Plainsong (Plainsong #1)(9)

She moved on. She crossed the tracks once more. Ahead at Second Street the traffic light blinked from red to green to yellow, unmindful of the hour, blinking over the black, almost empty pavement. She passed the shadowy stores and looked in the window of the café where the tables were arranged all quiet and neat in rows and the Pepsi light on the back wall shone on the orderly stacks of clean glasses set out ready on the counter. She walked up Main to the highway and crossed it and passed the Gas and Go, the untended fuel pumps and the bright lights overhead, the attendant inside reading a magazine at the counter, and turned at the corner and came to a frame house three blocks from school where she knew Maggie Jones lived.

She knocked at the door and stood blankly waiting. She was unconscious of any thoughts at all. After some time the yellow porch light came on over her head.

When Maggie Jones opened the door she was in her bathrobe and her black hair was already disheveled from sleep. Her face looked plainer than it had during the day, less dramatic without makeup, a little puffy. The robe she wore wasn’t fastened or buttoned but had swung open in front when she had unlocked the door, revealing a soft yellow nightgown.

Victoria? Is that you?

Mrs. Jones. Could I talk to you? the girl said.

Well honey, yes. What’s wrong?

The girl entered the house. They passed through the front room and Maggie took up a throw blanket from the couch and draped it around the girl’s shoulders. Then for an hour they sat at the table in the kitchen in the silence of night, talking and drinking hot tea, while all around them the neighbors slept and breathed in and out and dreamed in their beds.

The girl sat at the table warming her hands on the tea cup. Gradually she had begun to tell about the boyfriend. About the nights in the backseat of his car parked out on a dirt road five miles north of town where the road stopped at an old fallen-in homestead house, where there was an old gray barn and broken windmill and the few low trees were dark against the dark sky and where the night wind came in through the open car windows smelling of sage and summer grass. And the love then. She told very briefly about that. The scent of him close up, his aftershave, the feel of his hands and the urgency of what they did, then the quiet talking for a little while afterward sometimes. And always afterward, the ride home.

Yes, Maggie said. But who was he?

A boy.

Of course, honey. But who exactly?

I don’t want to say, the girl said. He’s not going to want it anyhow. He won’t claim it. He’s not that kind.

What do you mean?

He’s not the fathering kind.

But he ought to at least take some responsibility, Maggie said.

He’s from another town, the girl said. I don’t think you would know him, Mrs. Jones. He’s older. He’s a boy out of school.

How did you meet him?

The girl looked around the clean room. Dishes were set to dry in the draining rack on the counter, and there was an assemblage of white enameled cannisters ranged in a neat row under the shining cupboards. She drew up the blanket about her shoulders.

We met at a dance last summer, she said. I was sitting by the door and he came up and asked me to dance. He was good-looking too. When he came up to me I told him, I don’t even know you. He said, What’s there to know? Well, who are you? I said. What does that matter? he said. That don’t matter. I’m just somebody that’s requesting you to step out on the floor here and take a dance. He talked that way sometimes. So I told him, All right then. Let’s see if you can dance, whoever you are since you won’t tell me your name. I stood up and he took my hand and led me out on the floor. He was even taller than I thought he was. That’s when it started. That’s how.

Because he was a good dancer, Maggie said.

Yes. But you don’t understand, the girl said. He was nice. He was nice to me. He would tell me things.

Would he?

Yes. He told me things.

Like what for instance?

Like once he said I had beautiful eyes. He said my eyes were like black diamonds lit up on a starry night.

They are, honey.

But nobody ever told me.

No, Maggie said. They never do. She looked out through the doorway into the other room. She lifted her tea cup and drank from it and set it down. Go on, she said. Do you want to tell the rest?

After that I began to meet him in the park, the girl said. That’s where he’d pick me up. Across from the grain elevators. I’d get in his car and we’d go over to Shattuck’s on the highway and get something to eat, a hamburger or something, and then we’d drive around out in the country for an hour with the windows rolled down and we’d talk and he’d say funny things and the radio would be tuned in to Denver, and all the time the night air would be coming in. And afterward, after a while, we’d always drive to that old homestead place and stop. He said it belonged to us.

But he never came to your house to pick you up?

No.

Didn’t you want him to?

The girl shook her head. Not with Mama there. I told him not to.

I see, Maggie said. Go on.

There’s not much more to tell, the girl said. After school started at the end of August we still went out a couple times more. But something happened. I don’t know what. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t give me any warning. He just stopped picking me up. One day he didn’t come for me anymore.

You don’t know why?