Eventide (Plainsong #2)(5)

Eighteen, Betty said.

It ain’t right for her to talk to my wife that way. I got a mind to call the principal about it.

Just a minute, Rose said. Slow down and tell me what happened. Did you have Richie and Joy Rae out at the curb on time? We’ve talked about that before.

They was out there. They was dressed and ready.

You need to do that, you know. The bus driver’s doing the best she can.

They come right out after she honked.

What’s the bus driver’s name? Do you know?

Luther looked at his wife. Do we know her name, honey?

Betty shook her head.

We never did hear her name. The one with the yellow hair is all we know.

Yes, well. Would you like me to call and find out what’s going on?

Call that principal too. Tell him what she been doing to us.

I’ll make a phone call for you. But you have to do your part too.

We already been doing our part.

I know, but you need to try to get along with her, don’t you. What would you do if your children couldn’t ride the bus?

They looked at Rose and then across the room at the poster taped on the wall. LEAP—Low-Energy Assistance Program, all in red letters.

Let’s see then, Rose said. I’ve got your food stamps here. She produced the stamps from the file on the table, booklets of one, five, ten, and twenty-dollar denominations, each in a different color. She slid the packets across the table and Luther gave them to Betty to put in her purse.

And you received your disability checks on time this month? Rose said.

Oh yeah. They come in the mail yesterday.

And you’re cashing the checks like we talked about and putting the money in separate envelopes for your various expenses.

Betty’s got them. Show her, dear.

Betty removed four envelopes from her purse. RENT, GROCERIES, UTILITIES, EXTRAS. Each envelope with Rose Tyler’s careful printing in block letters.

That’s fine. Now is there anything else today?

Luther glanced at Betty, then turned toward Rose. Well, my wife keeps on talking about Donna. Seems like she always got Donna on her mind.

I just been thinking about her, Betty said. I don’t see why I can’t call her on the phone. She’s my daughter, isn’t she.

Of course, Rose said. But the court order stipulated that you have no contact with her. You know that.

I just want to talk to her. I wouldn’t have no kind of contact. I just want to know how she’s been doing.

Calling her would be considered contact, though, Rose said.

Betty’s eyes filled with tears and she sat slumped in her chair with her hands open on the table, her hair fallen about her face, a few strands stuck to her wet cheeks. Rose extended a Kleenex box across the table, and Betty took one and began to wipe at her face. I wouldn’t bother her, she said. I just want to talk to her.

It makes you feel bad, doesn’t it.

Wouldn’t you feel bad? If it was you.

Yes. I’m sure I would.

You just got to try and make the best of it, dear, Luther said. That’s all you can do. He patted her shoulder.

She isn’t your daughter.

I know that, he said. I’m just saying you got to get on the best way you know how. What else you going to do? He looked at Rose.

What about Joy Rae and Richie? Rose said. How are they doing?

Well, Richie, he’s been fighting at school, Luther said. Come home the other day with his nose all bloody.

That’s cause them other kids been picking fights with him, Betty said.

I’m going to teach him how to fight them back one of these days.

What’s causing this, do you think? Rose said.

I don’t know, Betty said. They just always been picking on him.

Does he say anything?

Richie don’t say nothing to them.

That’s because I been teaching him: Turn the other cheek, Luther said. When they smite thee on one cheek, turn him the other one. It’s out of the Bible.

He only has two cheeks, Betty said. How many cheeks is he suppose to turn?

Yes, Rose said, there are limits, aren’t there.

We come to the limits, Betty said. I don’t know what we’re going to do.

No, Luther said, otherwise I guess we don’t got too much to complain about. He sat upright in his chair, apparently ready to leave, to move on to whatever came next. I guess we been doing pretty good for ourselves. You get what you get and don’t have a fit, what I always tell people. Somebody told that to me one time.





3


HE WAS A SMALL BOY, UNDERWEIGHT FOR HIS AGE, WITH thin arms and thin legs and brown hair that hung over his forehead. He was active and responsible, and too serious for a boy of eleven. Before he was born his mother decided not to marry the man who was his father, and when he was five she died in a car wreck in Brush Colorado on a Saturday night after she’d been out dancing with a redheaded man in a highway tavern. She had never said who his father was. Since her death he had lived alone with his mother’s father on the north side of Holt, in a dark little house with vacant lots on both sides and a gravel alley out back that had mulberry trees grown up beside it. At school he was in the fifth grade and he was a good student but spoke only when called on; he never volunteered anything in the classroom, and when he was let out of school each day he went home by himself or wandered around town or occasionally did yardwork for the woman who lived up the street.