Plainsong (Plainsong #1)(64)

But listen to me, she said.

What.

You don’t actually think I’m scary, do you?

Yeah, I do.

Tell me the truth. I’m serious now.

That is the truth. At times I can’t say I know what to make of you.

Can’t you?

No.

What do you mean? Why not?

Because you’re different than everybody else, he said. You don’t seem to ever get defeated or scared by life. You stay clear in yourself, no matter what.

She kissed him. Her dark eyes were watching him in the dim light. I get defeated sometimes, she said. I’ve been scared. But I’m just crazy about you. She reached down and touched him. Here’s one part of you that seems to know what to make of me.

You do make a person feel interested, said Guthrie.

. . .

Afterward they slept. The stars wheeled west in the night and the wind blew only a little. About four-thirty she woke him and asked if he wanted to go home before daylight.

Does it matter to you?

Not to me, she said.

They went back to sleep and then at gray dawn she got up when they heard the old man moving about in the kitchen. I need to get up and fix his cereal, Maggie said.

Guthrie watched her get out of bed and put a robe on and leave the room. He lay in bed for a while, listening to them talk, then got dressed and went into the bathroom. When he came out into the kitchen, Maggie’s father was sitting at the table with a dish towel tied around his neck and a bowl of oatmeal before him. The old man looked at him. And who do you think you are? he said.

Dad, you know Tom Guthrie. You’ve met him before.

What’s he want? We don’t need another car. Is he trying to sell you a car?

Guthrie told her goodbye and went home and traded his boots for gym shoes and went back out and drove over to the depot where a ragged stack of Sunday Denver News lay sprawled out beside the tracks, wrapped in twine. He sat down at the edge of the cobblestone platform with his feet out in the ballast and rolled the papers, and then rose and loaded them into the pickup cab and drove through Holt along early morning streets almost empty yet of traffic or any commotion at all, and hurled the papers from the pickup window in the approximate direction of the front doors and porches. He climbed the stairs over Main Street to the dark apartments above the places of business, and about midmorning he finished the boys’ paper routes and returned home and went out to the barn and fed the one horse and the cats and the dog. At the house he fixed himself some eggs and toast and drank two cups of black coffee, sitting in the kitchen with the sunlight slanted across his plate. He sat smoking for a while. Then he lay down on the davenport to read the paper. Three hours later he woke with the newspaper folded across his chest like a bum’s blanket. He lay still for a while, alone in the silent house, remembering the night before, what that had been like, wondering what might be starting. Thinking did he want it to start, and what if he did. Late in the afternoon he called her. You doing all right? he said.

Yes, aren’t you?

Yes, I am.

Good.

I enjoyed myself, he said. You think you’d like to get together again sometime?

You’re not suggesting an actual date, are you? Maggie said. In broad daylight?

I don’t know what you’d call it, Guthrie said. I’m just saying I’d be willing to take you out for supper at Shattuck’s and invest in a hamburger. To see how that would go down.

When were you thinking of doing that?

Right now. This evening.

Give me fifteen minutes to get ready, she said.

He hung up and went upstairs and put on a clean shirt and entered the bathroom and brushed his teeth and combed his hair. He looked at himself in the mirror. You don’t deserve it, he said aloud. Don’t ever even begin to think that you do.





Victoria Roubideaux.

The next week he came home and informed her that he wanted to go to another party. But she wouldn’t go again. She was afraid of what would happen and how she’d feel afterward, because of the threat to the baby. She knew she shouldn’t take anything bad into herself, and she didn’t want to go anyway. She wasn’t happy with him. It wasn’t what she had expected or thought of, dreaming about it. They seemed to have gone straight into the problems and middle years of marriage, missing, passing the honeymoon, the fun and youthful times.

When she wouldn’t go to the party he got mad and went out alone, slamming the door. After he was gone she watched television for a while and retired to bed early. In the middle of the night, about three in the morning, she heard him knock over something in the kitchen and it broke, a jar or glass, and he cursed viciously and kicked the pieces away, and afterward she heard him in the bathroom next door, then he was in the bedroom taking off his clothes. When he got into bed beside her he smelled of smoke and beer, and even with her eyes shut she could feel him looking at her. You awake? he said.

Yes.

You missed a good time.

What happened?

You missed it. I’m not going to tell you.

He slid closer and began to touch her hip and thigh, feeling under her nightgown. He was breathing close to her face now, his breath coming hot on her cheek, moving her hair.

No, she said. I’m too sleepy.

I’m not.

He lifted the gown, passed his hand over her swollen stomach, and felt of her sore breasts.