Plainsong (Plainsong #1)(42)

You boys don’t say very much, she said. I wonder what you’re thinking all the time.

About what?

About anything. About the cookies you made.

They’re good, Ike said.

You can take them home with you, she said.

Don’t you want them?

I’ll keep a few. You take the rest home when you go.





Guthrie.

Maggie Jones said, You’re not leaving so soon?

Guthrie stood in the front hall with his winter coat in his hand, while behind Maggie other teachers stood about in groups holding little paper plates of food, drinking and talking, and still others sat in chairs and on the davenport. In the corner of the living room one of them was listening to Maggie Jones’s father. The old man had on a corduroy shirt and a green tie and he was gesturing with both hands, telling the woman something, some story out of his own old time when he was young.

Why so soon? Maggie said. It’s still early.

I’m not much for these things, Guthrie said. I think I’ll go on.

Where are you going?

Over to have a drink at the Chute. Why don’t you come with me.

I can’t leave these people here. You know that.

Guthrie pulled his coat on and zipped it.

Wait for me, she said. I’ll come join you when I can.

All right. But I don’t know how long I’ll be there.

He opened the door and went outside. He felt the cold air at once on his face and ears and inside his nose. There were cars parked all along the street in front of her house and around the corner. He walked up half a block and climbed into his pickup. It turned over grudgingly, then it caught and he shoved his hands in his pockets while it warmed up a minute, then he pulled out into the street. Three blocks south on the almost empty highway he stopped at the Gas and Go, leaving the pickup engine idling, and bought a pack of cigarettes and came back out and drove over a couple of blocks east to the Chute Bar and Grill. It was smoky inside and somebody had fed the jukebox. The usual crowd was there, for a Saturday night.

He sat down at the bar and Monroe came over, drying his hands on a white bar towel. Tom, what’s it going to be? Guthrie ordered a beer and Monroe drew it and set it down in front of him. He wiped at a spot on the polished wood but it was something in the grain of the wood itself. You want to start a tab?

I don’t guess so. Guthrie handed him a bill and Monroe turned and made change at the cash register in front of the big mirror and brought it back and set the bills and coins alongside the glass.

Anything happening?

It’s still early, Monroe said.

He went down the bar and Guthrie looked around. There were three or four men on his left and people at the booths behind them and others in the far room at the tables and booths and at the shuffleboard table against the wall. Judy, the high school secretary, was sitting with another woman at one of the tables. She saw him looking at her and raised her glass and waggled two fingers like a young girl would. He nodded to her and turned and looked the other direction back toward the entrance. A couple more men, and slumped on the end stool was a woman in an army jacket. The man next to him turned. It was Buster Wheelright.

That you, Tom?

How’s it going? Guthrie said.

It isn’t any use to complain, is it?

Not that I know of.

Not around here, Buster said.

Guthrie drank from his glass and looked at him. What’d you do, lose some weight? I didn’t recognize you.

Hell yeah. How’s it look on me?

It looks good.

I just got out of detox. I lost some weight in there.

How was that?

Detox?

Yeah.

It was all right. Except once I got sobered up I was depressed as hell. Crying all the time. Doctor give me some anti-depression pills. Then I was okay. Except I couldn’t shit.

Guthrie grinned and shook his head. Hell of a deal.

It’s a hell of a deal, Tom. You can’t live if you can’t shit. Can you?

I don’t believe so.

No. So then he give me some laxatives. Cleaned me out thorough. That’ll make you lose some weight, let me tell you. Only I couldn’t keep up with it. All the time I was in there I eat like a horse but I kept shittin like a full growed elephant. Buster laughed. He was missing teeth on the upper left side of his mouth.

Sounds like a radical cure to me, Guthrie said.

Oh, you don’t want to do it every day, Buster said.

They both drank. Guthrie looked back into the other room. Judy was laughing about something with the people at the table. A big curly-haired man was there now too.

Where’s your partner? Guthrie said. I don’t see him anywhere.

Who?

Terrel.

Oh, hell. Didn’t you hear about that?

No.

Well hell. Terrel he was coming into town yesterday morning driving in his truck on the north side of town there and that little spotted bitch dog of Smythe’s run out in the street in front of him. Terrel feared he run over it. So he slowed down and opened the door and leant out to look behind him and be goddamned if he didn’t fall out of the truck right out in the street. The truck went on without him and runt into Helen Shattuck’s backyard privacy fence. They took him to the hospital, thinking he’d had a cardiac arrest. When he come to he had to tell what it was. Fell out of the truck, all it was. On account of he’s overweight and got to leaning out too far. Overbalanced hisself, I guess. Dumped out on his head right there on Hoag Street.