come back though?

  Of course you can come back.

  Out there, I mean. With them.

  I can’t say about that. We’ll have to ask them.

  Yes, she said. All right.

  She hung up and went into the bathroom and gathered the few things she’d purchased since she’d been in Denver, and put them in a little zippered bag and returned to the bedroom and silently sorted out from the closet the few clothes he’d bought her, and she had them folded over her arm ready to walk out of the room when he turned over and opened his eyes.

  What are you doing? he said.

  Nothing.

  What are you doing with those clothes?

  I want to do some laundry, she told him.

  He looked at her for a moment. What time is it?

  It’s early.

  He stared at her. Then he closed his eyes and almost immediately drifted back to sleep. She returned to the front room. His wallet and keys were on the kitchen table inside his upturned cap, and she took money from his wallet and folded her meager belongings into a cardboard box together with her few toiletries, and tied a string around it, then left the apartment, wearing her new maternity pants but the same shirt she’d come in, with the same winter coat and red purse she’d had all along, and carrying the box by the string she went down the hall and stepped outside into the cold air. She walked fast to the bus stop and sat waiting there for more than an hour. Cars went by, people going to work or going early to church. A woman walking a white lapdog on a piece of ribbon. The air was chill and crisp, and westward above the city the foothills rose up stark and close, all red rocks now in the early morning sun, but the high dark snowy mountain ranges beyond were hidden from view. Finally the city bus came and she got on and sat looking at Sunday morning in Denver.

  At the bus station she waited for three hours for one going east out across the high plains of Colorado and from there eastward toward Omaha and still farther to Des Moines and Chicago. When they finally called her bus, she carried her box
of clothes and stood in line with the others, moving forward toward the black driver who stood at the door, checking tickets. When she reached the front she discovered that Dwayne had come looking for her, and she felt suddenly frightened of him. Standing in the station exit, looking around, he saw her and came over, hurrying in a kind of stiff-legged trot, looking uncombed and angry in the dark interior of the bus bay.

  Where do you think you’re going? he said. He took her by the arm and pulled her out of line.

  Dwayne, don’t. Let me go.

  Where you running off to?

  What’s this here? the driver said.

  Was I talking to you? Dwayne said.

  The driver looked at him, then turned to the girl. Do you have a ticket? he said.

  Yes.

  Can I see it?

  She showed it to him. He looked at her closely, taking in the fact of her pregnancy, then inspected her face and looked once again at Dwayne. He took the cardboard box from her. It was labeled simply Victoria Roubideaux Holt Colorado. This belong to you? he said.

  Yes, she said, it’s mine.

  You go ahead and get on then. I’ll stow it underneath. That what you want?

  Stay out of this, Dwayne said. This don’t pertain to you.

  No sir. I’m going to tell you something. I believe this girl here wants to get on this bus. He moved between them. He was a medium-sized man with a gray shirt and tie. So that’s what she’s going to do.

  Goddamn it, Vicky, Dwayne said. He grabbed at her and got hold of her red purse and jerked it. The strap broke.

  Oh, don’t, she said. Let me have that.

  Come and get it. He held it away from her.

  Here now, the bus driver said. That don’t belong to you.

  I don’t give a shit. He stepped back. Let her come and get it if she wants it.

  The girl looked at him and immediately there was nothing else to think about. She turned away and when the driver held out his hand to steady her, she took it and stepped up carefully into the bus. The people sitting in seats on both sides looked at her as she faced them, and she moved slowly up the aisle and they watched her pass, and afterward they looked at what was happening outside. Dwayne was moving now along the length of the bus, following her from outside until she found a seat and sat down, then he stood with one hand in a back pocket of his pants and the other hand brandishing the red purse, and he stared at her, talking, not even yelling. You’ll be back, he was saying. You don’t even have any idea how much you’re going to miss me. You’ll be back.

  Though she couldn’t hear, she could read from his lips what he was saying. He said it all again. She shook her head. No, she whispered against the glass. I won’t. I won’t ever. She turned away from the window and looked forward toward the front of the bus, her face shiny with the tears she wasn’t even conscious of, and soon the driver swung up into his seat and pulled the door shut and they rolled away from the curb in the dark underground departure bay of the station. When the bus turned up the ramp out into the bright street, she looked once more at him, standing where he had stood before, looking after her, watching the bus as it left, and she thought she might have been sorry for him, she felt she could be sorry, he looked so lonesome and forlorn now.

  She slept part of the way. Then she woke when the bus stopped at Fort Morgan. It stopped again at Brush. Out on the high plains the country was turning green once more, she felt a little cheered by that, and the weather was starting to warm up again and she sat looking out the window at the sagebrush and soapweed scattered in dark clumps in the pastures, and there were the first faint starts of blue grama and timothy.

  They stopped again in the town of Norka where his mother was. She had never seen his mother. She had only talked to her that one time, from the public phone booth beside the highway when she had tried to find out where Dwayne was, and now she would never meet the woman or even see her, and it didn’t matter anymore. His mother would never know about a baby being born in a town just forty miles away.

  The bus went on and they crossed into Holt County, the country all flat and sandy again, the stunted stands of trees at the isolated farmhouses, the gravel section roads running exactly north and south like lines drawn in a child’s picture book and the four-strand fences rimming the bar ditches, and now there were cows with fresh calves in the pastures behind the barbed-wire fences and here and there a red mare with a new-foaled colt, and far away on the horizon to the south the low sandhills that looked as blue as plums. The winter wheat was the only real green.

  It was dusk when they turned the last curve west of town and drove under the railroad overpass and slowed down coming into Holt, passing Shattuck’s Café and the Legion. The streetlamps were just coming on. The bus stopped at the Gas and Go at the intersection of Highway 34 and Main Street. She got up from her seat and came slowly down the steps. The evening air was chilly and sharp.

  The driver removed the girl’s box from underneath the bus and set it down on the pavement, then he nodded to her and she thanked him, and he stepped into the gas station to buy a paper cup of coffee and he came back holding it out in front of himself so he wouldn’t spill it, then the bus went on.

  The girl carried her box over to the side of the building where a telephone was bracketed to the wall under a little hood. She called Maggie Jones again.

  Victoria? Is that you? Where are you now?

  Here. I’m back here in Holt.

  Where?

  At the Gas and Go. Do you think they’ll take me back?

  Honey, nothing’s changed since this morning. Maybe they will. I don’t know. I can’t speak for them.

  Should I call them?

  I’ll drive you out there. I think you should do this in person.

  You haven’t told them I’m coming, have you? That I was coming back?

  No. I leave that for you to do.

  McPherons.

  Once more, as on that other Sunday in the fall, she drove her out into the country seventeen miles south of Holt and the girl was frightened again as she was on that previous day, yet she looked at everything closely now as they passed along on the road because it had become familiar to her, and after twenty minutes they pulled up the track to the old country house off the county road and the car stopped at the wire gate. The girl sat for a long moment looking at the weathered house. Inside, the kitchen light came on. Then the porch light above the door and Raymond stepped out onto the little screened porch.

  Go on, Maggie Jones said. You may as well find out.

  I’m afraid what they’re going to say, the girl said.

  They’re not going to say anything if you just sit here in the car.

  She opened the door and got out, still looking at the house and at the old man standing on the porch. Then Harold appeared beside his brother. The two of them stood unmoving, watching her. She walked slowly, heavily up to the porch, leaning back a little to balance her weight. In the cool darkening evening she stopped at the bottom step to look up at them. The wind gusted up. The winter coat she wore was too tight now, it was unbuttoned over her stomach and the coatskirts flapped against her hips and thighs.

  It’s me, she said. I’ve come back.

  They looked at her. We can see that, one of them said.

  She looked up at them. I’ve come back to ask you, she said . . . I wanted to ask if you’d let me come back here to live with you.

  They watched her, the two old brothers in their work clothes, their iron gray hair short and stiff on their uncombed heads, the knees of their pants baggy. They said nothing.

  She looked around. It all looks the same, she said. I’m glad of that. She turned back toward them once more. She waited, then went on: Anyway I wanted to thank you. For what you did for me. And I wanted to say I’m sorry for the trouble I caused. You were good to me.

  The old brothers stood regarding her without speaking, without moving. It was as though they didn’t know her or didn’t want to remember what they knew about her. She
couldn’t say what they were thinking. I hope you’re both well, she said. I won’t be bothering you anymore. She turned to go back to the car.

  She was halfway to the gate when Harold spoke. We couldn’t have you leaving like that again, he said.

  She stopped. She turned around to face them. I know, she said. I wouldn’t.

  We wouldn’t want that again. Not ever.

  No.

  That has to be understood.

  Yes, I understand. She stood and waited. The wind blew her coat.

  Are you all right? Raymond said. Did they hurt you?

  No. I’m all right.

  Who’s that out in the car?

  Mrs. Jones.

  Is it?

  Yes.

  I thought it would be.

  You better come in, Harold said. It’s cold out here, outside here in this weather.

  Let me get my box, she said.

  You come in, Harold said. We’ll get the box.

  She approached the house and climbed up the steps and Raymond went out past her to the car. Maggie Jones got out and removed the box from the backseat and handed it over to him while Harold and the girl stood waiting on the porch.

  Do you think she’s okay? Raymond said softly to Maggie.

  I think so, she said. So far as I can tell. But are you sure you want to try this again?

  That girl needs a place.

  I know, but . . .

  Raymond turned abruptly, peering out into the dark where the night was collecting beyond the horse barn and the holding pens. That girl never meant us no harm, he said. That girl made a difference out here for us and we missed her when she was gone. Anyhow, what was we suppose to do with that baby crib of hers?

  He turned back and looked once directly at Maggie Jones and carried the girl’s box of clothes up to the house. Maggie called, I’ll be in touch, and then got back in the car and drove away.

  Inside the old house, the two brothers and the pregnant girl sat at the kitchen table. Looking around, she could see that the room had fallen into disorder again. The McPheron brothers had let it go. There were heel-bolts and clevises and screweddown Vise-Grips and blackened springs loaded onto the extra chairs and stacks of magazines and newspapers piled against the back wall. The counters held days of dirty dishes.