Benediction

by Kent Haruf

  Wait! Alene said. What are you doing?

  But she recognized the woman. She’d never met her before, but she’d seen her picture in the newspaper once, showing the principal with his wife and their two children.

  The woman began to scream. You’re filthy! You’re just a whore! I won’t let him go! I won’t ever! She raised her hand again, but Alene caught her wrists and shoved her away. The woman fell back in her high-heeled shoes and good dress against the stand of oranges and knocked some of them rolling out across the floor.

  Oh! You shoved me! You can’t do that.

  People were watching them now. Housewives, old single men, the stockboy. The woman rushed at Alene and tried now to hit her with her purse, swinging it. Wait, Alene said. Stop it.

  Oh, don’t speak to me. Whore!

  Then the grocery manager came hurrying up. What’s going on here? What’s this?

  She’s sleeping with my husband. She wants to steal him. She’s a whore.

  Here now, he said. Stop this. Let me help you. He put his arm around her and she tried to slap him too, but he caught her arms and pinned them to her sides. Whoa, he said, let’s just go outside. Come with me.

  He held her tight and half carried her out the door. Alene and the others watched them out in the parking lot. The manager opened the car door and she got in. She appeared to be calmer now, as if she suddenly were exhausted. He stood talking to her, and then he shut the car door, she started the engine and drove off. The manager came back in the store and walked up to Alene. Aren’t you a teacher in the grade school?

  Yes.

  What are you doing? he said and shook his head.

  I’ll just go, Alene said. She left her grocery cart and went outside to her car into the cold day. She drove home and on the following Monday she returned to her classroom of young children. Everyone in town knew what had happened in the grocery store and nevertheless there she was, still teaching.

  The principal of her school called her into the school office and said they could not have this behavior, she’d have to be on probation now, and one more thing like this, if anything happened again, they’d let her go. She was a good teacher, he said. They didn’t want to lose her. But they couldn’t have this.

  In the other town the man, the principal, almost lost his job too. The district school board met with him in executive session in the school’s library. The board chairman, a retired insurance agent, said, In the name of Jesus, what were you thinking of? Didn’t you know you can’t do that?

  Yes. I knew.

  Then why did you?

  Oh, we all know why, said one of the other board members, a young man. Why did you think you could get away with it? That’s what I want to know. I thought you grew up in a place like this.

  Yes. It was about this size.

  Then you would know you can’t do anything without everybody else in town hearing what happened before you even got home. Whether you broke your leg or your thumb or some woman’s heart on the other side of the county there.

  I know that, the principal said.

  So what were you thinking of? Tell us.

  He didn’t answer. He looked around the room at them, in the school library with the reference books collecting dust on the shelves and the school librarian’s desk located in the place where she could keep watch on everything, and the bright posters on the walls.

  He wasn’t thinking, one of the others said. That’s the point of all this. You weren’t thinking, were you. It wasn’t about thinking. Thinking didn’t have a thing to do with it.

  He didn’t answer that either.

  All right, the old chairman said. You can never mind that. You will have to at least answer this, though. Are you done with her?

  The principal looked at him for a moment. I am, he said.

  You’re finished.

  Yes.

  You promise us that.

  Yes.

  Never mind what you promise your wife. You have to be sure, what you tell us. We won’t put up with this kind of thing. We’re not like your wife might be, we won’t take you back.

  I said it was over.

  All right. The chairman looked around the room. Anything else concerning this issue here today?

  None of them spoke.

  All right then. I don’t like this way of doing things. Talking out here in the open about what ought to be kept back secret behind closed doors. This isn’t good. I don’t like it.

  She never met the principal again. She did not even have a final talk or a final hour with him in a café or a last night in a rented bed in a hotel room. She only ever saw him once again, and that was from a distance at a meeting when he crossed in a hallway fifty feet away, wearing a suit and tie. Then in the summer she heard that he and his wife and children had moved to Utah.

  She phoned three times during those months, but he couldn’t or wouldn’t take her calls. She wrote him a letter but she never knew if he received it, or if he simply refused to answer. She decided finally that he was a kind of coward for that. That was the word that came to her mind. She herself stayed and taught for years in the same little town. She believed she had to do that. It took a kind of courage. She was marked and known. It was how you paid for love. But over time that was lost too. She became part of the history of the town, like wallpaper in the old houses—the aging lonely isolated woman, the unmarried schoolteacher living out her days among other people’s children, a woman who’d had a brief moment of excitement and romance a long time ago and afterward had retreated and lived quietly and made no more disturbance.

  The principal only ever came to visit her in dreams that were never satisfactory and from which she woke in tears, with an ache that wouldn’t be healed or soothed.

  She had a picture of him that she had taken herself. And one of them together in the hotel lobby that the desk clerk in Denver had taken that first winter. A black-and-white picture which didn’t show how red their cheeks were, coming in off the cold street, before they rode the elevator up to the room to undress and lie down in bed together.

  31

  HE WAS SITTING in his chair at the window after breakfast when he saw Alice go out the front door and retrieve her bicycle from the back porch and then push it along the side of Berta May’s house and begin to ride in the street. He watched her pedal out of sight. He looked the other way to the west where the barn and the corral were. He hadn’t got the barn painted and the weeds in the corral were as tall as the top of the fence. Then Alice rode back into view and he watched her pedal out of sight in the other direction.

  He drifted off to sleep. When he woke it looked hot outside in the yard. He couldn’t see the girl. He pushed against the arms of the chair and stood a while to steady himself. All was quiet. He took his cane and began to walk, shuffling, and looked out to the kitchen. He called, Are you there, Mary? He shuffled on and entered the bathroom, looking at his face in the mirror, an old man with a day-old grizzled beard, looking angry and puzzled at the same time. He stood his cane against the wall and pushed down his sweatpants and sat too hard. After a while he tried to get up. He called, Mary, come here, will you? He sat. He called again. Where in the hell? And dozed off.

  Then she had come in. You’re in here, she said.

  He opened his eyes. Where were you? I called for you.

  I was outside talking to Berta May in the backyard.

  I couldn’t find you.

  I’m sorry. Are you done here?

  As much as I’m going to be. Now I can’t get up.

  Let me help you.

  Wait. Maybe you better get Lorraine.

  She’s downtown shopping.

  I don’t want you to hurt yourself.

  I’ll be careful.

  She lifted under his arm and he gradually rose up and stood, his legs shaking, quivering.

  Honey, are you all right?

  He looked straight ahead. Yeah.

  She drew up the diaper inside his sweatpants. This one’s still good, s
he said. We don’t need to change it.

  I’m about like a goddamn baby, he said. It’s a damn nuisance.

  It’s time for your pill. Let’s get you in the bedroom.

  She held his arm while he used his cane and they went into the room and he slumped on the bed, then he lay back and she lifted his legs over in place.

  I don’t like you lifting like that, he said. You’re going to hurt your back.

  Are you all comfortable now?

  I’ll take that pill, please.

  She put the pill on his old parched tongue and gave him the water glass. He raised his head to swallow.

  Okay?

  Yeah. He closed his eyes.

  Can I get you anything else?

  No, thanks. You do too much already.

  I don’t mind at all. You know that. Would you like me to sit here with you?

  No. I’m all right now.

  When he woke an hour later the room seemed too dark. He hadn’t slept so long, it wasn’t the end of day, night wasn’t coming on yet. He peered at the ceiling. Then he felt there were people in the room. He had visitors. But she hadn’t wakened him. It wasn’t like her letting people come in when he was asleep. He didn’t like anyone seeing him asleep unless it was his wife or his daughter, and he didn’t want even them to sit and wait for him to wake up.

  He looked around. There were four of them, two sitting on chairs in the corner where the room was darker, and two more in chairs near him. The closest one was sitting straight up, a man. He was watching him. He was smoking a cigarette.

  You shouldn’t be smoking no cigarettes in here, Dad said. Didn’t she tell you that? I got cancer of my lungs. I can’t breathe good.

  I’m almost done with it.

  Dad looked at him closely. I know you, he said.

  You ought to. I haven’t changed that much.

  Frank. Is that you, Frank?

  Yeah, it’s me.

  You lost your hair on top. Most of it. I didn’t recognize you.

  Isn’t that the berries?

  Yeah, I guess. But what do you mean?

  I end up looking like you.

  You don’t look like me.

  Yeah. I do. Have you looked lately?

  Well. If you mean you look like I used to. Not now. Maybe back then.

  When you were in your fifties.

  I guess so.

  Well. That’s where I am. I’m in my fifties.

  Dad looked at him sitting there, smoking. I know you now. I’m glad you come.

  Are you? Why would you be?

  I want to talk to you.

  Go ahead. Talk.

  Dad looked around at the others. I don’t like to talk in front of these other people here.

  They won’t mind.

  Who are they?

  Don’t you know me? The woman in the chair behind Frank moved so he could see her. A blond woman about thirty, ripe-looking with a big chest, wearing a low-cut blouse and shorts. Her legs looked white and plump. Don’t you know my voice too?

  I never thought I’d see you again, Dad said.

  Here I am. I came to visit you.

  Do you want something?

  Maybe I do.

  What is it? I thought you told me you never wanted to see me again. That it was enough. You wrote that letter.

  I know. That’s what I’m talking about. I want to catch you up. Tell you all that’s happened.

  That’s fine. Go ahead. But just a minute. Who’s these others here?

  You know us too, Dad. Hell, you ought to recognize us.

  Is that you, Rudy?

  Nobody else.

  And Bob?

  Yeah. It’s me, Dad.

  I don’t understand this. Aren’t we done with the store?

  Yeah. About done.

  He peered at them. Then he studied the other faces, one after the other. Well, do you want some coffee, all of you? He looked toward the open doorway.

  No, Rudy said. We wouldn’t want to bother Mary.

  I never got to meet her, Tanya said.

  Didn’t you?

  I used to see her in town on Main Street when we was still living here before we moved away. Before you made us get out of here. Before you told Clayton what you told him.

  What was I supposed to do? Dad said. He stole from me.

  You say. There might of been different ways though.

  What ways?

  You might of let him work it off. Pay down his debt that way.

  I didn’t want that, Dad said. I couldn’t have him in the store. I never wanted to see him again.

  Yeah. Clayton told me that’s what you said.

  Dad looked at each of them again. You don’t want any coffee, Rudy?

  No, sir. I’m okay. Doing fine.

  You neither, Bob?

  No, thanks.

  I don’t know if you even drink coffee, Frank.

  Don’t you remember?

  No. Should I?

  You would have, if you were paying attention.

  What does that mean? Dad said.

  I drank coffee all the time when I was still here. When I was going to high school. You don’t remember that, do you.

  No. That’s just a little thing. Why would I think of something like that?

  No reason. You’re right, it doesn’t amount to anything if I was drinking coffee and sitting at the same table with you every day, you and Mom, for however many years I was doing it before I left and went to Denver.

  We come to see you in Denver, Dad said.

  And stayed one hour. That was all.

  We had to get home. It was wintertime. They said it was going to snow.

  It didn’t snow, Frank said.

  It was going to.

  They were still with him when Dad woke once more in the darkened bedroom.

  Does your mother know you’re here? he said.

  Mom?

  Did you see her? Did you tell her you were here, that you come in? She would want to see you. He didn’t answer. Dad looked out through the window toward the barn and empty corral, the tall weeds growing up.

  Never mind Mom for now. We’ll get to Mom.

  What are you talking about? Dad said.

  You don’t understand, do you.

  You ought to have more respect, Tanya said. He’s your father. You shouldn’t treat him like that.

  I have respect for him. For some aspects of him.

  You don’t show it. He’s going to be gone anytime now and then you’ll wish you’d of done him different.

  Like you and Clayton, you mean, he said.

  Clayton don’t have nothing to do with this.

  He’s why you’re here, isn’t he?

  Not like you’re talking about. I loved Clayton.

  Okay. Good, said Frank. You loved him.

  I loved that man and then he goes to Denver and shoots himself in the head. How would you like that?

  It seems like as good a way as any, Frank said.

  But how would you like to have to look at that thing there, to say that’s him. That thing used to be my husband and now I got two little kids that don’t have no daddy no more.

  It’s tough shit, isn’t it, Frank said. It’s life. Maybe they were better off without him.

  She looked at him. Oh, you got hard, she said. Didn’t you.

  I had to.

  They turned toward Dad lying propped up in bed watching them talk. Gray and yellow-looking, with parchment skin, sunken eyes, hair shoved up awry on the sides of his head.

  That’s life, isn’t it, Dad. Isn’t that what you would say?

  I don’t know.

  You would if you were thinking right.

  I’m thinking okay.

  It’s life, Frank said. It’s the way it goes, it’s how shit happens. I used to want you to do something.

  What are you talking about now? Dad said.

  Do something. Show something to me.

  I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  I waited
for you for years and nothing happened. You never did anything, did you.

  I did things, Dad said. I did a lot of things.

  Not like what I’m talking about. You didn’t.

  Dad stared at him. After a while he glanced toward the window again.

  It’s tough shit, isn’t it, Frank said. It’s just life.

  I helped her. This woman here. I did things for her, Dad said.

  He give me some money, Tanya said. He did.

  For quite a long time too, Dad said.

  After you killed her husband, Frank said.

  What are you talking about? I didn’t kill him. You just heard her say he shot himself.

  How come, though? Who caused that to happen?

  You can’t blame that on me.

  I don’t have to. You blame yourself.

  Dad peered over into the corner. The two familiar figures, one tall, one short, were still sitting there, listening to everything, picking at their big hands. I treated you all right anyway. Isn’t that true? Dad said.

  I was going to be manager, Rudy said.

  You still are.

  No. She is. Your daughter is.

  Someday you will be.

  Which one of us?

  I don’t know. That comes later, after I’m out of this.

  Who’s going to decide that?

  That ain’t for me to say. I gave you each a bonus.

  We appreciate that.

  Ten thousand dollars, Dad said.

  For twenty years.

  But you acted like it was a good thing I did. I believed you.

  We know.

  He turned to Frank. Does your mother know you’re here? Did you tell her? I need some water. I don’t see no water here. I need some water.

  Honey, who are you talking to? Mary said.

  He looked up and she was standing beside the bed now.

  You were talking out loud. Were you dreaming, honey? Were you having a kind of dream-like? Here’s your water. Your water’s right here. She gave him the glass and he took it but didn’t drink.

  They’re right here, he said.

  There’s nobody here.

  Frank is here.

  Frank. You saw Frank?

  He was here. I didn’t get to talk to him enough. I wanted to talk to him.

  I wish he’d talk to me, she said.

  Did he drink coffee? Dad said.

  Who?

  Frank. Did he drink coffee when he was still living here? When he was a boy?