Eventide (Plainsong #2)(67)

Maybe you did. I can’t recall. Anyway, come in, come in. Welcome to this old house here.

Thank you. It’s good to be here.

Well, it’s pretty quiet. Not like in town. Where you from, son?

Denver.

From the city.

Yes sir. I’ve been there all my life. Until I went to college.

Well, things are a little different out here. Kind of slow. Anyhow, if you’re a friend of Victoria’s you’re welcome.

They went back to the car and brought their bags in and afterward Victoria made a light supper. It was a quiet awkward meal. Victoria did most of the talking. Afterward Raymond took the little girl into the parlor and sat her on his lap in the recliner chair and read the paper and talked to her a little while her mother and the boy did the dishes. Katie had been shy of him at first, but warmed up over supper and now was asleep, curled against his shoulder. Raymond peered out into the kitchen above the top of his newspaper. He couldn’t make out what they were saying but Victoria looked to be happy. Once the boy leaned over and kissed her, then looked up and saw Raymond was watching them.

Victoria made up the bed for Del Gutierrez in Harold’s old room upstairs, and Raymond watched the ten o’clock news and weather on television, then said good night and went up to bed. He lay awake for a time listening for what he might hear, but he couldn’t hear anything from downstairs and after a while he went to sleep, and then he woke when the boy entered the room across the hall and shut the door. He lay there thinking how long it had been since he’d heard anyone moving about in his brother’s room.

The next morning the boy surprised him. He was drinking coffee at the kitchen table when Raymond came downstairs in the slanted light of early morning. I never expected to see you at this hour, Raymond said.

I thought you might let me help you do something, the boy said.

Do something.

Outside. Whatever you have to do.

Raymond looked around the kitchen. Did you make this coffee?

Yes.

Were you planning on sharing it?

Yes sir. Can I get you a cup?

Oh, I believe I know where we keep the cups. Unless they got moved since last night.

He took down his usual cup and poured some coffee and stood looking out the window with his back to the boy. Then he finished and set the cup in the sink. All right, he said. You can come out with me if that’s what you think you want to do. I’ve got to feed out, then we’ll come back in for breakfast later on.

All right, the boy said.

You have any warm clothes?

I brought a jacket.

You’ll want something warmer than that.

Raymond handed him his brother’s lined canvas chore jacket from the peg by the door. There’s gloves in the side pocket. You got a hat?

I don’t usually wear one.

Here, wear this. He handed the boy Harold’s old red wool cap. I don’t want to think what Victoria would say if I got your ears froze off the first day you got here.

The boy pulled on the old cap. In his wire glasses and with the earflaps hanging loose beside his head, he looked to be some manner of nearsighted immigrant farmhand from an era much earlier.

Well, Raymond said. I guess you’ll do. He put on his coat and cap and gloves and they went outside.

They walked out through the wire gate and crossed to the haylot east of the barn where the ancient red sun-faded Farmall tractor was hooked up to the flatbed hay wagon next to the stack of bales. A cold wind was blowing out of the west, the sky obscured by streams of cloud. Raymond told him to climb onto the stack and throw down the bales while he stacked them on the wagon. We might as well do a good load, since you’re here, he said.

They worked for most of an hour. The boy threw down one bale after another, each one bouncing on the worn plank floor of the wagon, and Raymond set them in place, stacking them in tiers. After a while the boy took his coat off and they went on working. Then Raymond called a halt and climbed down from the wagon and got up into the seat of the tractor. Let’s go to it, he said.

Where should I ride? the boy said.

Stand here on the draw bar. And hang on. You don’t want to get yourself dumped off and mashed under these iron wagon wheels.

The boy put his coat back on and stepped up behind Raymond, holding on to the back of the metal seat, and they went clattering and bouncing out of the haylot into the pasture, rocking across the rough ground on a track through the sagebrush and soapweed, and on out to where the mother cows and calves were milling about and shoving into one another, waiting for their morning feed.

Raymond braked to a stop. You think you can drive this tractor?

I don’t know. I’ve never driven one before.

Climb up here and I’ll show you.

They traded places and Raymond showed him which gear to use so the tractor would creep along, and indicated to him the two foot brakes and the clutch and the hand throttle.

I expect you’ve drove a stick shift before.

I’ve done that much.

There isn’t anything to it. Just keep it in compound and let it crawl. Give it a little gas when you need to, going up any rise.

The boy sat in the metal seat and they started out, the tractor rocking and heaving.

You want to head out this way, Raymond said. Follow that trail of worn ground there where I been feeding.

Along there?

You think you can do that?

Yes.