Where You Once Belonged(34)

“She’s here,” Bob said. “She wants to see you.”

“Who does?”

“Her. That son of a bitch’s wife. She’s out there in the scale room.”

“What does she want?”

“How the hell do I know? She just said she wanted to see you. That’s all she said.”

“Well,” Doyle said. “Show her in, Bob. Or are you scared, if we get too close to her, she might steal your pocketbook or something?”

“By god,” Bob said. “I don’t trust none of them no more. That’s a fact.”

“Never mind,” Doyle said. “Ask her to come back here. Go on now, try to act like a gentleman for once in your life.”

“I don’t need to act like no gentleman. Not with her, I don’t.”

He turned and went back out to get Jessie. She was still standing at the counter.

“He said he’d see you. Come on, I’ll show you where he’s at.”

“Thank you,” Jessie said, “but I know where the manager’s office is.”

“Well don’t take too long. Some of us got to work for a living.”

Jessie walked around the counter and down the narrow hallway past the toilet and the storage room. She was wearing slacks and a loose green blouse. When she entered, Doyle Francis stood up. He was one of the few men in town then, at least of those connected to the elevator, who still treated her with respect and minimal courtesy. He offered her a wooden chair with armrests.

She sat down heavily, a little carefully—she was still pregnant then, still carrying that little girl of hers that Burdette had left her with; she was in her seventh month. She set her purse on her shortened lap, in front of her stomach.

“Now, then,” Doyle said. “What can I do for you, Jessie?”

“I don’t want anything. If that’s what you think.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t think that. They don’t pay me enough to worry about what other people think.”

“Well I don’t,” Jessie said. “I didn’t come here to ask for anything. I came here to give you something.”

“Oh?” he said. “What is it you want to give me?”

“Not you. The board of directors. The elevator. All these people.”

“What is it?”

“Here.” She opened her purse and withdrew a legal document. She pushed it across the desk toward him. Doyle picked it up, looked at it.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Hold on now. This is some kind of a deed, isn’t it?”

“They said it was legal.”

“Who said it was legal? What are you talking about?”

“The people down at the bank. They said I could sign it over to whoever I wanted to, even if Jack wasn’t here to cosign it. They said considering the circumstances it would be all right.”

“Did they now?” Doyle said. “I’ll bet they did too.”

He looked at the document again, read it this time. It was a quitclaim deed transferring the title of a house and property over to the board of directors of the Holt County Farmers’ Co-op Elevator. Her signature was at the bottom in fresh ink.

“All right, then,” he said, “I suppose it is legal. I wouldn’t know; I’m not a lawyer. But then I don’t suppose anybody around here would protest it very much, would they? Even if it wasn’t legal?”

“No. They wouldn’t protest it.”

Doyle laid the deed down on the desk. He folded his hands over it. He said: “How old are you, Jessie?”

“I’m twenty-seven.”

“And you have two boys?”

“Yes.”

“How old are they?”

“They’ve just turned four and three. But why are you asking me these—”

“And you’re going to have another one pretty soon, aren’t you?”

“In June,” she said. “But—”

“Do you believe in hell?” he said. “Is that it?”

She stared back at him.

“Is that why you’re doing this? Because, let me tell you, I don’t think there is any hell. No, I don’t. And I don’t think there’s any heaven either. We just die, that’s all. We just stop breathing after a while and then everybody starts to forget about us and pretty soon they can’t even remember what it is we think we did to them.”

“I don’t know what I believe,” she said.

“Then why are you doing this? Will you tell me that?”

“Because,” she said.

“Because? That’s all. Just because.”

She continued to stare back at him, to watch him, her eyes steady and deep brown.

Finally Doyle said: “All right, you’re not going to tell me. You don’t have to tell me; I think I know anyway. But listen now. Listen: let an old man ask you this. Don’t you think you’re going to need that house anymore? I mean, if you give it up like you’re proposing to do, just where in hell are you and these kids going to live afterwards?”

“That’s my concern,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

“Yes, of course it is, but—”