Plainsong (17 page)

Victoria Roubideaux.

She was in the hallway at the high school in the afternoon when Alberta, the small blond girl from history, came up to her bearing something in her hand and said, He’s outside. He said to give you this. Here.

Who said?

I don’t know his name. He just stopped me and said give this to you when I saw you. Here, take it.

She opened the note. It was a folded scrap of cheap yellow tablet paper, with pencil writing scrawled on it.
Vicky. Come out
to the parking lot. Dwayne.
She turned it over, there was nothing on the other side. Though she had never seen any of his handwriting before she believed this was what it would look like, this pencil-scrawl slanted backward. She didn’t think it was a joke. It was from him, no one else. She didn’t even feel much surprised. So he’d come back now. What did that mean? For most of the fall she had wanted that. Now late in the winter it had happened when she no longer believed in it or expected it. She looked at Alberta. Alberta’s eyes were wide and excited as if she were engaged in some daytime soap opera and some new shocking pronouncement was about to be made and she was only waiting for the cue to react to it.

She reached past Alberta matter-of-factly and opened the metal door of the student locker and took out her winter coat. She put it on and drew out her red shiny purse.

Vicky, what are you going to do? Alberta said. You better be careful. That’s him, isn’t it.

Yes, she said. That’s him.

She left Alberta and walked down the hall and out of the school building into the cold afternoon air, walking without rush, without hurry, in a kind of numbed trance, moving toward the icy parking lot behind the school. When she passed the last corner of the building she saw his black Plymouth waiting at the edge of the paved lot. He had the motor running and there was the familiar low muttering of the muffler, a sound that took her back to the summer. He was sitting slumped down in the front seat, smoking a cigarette. She could see the smoke drifting thinly out of the half-opened window. She walked up to him. He was watching her as she approached, then he sat up.

You don’t look too pregnant, he said. I figured you’d be bigger.

She said nothing to him yet.

Your face got rounder, he said. He studied her, looking at her steadily, a little critically as he always did, as he regarded everything. That calmness, a kind of distance he had, that you couldn’t touch. She remembered that now. It looks okay on you, he said. Turn sideways.

No.

Turn sideways. Let me see if it shows that way.

No, she said again. What do you want? What are you doing here?

I haven’t made up my mind yet, he said. I come back to see how you’re doing. I heard you were pregnant and living out in the country with two old men.

Who told you that? Haven’t you been in Denver all this time?

Sure. But I still know people here, he said. He sounded surprised.

Well, what of it? she said.

You’re mad now. I can see that much, he said.

Maybe I have a reason to be.

Maybe you do, he said. He seemed to be considering something. He reached forward and stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. His motions seemed unhurried and calm. He looked at her again. Don’t be like this, he said. I come back to see you, is what I’m saying. To see if you’d want to go to Denver.

With you?

Why not?

What would I do in Denver?

What does anybody do in Denver? he said. Live in my apartment with me. We could take up our lives together. We could take up where we left off. You’re carrying my baby, aren’t you?

Yes. I have a baby in me.

And I’m the father, aren’t I?

Nobody else could be.

That’s why, he said. That’s what I’m talking about.

She looked at him in the front seat of the car. The motor was still running. She felt cold standing out in the open air in the parking lot. Six months had passed since he’d left and things had happened to her, but what had changed for him? He looked no different. He was thin and dark and his hair was curly and she still thought he was very good looking. But she didn’t want to feel anything at all for him anymore. She had thought she was over those feelings. She believed she was. He had left without telling her he was leaving and she was already pregnant then, and afterward her mother wouldn’t let her in the house and then she couldn’t stay any longer with Mrs. Jones because of her old father, so she had gone out into the country with the two McPheron brothers and as unlikely as that had seemed that was turning out all right, and lately it was better than all right. Now, unexpectedly, here he was again. She didn’t know what to feel.

Why don’t you get in? he said. At least you could do that. You’re going to freeze like a hunk of ice standing out there. I didn’t come back to make you get cold, Vicky.

She looked away from him. The sun was bright. But it didn’t feel warm. It was a bright cold winter day and nothing was moving, no one else was even outside, the other high school kids were in their afternoon classes. She looked at their cars in the parking lot. Some had frost forming inside the windows. The cars had been there since eight in the morning. They looked cold and desolate.

Aren’t you even going to talk to me? he said.

She looked at him. I shouldn’t even be here, she said.

Yes you should. I come back for you. I should of called during these months, I know. I’ll apologize for that. I’ll say I was wrong. Come on, though. You’re getting cold.

She continued to look at him. She couldn’t think. He was waiting. From across the pavement came a gust of wind; she felt it on her face. She looked out toward the patches of snow on the football field and toward the empty stands rising up on either side. She looked back at him once more. He was still watching her. Then, without knowing she was going to, she walked around the rear of the car and got in on the other side and closed the door. It was warm inside. They sat facing each other. He didn’t try to touch her yet. He knew that much. But after a while he turned forward and put the car in gear.

I missed you, he said. He was speaking straight ahead, talking over the steering wheel of the black Plymouth.

I don’t believe you, she said. Why don’t you tell me the truth.

That is the truth, he said.

.  .  .

They left Holt driving west on 34, driving out into the winter landscape. When they got out past Norka after half an hour they began to see the mountains, a faint jagged blue line low on the horizon a hundred miles farther away. They didn’t talk very much. He was smoking and the radio was playing from Denver and she was looking out the side window at the brown pastures and the dark corn stubble, the shaggy cattle and the regular intervals of telephone poles, like crosses strung beside the railroad tracks, standing up above the dry ditch weeds. Then they arrived in Brush and turned up onto the interstate and went on west, going faster now on the good road, and passed Fort Morgan where in the freezing air the fog from the sewage plant drifted across the highway, and about then she decided to say what she had been thinking for the last five minutes. I wish you wouldn’t smoke in the car.

He turned toward her. You never cared before, he said.

I wasn’t pregnant before.

That’s a fact.

He rolled the window down and flicked the burning cigarette outside into the rushing air and turned the window up again.

How will that be? he said.

Better.

How come you have to sit so far away? he said. I never bit you before, did I?

Maybe you’ve changed.

Why don’t you come a little closer and find out. He showed his teeth and grinned.

She slid across the seat toward him and he put his arm over her shoulders and kissed her cheek and she set her open hand on his thigh, and they rode as they had ridden in the summer when they had driven out in the country north of Holt before stopping at the old homestead house under the green trees in the evening, and they were still riding that way when they drove into Denver at dusk in the midst of city traffic.

After that she didn’t know what to do with herself. She had made a sudden turn. She was seventeen and carrying a baby and she was alone most of every day in an apartment in Denver while Dwayne, this boy she had met last summer and wasn’t sure she knew at all, went to work at the Gates plant. His apartment was two rooms and a bathroom, and she had it completely cleaned and swept in the first morning. And his cupboards rearranged on the second morning, and the laundry done, the single set of sheets he owned and his dirty jeans and work shirts, all done in the first three mornings, and the only person she had met so far was a woman in the laundry room in the basement who stared at her the whole time, smoking and not speaking to her even once so that she thought the woman must be mute or maybe angry at her for some reason. In the first few days in Denver she did what she could, washed the clothes and cleaned the apartment and had something cooked for supper in the evening, and on the first Saturday afternoon when he got off work she went out with him to a shopping mall and he bought her a few things, a couple of shirts and a pair of pants, to make up for what she had left in Holt. But there wasn’t enough for her to do, and she was more alone than she had ever been.

That first night when they had arrived at the apartment they had gotten out of the car in the parking lot with its rows of dark cars and he had led her up the stairs and down a tiled hallway to the door and unlocked it. You’re home, he said. This is it. It was two rooms. She looked around. And in a little while he took her into the bedroom and they had never been in bed together before, not an actual bed, and he undressed her and looked at her stomach, the round smooth full rise of it, and he noted the blue veins showing on her breasts, and her breasts swollen and harder now, and her nipples larger and darker too. He shaped his hand over the hard ball of her stomach. Is it moving yet? he said.

It’s been moving for two months.

He held his hand there, waiting, as if he expected it to move now, for him, then he bent and kissed her navel. He rose and took his clothes off and got back in bed where she was and kissed her and stetched out beside her, looking at her.

You still love me?

I might, she said.

You might. What does that mean?

It means it’s been a long time. You left me.

But I missed you. I told you that already. He began to kiss her face and to caress her.

I don’t know if you should do this, she said.

Why not?

Because. The baby.

Well, people still do this after she has a baby in her, he said.

But you have to be careful.

I’m always careful.

No, you’re not. Not always.

When wasn’t I?

I’m pregnant, aren’t I?

He looked in her face. That was a accident. I didn’t mean to do that.

It still happened.

You could of done something yourself too, you know, he said. It wasn’t just up to me.

I know. I’ve thought about that a lot.

He looked into her face, her dark eyes. You seem different some way now. You’ve changed.

I’m pregnant, she said. I am different.

It’s more than that, he said. But you’re not sorry, are you?

About the baby?

Yeah.

No, she said. I’m not sorry about the baby.

You going to let me kiss you, then?

She didn’t say anything, she didn’t refuse. And so he began to kiss her and caress her once more and after a while he lay on top of her, holding himself up, and after a while longer he came inside and began to move slowly, and in truth it seemed to be all right. But still she was worried.

Later, they lay in bed quietly. The room was not a very big one. He had nailed a couple of posters on the walls for decoration. There was one window which had a shade pulled down over it and outside the window was the noise of nighttime Denver traffic.

Still later they got up from bed and he called on the phone for pizza and the delivery boy brought it and he paid the boy and made a little joke which made the boy laugh, and after he was gone they ate the pizza together in the front room and watched what there was on television until midnight. The next morning he got up early and went to work. And then she was lonely as soon as he left the apartment and she didn’t know what to do with herself.

McPherons.

Three hours after dark they stopped the pickup at the curb in front of Maggie Jones’s house and got out in the cold and went up onto the porch. When she came to the door she was still in her school clothes, a long skirt and sweater, but she had taken her shoes off and was in her stocking feet. What is it? she said. Will you come in?

They got as far as the front hall. Then they began to speak, almost at the same time.

She never come home today, Harold said. We been driving all over these streets looking for her.

We don’t even know where to start looking, Raymond said.

We been driving the streets more than three hours, looking everywhere we could think of.

You’re talking about Victoria, of course, Maggie said.

There don’t seem to be any friend we could talk to, Raymond said. Least we don’t know of one.

She didn’t come home on the bus after school this evening?

No.

Has she not come home like this before?

No. This is the first.

Something must of happened to her, Harold said. She must of got taken off or something.

Watch what you say, Raymond said. We don’t know that. I’m not going to think that yet.

Yes, Maggie said, that’s right. Let me make some calls first. You want to come in and sit down?

They entered her living room as they would some courtroom or church sanctuary and looked around cautiously and finally chose to sit on the davenport. Maggie went back to the kitchen to the phone. They could hear her talking. They sat holding their hats between their knees, just waiting until she came back into the room.

I called two or three girls in her class, she said, and finally called Alberta Willis. She said she’d given Victoria a note from a boy waiting in a car out in the parking lot. I asked her if she knew what was in the note. She said it was private, it wasn’t to her. But did you read it? I asked her.

Yes. But just once, she said.

Tell me please. What did it say?

Mrs. Jones, it didn’t say anything. Only come see me in the parking lot, and then his name. Dwayne.

Do you know him? I said.

No. But he’s from Norka. Only he doesn’t live there no more. Nobody knows where he lives.

And did Victoria go out to him in the parking lot, like the note said?

Yes, she went out to him. I tried to tell her not to. I warned her.

And did you not see her after that?

No. I didn’t see her again after that at all.

So, Maggie said to the McPherons. I think she must have gone with him. With this boy.

The old brothers looked at her for a considerable time without speaking, watching her, their faces sad and tired.

You know him yourself at all? Harold said finally.

No, she said. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen the boy. The kids know him somewhat. He was at some of the dances last year, this past summer particularly. That’s when Victoria met him. She told me a little about that. But she wouldn’t ever tell me his name. This is the first I’ve heard any part of his name.

Did that girl on the phone know the rest of it?

No.

They stared at her again for a time, waiting for anything more.

So she isn’t hurt, Harold said. Or lost.

No, I don’t think so.

She isn’t lost, Raymond said. That’s all we know. We don’t know about hurt.

Oh, I want to believe she is all right, Maggie said. Let us think that.

What brought her to leave though? Raymond said. Can you tell me that. You think we did something to her?

Of course not, Maggie Jones said.

Don’t you?

No, she said. Not for a minute.

Harold looked slowly around the room. I don’t think we did anything to her, he said. I can’t think of anything we might of did. He looked at Maggie. I been trying to think, he said.

Of course not, she said. I know you didn’t.

Harold nodded. He looked around again and stood up. I reckon we might as well go on home, he said. What else is there to do. He put his old work hat on again.

Raymond still sat as before. You think this here is the one? he said. That give her the baby?

Yes, Maggie said. I think it must be.

Raymond studied her for a moment. Then he said, Oh. He paused. Well. I’m getting old. I’m slow on the uptake. And then he couldn’t think what more there might be to say. He stood up beside his brother. He looked past Maggie, out across the room. I reckon we can go, he said. We thank you for your kindly help, Maggie Jones.

They went out of her house into the cold again and drove off. At home they put on their canvas coveralls and went out in the dark, carrying a lantern to the calf shed where they’d penned up a heifer they’d noticed was showing springy. She was one of the two-year-olds. They’d noticed her bag had begun to show tight too. So they had brought her into the three-sided shed next to the work corrals the day before.

Now when they stepped through the gate, holding the lantern aloft under the pole roof, they could see she wasn’t right. She faced them across the bright straw and frozen ground, humped up, her tail lifted straight out, her eyes wide and nervous. She took a couple of quick jittery steps. Then they saw that the calf bed was pushed out of her, hanging against her back legs, high up beneath her tail, and there was one pink hoof protruded from the prolapsed uterus. The heifer stepped away, taking painful little steps, humped up, moving toward the back wall, the hoof of her unborn calf sticking out from behind her as though it were mounted in dirty burlap.

They got a rope around the heifer’s neck, made a quick halter of it and snugged her tight to the shed wall. Then Harold took off his mittens and pushed at the hoof for a long time until he was able to move it back inside, and then he went inside with his hand and felt of her and tried to position the calf’s head between the two front feet as it was supposed to be, but the head wasn’t right and the calf would not come. The little heifer was worn out now. Her head hung down and her back was humped. She stood and moaned. There was nothing to do but use the calf chain. They put the loops inside the heifer over the unborn calf’s legs above the hocks, then fit the U-shaped piece against the heifer’s hindquarters, and began to jack the calf out. Ratcheting it out of her. The heifer was pulled against the rope around her neck and head and she moaned in harsh pants and once raised her head to bawl, her eyes rolled back to white in terror. Then the calf’s head came out with the front legs and suddenly the whole calf dropped heavily, slick and wet, and they caught it and wiped its nose clean and checked its mouth for air passage. They put the calf down in the straw. For the next hour, while the heifer stood panting and groaning they cleaned the prolapsed uterus and pushed it back inside of her and then sewed her up with heavy thread. Afterward they shot her with penicillin and stood the calf up and pointed it toward the heifer’s bag. The heifer sniffed at the calf and roused a little and began to lick at it. The calf bumped at her and started to suck.

By now it was after midnight. It was cold and bleak outside the shed and utterly quiet. Overhead, the stars in the unclouded sky looked as cold and arctic as ice.

They came back into the house without yet removing their canvas coveralls and sat spent and bloody at the wood table in the kitchen.

You think she’s going to be all right? Raymond said.

She’s young. She’s strong and healthy. But you don’t ever know what might could happen. You can’t tell.

No. You can’t tell. You don’t know how she is. You don’t even know where he might of took her for sure.

He might of landed her in Pueblo or Walsenburg. Or some other place besides Denver. You can’t never tell.

I’m going to hope she’s all right, Raymond said.

I hope it, said Harold.

They went upstairs. They lay down in bed in the dark and could not sleep but lay awake across the hall from each other, thinking about her, and felt how the house was changed now, how it seemed all of a sudden so lonesome and empty.