Plainsong (Plainsong #1)(46)

Who does he sell it to? the girl said.

Any number of places. Most likely to the milling company. Mostly it goes for your baking flour.

Then when do you get your money?

He writes you out a check today.

Who does that?

The elevator manager.

Except if there’s a storage charge, Harold said, taking his turn again. He takes that out. Plus your drying charge, if there is one. Only, since it’s wheat we’re talking about, there’s never much drying charge with wheat. Mostly that’s with your corn.

They stopped again and studied the girl once more. They had begun to feel better, a little satisfied with themselves. They knew they were not out of the woods yet, but they had begun to allow themselves to believe that what they saw ahead was at least a faint track leading to a kind of promising clearing. They watched the girl and waited.

She shook her head and smiled. They noticed again how beautiful her teeth were and how smooth her face. She said, I still don’t think I understand it. You said something about cattle. What about them?

Oh, well, Harold said. Okay. Now with cattle.

And so the two McPheron brothers went on to discuss slaughter cattle and choice steers, heifers and feeder calves, explaining these too, and between the three of them they discussed these matters thoroughly, late into the evening. Talking. Conversing. Venturing out into various other matters a little too. The two old men and the seventeen-year-old girl sitting at the dining room table out in the country after supper was over and after the table was cleared, while outside, beyond the house walls and the curtainless windows, a cold blue norther began to blow up one more high plains midwinter storm.





Ike and Bobby.

As per agreement they spent Christmas week in Denver with their mother. Guthrie drove them to the city in the pickup and went up with them to the seventh floor of the apartment building on Logan Street where their mother’s sister lived. They took the elevator and followed a runner of carpet in the long bright corridor. Guthrie saw them into the front room and talked briefly to their mother without heat or argument, but he wouldn’t sit down and he left very soon.

Their mother seemed quieter now. Perhaps she was more at peace. Her face looked less pinched and pale, less drawn. She was glad to see them. She hugged them for a long time and her eyes were wet with tears while she smiled, and they sat together on the couch and she held their hands warmly in her lap. It was clear she had missed them. But in some way their mother had been taken over by her sister who was three years older. She was a small woman, precise and particular, with sharp opinions, pretty instead of beautiful, with gray eyes and a small hard chin. She and their mother would contend now and then over little things—the table setting, the degree of heat in the apartment—but in the matters of consequence their mother’s sister had her way. Then their mother seemed remote and passive as though she could not be roused to defend herself. But the two boys didn’t think in such terms. They thought their aunt was bossy. They wanted their mother to do something about the way their aunt was.

The apartment had two bedrooms and the boys stayed with their mother in her room, chatting and telling little jokes and playing cards, and at night they slept on the floor on pallets, with warm blankets folded over them at the foot of her bed. It was like camping. But much of the time they couldn’t be in the bedroom since their mother was having her silent spells again, when she wanted to be alone in a darkened room. The spells started the fourth day they were in Denver, after Christmas. Christmas had been disappointing. The red sweater they’d bought their mother was too big for her, though she said she liked it anyway. They hadn’t thought to buy their aunt anything. Their mother had bought them each a bright shirt, and later, one day when she was feeling better, she took them shopping downtown and bought them new shoes and new pants and several pairs of socks and underwear. When they stopped at the register to pay Ike said, It’s too much, Mother. We don’t need all this.

Your father sent me some money, she said. Should we go back now?

It was very quiet in their aunt’s apartment. Their aunt was a supervisory clerk in the municipal court system with an office in the civic center downtown, and she had been there for twenty-three years and as a result she had developed a stark view of humanity and its vagaries and the multitude of ways it found to commit crimes. She had been married once, for three months, and since that time had never considered marrying anyone again. She was left with two passions: a fat yellow neutered cat named Theodore and the television soap opera that came on at one o’clock every weekday while she was at work, a program she taped religiously and watched without fail every night when she was home again.

The boys were bored right away. Their mother had seemed better, but after the silent spells began she appeared defeated again and went back to bed, and their aunt told them they must be quiet and let her rest. This was after she’d gone into their mother’s room one evening and they’d talked for an hour behind the closed door, and then she had come back out and said, You will have to be quiet and let her rest.

We have been quiet.

Are you arguing with me.

What’s wrong with Mother?

Your mother is not strong.

So their aunt went to work and their mother went back to bed lying with her arm folded over her eyes in a darkened room, and they were left alone in the seventh-floor apartment in Denver and were told strictly not to go outside. They spent their time reading a little and they watched tv until they were blind, while still being careful at the critical hour not to interfere with the taping of their aunt’s soap opera. Their only recourse was the balcony at the front of the apartment, which they entered by sliding back a glass door. It overlooked Logan Street and the sidewalk and there were cars parked all along the curbing and they could see into the tops of the leafless winter trees. They began to go out on the balcony to watch the cars go by in the street and to see people walking their dogs. They put their coats on and stayed for longer and longer periods of time. After a while they took to dropping things off the balcony. They started by leaning over the rail to watch what the wind did with their spittle, then they made up a game to see who could sail scraps of paper the farthest, floating the paper like feathers, and they invented a system of points for distance and placement. But that was too unpredictable. Wind had too much to do with it. They found that dropping things that had weight was better. And eggs were best.