Plainsong (Plainsong #1)(69)
You little girls know where you are?
They looked around.
That’s town back there, he said. Where you see those lights. Look where I’m pointing at, goddamn it. Don’t look at me. See em? All you got to do is walk back on this road. But you better not cry to nobody about this. I don’t even want to think what I’ll do the next time, if somebody finds out.
They looked toward the lights of town. Then they looked at the girl still in the car. The door was open and the dome light was shining and she was watching them, but her face was blank. There wouldn’t be any help from her. They stood in their mackinaw coats, bareheaded, waiting, their faces ashen and frightened.
You hear what I said?
We heard you.
All right. Take off.
They pushed away from the car, moving in the direction of town.
Wait a minute, the other boy said. I mean, hell. That’s all you’re going to do?
You got something else in mind?
I can think of something.
He looked at the two boys, who started to back away from him, then he grabbed Bobby by the coat arm. This here’s the little f*cker that kicked me. He dragged him out into the middle of the road, Bobby was yelling and swinging his arms, trying to kick at him, until the high school boy wheeled him around and upended him facedown in the dirt.
Quit it, Ike cried. Leave him alone, goddamn you.
The redhaired boy grabbed Ike and forced him back against the hood of the car. The other boy bent over Bobby and pulled off his shoes and flung them backward into the darkness, then hauled his jeans down and threw them spinning into the barrow ditch. Afterward he jerked Bobby’s underwear down, disentangled them from his feet and sent them sailing away. Bobby’s naked white legs flailed in the dirt.
Ike pulled loose from the first boy and ran at the other one holding Bobby and hit him in the neck and kicked him before he was grabbed from behind.
You got him now? the other boy said.
Yeah, the redhaired boy said. I got him.
Well hang on to him, goddamn it.
He ain’t going nowhere.
I still got this other one.
He stood up and lifted Bobby into the air, holding him aloft like some specimen for them to consider. He turned him toward the girl in the car.
How’d you like to suck his little dick, Sharlene?
The girl was looking at Bobby, she looked at each of them, but she didn’t say anything.
Below his mackinaw Bobby was white-legged and naked, shriveled up and podlike, as though he’d been skinned. He was crying now.
Leave him alone, Ike cried. Leave him alone. He fought against the redhaired boy. You son of a bitch. He didn’t do anything to you. Why don’t you leave him alone. You dirty sons of bitches.
I want you to listen to that little f*cker’s mouth? the boy said. Can’t you shut him up?
I’ll shut him up, the redheaded boy said. He held Ike by the arms and suddenly tripped him forward onto the road, kneeling on him. He hauled Ike’s shoes off one at a time and jerked his pants down, threw them away, and hauled off his underwear and flung them backward over his shoulder. Finally he stood up and pulled Ike to his feet, holding him forward in front of the others.
He don’t have any fuzz yet either, the other boy said. You reckon anybody in that family’s got any? You figure their daddy’s sprouted his feathers yet?
I’m not even talking about that son of a bitch, the redhaired boy said. He shoved Ike forward. Ike was crying now too. He moved over to Bobby and together they crouched in the road. Stretching their coats over their knees, they looked like forlorn and misshapen dwarfs caught by some great misfortune out in the night on a dirt road, a long way from any help.
Let’s go, the other boy said. I’ve had enough of this.
We’re going, the redhead said, looking at Ike and Bobby. But you remember what I told you. Nobody better hear about this shit tonight.
They watched him, looking up at him from where they squatted in the road. They said nothing.
You hear me? You just remember what I said.
He and the other boy got back in the car which then roared away in the night with the dust boiling up behind it and the dim taillights fading to nothing above the narrow road.
Afterward they could hear it without seeing it. Then it was just quiet. Overhead the stars flickered, white and hard-edged, myriad and distant. The wind still blew.
Are you all right, Bobby? Did he hurt you?
Bobby shivered and wiped his eyes and nose on his coat sleeve. I can’t find where my shoes are, he said. He stepped barefoot in the cold dirt, looking. That girl never even tried to help us, he said.
He wouldn’t let her.
She didn’t try hard enough, Bobby said.
. . .
It was thirty minutes before they found their shoes and both pairs of their jeans and their underwear in the dark. The clothes felt cold and stiff when they pulled them on, and then they started south toward the clustered lights of Holt. The lights seemed far away.
We should stop at one of the farmhouses, Bobby said.
You want them to know? Tell them what happened?
We wouldn’t have to say.
We’d have to tell them something.
They walked on, staying close together. The road showed dimly before them, paler than the bar ditches to the sides.
They all keep dogs anyhow, Ike said. You know that.
It was after midnight by the time they walked once more onto Railroad Street and then turned in at the familiar gravel drive at home. A while before, when they were still out on the quiet dirt road in the country, they’d seen the lights of a car coming toward them and thought it was the redhaired boy and the other one coming back, and they’d dropped down into the ditch and then the car had gone rattling past, peppering their backs with dirt and gravel and the ground had been icy cold and smelled rank of dust and weeds, but when the car passed they saw that it wasn’t driven by the high school boys. It was somebody else. A different car, just somebody going home. So they might’ve waved it down and gotten a ride, but afterward it was too late. They climbed up to the road and went on. They didn’t talk very much. They kept walking. A couple of times they heard a coyote yapping and howling, crying out somewhere in the country, and they knew there were cattle somewhere out to the west, they heard them moving about in the corn stubble across the dark. Ahead, the lights of Holt seemed to stay far away, and they were foot-weary and tired by the time they finally passed into the town limits and walked under the first of the corner streetlamps.