Our Souls at Night

by Kent Haruf

  Then Louis took Jamie down along the creek and cut three green willow shoots and sharpened the ends and went back to the campfire. Your grandma has a surprise for you.

  What is it?

  Addie got out a bag of marshmallows and poked one over the sharp end of each of the sticks.

  Hold it near the fire. Let it brown up and get soft.

  He held it out and it flamed up at once.

  Blow on it.

  Addie showed him how to brown it slowly by turning the stick. They ate two or three each. Jamie’s mouth and hands got sticky with the sweet insides and blackened with marshmallow ash.

  When they finished eating they put the food in the pickup cab for the night so it wouldn’t attract bears. Then Louis took Jamie to the campground toilet and went in with him with a flashlight.

  Just do your business and come out, Louis said. We don’t have to linger in here. You want me to stay with you?

  It stinks in here.

  Louis pointed the flashlight down into the gaping dark hole of the tank.

  Go ahead. I’m not leaving you.

  Louis turned away and the boy pulled down his pants and sat on the seat with the open tank under him. He was afraid of it. When he was done Louis used the toilet and they went outside where the dog was waiting. They breathed again in the fresh air. They walked over and washed their hands and faces at the pump and went back to the tent.

  It stinked in there, Grandma.

  I know.

  She got Jamie ready for bed in the sleeping bag with Bonny lying on the pillow beside him.

  Where will you be?

  We’ll be sleeping here, right next to you.

  All night?

  Yes.

  He went to sleep and Louis and Addie came into the tent after an hour and got undressed and lay down and held hands and looked at the stars up through the mesh window of the tent. There was the sharp pine smell of the trees.

  Isn’t it nice like this, Addie said.

  In the morning they had pancakes and eggs and bacon and then tidied up the camp and put the food and cooking pans in the cooler in the back of the pickup and drove up farther in the mountains on the highway to Monarch Pass and stopped and got out at the Continental Divide and looked out over the western slope and if their eyes had been good enough and if they could have seen over the curvature of the earth they could have seen the Pacific Ocean a thousand miles away across the mountains. At noon they drove back to their camp and ate cheese sandwiches and apples and drank cold water from the old-fashioned well, pumping it out with the green pump handle, and then took a hike up to the waterfalls on North Fork Creek and sat and watched the water crash down into the clear green pool below. When they hiked down to the bottom, the air was cooler near the falls, the air misted on their faces.

  They returned to camp and Addie and Louis set up folding camp chairs in the shade by the creek and read their books. The boy and the dog wandered around in the surrounding trees.

  Can we take a walk somewhere, Jamie said.

  You can follow the creek, Louis said. Which way do you think it’s running?

  Down there.

  Why is that?

  I don’t know.

  Because it’s going downhill. Water always wants to flow to a lower place. Where do you want to go?

  That way.

  That’s downhill. Down-river. To get back here to camp what would you do?

  Turn around.

  Smart boy. Follow the creek up-river and come back to our tent. Your grandma and I’ll be waiting for you. Try it once. Go a little ways and then come back. Take Bonny with you. But don’t cross the creek anywhere. Stay on this side.

  The boy and the dog went down away from the campground and came back and then went farther down and poked around in the rocks and examined the shining mica and climbed on the big boulders and lay looking down into the water. Then they moved back up the creek.

  What did you see? Louis said.

  We didn’t see any bears. But there was a deer.

  What did Bonny do?

  She barked at it. We just turned around. That’s all we did.

  In the evening they made another small fire and Addie cut up onions and peppers and put them in butter in the iron skillet and put in the ground-up hamburger and tomato sauce and a spoonful of sugar and Worcestershire sauce and a quarter cup of ketchup and salt and pepper, a sauce she’d made before they left home, and now stirred it all together and laid a lid on the pan. Louis and Jamie got out the hamburger buns and the leftover chips from the day before and set everything ready on the table, all the plates and unbreakable cups. Jamie took the dog and the empty jug down to the pump and came back with sweet fresh water, and the three of them ate sitting by the fire as the night came down. The boy gave Bonny some of his sloppy joe and looked at Louis to see what he thought. Louis winked and looked off into the trees.

  Will we see any bears tonight? Jamie said.

  I doubt it, Louis said. If we do it’ll be a black bear. But they won’t hurt us unless they get scared. Bonny would warn us anyway.

  I’d like to see one from the pickup. From inside.

  That’d be the way all right.

  Are you worried about it? Addie said.

  I just would like to see one.

  They poured water on the fire, and the wood steamed and smoked, and the red coals blinked out, and then Louis took Jamie out into the trees with the flashlight shining ahead. He stopped.

  You can pee here, he said. We don’t have to go to the toilet when it’s dark like this.

  I’m not supposed to do it outside.

  It’s all right this time. Nobody will see us. He turned the light off. The animals pee out here. I guess we can this once.

  They both peed on the ground and afterward Louis turned the flashlight on and let Jamie carry it. The light flickered and looped up and down on the trees and underbrush. They walked back to the tent.

  The next day they drove down out of the mountains back onto the plains. Other people were coming up now for the weekend towing big campers that looked out of place in the forest.

  When they got down on the plains the air was hot and dry and the country seemed flatter than it had been and more bare and treeless. They reached home after dark and were tired, they showered and went to bed right away in their two separate rooms.

  28

  In early August Gene came out from Grand Junction to visit and Addie and Jamie met him at the door.

  I don’t see the dog you’ve been telling me about, he said.

  She’s at Louis’s house, Jamie said.

  You call him Louis?

  Yes. He said to.

  They went in and Gene took his bags upstairs to the back bedroom where Jamie and the dog slept and put the bags on the bed.

  I’ll stay in here with you in my old room.

  What about Bonny?

  She can’t sleep in here with both of us.

  She always sleeps with me.

  We’ll see how it goes.

  They went back downstairs and in the late afternoon Louis came over to say hello and he brought the dog along. Jamie knelt down in front of her and petted her and took her outside to play in the yard.

  Stay out of the street, Gene said.

  We do this all the time, Dad. They went on out.

  Gene looked at Louis. I hear you stay here with my mother too.

  Some nights I do.

  What’s that about?

  Friendship. For one thing.

  What are you doing? Addie said. You know about this.

  What am I doing? My mother’s sleeping with an old neighbor man while my son’s in the other room and I’m not supposed to ask about it.

  That’s right. How can this be any of your business?

  It’s my business if my son is here.

  There’s nothing to see, Louis said. I don’t think it’s hurting him. I wouldn’t be here if I thought so.

  I don’t think you’re the one to judge. You’re ge
tting what you want. Why would you care about a boy that belongs to somebody else?

  But I do care about him.

  Well, you can stop. I don’t want him to be affected by this. I know about you. When I was a kid I heard about you.

  What about me?

  How you left your wife and daughter for some other woman.

  That was over forty years ago.

  It still happened.

  And I’m sorry it did. But I can’t go back and fix it now. Louis watched him for a moment. I think I’ll leave. This isn’t helping anything.

  I’ll call you later, Addie told him.

  He stood and went out.

  Why are you being this way? Addie said. What’s wrong with you?

  I don’t want my son to be hurt.

  You don’t think he’s already been hurt by his father and mother this summer?

  Yes, I do think so. And now it’s getting worse.

  You don’t know what you’re talking about. He’s far better now than when you left him here. And if you want to know the truth Louis has been good for him.

  Because he’s after your money too, isn’t he?

  Whatever are you talking about now?

  If you married him he’d get half of everything, wouldn’t he? I couldn’t stop him.

  We’re not getting married. And he’s not interested in my money. My God, what little you must think of me.

  He looked away. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ve got to start over.

  You know I’ll help you.

  For how long?

  As long as it takes. As long as I can.

  You’re getting tired of it already. You must be.

  Well, I’m still doing it. You’re my son. Jamie’s my grandson.

  The next two nights the dog stayed with Louis at his house and the boy slept upstairs in the back room with his father and on the second night, Sunday night, he had a bad dream and woke up crying and would not be consoled until Addie came in and held him and took him back into her bed. On Monday Gene told them good-bye and drove home.

  When his father was gone the boy went to Louis’s house and put on the dog’s leash and the protective tube on her paw and came out with her and walked around the block and up the alley to Addie’s backyard and played with her there while she and Louis watched him.

  It was bad last night, Addie said. It was like when he first got here. Having those bad dreams. He was upset again. Now Gene tells me Beverly is coming back home in a couple of weeks.

  What’s going to happen then?

  I don’t know. They’re going to try again, I guess. She’ll move back in. And Jamie will start school.

  He could take the dog with him when he goes. If they’d agree.

  I don’t know if they would.

  Why don’t you ask. It’d make some difference anyway.

  They looked out at Jamie and Bonny in the backyard.

  Should I come over tonight? Louis said.

  You’d better, you dirty old man.

  He didn’t say I was dirty.

  But I know, she said.

  29

  Louis said, It was awful for her that last year. She was just always sick. They tried chemotherapy and radiation and that slowed it for a while but it was still there and it never was out of her system completely. She got worse and she didn’t want to have any more treatments. She was just wasting away.

  I remember, Addie said. I wanted to help.

  I know. You and all the others brought food. I appreciated that. And the flowers.

  But I never saw her in her bedroom.

  No. She didn’t want any company upstairs except Holly and me. She didn’t want anybody to see her, how she looked then in the last months. And she didn’t want to talk. She was afraid of death. Nothing I said made any difference.

  Aren’t you afraid of death?

  Not like I was. I’ve come to believe in some kind of afterlife. A return to our true selves, a spirit self. We’re just in this physical body till we go back to spirit.

  I don’t know if I believe that, Addie said. Maybe you’re right. I hope you are.

  We’ll see, won’t we. But not yet.

  No, not yet, Addie said. I do love this physical world. I love this physical life with you. And the air and the country. The backyard, the gravel in the back alley. The grass. The cool nights. Lying in bed talking with you in the dark.

  I love all that too. But Diane was worn out. At the end she was too tired and too weary to pay attention to her fears anymore. She wanted out, relief. An end to her suffering. She suffered terribly in the last months. So much pain. Even with sedatives and morphine. And she was still scared most of the time, underneath. I’d come in, I’d check her in the night and she’d be awake staring at the dark through the window. Can I help you? I’d say. No. Do you want something? No. I just want it to be over. Holly would help bathe her and would try to get her to eat but she wasn’t hungry. She wouldn’t eat anything. I suppose in some way she knew she was starving herself. She was so frail and tiny at the end, her legs and arms like sticks. Her eyes looking too big in her head. It was awful to watch and more than awful for her, of course. I wanted to do something for her and there wasn’t a thing more to be done than what we were already doing. The hospice nurse came every day and was very good and helped make it possible for her to die at home. She didn’t want to go back to the hospital ever. So that’s how it was. Finally she died. Holly and I were both in the room. She stared at us with those big dark staring eyes like she was saying Help me Help me Why won’t you help me. Then she quit breathing and was gone.

  People say the spirit stays around for a while floating over the body and maybe hers did. Holly said she had the sense of her mother being in the room and maybe I did too. I couldn’t be sure. I felt something. Some kind of emanation. But it was very slight, maybe just a breath. I don’t know. At least she’s at peace now in some other place or higher realm. I think I believe that. I hope she is. She never really got what she wanted from me. She had a kind of idea, a notion of how life should be, how marriage should be, but that was never how it was with us. I failed her in that way. She should’ve had somebody else.

  You’re being too hard on yourself again, Addie said. Who does ever get what they want? It doesn’t seem to happen to many of us if any at all. It’s always two people bumping against each other blindly, acting out of old ideas and dreams and mistaken understandings. Except I still say that this isn’t true of you and me. Not right now, not today.

  I feel that too. But you might get tired of me too and want out.

  If that happens we can stop, she said. That’s the understood agreement for us, isn’t it. Even if we never actually said so.

  Yes, when you get tired of this, you can say so.

  And you too.

  I don’t think I’ll get there. Diane never got to have what we do. Unless she had somebody I didn’t know about. She didn’t, though. She wouldn’t think that way.

  30

  In August there was the annual Holt County Fair and rodeo and livestock judging at the fairgrounds on the north side of town. It started with a parade coming up from the south end of Main Street, coming up the street toward the railroad tracks and old depot. It was raining the day of the parade. Louis and Addie put on raincoats and cut a hole in the end of a black plastic trash bag to put over Jamie and the three of them walked over to Main Street and stood along the curb with the other people. There were crowds along both sides of the street despite the weather. The honor guard came first, carrying the limp wet flags and shouldering dripping rifles, then there were old tractors muttering up the street and old combines on flatbed trailers and antique hay rakes and mowers, and more tractors, puttering and popping, and the high school band, reduced in the summer to only fifteen members wearing white shirts and jeans all soaking now and sticking to their skin, then the convertible cars with the county notables inside but with the tops up because of the weather, and then the rodeo queen and her attendants
on horses, the girls all good riders wearing ranch slickers, followed by more fancy cars with advertisements on the doors, and cars for the Lions Club and the Rotary and Kiwanis and the Shriners zigzagging around in the street, like fat show-off kids, in their hopped-up go-carts, and more horses and riders in yellow slickers and a pony cart, and toward the end of the parade there was a flatbed truck with a cardboard religious picture on it and a riser at the front, entered in the parade by one of the evangelical churches in town. On the riser there was a wooden cross and a young man standing in front of it with long hair and a dark beard, wearing a white tunic and because of the rain he was holding an umbrella over his head. When Louis saw him he laughed out loud. The people standing nearby turned and stared at him.

  You’re going to get yourself in trouble, Addie said. This is serious here.

  I guess he can walk on water, but he can’t keep it from falling on his head.

  Hush, she said. Mind your manners.

  Jamie looked up at them to see if they were really angry.

  At the end of the parade the Holt street cleaner came sweeping up the street with its big rotating brushes.

  —

  In the afternoon the rain stopped and they drove out to the fairgrounds and parked and walked through the stock barns past the sleek horses and the groomed cattle with their puffed-up ratted tails, and looked at the great hogs lying on the straw on the cement flooring in the pens, lying there fat and panting and pink, batting their ears, and they walked past the goats and sheep all trimmed and shaved, and then out through the cages of rabbits and chickens and around to the carnival area. They put Jamie on the Ferris wheel with Addie, Louis said the rides made him sick. Addie and the boy rode up and around and when they were at the top she pointed out Main Street and the grain elevator and water tower and pointed to where their houses were on Cedar Street.

  Do you see my house?

  No.

  Right over there. With the big trees.

  I don’t see it.

  They looked far out beyond the edge of town to the open country where they could see farmhouses and barns and the windbreaks. Afterward they tried some of the games, the rifle shoot and ball throw, and bought Jamie pink cotton candy on a paper cone, and icy slushy drinks for themselves and wandered around watching the people and then went back and she and the boy rode the Ferris wheel again. By now it was late afternoon. They could hear the rodeo still going on from the arena on the other side of the grandstands, the loud cheerful voice of the announcer. They didn’t buy tickets to go into the rodeo stands but walked down past the far end and looked over the fence at the calf roping and bull riding. There was a quarter-mile horse race on the dirt track and they watched as the horses galloped by, the jockeys standing up now in their irons after they had passed the finish line, the horses wide-nostriled and stirred up. Then they went back to the car and drove home and the boy got the dog out of Louis’s kitchen and they had supper on the front porch as the day was ending.