Eventide (Plainsong #2)(7)

AFTER HE WAS FINISHED HE TOOK THE BEANS AND THE cucumbers to the back door and knocked and stood waiting. Mary Wells came to the door with the two girls.

My, look at all you found, she said. I didn’t think there were that many. You keep some of them yourself. Now, let me get you some money.

She turned back into the house and he stepped away from the open doorway and looked out across the backyard toward the neighbors’ yard. There were patches of shade under the trees. Where he stood on the porch the sun shone full on his brown head and on his sweaty face, on the back of his dirty tee-shirt and the corner of the house. The girls were watching him. The older one wanted to say something but couldn’t think what it should be.

Mary Wells came back and handed him four dollars folded in half. He didn’t look at the money but put the bills in his pants pocket. Thank you, he said.

You’re welcome, DJ. And take some of these vegetables with you. She handed him a plastic bag.

I better go then. Grandpa’ll be getting hungry.

But you take care of yourself too, she said. You hear me?

He turned and went around to the front yard and started up the empty street in the late afternoon. He had the money in his pocket and the bag of green beans and two of the cucumbers.

When he was gone the girls walked out to the edge of the garden to see if he’d eaten the cookies, but they were still in the grass. There were red ants crawling on them now and a line of ants moving away in the grass. Dena picked up the cookies and shook them hard, then threw them out into the alley.



AT HOME HE FRIED HAMBURGER IN AN IRON SKILLET AND boiled some red potatoes and the green beans Mary Wells had given him and set out bread and butter on the table together with the sliced cucumbers on a plate. He made a new pot of coffee and when the potatoes and beans were ready he called his grandfather to the table and they began to eat.

What’d she have you doing over there? the old man said.

Pulling weeds. And picking vegetables.

Did she pay you?

Yes.

What’d she give you?

He drew the folded bills from his pocket and counted them out on the table. Four dollars, he said.

That’s a lot.

Is it?

It’s too much.

I don’t think it is.

Well, you better hang on to it. You might want to buy something someday.

After supper he cleared the table and washed the dishes and set them to dry on a towel on the counter while his grandfather went into the living room and turned on the lamp beside the rocker and read the Holt Mercury newspaper. The boy did his schoolwork at the kitchen table under the overhead light and when he looked in an hour later the old man was sitting with his eyes shut, their paper-thin lids crosshatched by tiny blue veins and his dark mouth lapsed open, breathing harshly, and the newspaper spread across the lap of his overalls.

Grandpa. He touched his arm. You better go to bed.

His grandfather woke and peered at him.

It’s time for bed.

The old man studied him for a moment as if trying to think who he was, then folded the paper together and set it on the floor beside the chair and, pushing against the arms of the rocker, rose slowly and walked into the bathroom, and afterward went back to his bedroom.

The boy drank another cup of coffee at the kitchen sink and dumped the dregs in the drain. He rinsed out the pot and turned off the lights and went back to bed in the little room next to his grandfather’s, where he read for two hours. Through the wall he could hear the old man snoring and coughing and muttering. At ten-thirty he cut the light out and fell asleep and the next morning he got up early to make their breakfast and afterward went to school across the tracks to the new building on the south side of Holt, and at school he did willingly and skillfully all that was required of him but didn’t say much of anything to anybody throughout the day.





4


THEY HAULED THE BLACKBALDY YEARLING STEERS TO town in the gooseneck trailer and jumped them out into the alley at the load-in dock behind the sale barn and the yard crew sorted them into a pen. The veterinarian inspected them and found none of the respiratory diseases he looked for in yearlings, nor the cancer eyes nor Bang’s nor the occasional malformed jaw he might expect in older cattle, and the brand inspector cleared them without question. Afterward they were handed the chit saying the steers were theirs and how many of them there were, and then they drove home again and ate in the kitchen in the quiet and went up to bed, and the next morning in the stilldark they rose from bed and chored out.

Now at noon they were seated at a square table in the little dirty sale barn diner ordering lunch. The waitress came with a pad and stood over them, sweating and red-faced. What are you two going to have today?

You look about like you was flat wore out, Harold said.

I’ve been at this since six this morning. Why wouldn’t I be?

Well, you might just bust something. You better take it easy.

When would I do that?

I don’t know, Harold said. That’s the question. You got any specials going on?

Everything’s special. What have you got in mind?

Well, he said, I’ve been considering the noble pig. I’ve seen about enough of these blackbaldy steers the last couple days to put me off beef for a week.

We have ham steak and there’s bacon if you want that. We could make you up a ham sandwich.