Plainsong (Plainsong #1)(8)

She might not of too.

She’s going to hear you, Ike said.

She can’t hear me. She can’t hear anything from up there. She’s asleep.

You don’t know if she is. She could be awake.

Then how come she doesn’t come downstairs? Bobby said.

Maybe she already did. Maybe she went back up. She has to eat sometime.

Together they looked at the ceiling as if they could see through it into the dark guest room where the shades were drawn down night and day blocking out the light and all the world, as if they could see her lying motionless in the bed as before, alone and withdrawn into her sad thoughts.

She should eat with us, Bobby said. If she wants to eat she can eat with us next time if she comes downstairs.

They went out to the kitchen and poured milk into two glasses and got down storebought glazed cookies from the cupboard and stood at the counter eating, standing close to each other, not talking but eating quietly, single-mindedly, until they were finished and then they drank off the remaining milk and set the glasses in the sink and went back outside again.

They crossed the drive toward the horse lot and opened the plank gate and passed through. In front of the barn the two horses Elko and Easter, one red, one a dark bay, stood dozing in the warm sun. When the horses heard the boys enter the corral they threw their heads up and watched them warily. Go on, Ike called. Get in the barn. The horses began to step sideways, sidling away. The boys spread out to head them. Here now, Ike said. No you don’t. He ran forward.

The horses broke into a high-stepping trot, tossing their heads, and broke past the boys, flowing stiff-legged along the fence past the barn, and loped across the corral to the back fence where they wheeled again and eyed the boys, watching them with great interest. The boys stopped at the end of the barn.

I’ll go get them, Ike said.

You want me to get them this time?

No. I will.

Bobby waited opposite where both halves of the door gaped open. Ike turned the horses back toward him, the horses trotting again now, their heads high up, watching the small boy standing wide-legged ahead of them in the corral dirt. Then he began to flap his arms and to shout. Hey! Hey! He looked very small in the open space of the corral. But at the last moment the two horses veered abruptly and clattered over the high doorsill into the barn, one after the other, and settled down immediately in the stalls. The boys followed them.

It was cool and dark inside, smelling of hay and manure. The horses stamped in the stalls, blowing into the empty grain boxes built into the corners of the mangers. The boys poured oats into each box and then brushed and saddled the horses while they ate. Then they buckled on the bridles and mounted up and rode out along the railroad tracks going to the west away from town.





Victoria Roubideaux.

The evening wasn’t cold yet when the girl left the café. But the air was turning sharp, with a fall feeling of loneliness coming. Something unaccountable pending in the air.

She went out of the downtown, crossing the tracks and on toward home in the growing dark. The big globes had already shuddered on at the street corners, their blue lights shining now in flat pools on the sidewalks and pavement, and at the front of the houses the porch lights had come on, lifted above the closed doors. She turned into the meager street passing the low houses and arrived at her own. The house appeared unnaturally dark and silent.

She tried the door but it was locked. Mama? she said. She knocked once. Mama?

She stood up on her toes and peered inside through the narrow window set into the door. There was a faint light toward the back of the house. A single unshaded bulb burning in the little hall between the two bedrooms.

Mama. Let me in now. Do you hear me?

She clutched at the doorknob, pulling and twisting it, and she knocked on the window, rattling the hard little pane, but the door stayed locked. Then inside the house the dim hall light went out.

Mama. Don’t. Please.

She clung to the door.

What are you doing? I’m sorry, Mama. Please. Can’t you hear me?

She rattled the door. She leaned her head against it. The wood felt cold, hard, she felt tired now, all at once worn out. There was something like panic coming.

Mama. Don’t do this.

She looked all around. Houses and bare trees. She slid down onto the porch in the cold, lapsing back against the chill boards of the housefront. She seemed to fade away, to drift and wander in a kind of daze of sorrow and disbelief. She sobbed a little. She stared out at the silent trees and the dark street and the houses across the street where people were moving about reasonably in the bright rooms beyond the windows, and she looked up at the movement in the trees when the wind sighed. She sat, staring out, not moving.

Later she came out of that.

Okay, Mama, she said. You don’t have to worry. I’m gone.

Slowly a car went by in the street. The people inside looked at her, a man and a woman, their heads turned in her direction.

She pushed up from the porch and pulled her thin jacket tighter around her, over her thin body, her girl’s chest, and walked away from the house toward town.

It was full dark now and it had turned off cold. The streets were almost empty. Once a dog came barking out at her from behind a house and she held out her hand to him. The dog stood back and barked, his mouth shutting and opening as though operated by a spring hinge. Here, she said. He came forward suspiciously and sniffed her hand, but as soon as she moved he began to bark again. Behind them in the house the front lights went on. A man appeared in the door and yelled Goddamn it, you get in here! and the dog turned and trotted toward the house and stopped and barked again and went inside.