Benediction (Plainsong #3)(16)

After they had moved to Holt, John Wesley spent the first week up in his room at his computer writing long letters to his friends in Denver. Then on Sunday he was forced to attend the morning service since it was the entire family who made up the preacher’s presence in town and the church expected them all to attend. On the third Sunday he got a surprise.

There was a girl who attended church who was tall and thin and strange, dressed in black with bright red lipstick, and with very pale skin. She always sat in the back pew. She caught up to him after the Sunday service when he was walking away from the church.

Wait, she said. Are you trying to escape from me?

He stopped and turned toward her.

They told me about you. You’re going to be a sophomore in high school. It’s too bad you’re not still a freshman, I could initiate you. Well I can anyway.

She had her own car and they went out at night driving all over the town and out into the country on the gravel roads as far south as Highway 36 and as far north as Interstate 76, John Wesley in the seat beside her, the windows open, the cassette player playing her music, the two of them talking, and then they would pull off the road onto a farm track or an unused side road and she would move him into the backseat and unbutton him and teach him what she knew, and afterward sweaty and red-faced they would get back in the front to drive some more. The air would be coming in cool and fresh and the dust boiling up behind them on the county roads, with rabbits and coyotes and red foxes and raccoons all out at night on the road, and once suddenly the great white shape of a Charolais cow broadside in the headlights together with its pale calf, and occasionally they’d stop again for another time in the backseat. She was on birth-control pills. Are you stupid? she said. I thought you city boys knew something. I’m not going to get pregnant and f*ck everything up. Don’t worry about it. Come on, preacher’s boy. Don’t you want to go again.

Then he’d return home. She’d drop him off in front of the parsonage and drive away and he’d walk up onto the porch and enter the dark quiet house. His father and his mother would be asleep in their bedroom upstairs, and he’d go back to the kitchen and make something to eat, and take the food up to his room, and enter the bathroom and lower his trousers and inspect himself and soothe his soreness with hand salve and return to his bedroom and turn on the computer and eat the food he’d brought upstairs and read his messages.

It went on for most of a month this way. He and this older girl, Genevieve Larsen, out in the country in the dark in Holt County driving and stopping and climbing into the backseat. And then starting the car again and turning back out onto the gravel roads and always the dust swirling and rising up behind them.

You should have known me in Denver, he said. It was different in Denver. I had friends there. I was known there.

What’d you do? Sit around and play with your computer?

No. We had fun. It was interesting.

Doing what?

It was different. There’s so much to do. We went out at night and talked and saw people. Ate in the cafés. We laughed and laughed. We hung out at the malls.

We’re out at night. We’re talking. Don’t you like this?

Yes. Of course.

You didn’t have somebody like me there, did you?

No.

Well.

I don’t know, it was just different there. That’s all I’m saying. You’d have liked it.

You’re going to mess this up, do you know that? You don’t even see what’s in front of you. You’re like everybody else.

No, I’m not.

You’re dreaming backward.

One night his mother was waiting in the living room, reading, when he came in. It was late. He stood in the doorway. She was watching him over the top of her book.

Come here, she said. I want to look at you.

Why?

I want to see what you look like when you come in so late after being out with her all night.

It’s not all night.

Don’t be literal. You know what I mean.

He went over and stood before her. She studied him, a tall skinny thin-faced boy, his hair a mess.

You smell like her, she said. Don’t you.

No.

Yes, you smell like her. You have her odor. I hope you’re not being foolish about this. I hope you’re not going to get this girl pregnant.

She’s on the pill.

Is she. Did she tell you that?

Yes.

Do you believe her?

Yes.

Well, we can hope she’s not a little liar. Do you love her?

It’s none of your business.

Do you or not?

Yes, I do.

That’s good. I wouldn’t want it all to be for nothing. Just sex.

Mother. What are you doing?

You’ll get tired of her. Or she you. It doesn’t last. Love doesn’t last. You look like you’re losing weight. Are you?

No.

Well go to bed. You must be exhausted.





12


AT THE WINDOW sitting in his chair Dad Lewis was awake in the late morning when the Johnson women drove up and stopped in front of Berta May’s house and got out of the car in their summer dresses. They went up the walk onto the porch and knocked and stood waiting.

Dad turned his head and called toward the kitchen.

Yes? Mary said. Do you want something?

Would you come out here?