Plainsong (Plainsong #1)(7)

Sure, Alice said. I know how that is.

The girl moved to the front window of the store past the double glass doors and stood at the magazine rack, reading about three girls her age who had trouble in California, while she ate the popcorn one kernel at a time and sipped at the can of pop. More kids came in and bought drinks during the noon hour and went out, calling back and forth, and once a couple of sophomores began to shove each other in the aisle stacked with cans of motor oil and pork-and-beans until Alice said, You boys can knock that off anytime.

A senior came in and paid for gas. He was a tall blond boy with sunglasses pushed up on the top of his head. She knew him from first-year biology. On his way out he stopped in the doorway, leaning toward her, holding the door open with his hip. Roubideaux, he said.

She looked at him.

Want a ride?

No.

Just back to school.

No thank you.

Why not?

I don’t want to.

Hell then. You had your chance.

He stepped out and the door drew slowly shut behind him. She watched through the plate glass window over the top of the magazine rack as he got into his red car, revved it up and turned out onto the highway, making a little squeal when he shifted gears. Before the hour was up she went back to school.

After classes that day she departed the building with the other students, descending the front steps in that daily afternoon noise and exhilaration of release. She was alone again, taking the reverse of her morning’s path to school. Turning north up Main, she walked by the boxy houses and under the tall legs of the old water tower, passed a few scattered businesses and along the three blocks of downtown where the stores were crowded together behind their false fronts, starting with the bank behind its tinted windows and the post office beneath its flag.

When she arrived at the Holt Café on the corner of Second and Main she stepped into the long fair-sized rectangular room. A pair of old men in adjustable caps sat talking and drinking black coffee from thick mugs at one of the tables, and there was a young woman in a print dress drinking tea in one of the booths along the wall. The girl went back to the kitchen and removed her jacket and hung it on a peg in the closet and draped the purse over it and then pulled on a long apron over her shirt and short skirt. The cook, standing at the grill looking at her, was a short heavy man with eyes hooded in his red face. The apron was stained over his thick middle and again at the skirts on both sides where he’d gathered up the apron to wipe his hands.

I’m going to want me some of them pots pretty quick, he told her. Quick’s you can get em washed.

She immediately began to clear the two gray industrial sinks, lifting out the stacked dirty pots and pans and setting them on the counters.

And that fry basket. I put that in there for you too. It needs cleaning.

You’ll have it in a minute, she said.

She ran water in the sink and dipped in powdered soap from a box whose top was cut off. Steam began to rise from the swirling suds.

I didn’t see Janine, the girl said.

Oh, she’s here someplace. On the phone probably. Out in the office.

The girl stood over the sink working in the hot soapy water, her hands in rubber gloves. She began to scour the pots left over from the lunch trade. She came in every weekday after school and washed the pots the morning cook had used and also the plates and cups and silverware and platters from the noon hour. The old leather-faced man who came in to wash the breakfast dishes quit at nine. There were always high stacks waiting for her in the sinks and on the counters. She worked through the afternoon until seven, through supper, and had everything clean and finished to that point, when she’d take a plate of food out into the café and sit at the end of the counter talking to Janine or one of the waitresses and afterward she would go home.

Now, presently, Janine came into the kitchen in a brown pinafore and a white blouse and looked sharply all around and moved up beside the girl and put her arm around her waist.

Sugar honey. How’s my girl today?

Okay.

The short blocky woman drew back to look at her. Well, you don’t sound okay. What’s wrong here?

Nothing.

She leaned close. Is it that time of month?

No.

Well, you’re not sick, are you?

The girl shook her head.

You take it easy anyhow. You just sit and rest when you need to. Rodney can just wait. She looked at the cook. Is he been bothering you? Goddamn you, Rodney. You bothering this girl?

What are you talking about? the cook said.

No, the girl said. It’s not him. It’s not anything.

He better not. You better not, Janine said to him. Then she turned back to the girl. I’ll can his fat ass. She pinched the girl’s hip. And he knows it, she said.

Oh? he said. And where’d you get another cook in this pissant place?

Where I got the last one, the woman said and laughed in pleasure. She pinched the girl again. Would you look at his face, she said. I told him something that time.





Ike and Bobby.

When they entered their driveway his pickup wasn’t parked in front of the house. They hadn’t expected him to be there but sometimes he came home early. They crossed the porch and went inside the house. In the dining room they stopped next to the table and lifted their faces ceilingward, listening.

She’s still in bed, Bobby said.

She might of come down and gone back, Ike said.