Plainsong (Plainsong #1)(60)

Guthrie was at the stove, stirring eggs. Wait, he said. Can’t one of you boys talk at a time?

They told him again.

All right, he said. I’ll go look. But you stay here. Eat your breakfast.

He went outside. They could hear his steps on the porch. When the screen door slapped shut they sat down at the bare wooden table against the wall and began to eat, sitting across from each other, chewing quietly and then listening and looking at each other and beginning to chew again, their brown heads and blue eyes almost identical above the crockery plates. When he finished eating, Ike stood up and looked out the window. He’s coming back, he said.

I guess he’s going to die, Bobby said.

Who is?

Your horse. I guess he’s going to die today.

No he isn’t. Eat your breakfast.

I already ate my breakfast.

Well eat some more.

Guthrie came back into the house. He crossed to the phone and called Dick Sherman. They talked briefly. Then he hung up and Ike said: What’s he going to do to him? He’s not going to hurt him, is he?

No. He’s already hurt.

But what makes him do that?

I’m not sure.



Was he still kicking himself?

Yes. There’s something the matter with him. Something in his stomach, I guess. Dick’ll look him over.

I guess he’s going to die, Bobby said.

You be quiet, Bobby.

He could die though.

But you don’t know that. You don’t know anything about it. So keep your mouth shut.

Stop now, Guthrie said.

The two boys looked at each other.

Both of you, he said. And you better go get your papers started. I heard the train half an hour ago. It’s time you were leaving.

Can’t we do it later?

No. People pay on time and they want their papers on time.

But just this once? Dick Sherman’ll be gone already.

He might be. And if he is I’ll tell you about it. Go ahead now.

You won’t let him hurt him.

No, I won’t let him hurt him. But Dick wouldn’t anyway.

Anyway, Bobby said. He’s hurt already.

They went back outside into that early morning cold sunlight for the second time and walked their bikes out of the yard. They looked toward the barn and corral. Elko was still humped on three legs, still kicking. They mounted the bikes and rode out of the driveway onto the loose gravel on Railroad Street and east a half mile to the Holt depot.

When they were finished with their paper route they met again at Main and Railroad and rode home. It was a little warmer now. It was about eight-thirty and they were sweating a little under the hair on their foreheads. They rode past the old light plant beside the tracks. When they passed Mrs. Frank’s house on Railroad Street and then the line of lilac bushes in her side yard, the new little heart-shaped leaves beginning to open along the branches now, they could see the extra pickup was still in the driveway at home, parked beside the corral.

Anyway, Ike said, he’s not done with him yet. That’s Dick Sherman’s pickup.

I bet he’s still kicking, Bobby said. Kicking and grunting.

They rode on, pedaling over the loose gravel, past the narrow pasture and the silver poplar and turned in at the drive and left their bikes at the house. They approached the corral but didn’t enter; instead they looked through the fence boards. Elko was on the ground now. Their father and Dick Sherman were standing beside him, talking. He was down on his side in the corral dirt with his neck reached out as if he meant to drink at the barn’s limestone block foundation. They could see one of his dark eyes. The eye was open, staring, and they wondered if the other eye was open too like that, staring blindly into the dirt under his head, filling with it. His mouth was open and they could see his big teeth, yellow and dirt-coated, and his salmon tongue. Their father saw them through the fence and came over.

How long have you boys been here?

Not very long.

You better go back to the house.

They didn’t move. Ike was still looking through the fence into the corral. He’s dead. Isn’t he? he said.

Yes. He is, son.

What happened to him?

I don’t know. But you better go back to the house. Dick’s going to try to find out.

What’s he going to do to him?

He has to cut him open. It’s called an autopsy.

What for? Bobby said. If he’s already dead.

Because that’s how we find out. But I don’t think you want to watch this.

Yes we do, Ike said. We want to watch.

Guthrie studied them for a moment. They stood before him across the fence, blue-eyed, the sweat drying on their foreheads, waiting in silence, a little desperate now but still patient and still waiting.

All right, he said. But you ought to go up to the house. You won’t like it.

We know, Ike said.

I don’t think you do, son.

Well, said Bobby. We’ve seen chickens before.

Yes. But this isn’t chickens.

They sat on the fence and watched it all. For most of it Dick Sherman used a knife with a steel handle, which was easier to clean up afterward, and there wasn’t the problem of a wooden handle’s breaking. It was a sharp knife and he began by stabbing it into the horse’s stomach and working it sawlike along his length, sawing up through the tough hide and brownish hair and pulling with his other hand to open the cut wider. When the knife grew slippery with blood he wiped it and his red hands on the hair over the ribs. Then the yard-long incision had been made and Dick Sherman and their father began to peel back the hide, their father pulling the upper flap of skin and hair backward while Sherman shaved at it underneath, freeing the hide from the ribs and stomach lining, exposing a thin layer of yellow fat and the fine sheaf of red muscle. Dick Sherman was kneeling at the horse’s stomach with the knife and their father was crouched over his back. Both men had begun to sweat. Their shirts showed darker along the back and their faces shone. But they paused only briefly, routinely, to wipe their forearms across their shining foreheads, then fell to work again over the prone horse, whose one visible eye, as far as the boys could determine from the fence, had not changed at all but was still wide open, still staring indifferently into the blank featureless sky above the barn as if he didn’t know or didn’t care what was being done to him, or as if he had decided at last not to look anywhere else ever again. But Dick Sherman wasn’t finished yet.