Eventide (16 page)

26

C
HRISTMAS EVE OBSERVANCE WAS GENERAL IN HOLT.
There were candlelight services at the local churches and family gatherings in the front rooms of the houses overlooking the quiet streets, and out on the east side of town on US Highway 34 the bartender Monroe kept the Chute Bar and Grill open until two o’clock in the morning.

Hoyt Raines was sitting in a back booth with a middle-aged divorcée named Laverne Griffith, a fleshy maroon-haired woman twenty years his senior. She was buying and they were sitting close together on the same side of the booth, their drinks before them next to the ashtray on the scarred wooden table.

The Chute had been decorated for the season. Loops of red and green lights were festooned above the bar and silver tassels hung from the mirror. A half-dozen men were sitting at the bar, drinking and talking, and an old woman was asleep with her head in her arms at a far table. From the jukebox Elvis Presley was singing I’ll have a blue Christmas without you. A man who had been at the bar earlier had put in enough quarters to play the same song eight times over, but then had gone outside and driven off in the night in his pickup.

One of men at the bar turned to look balefully at the jukebox. He turned back to the bartender. Can’t you do something about that?

What do you want me to do about it?

Well, can’t you turn it off or something?

It’ll stop pretty soon by itself. It’s Christmas. You got to enjoy yourself.

I’m trying to. But I’m sick of that goddamn thing.

It’ll run out pretty quick now. Forget it. Let me get you another drink.

Are you buying?

I could.

Make it a double then.

I said it was Christmas. I never said it was old home week.

The man looked at him. What in hell’s that suppose to mean?

I don’t know. It just come to me. Let’s say it means I’ll get you a single drink.

I’m waiting.

You know what? Monroe said. You ought to cheer up. You’re starting to make everyone around here feel bad.

I can’t help it. It’s the way I am.

Well try, for christsake.

In the back booth Hoyt had circled his arm around Laverne Griffith. She picked a cigarette from the pack on the table and put it in her mouth, and he reached the lighter with his free hand and took it and lit it for her. She blew a cloud of smoke and squinted her eyes shut and rubbed them, then she opened her eyes again, blinking, and stared unhappily across the table.

You all right? Hoyt said.

No, I’m not all right. I’m sad and blue.

Why don’t you and me go over to your place when they close up here. That’ll make you feel better.

She inhaled and blew a long thin stream of smoke away from her face. I’ve been down that old road before, she said. I know where it comes out.

Not with me, you haven’t.

She turned to stare at him. His face was only inches away, his cap pushed back on his thick head of hair. You think you’re that much different?

I’m like nothing you ever knew before, Hoyt said.

What makes you so different?

I’ll show you. I’ll give you a little demonstration.

I’m not talking about that, she said. That’s available to a woman anytime. What about in the morning when we wake up?

I’ll make you breakfast.

What if I don’t eat breakfast.

I’ll make one you will.

She smoked again and looked out into the room. It doesn’t close here for two more hours, she said. She turned and lifted her face toward him. You can give me a kiss anyhow.

A
T THE STROKE OF MIDNIGHT MONROE CALLED: MERRY
Christmas, you sons of bitches. Merry Christmas, everybody. The men at the bar shook hands and one of them said they should wake the woman sleeping at the far table and ask her if she could guess what day it was.

Let her sleep, one of the others said. She’s better off sleeping. Here, he said to Monroe, give me one of those decorations. Monroe took down a piece of silver tassel from the bar mirror and the man walked over to the woman and leaned over and draped it across her head and shoulders. How’s that look? he said. The woman groaned and sighed, but didn’t wake.

In the booth, Hoyt and Laverne kissed a long time at the announcement that it was Christmas. Oh hell, she said finally. Let’s get out of here. We might as well go back to my place. They stood up out of the booth.

Monroe called: You two have yourself a merry little Christmas now. Drive careful.

Hoyt waved at him and they went outside. It was very cold in the parking lot, the air dry and hard on their faces. They got into her car and she drove them along the ice-rutted empty streets to her apartment on the second floor of a house on Chicago Street, a block south of the grain elevators. They walked around to the back of the house in the frozen grass and he followed her up the plank stairs that were built up outside the house, climbing to a little porch that was roofed over with tin above the landing. She found her key in her purse and unlocked the door. Inside, the apartment was stifling hot but neat and tidy, with almost no furniture. She locked the door and he at once turned her around and began to kiss her face. Jesus Christ, she said, shoving him back, let me get my coat off first. I have to use the bathroom.

Where’s your bedroom at? Hoyt said.

Back there.

She went through the kitchen, and he walked a few steps across the room and entered the bedroom. There was a red comforter over the bed and a mirrored dresser against the bare wall. The mirror reflected the room at an odd angle, including a little closet with a naked lightbulb hanging from a cord. He switched on the lamp beside the bed and got out of his clothes, then dropped them on the floor and got in bed and pulled the cover up. He stretched out comfortably looking at the ceiling and put his hands under his head.

Laverne stepped into the room. Well, why don’t you make yourself at home?

I’m just waiting on you.

You didn’t wait long.

Come on to bed.

Don’t look at me, she said.

What?

Don’t watch me. She turned her back and removed her blouse and her slacks and hung them in the little closet and stood in the doorway facing away from him, and took off her black bra and black silky underwear. Are you looking?

No.

Yes you are.

I’m just doing what you want me to.

Like hell. Shut your eyes.

He looked at her and shut his eyes and she turned toward the bed. She was very pale and soft-looking, with a thick stomach and large fallen breasts and heavy legs, and she seemed saddened in the dim light. She crossed to the bed and crawled in under the covers. She switched off the bedside lamp.

You have to be nice to me, she said. I don’t like to be hurt.

I’m not going to hurt you.

Kiss me first.

He raised up on his side and put one hand to her face and kissed her, then he kissed her again and she lay back quietly and closed her eyes, and beneath the sheet he began to move his hand over her flattened breasts and across her soft stomach, and she said nothing more to him but seemed content just to breathe, and he went on kissing and after a while he lay on her and began to move.

When he was finished he saw that she had gone to sleep beneath him. Laverne, he said. Darlin. Hey. He looked into her sleeping face and rolled off and lay back beside her under the warm covers, and soon was asleep himself.

T
HE NEXT DAY HE GOT UP LATE AND MADE A BREAKFAST
of eggs and coffee and buttered toast, and he sprinkled paprika on the eggs and arranged everything on a large white plate and brought all of it to her in the bedroom. She sat up with the blankets drawn around her shoulders, her maroon hair all matted and disheveled, but she seemed to be cheered now in the morning. What have you got here? she said.

Didn’t I say I’d make you breakfast?

At noon they rose from bed and spent the afternoon and the evening watching the holiday parades on television and viewing the old sweet movies that were shown at Christmastime. And in the succeeding days and weeks in the heart of winter she allowed him to stay with her in the upstairs apartment on Chicago Street while she went off to work as an aide at the Holt County Twilight Nursing Home and he took a job riding cattle pens at the feedlot east of town. He reported to the probation officer at the courthouse as the judge had ordered, and he and Laverne Griffith were still together at the middle of February, and during all that time things stayed satisfactory for Hoyt in the little apartment upstairs.

27

I
N THE WEEK BETWEEN CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR’S
they passed the long afternoons in the shed beside the alley. It was very cold in the shed and the sunlight came in only thinly from the single window. They lit candles on the table and the back shelf, and they had the blankets. For greater warmth they took to lying beside each other on the carpet in the patch of sunlight that fell in through the window.

They lay under the blankets on their backs and talked. Frequently now she talked about her mother. He recalled a memory of his own mother, how she once wore a sleeveless red blouse in the summertime, sitting in the shade on the back porch of a little house in Brush Colorado, and how she was wearing shorts and would stretch her toes in the dirt below the porch step. There was red polish on the nails of her toes and the dirt was soft like powder.

In return, she remembered how her father picked her up one time when she was a little girl and carried her on his shoulders, ducking through a doorway into the kitchen. Her mother was making white flour gravy at the stove, and she turned and smiled, looking at them both. Then her father said something funny, but she couldn’t recall what it was. It had made her mother laugh, she remembered that.

O
NE AFTERNOON THEY WERE LYING ON THE FLOOR IN THE
shed when she turned toward him and looked at his face in the weak sunlight. What happened to you here?

Where?

This little curved scar.

I ran into a nail, he said.

There was a white scar the shape of a quarter moon beside his eye.

I have a scar too, she said. She opened the blanket and put her shirt neck down for him to see.

S
OME AFTERNOONS HE BROUGHT CRACKERS AND CHEESE
from his grandfather’s house together with a thermos of coffee. He also brought them books, though he read more than she did. For some time now he’d been checking books out of the old limestone-block Carnegie Library on the corner of Ash Street, where the librarian was a thin unhappy woman who took care of her invalid mother when she wasn’t at work and who during the day conducted the library as if it were a church. He had found the shelves of books he liked and brought the books home every two weeks, summer and winter, and now he took to bringing them to the shed to read lying on the floor beside her.

She took more and more to the practice of daydreaming and wishing, more so now in the absence of her father and in the new desolation that filled the house since her mother had turned so sad and lonely. An hour might go by in the shed with little or no talking, and then watching him read she would eventually begin to tease him, tickling his cheek with a piece of thread, blowing thinly in his ear, until he would put his book down and push her, and then they would begin to push back and forth and to wrestle, and once it happened that she rolled on top of him, and while her face was so close above his she dropped her head suddenly and kissed him on the mouth, and they both stopped and stared, and she kissed him again. Then she rolled off.

What did you do that for?

I felt like it, she said.

A
ND ONCE HER LITTLE SISTER OPENED THE DOOR OF THE
shed in the afternoon, late in that week of Christmas vacation, and found them reading on the floor with the blankets over them. What are you doing?

Shut the door, Dena said.

The little girl stepped inside and shut the door and stood looking at them. What are you doing there on the floor?

Nothing.

Let me under too.

You have to be quiet.

Why?

Because I said so. Because we’re reading.

All right. I will. Let me in.

She crawled under the blanket with them.

No, you have to be over here, Dena said. This is my place next to him.

So for a while the two sisters and the boy lay on the floor under the blankets, reading books in the dim candlelight, with the sun falling down outside in the alley, the three of them softly talking a little, drinking coffee from a thermos, and what was happening in the houses they’d come from seemed, for that short time, of little importance.

28

W
HEN RAYMOND CAME UP TO THE HOUSE IN THE AFTERNOON
of New Year’s Day after feeding in the winter pasture, shoving hay and protein pellets onto the frozen ground in front of the shaggy milling cattle, he removed his overshoes and canvas coveralls at the kitchen door and went back through the house to shave and wash up, then mounted the stairs to his bedroom and put on dark slacks and the new blue wool shirt Victoria had given him for Christmas. When he came downstairs into the kitchen, Victoria was cooking chicken and dumplings in a big blued pot for their holiday dinner and Katie was standing on a chair at the table stirring flour and water in a red bowl. Each had a white dish towel tied about her waist, and Victoria’s heavy black hair was pulled away from her face and her cheeks were flushed from the cooking.

She turned to look at him from the stove. You’re all dressed up, she said.

I put on your shirt.

I see that. It looks good on you. It looks just right.

So what can I do? he said. What else needs to be done here to get ready for dinner?

You could set the table.

So he spread a white tablecloth over the formal walnut table out in the dining room, where it was centered under the overhead light, and got down the old rosebud china his mother had received as a wedding gift so many years ago and arranged the plates and glasses and silverware about the table. The low afternoon sun streamed in onto the dishes from the unshaded windows. The sunlight was brilliant in the glassware.

Victoria came into the room to see how he was faring and looked closely at the table. Is somebody else coming? she said.

He looked at her briefly and turned to peer out the window toward the horse barn and corrals beyond the graveled drive. I guess you could say there is, he said.

Who is it?

It’s somebody I met.

Somebody you met?

You met her too.

Her? A woman’s coming to dinner?

It’s a woman from the hospital.

What’s her name?

Her name is Linda May. She was working nights when I was in the room there with my leg.

The middle-aged woman with short dark hair?

That sounds about right. Yes, I guess that would have to be her.

Victoria looked at the dishes and glasses ranged in order on the white tablecloth. Why didn’t you tell me?

Raymond stood with his back to her. I don’t rightly know, he said. I guess I was kind of scared to. I didn’t know what you’d think of it.

It’s your house, she said. You can do what you want.

Now that ain’t right, he said. Don’t say that. This here is your house as much as it is mine. It’s been that way for a good while.

I thought it was.

Well it is. He turned to face her. I can tell you that much.

But I don’t understand you not telling me about somebody coming for dinner.

Oh hell, honey, can’t you lay it to an old man’s mistake? An old man that don’t know how to do something he’s never done before?

He stood before her in the new blue shirt, with an expression on his face she had never seen or even imagined. She moved up beside him and put her hand on his arm. I’m sorry, she said. It’ll be all right. It’s just fine. I’m glad you asked her.

Thank you, he said. I hoped you wouldn’t take no offense. I just got the idea to ask her to dinner, that’s all it was. I never saw the harm in it.

There isn’t any, Victoria said. What time did you tell her to come?

Raymond looked at his watch. About a half hour from now.

Did you tell her how to find us out here?

She told me she already knew. She’d been asking around about us, she said.

Oh?

That’s what she told me.

T
HAT
AFTERNOON
SHE
DROVE
UP
TO
THE
HOGWIRE
FENCING
in front of the house in a ten-year-old cream-colored Ford convertible. She got out and surveyed the gray house and the patches of dirty snow and the three leafless stunted elm trees in the side yard, then came up through the wire gate onto the screened porch. Before she could knock, Raymond opened the door. Come in, he said, come in.

I see I got the right place.

Yes ma’am.

Now you’ll have to call me Linda today, she said. You have to remember that.

You better come in. It’s cold out here.

She entered the kitchen and looked across the room at the girl holding her child at the stove.

This here is Victoria Roubideaux and little Katie.

Yes. I remember them from when you were in the hospital. How do you do.

Victoria stepped forward and they shook hands. Linda May tried to touch Katie but the little girl turned away, pointing her face into her mother’s shoulder.

She’ll be more friendly after a while.

Let me take your coat, Raymond said.

He hung it next to his coveralls and his canvas work jacket on the peg beside the door. Linda May wore black slacks and a red sweater and there were bright silver hoops suspended from her ears. Something sure smells good, she said.

It’s just about ready, Victoria said. Why don’t you go ahead and be seated and I’ll bring it in.

Is there anything I can do to help?

I don’t think so.

Raymond led his guest into the dining room.

What a beautiful table, she said. It all looks so pretty.

This table was my mother’s table. It’s been in that same spot for as long as I can remember.

May I look at it?

Well, how do you mean?

Just underneath, at the table itself.

It’s going to be kind of dusty under there.

She lifted the white cloth and examined the polished surface and then peered below at its massive center pedestal. Why, this must be real walnut, she said. An antique.

It’s old anyhow, Raymond said. Older than me even. Why don’t you sit here.

He pulled out a chair and held it for her and she sat down.

Thank you, she said.

I’ll be right back.

He went into the kitchen, where Victoria was dishing food at the stove. What’s next? he said.

Will you take Katie in and get her settled?

Course I will. Come on, little darlin. Are you ready for some dinner? He bent over to pick her up, then leaned back to take in her round dark eyes that were exactly like her mother’s, and brushed the shiny black hair out of her face. He carried her into the dining room and sat her on a wooden box on the chair opposite Linda May. The little girl looked across the table at her, then picked up her napkin and studied it with great interest.

Victoria came in with the steaming bowl of chicken and dumplings and another of mashed potatoes and went back for a plate of hot rolls and a dish of green beans flavored with bacon. Raymond stood at the head of the table until she sat down and then took the seat across from her, with Linda May and Katie on either side.

Would you say grace? Victoria said.

Raymond appeared startled. What?

Would you say grace, please?

He glanced at Linda May and back at Victoria. I suppose I could take a run at it. It’s been a hell of a long time, though. He dropped his iron-gray head. His cheeks were chafed red and his white forehead shone. Lord, he said. What we’re going to do here, we’re just going to say thank you for this food on the table. And for the hands that prepared it for us. He paused for a long time. They all looked up at him. He went on. And for this bright day outside we’re having. He paused again. Amen, he said. Now do you think we can eat, Victoria?

Yes, she said, and passed Linda May the chicken and dumplings.

L
INDA MAY DID MUCH OF THE TALKING WHILE VICTORIA
and Raymond listened and answered her questions. Victoria tended to the little girl. After dinner they helped her clear the table, then she took Katie back to the downstairs bedroom they’d been sharing since Raymond had moved up to his old room again, and she put the little girl into bed and lay down with her and read to her until she was asleep, and afterward lay in the darkened room listening through the opened door to Raymond and the woman talking.

They’d already done the dishes together at the kitchen sink and had retired to the parlor. Around them the old flowered wallpaper, stained in places and darkened in one corner from some long-ago rain, was dim and gray. When Linda May entered the room she’d seated herself in Raymond’s chair and he had looked at her and hesitated, then he sat in the chair that had always been his brother’s.

My, she said, that was a wonderful dinner.

That was Victoria’s doing. We never taught her any of that.

Yes. She looked through the doorway into the dining room. The ceiling light made a bright glare over the white tablecloth. I don’t know how you two stand it out here, she said. It’s lonely, don’t you think?

I’ve always been out here, Raymond said. I don’t know how it’d be other places. There’s a neighbor a mile and a half down the road if you need something.

A farmer like you?

Well, I wouldn’t say we was farmers exactly.

What would you say?

I guess you’d have to call us ranchers. We raise cattle. Poverty-stuck old cattle ranchers, more like it.

You make it sound like you’re close to starving.

We’ve done that a time or two. Or pretty near to it.

How big a ranch do you have?

How much land?

Yes.

Well, we have about three sections. All counted.

How much is that? I don’t know what a section is.

There would be six hundred forty acres to a section. It’s mostly grass pasture, what we have. We put up a lot of brome hay every summer but we don’t do any real farming. Well, I keep saying we. I mean me now. I haven’t figured out what I’ll do about haying next summer.

How will you manage?

I’ll think of something. Hire somebody I expect.

It must be terribly hard without your brother here anymore.

It’s not the same. It’s not anything like it. Harold and me, we was together all our lives.

You just have to go on, don’t you.

He looked at her. People always say that, he said. I say as much myself. I don’t know what it means, though. He looked out the window behind her where the night had fallen. The yardlight had come on and there were long shadows in the yard.

She sat watching him. I was surprised to see you come into the tavern the other night, she said.

No, it ain’t like me, he said. I was surprised to be there myself.

Do you think you might come in again?

I imagine it’s possible.

I hope you do.

She sat with one foot folded up under her in his big recliner chair. Her red sweater looked very bright against her dark hair.

And I want to thank you again for inviting me to dinner today, she said.

Well, yes, ma’am. Like I say, Victoria is the one that did all that.

But you’re the one who asked me. I’ve lived in this area long enough to know quite a few people, but I don’t think I’ve ever been invited into one of these old ranch houses before.

Our grandfather homesteaded this place. Him and our grandmother. They come out in eighty-three from Ohio. But where do you come from yourself, can I ask you that?

From Cedar Rapids.

Iowa.

Yes. I was ready for a change.

Don’t they have good hospitals back there?

Oh, sure. Of course they do. But my life kind of fell apart, so I thought I’d come out here. I thought I’d start over, try out life in the mountains. But I only got this far and kind of broke down. I think I may go on to Denver yet, though.

When do you reckon on doing that?

I don’t know. I guess it depends. I’ve only been here a year.

Sometimes a year can be a long time, Raymond said.

Sometimes it can be too long, she said.

W
HEN
LINDA
MAY
WAS
GETTING
READY
TO
LEAVE,
VICTORIA
came out from the bedroom to say good night. They stood in the kitchen and Raymond took down Linda May’s coat and held it as she put it on, then he walked her out through the wire gate to her car. Outside in the cold air everything seemed brittle and the ground was frozen down as hard as iron.

Thank you again, she said. You make sure you come into town one of these days.

Be careful out there on that road, he said.

She got into her convertible and turned the key, and the engine turned over but wouldn’t catch. When she tried again it only whined and clicked. She rolled the window down. It’s not going to start, she said.

Sounds like it’s your battery. Is it a old one?

I don’t know. The battery was in it when I bought the car a year ago.

I better give you a push. Let me get my coat.

He went back into the house and pulled his coat and hat from the pegs in the kitchen. Victoria was putting the clean dishes up in the high cupboards. What’s wrong? she said.

I need to give her a push.

You better stay warm out there.

He walked back out past the Ford, where Linda May was still sitting behind the wheel, and crossed the rutted gravel to the garage and climbed into his pickup. He let it run for a minute, then pulled it behind her car and got out to see how the two bumpers would meet. When he walked up to the side of the car and opened the door, she was shivering and hugging herself.

Are you all right? he said.

It’s really cold.

You want to go back in the house?

No. Let’s go ahead.

You know what to do, don’t you?

Pop the clutch once we get going, she said.

And have the key turned on. But don’t try it till I get you out on the county road where we can go a little faster.

He shut the door and got back in his pickup and eased it forward. The bumpers touched and he pushed her slowly out the drive onto the lane and then onto the dark road, his headlights shining very bright on the rear of her car. He went faster, the gravel kicked up under the fenders, and with a lurch her car leapt forward and she pulled away and her headlights and taillights came on. She sped up, the dust was boiling under them from the dry road, and he followed her for half a mile to be sure she was all right, then he slowed and stopped and watched the red taillights going away in the dark.