by Kent Haruf
You can shut it again, he said to Guthrie. That ain’t him in there. My brother wouldn’t let himself look like that even for a minute if he was still alive. Not if he still had breath to prevent them from doing him like that. I know what my brother looks like.
He turned and hobbled back to the pew and sat down and laid his crutches out of the way. Then he shut his eyes and never looked at the dead face of his brother again.
PEOPLE BEGAN FILING INTO THE CHURCH. THE ORGANIST in the loft at the back of the sanctuary began to play, and Victoria and Maggie came in, with Katie in her mother’s arms. Together they slid in beside Raymond. The mortician and an assistant in a matching black suit seated people in pews on both sides of the aisle, moving everybody up to the front, but there were not a great many mourners at the funeral, and only the first five rows were filled. Before the service began, the mortician came forward very somberly and opened the casket so that during the service people might view his handiwork, and then the minister came in from a side door and crossed to the pulpit and greeted them one and all in the name of Jesus in a voice that was laden with solemnity and import. Then there were prayers to be said and hymns to be sung. The organist played Blessed Assurance, Jesus Is Mine and Abide with Me: Fast Falls the Eventide, and people sang along, but not very loud. When the music was finished the preacher began to talk in earnest and he spoke about a man about whom he knew next to nothing at all, saying to those in attendance that he believed Harold McPheron must have been a good man, a Christian light among his fellows, else why would they be there marking his passing even if they were only a few in number, though they must all remember a man might be loved deeply even if he was never to be loved widely, and no one present should ever forget that. Sitting beside Raymond, Victoria cried a little despite the inadequacy and ignorance of what the man was saying, and Katie at one point grew so fussy that Raymond had to reach over and lift her onto his lap, patting her and whispering in her ear until she quieted down.
Then the service was over and Raymond and Victoria and Katie and Maggie and Guthrie went back up the aisle very slowly. Raymond led them, his hat on his head again as before, limping and hobbling with his crutches. They went outside to the black cars waiting in front at the curb in the sun. After some time, when the mourners had filed past and looked at the body, the mortician and his assistant rolled out the closed casket and slid it into the black hearse. Then they all drove away in a slow procession with the headlights of all the cars turned on in the broad daylight, heading out north and east to the cemetery three miles outside of town. Beside the grave when they were seated in the metal folding chairs under the awning, the preacher said a few words more and read from scripture once again, and he prayed for the safe translation of Harold’s immortal soul into everlasting heaven. Afterward he shook Raymond’s hand. And by that time the wind was blowing so hard that the caretakers had to lean far over to do their work, and they lowered the dark casket into the ground next to the plot in which the senior McPherons had been buried more than half a century before.
Then they all drove back to town and Raymond climbed once more into Victoria’s car. Honey, you can take me home now, he said.
You’re not going back to the hospital? You’re sure?
I’m going back to the house. I won’t be going nowheres else.
So she drove him through town and out south toward the ranch. He dozed off before they had gotten far out of Holt and then he woke when she stopped in front of the wire gate. She helped him into the house, then went back and got Katie. I’ll get supper pretty soon, she said. You need to eat something.
I’m going to rest for a little bit, he said.
She took his arm and led him into the bedroom off the dining room, where Maggie Jones had changed the sheets four days earlier, and he lay down in what had been his parents’ marriage bed so many years before and until recently had been Victoria’s bed. She propped his leg on a pillow and spread a quilt over him. I’ll have supper ready when you wake up, she said. Try to get some rest.
Maybe I can sleep now, he said. Thank you, honey.
She went out to the kitchen and he lay in the old soft bed with his eyes shut but soon he opened them again, sleep would not come to him, and he turned to look out the window and then turned again to look overhead, and he realized that this room he lay in was directly below his brother’s empty bedroom, and he lay under the quilt staring at the ceiling, wondering how his brother might be faring in the faraway yet-to-be. There would have to be cattle present there somehow and some manner of work for his brother to do out in the bright unclouded air in the midst of these cattle. He knew his brother would never be satisfied otherwise, if there were not. He prayed there would be cattle, for his brother’s sake.
19
IN THE WEEK AFTER HAROLD MCPHERON’S FUNERAL, THE first-grade teacher in the elementary school on the west side of Holt noticed one morning, within the first hour of classes, that something was the matter with the little boy in the middle of the room. He was sitting peculiarly, almost on his backbone, holding himself slouched far back in his desk, and he was only playing with the worksheet she’d handed out. She watched him for some time. The other children were all working quietly, their heads bent over the sheets of paper like so many miniature accountants. After a while she rose from her desk and walked back between the rows and came to him and stood over him. He looked as undersized and ragged as ever, like some wayward orphan turned up by mere happenstance and misfortune in her class. His hair needed cutting, it stuck out behind against the collar of his shirt, which itself was not clean. Richie, she said, sit up. How can you work like that? You’ll damage your back.
When she put a hand on his shoulder to urge him forward, he winced and jerked away. Why, what’s wrong? she said. She knelt beside him. There were tears filling his eyes and he looked very frightened. What is it? she said. Come out in the hall a minute.
I don’t want to.
She stood and took hold of his arm.
I don’t want to.
But I’m asking you to.
She pulled him to his feet and led him toward the hallway door, but as they passed her desk he grabbed at it, dragging one of her books to the floor with a loud flat crash. The other students were all watching.
Class, she said. Keep working. All of you get back to work. She stood until their heads were bent again over their desks and then took him under the arms and pulled as he struggled against her and kicked and caught at the door. She got him into the hall and knelt in front of him, still holding him.
Richie, what’s wrong with you? she said. Stop it now.
He shook his head. He was looking off along the hallway.
I want you to come with me down here.
No.
Yes, please.
She rose and took him by the hand in the direction of the office along the empty tiled hallway past the other classrooms, their doors all shut to the noises and murmurings rising from behind them. Are you sick? she said.
No.
But something’s wrong. I’m worried about you.
I want to go back to the room, he said. He looked up at her. I’ll do my work now.
I’m not concerned about that, she said. Let’s just see the nurse. I think the nurse should look at you.
She took him into a small room next to the school office where a narrow cot was pushed close to the wall opposite a metal cabinet with locked doors. The nurse sat at a desk against the far wall.
I don’t know what’s wrong with him, the teacher said. He won’t tell me. I thought you better have a look.
The nurse stood and came around and asked him to sit on the cot but he would not. The teacher left and went back to her classroom. The nurse bent over him and felt his forehead. You don’t seem hot to the touch, she said. He looked at her out of his big wet eyes. Will you open your mouth for me, please? She put her arm around him and he squirmed away. Why, what is it? Are you afraid of me? I won’t hurt you.
Don’t,
he said.
I need to look at you.
He leaned away but she pulled him close and examined his face and looked briefly in his ears and felt along his neck, and then she lifted his shirt to feel if he was hot and then she found the dark bruises on his back and below the belt of his pants.
She peered into his face. Richie, she said. Did somebody do this to you?
He looked frightened and he wouldn’t answer. She turned him around and drew down his pants and underwear. His thin buttocks were crosshatched with dark red welts. In some of the places the welts had bled and clotted.
Oh, my God, she said. You stay right here.
She left and went next door and came back at once with the principal. She lifted the boy’s shirt and showed the welts to the principal. They began to ask the boy questions but he was crying by now and shaking his head and he wouldn’t say a word. Finally they called his sister out of her fifth-grade classroom and asked her what had happened to her brother. Joy Rae said: He fell off the slide at the park. He had a accident.
Would you go out? the nurse said to the principal.
All right, he said. But you let me know. We have to report this. We’re going to find out what’s going on here.
The principal went out and then the nurse said: Will you let me look at you too, Joy Rae?
I don’t have anything wrong with me.
Then you’ll just let me look, won’t you?
You don’t need to look at me.
Just for a moment. Please.
Suddenly the girl began to cry, covering her face with her hands. Don’t, she said. I don’t want you to. Nothing’s wrong with me.
Honey, I won’t hurt you. I promise. I need to look, that’s all. I have to examine you. Won’t you let me, please?
The nurse turned to her little brother. I want you to step into the hall for a minute, so we can be alone. She led him out and told him to wait there near the door.
Then she came back into the room and took the girl gently by the shoulders. This won’t take long, honey, I promise, but I need to look at you. Slowly she turned her around. Joy Rae stood sobbing with her hands at her face, while behind her the nurse unbuttoned the back of her blue dress and drew down her underpants, and what she saw on Joy Rae’s thin back and thin buttocks was even worse than what she’d seen on her brother.
Oh, honey, the nurse said. I could just about kill somebody for this. Just look at you.
AN HOUR LATER WHEN ROSE TYLER FROM THE DEPARTMENT of Social Services came into the nurse’s room, the two children were still there, waiting for her. They had been given pop and cookies and two or three books to look at. And soon after Rose arrived a young sheriff’s deputy from the Holt County Courthouse came in and began to set up a tape recorder. The two children watched him in terror. He talked to them but his efforts were of little use, and they watched him without blinking and when he wasn’t looking they glanced at his thick leather belt and revolver and his nightstick. Rose Tyler was more successful in her attempts, the children knew her from before and she talked to them quietly and gently. She explained that they were not in any trouble but that she and the officer and the nurse and their teachers were all worried for their safety. Did they understand that they only needed to ask them some questions? Then she asked the deputy to go out of the room and she took photographs of their welts and bruises, and afterward when the deputy returned they began the interview, with Rose asking most of the questions. These were not meant to be leading questions, so as to avoid planting anything in the children’s minds but to allow them to tell their story in their own words, but it didn’t matter, the children were very reluctant to talk at all. They stood uncomfortably at the edge of the cot, standing side by side, and looked at the floor and played with their fingers, and it was Joy Rae who spoke for both of them, though she herself answered very few of the questions in the beginning. Instead she adopted a kind of bitter defiant silence. Gradually, though, she began to talk a little. And then it came out.
But why? Rose said. What would make him want to do this to you?
The girl shrugged. We didn’t pick up the house.
You mean he expected you to clean the house.
Yes.
Yourselves? The two of you?
Yes.
And did you? The entire trailer house?
We tried to.
And was that all, honey? Was there anything else he was upset about?
The girl looked up at Rose, then looked down again. He said I talked back.
That’s what he said?
Yes.
Do you think you talked back to him?
It don’t make no difference. He says I did.
Rose wrote in her notebook, then finished and looked at the two children and looked at the sheriff’s deputy and suddenly felt she might cry and not stop. She had seen so much trouble in Holt County, all of it accumulating and lodging in her heart. This today made her sick. She had never been able to numb herself to any of it. She had wanted to, but she had not succeeded. She looked at the two Wallace children and watched them for a moment and began again to question the girl. Honey, she said, where were your mother and father at this time, while this was happening?
They were there, the girl said.
They were in the room?
No. We was in the bathroom.
Were they in the room when he began talking to you?
Yes.
But they weren’t in the bathroom when he whipped you?
No.
Where were they then?
In the front room.
What were they doing?
I don’t know. Mama was crying. She wanted him to stop.
But he wouldn’t stop? He wouldn’t listen to her?
No.
Where was your father? Did he try to do anything?
He was hollering.
Hollering?
Yes. In the other room.
I see. And you and your brother were with him in the bathroom at the same time?
No.
He took you in there separately?
Joy Rae looked at her brother. He took him first, she said. Then me.
Rose stared at the girl and her little brother, then shook her head and turned away and looked out into the hallway, imagining how that must have felt, being taken toward the back of the house and hearing the other one screaming behind the closed bathroom door, being afraid of what was to come, and the man’s face all the time getting redder and redder. She wrote in her notebook again. Then she looked up. Do you have anything else you might want to say to us?
No.
Nothing at all?
No.
All right then. I thank you for saying that much, honey. You’re a brave girl.
Rose closed her notebook and stood up.
But you won’t tell him, will you? Joy Rae said.
You mean your mother’s uncle?
Yes.
The sheriff’s office will certainly want to talk to him. He’s in serious trouble. I can promise you that.
But you won’t tell him what we said?
Try not to worry. You’ll be safe now. From now on, you’ll be protected.
ROSE TYLER AND THE YOUNG DEPUTY DROVE IN SEPARATE cars to the east side of Holt to the Wallaces’ trailer on Detroit Street. The weeds surrounding the trailer were all dry now and dusty, dead for winter, and everything looked dirty and ragged. Still, the sun was shining. They went up to the door together and knocked and waited. After a while Luther opened it and stood in the doorway shielding his eyes. He was wearing sweatpants and a tee-shirt, but no shoes. Can we come in? Rose said. Luther looked at her. We need to talk privately.
Well. Yeah. Come on in, he said. We’re in a terrible fix here. Dear, he called back into the house. We got company.
Rose and the deputy followed him inside. There was the sweetish-stale smell of sweat and cigarette smoke and of something spoiling.
Betty lay stretched out on the couch, sunken into the cushions and cove
red by an old green blanket that she kept wrapped about herself. I ain’t feeling very good, she said.
Is your stomach still hurting? Rose said.
It hurts me all the time. I can’t never get rested.
We’ll have to make you another appointment with the doctor. But I wonder, is your uncle here?
No. He ain’t here right now.
He’s over to the tavern, Luther said. He goes over there most days. Don’t he, honey.
He’s over there every day.
We need to talk to him, Rose said. When will he be back, do you think?
You can’t tell. Sometimes he don’t come back till nighttime.
I think I’ll just go find him, the deputy said. We’ll talk later, he said to Rose, then let himself out.
After he was gone Rose sat down on the couch beside Betty and patted her arm and took out her notebook. Luther went into the kitchen for a glass of water and came back and lowered himself into his cushioned chair.
Do you know why the officer and I came here today? Rose said. Do you know why I need to talk to you?
My kids, Betty said. Isn’t it.
That’s right. You know what happened, don’t you.
I know, Betty said. Her face fell and she looked very sad. But we never meant him to do nothing like that, Rose. We never wanted that, ever.
He wouldn’t even listen to us, Luther said.
But you can’t let him mistreat your children, Rose said. You must have seen what he’d done to them. It was very bad. Didn’t you see it?
I seen it afterwards. I tried to put some hand ointment on them. I thought maybe that might help.
But you know he can’t stay here if he does anything like that. Don’t you see? You have to make him leave.
