Plainsong (Plainsong #1)(49)

She laughed. I’m doing fine.

Thanks for the information, he said. Happy New Year’s to you, and hung up.

The next morning the McPheron brothers came up to the house from work about nine o’clock, covered up against the cold, stomping their boots on the little porch, taking their thick caps off. They had purposely timed their return to the house so as to find the girl still seated in the dining room at the walnut table, eating her solitary breakfast. She looked up at them where they stood hesitating in the doorway, then they came in and sat down across from her. She was still in her flannel nightgown and heavy sweater and stockings and her hair was shining in the winter-slanted sun coming in through the uncurtained south windows.

Harold cleared his throat. We’ve been thinking, he said.

Oh? the girl said.

Yes ma’am, we have. Victoria, we want to take you over to Phillips to do some shopping in the stores. If that’s all right with you. If you don’t have something else planned for the day.

This announcement surprised her. What for? she said.

For fun, Raymond said. For some diversion. Don’t you want to? We thought you might appreciate getting out of the house.

No. I mean, what are we shopping for?

For the baby. Don’t you think this little baby you’re carrying is going to want some place to put his head down some day?

Yes. I think so.

Then we better get him something to do it in.

She looked at him and smiled. What if it’s a girl though?

Then I guess we’ll just have to keep her anyway and make the best of our bad luck, Raymond said. He made an exaggeratedly grave face. But a little girl’s going to want a bed too, isn’t she? Don’t little baby girls get tired too?

They left the house about eleven that morning after the McPheron brothers had finished the morning feeding. They had come back in and washed up and changed into clean pants and clean shirts, and by the time they had put on the good handshaped silver-belly Bailey hats that they wore only to town the girl was already waiting for them, sitting at the kitchen table in her winter coat with the red purse looped over her shoulder.

They set out in the bright cold day, riding in the pickup, the girl seated in the middle between them with a blanket over her lap, with the old papers and sales receipts and fencing pliers and the hot wire testers and the dirty coffee mugs all sliding back and forth across the dashboard whenever they made any sharp turn, driving north toward Holt, passing through town and beneath the new water tower and carrying on north, the country flat and whitepatched with snow and the wheat stubble and the cornstalks sticking up blackly out of the frozen ground and the winter wheat showing in the fall-planted fields as green as jewelry. Once they saw a lone coyote in the open, running, a steady distance-covering lope, its long tail floating out behind like a trail of smoke. Then it spotted the pickup, stopped, started to move again, running hard now, and crossed the highway and hit a section of woven fence and was instantly thrown back but at once sprang up again and hit the fence again and at last in a panic scrambled up over the wire fence like a human man would, and ran on, loping again in the open, traversing the wide country on the other side of the road without once pausing or even slowing down to look back.

Is he all right? the girl said.

Appears like it, Raymond said.

Until somebody gets after him, Harold said, chasing after him in a pickup with coyote dogs. And shoots him.

Do they do that?

They do.

They drove on. There were farm houses scattered and isolated in the flat sandy country, with barns and outbuildings down below them, and dark windbreaks of trees in the far distances, showing where a farmstead was now or once had been. They drove past one farm beside the highway where there were quarter horses and a red barn and where the man had poked worn-out cowboy boots upside down over the tops of the fence posts along the road for an eighth of a mile, for decoration. At Red Willow they turned west and drove on, past the country schoolhouse at Lone Star and across the high open wheatland, and after a while they topped a rise and could see down into the South Platte River valley, wide and tree-lined, the cliffs far away on the other side, with the town laid out below. They fishtailed down, crossed the interstate highway and entered the outreaches of Phillips.

By now it was about one-thirty. They parked at the curb across from the courthouse and went into a little local café for lunch and sat down at a table with a green tablecloth quartered over it. The noon-hour rush was finished and they were the only customers. In a moment a woman got up from the counter where she’d been smoking and resting and brought them water glasses and menus. The girl ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup. Raymond said to her, You better get you more than that. Don’t you think, Victoria? It’s a long time till supper.

The girl asked for a glass of milk.

Bring her a tall glass, would you, ma’am? Raymond said.

What about you two gentlemen? the woman said.

Both of the McPheron brothers ordered chicken fried steaks which came with mashed potatoes and green beans and canned corn and a carrot Jell-O salad.

Them are good to eat, the woman said.

That so? Harold said.

I like em myself, she said.

That sounds encouraging, if the help eats the food, he said. What kind of gravy comes with it?

Yellow.

Put some of that on the steaks too, would you?

I can tell him. I don’t do it myself.