Eventide (Plainsong #2)(26)

They drove on along the blacktop. The narrow highway looked empty and forlorn ahead in the lights of the pickup. The wind blew across the flat open sandy ground, across the wheat fields and corn stubble and across the native pastures where dark herds of cattle grazed in the night. On either side of the highway farmhouses were set off by faint blue yardlights, the houses all scattered and isolated in the dark country, and far ahead down the highway the streetlights of Holt were a mere shimmer on the low horizon.

Maggie sat next to Guthrie in the cab and stared ahead at the center stripe in the road. I think I’ll ask Victoria if she wants to stay with me, she said. She won’t want to be alone in that house tonight.

She’s going to have to stay in it sometime.

Not tonight, Maggie said. She’s had enough to get used to for one day.

She’s not the only one, Guthrie said. That poor old son of a bitch. Think of him.

Yes, Maggie said. She looked at Guthrie and slid over nearer in the seat and sat close beside him. She put her hand on his thigh and left it there as they rode along in the dark. They passed the small square sign at the side of the road that announced they had entered the limits of Holt.

In town they turned left onto US 34 and turned again onto Main Street and parked in front of the hospital. They got out in the chill air and went inside and found that Victoria was still seated in the chair beside Raymond’s bed. Since they had left two hours earlier she had not moved. It was as if she would not even consider the possibility of moving, as if she thought by sitting beside his bed, refusing to move, she might prevent anything else from happening to him, or to anyone else she loved in this world. She was still holding Katie on her lap, and Raymond and the little girl were both asleep.

Then, hearing Maggie and Guthrie come into the room, Raymond woke. He looked up and it was clear, by what showed in his face, that he had just remembered. Oh Lord, he said. Oh Lord.





15


LATER, GUTHRIE AND MAGGIE LEFT THE ROOM AND WENT out, and Victoria stayed in the hospital and tended to Raymond and told him she would go to Maggie’s house after visiting hours were over.

The orderly brought Raymond a tray of supper but he didn’t want it. It tasted like nothing he cared for and he wasn’t hungry anyway. Victoria fed some of the applesauce to Katie and she took the spoon and ate it herself and afterward sat on the floor with pencils and crayons, drawing pictures until she grew tired, then Victoria put her in the empty bed next to the door and spread the light cotton blankets over her.

She’s all wore out, Raymond said.

I thought she would sleep in the car driving up here but she didn’t, Victoria said. She jabbered all the way.

Victoria was holding Raymond’s hand. She was sitting next to him as before in the chair beside his bed, the door half closed against the noise of people going by and the low murmuring of people talking out in the hallway.

How’s school going? he said. Still doing all right?

It’s okay. It doesn’t seem very important right now.

I know. But you’ll have to keep on.

I’m going to stay home for a while.

You don’t want to miss your school.

It won’t hurt to miss some. This is more important. She straightened the bedsheet at his neck.

Raymond looked at her and then at the tiled ceiling, shifting a little in the bed. I can’t quit thinking about him, he said. He stays at the front of my mind all the time.

Do you want to talk about it?

It happened so fast. You can’t predict what an animal is going to do. You never can. I knew that bull was that way, but he’d never hurt nobody before.

You couldn’t do anything, she said. You have to know that.

But it doesn’t help, just knowing it. I keep going over all of it again in my head. There ought to of been something I could do.

Did he suffer? Victoria said.

Yes. He was awful bad at the end. I’m only glad now it didn’t last too long. I didn’t know how bad it was really. I thought he’d make it, I thought he’d come out of it. We been together all our lives.

You always got along together, didn’t you.

Yes, honey, we did. We never did have much of a fight. We had our disputes sometimes but they never amounted to anything. They was always done the next day. We just agreed on most things. Even without having to talk about them.

Did you ever think of doing anything else?

Like what, honey?

I don’t know. Like getting married, maybe. Or living apart.

Well. There was this one time Harold had him kind of a interest in a woman, but then she got interested in somebody else. That was a long time ago. She still lives here in town, with two grown-up kids. He always figured he was too slow, I guess. It might not of ever got anywhere anyway. Harold was pretty set in his ways.

They were good ways though, Victoria said. Weren’t they.

I think they were, Raymond said. He was a awful good brother to me.

He was good to me too, Victoria said. I keep expecting him to come walking in that door any minute now, saying something funny, and wearing that old dirty hat of his, like he always did.

That was him, wasn’t it, Raymond said. My brother always did have his own way of wearing a hat. You could tell Harold from a distance anywhere. You could tell him two blocks away. Oh hell, I miss him already.

I do too, she said.

I don’t imagine I’ll ever get over missing him, Raymond said. Some things you don’t get over. I believe this’ll be one of them.