Benediction (Plainsong #3)(20)

Dad was alone in the house. Mary was gone, working at the bazaar, selling chokecherry jam and homemade quilts and crocheted dishcloths in the basement of the Community Church for an African fund-raiser. And Lorraine hadn’t come home from school yet.

He went to the bathroom and was sick for a while and afterward returned to bed, looking again out the window, but didn’t see the boys this time and didn’t think anything of it, but when he got up from bed an hour later and looked once more and didn’t see them in the corral this time either, he wondered what was wrong. He thought they might have gotten hurt. Or were having trouble with the mare. He stood looking out the bedroom window for some time.

Finally he went out across the kitchen to the back porch and watched out the window. He pushed open the door and stepped out into the howling raw day and cupped his hands and hollered toward the barn. The wind tore his voice away. He could barely hear it himself. He hollered again. He looked left and right and saw nothing but Berta May’s yellow house to the south and the empty windblown weed-grown undeveloped lots to the north and the raised bed of the railroad tracks. He stepped back into the house and shut the door. Weak and sick, he stood shivering on the back porch in his pajamas, shaking steadily, looking out the window.

He put on his winter coat and boots and work cap and scarf and gloves and crossed the bare winter lawn in the backyard and went on into the corral. The wispy dirt was swept up by the wind into little drifts across the bare ground. The wind cried and whistled in the leafless trees. He came around the south end of the barn out of the weather and opened the door and peered in at the dim and shadowy center bay. Shafts of sunlight from the cracks in the high plank barn walls fell across the dirt floor. Dust motes and chaff drifted in the air. There was the rich smell of hay and the good smell of horse. He stood for a moment to allow his eyes to adjust. Then he could see Frank and the Seegers kid.

They were mounted on the mare, riding her around in a circle in the closed area of the dirt-floored barn, Frank behind the other boy, their heads close together, and each of them was dressed in one of Lorraine’s frilly summer dresses, trotting in and out of the shafts of sunlight. Riding the horse bareback, bouncing, their thin bare legs clutching the mare’s shaggy winter-coated barrel. Frank held the reins in one hand and his other hand was wrapped around the Seegers kid.

Then Frank saw Dad standing in the barn doorway. He reined the mare in sharply. Dad stepped inside and moved over to them. The Seegers boy was a redheaded twelve-year-old kid, skinny, his neck scrawny above the square-cut yoke of the pink dress. He looked cold and scared. He and Frank both had lipstick on their mouths.

Get down from that horse, Dad said.

Dad, Frank said. It’s all right.

Get down from there.

Frank slid down, then the other boy slipped off. They stood waiting, watching Dad.

What in the goddamn hell do you think you’re doing? he said.

We weren’t hurting anything, Frank said.

You weren’t.

No.

Let me have the goddamn horse. And get the hell out of those goddamn dresses.

Dad took the reins and led the mare across to the big sliding door and shoved it open and jerked the bridle free and slapped the mare hard on the rear, and she trotted out across the empty lot, then he came back. The boys had removed the dresses and were working at getting the brassieres off. They looked like thin hairless animals, frightened and cold. They turned their backs to him and took down Lorraine’s silky underpants and stepped shivering over to the manger to their own clothes draped on spikes and got into their pants and shirts and coats.

Are you going to tell my mom? the Seegers kid said.

What? No. But if I see you in here again, by God, I’m going to whip you.

The boy looked at Frank once, quick, and stumbled across to the door and hurried outside. They could hear him running across the corral.

You want to tell me what this is about? Dad said.

There’s nothing to tell, Frank said.

Those were your sister’s dresses.

Yes.

Does she know you took them?

No. But we weren’t doing anything to them.

You think she’d see it that way?

Frank looked at him and looked out the open door where the boy had gone. She wouldn’t care, he said.

Why wouldn’t she care?

She just wouldn’t.

How do you know that?

I don’t know it for sure.

Have you talked to her about this, what you’ve been doing?

No.

She doesn’t know anything about it? How you two were wearing her dresses?

No.

Jesus Christ. He looked at Frank, watching his face. What am I supposed to do about this?

Leave me alone.

Leave you alone.

Please.

Dad stared at him. Christ, he said. What are you anyway?

I’m just your boy. That’s all I am.

Dad grabbed him and shook him, hauling him around in the cold air, they staggered in and out of the bars of light fallen across the floor, and then Dad stopped shaking him and grabbed the bridle reins and whipped at him. Frank pulled away, and in his wildness Dad whipped him once across the face and then he suddenly threw the reins away and grabbed the boy, holding him in his arms, hugging him and sobbing. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.

Frank held himself rigid in his father’s arms and finally Dad let him go, then Dad hurried out of the barn, stumbling across to the house into the bathroom and was sick and then went back to the bedroom, his head aching and throbbing now. When he was lying in bed he turned his head and looked out the window. The sun was going down. His eyes welled up and he straightened his head on the pillow and folded his arm over his face in the darkening room.