Plainsong (Plainsong #1)(73)

It’s due in about two weeks, she said.

Is that so?

Yes.

What else did he say?

He says I’m all right. Both of us seem to be fine, he says.

That’s good, Raymond said. That’s just fine. Now you go on out to the pickup.

Why? Aren’t you coming?

Go ahead, if you would. It won’t be long.

She went outside and the McPheron brothers walked back, one after the other, past the middle-aged woman who was seated as before at the window. She stood up at once when they started unannounced down the hall and she rushed after them, calling to them, asking what they meant by this, they weren’t allowed back there, didn’t they know that much, and they went on regardless, as though they couldn’t hear her or else didn’t care even a little what she was saying, sticking their heads in any doors that were open along the way and opening two or three closed ones upon unsuspecting waiting patients who afterward came out into the hallway too, watching after them in shock and amazement. At the end of the hall the McPherons came upon a closed door behind which they could hear old Dr. Martin consulting with a female patient. They listened briefly, their heads cocked in an attitude of concentration under their silver-belly hats. Then Raymond knocked one time and shoved the door open.

Come out, he said. We got to talk with you.

What in the name of God! the old doctor cried. Get the hell out of here.

The woman whose heart he’d been listening to hurriedly pulled her paper shirt together and looked over at them, her pendulous breasts pressing against the thin material.

Come on out here, Raymond said again. Harold stood behind him, looking over his shoulder. The woman from the front counter stood back of Harold now, still objecting and remonstrating, talking quite loudly. They paid her no attention whatsoever. The doctor stepped out of the room and shut the door. His eyes were fiery glints behind his rimless glasses, above his good blue suit and immaculate white shirt and his neat hand-tied bow tie.

Just what is it you think you’re doing? he said.

We’re going to talk to you, Raymond said.

It won’t wait?

No sir, it won’t.

All right then. Talk. What’s this about?

This don’t concern her, Raymond said, indicating the woman from the front desk.

The old doctor turned to her and said, You can go back, Mrs. Barnes. I’ll take care of this.

It’s not my fault, she said. They came barging back here by themselves. I didn’t let them back here.

I know. You can return to the front desk now.

She wheeled and marched away, and the doctor led the McPheron brothers into the vacant examination room next door.

I don’t suppose you want to take the time to do anything so civil as to sit down, he said.

No.

No. I didn’t think so. Very well. What did you want to talk about?

Is she all right? Raymond said.

Who?

Victoria Roubideaux.

Yes, she is, the doctor said.

That boy didn’t do her any good.

You’re talking about the boy in Denver, I take it.

Yes. That miserable son of a bitch.

She told me about him. She said what happened there. But she seems all right.

He better not of hurt her permanent, Raymond said. You better be sure.

There’s no use threatening me, the old doctor said.

I’m telling you. You better make this come out right. That girl’s had enough trouble.

I’ll do everything I can. But it isn’t all up to me.

Some of it is.

And you better not get so wrought up, the doctor said.

I am wrought up, Raymond said, and I’m going to stay that way till this baby is born good and healthy and that girl is okay. Now you tell us what you told her.





Ike and Bobby.

Of an afternoon, a Sunday, when Guthrie was out for a drive riding in the pickup with Maggie Jones along the empty country roads, they wandered about the house, room to room, thinking what they wanted to do. They went into Guthrie’s and their mother’s bedroom upstairs at the front of the house and inspected the things that belonged to their parents, the minute examination of the various items that had been accumulated over the years, most of them bought and collected before the boys’ own time—pictures, clothes, drawers of underwear, a box containing necktie pins and old pocket watches and an obsidian arrowhead and rattles cut from a snake and a track medal—and put the box back and drifted out of the room down the hall to the guest room where some of their mother’s possessions were still located and picked them up and smelled and felt of them and tried on one of her silver bracelets, and lastly they went into their own room at the back of the house and looked out and saw the old man’s house next door and the abandoned place to the west at the end of Railroad Street and all the land open beyond, with the fairgrounds to the north across the pasture behind the barn, the grandstands white-painted and empty, and then they left and went downstairs to the outside and mounted their bikes.

They went up once more to the apartment above Main Street, passing along the dim corridor and stopping at the last door. She had taken in the Denver News they’d dropped off on the mat early that morning, but when they knocked there was no answer. They used the key she’d given them months ago when they’d gone to the grocery store, when she’d said: I am going to trust you with that. They used the key now and went in. She, the old woman, Iva Stearns, was sitting across the room in the stuffed chair against the wall. Her head was lapsed sideways onto the shoulder of her blue housedress. As usual the room was too hot, as stifling as a sickroom, and as always it was crowded with the stores of her accumulation.