Plainsong (22 page)

Ike and Bobby.

They sat down front in the first row at the movie theater with the other boys, watching up at the faces turned three-quarters to each other, their outsized mouths talking back and forth while the patrol car was taking the third one away, the red lights rotating flickering light across the faces as the car passed, and behind it all the country gliding past on the screen like it was some manner of dream country that was being blown away by an unaccountable wind. Then the music came up and the house-lights came on and they came back up the aisle into the lobby among the movie crowd and emptied with it out onto the sidewalk in the night. Above the streetlamps the sky was filled with bright hard stars like a scatter of white stones in a river. Cars were waiting double-parked at the curb to pick up kids, fathers waiting and mothers with younger children, while the high school boys and girls broke away and got into their own loud cars and began immediately to drive up and down Main Street, honking at one another as they passed as if they hadn’t seen the passengers in the other cars for weeks and months.

The two boys turned northward on the wide sidewalk. They crossed Third Street and looked in the furniture store window at the velvet couches and the wood rockers, and the
Holt
Mercury
offices and the hardware store, both dark inside, and crossed Second Street and passed the café whose lunch tables were all set in place and the chairs turned up, and the Coast to Coast and the sports store and the sewing shop, and then they stepped over the shiny railroad tracks at the crossing, the grain elevator down the way looming up white and shadowy, as massive and terrific as a church, before turning homeward onto Railroad Street. They went along the empty street under the trees that were beginning to swell though the air was still sharply cold at night, and they were not yet as far as Mrs. Lynch’s house when a car suddenly pulled up in front of them. They recognized the three people inside at once: the big redheaded boy and the blond girl and the second boy, from the room with flickering candles at the end of Railroad Street five months ago in the fall.

You little girls want a ride? the redheaded boy said from behind the wheel.

They looked at him. The side of his face was yellow, lit up by the dashlights.

Bobby, Ike said. Come on.

They tried to walk across the street, but the car rolled ahead in their way.

You never answered my question.

They looked at him. We don’t want a ride, Ike said.

He turned and spoke to the other high school boy. He says they don’t want a ride.

Tell him it’s tough shit. They’re going to get one anyway. Tell him that.

The red-haired boy turned back. He says you’ll get one anyway. So what do you want to do? Want to call your daddy? Does that asshole know where you are?

Russ, the girl said. Let them go. Somebody’s going to see us. Leaning forward, watching what was happening, she sat in the front seat between the two boys, her hair framed like cotton candy about her face. Russ, come on, let’s go.

Not yet.

Let’s go, Russ.

Not yet, goddamn it.

You want me to get em in? the other boy said.

They don’t act like they want to get in by their own selves.

I’ll get em.

The other boy got out of the car on the far side. He stood out in the street and came around, and they began to back up. But now the red-haired boy was out of the car too. He was strong and as tall as their father. He was wearing his high school jacket.

Bobby, come on, Ike said.

They turned to run but the red-haired boy grabbed them by their coats.

Where you think you’re going?

Leave us alone, Ike said.

He held them by their coats and they kicked and swung at him, hollering, trying to turn around, but he held them away at arm’s length and the other boy grabbed Bobby and twisted his arms up behind him and Ike was lifted off his feet, and together they were shoved into the backseat. The big boys got in the car again. Ike and Bobby sat behind them waiting.

You better let us go. You better quit this. We didn’t do anything to you.

Maybe you didn’t, you little shits. But somebody did.

Russ, the girl said, what are you going to do? She was half-turned in the seat, watching them.

Nothing. Take em for a little ride.

She faced forward again, looking at him. Where to?

Just shut up. You’ll find out when they do.

One of them little fuckers kicked me, the other boy said.

Did he get your nuts?

He’d like to.

The redheaded boy put the car in gear and it jumped forward, leaning over as it spun gravel and turned completely around, the wheels squealing, and rushed back up Railroad Street, then squealed again, onto Ash Street and north onto a dirt road heading into flat open country.

Outside through the car windows it was just blue-black. The flare of the headlights pointed forward on the road, fanned out along the ditches on both sides, picking up brush and weeds and fence posts, and beyond, only the blue farmlights in the dark country. In the front seat they were drinking beer. The one boy drank, then turned the window down and flung the can out, hollered and turned the window up again. Ike and Bobby sat in back watching them, as still as country rabbits, waiting, and pretty soon the girl turned around once more and peered at them, then she turned back.

They’re scared, she said. They’re just little boys, Russ. They’re afraid. Whyn’t you let them go?

Whyn’t you just shut up like I told you, he said. He looked at her. Fuck’s wrong with you tonight anyway?

He drove on. The gravel pounded up under the car. They topped a little rise and abruptly he slid the car to a stop. This is far enough, he said.

He got out as the other boy did on his side, and they bent into the back and pulled them from the car onto a low hill in the night. The snow was gone but the wind was blowing, and they were out on a dirt road with sagebrush and last year’s dry bluestem sticking up from the new grass behind the barbed-wire fences on both sides, all of it pale and cold-looking, showing dim and shadowy in the blue light of the high white stars.

Russ, the girl said.

What?

Russ, you won’t make them walk from here.

I’m going to, he said. It’s not even five miles. Now shut your mouth like I told you. Or maybe you want to walk back with em yourself. Do you?

No.

Then keep out of this.

He looked at the two boys standing next to each other against the car, waiting for what was going to happen, their eyes like outsized coins in the night. The car was still idling and the headlights were pointed forward along the dirt road, showing the washboards and the uneven grading.

You little girls know where you are?

They looked around.

That’s town back there, he said. Where you see those lights. Look where I’m pointing at, goddamn it. Don’t look at me. See em? All you got to do is walk back on this road. But you better not cry to nobody about this. I don’t even want to think what I’ll do the next time, if somebody finds out.

They looked toward the lights of town. Then they looked at the girl still in the car. The door was open and the dome light was shining and she was watching them, but her face was blank. There wouldn’t be any help from her. They stood in their mackinaw coats, bareheaded, waiting, their faces ashen and frightened.

You hear what I said?

We heard you.

All right. Take off.

They pushed away from the car, moving in the direction of town.

Wait a minute, the other boy said. I mean, hell. That’s all you’re going to do?

You got something else in mind?

I can think of something.

He looked at the two boys, who started to back away from him, then he grabbed Bobby by the coat arm. This here’s the little fucker that kicked me. He dragged him out into the middle of the road, Bobby was yelling and swinging his arms, trying to kick at him, until the high school boy wheeled him around and upended him facedown in the dirt.

Quit it, Ike cried. Leave him alone, goddamn you.

The red-haired boy grabbed Ike and forced him back against the hood of the car. The other boy bent over Bobby and pulled off his shoes and flung them backward into the darkness, then hauled his jeans down and threw them spinning into the barrow ditch. Afterward he jerked Bobby’s underwear down, disentangled them from his feet and sent them sailing away. Bobby’s naked white legs flailed in the dirt.

Ike pulled loose from the first boy and ran at the other one holding Bobby and hit him in the neck and kicked him before he was grabbed from behind.

You got him now? the other boy said.

Yeah, the red-haired boy said. I got him.

Well hang on to him, goddamn it.

He ain’t going nowhere.

I still got this other one.

He stood up and lifted Bobby into the air, holding him aloft like some specimen for them to consider. He turned him toward the girl in the car.

How’d you like to suck his little dick, Sharlene?

The girl was looking at Bobby, she looked at each of them, but she didn’t say anything.

Below his mackinaw Bobby was white-legged and naked, shriveled up and podlike, as though he’d been skinned. He was crying now.

Leave him alone, Ike cried. Leave him alone. He fought against the red-haired boy. You son of a bitch. He didn’t do anything to you. Why don’t you leave him alone. You dirty sons of bitches.

I want you to listen to that little fucker’s mouth? the boy said. Can’t you shut him up?

I’ll shut him up, the redheaded boy said. He held Ike by the arms and suddenly tripped him forward onto the road, kneeling on him. He hauled Ike’s shoes off one at a time and jerked his pants down, threw them away, and hauled off his underwear and flung them backward over his shoulder. Finally he stood up and pulled Ike to his feet, holding him forward in front of the others.

He don’t have any fuzz yet either, the other boy said. You reckon anybody in that family’s got any? You figure their daddy’s sprouted his feathers yet?

I’m not even talking about that son of a bitch, the redhaired boy said. He shoved Ike forward. Ike was crying now too. He moved over to Bobby and together they crouched in the road. Stretching their coats over their knees, they looked like forlorn and misshapen dwarfs caught by some great misfortune out in the night on a dirt road, a long way from any help.

Let’s go, the other boy said. I’ve had enough of this.

We’re going, the redhead said, looking at Ike and Bobby. But you remember what I told you. Nobody better hear about this shit tonight.

They watched him, looking up at him from where they squatted in the road. They said nothing.

You hear me? You just remember what I said.

He and the other boy got back in the car which then roared away in the night with the dust boiling up behind it and the dim taillights fading to nothing above the narrow road.

Afterward they could hear it without seeing it. Then it was just quiet. Overhead the stars flickered, white and hard-edged, myriad and distant. The wind still blew.

Are you all right, Bobby? Did he hurt you?

Bobby shivered and wiped his eyes and nose on his coat sleeve. I can’t find where my shoes are, he said. He stepped barefoot in the cold dirt, looking. That girl never even tried to help us, he said.

He wouldn’t let her.

She didn’t try hard enough, Bobby said.

.  .  .

It was thirty minutes before they found their shoes and both pairs of their jeans and their underwear in the dark. The clothes felt cold and stiff when they pulled them on, and then they started south toward the clustered lights of Holt. The lights seemed far away.

We should stop at one of the farmhouses, Bobby said.

You want them to know? Tell them what happened?

We wouldn’t have to say.

We’d have to tell them something.

They walked on, staying close together. The road showed dimly before them, paler than the bar ditches to the sides.

They all keep dogs anyhow, Ike said. You know that.

It was after midnight by the time they walked once more onto Railroad Street and then turned in at the familiar gravel drive at home. A while before, when they were still out on the quiet dirt road in the country, they’d seen the lights of a car coming toward them and thought it was the redhaired boy and the other one coming back, and they’d dropped down into the ditch and then the car had gone rattling past, peppering their backs with dirt and gravel and the ground had been icy cold and smelled rank of dust and weeds, but when the car passed they saw that it wasn’t driven by the high school boys. It was somebody else. A different car, just somebody going home. So they might’ve waved it down and gotten a ride, but afterward it was too late. They climbed up to the road and went on. They didn’t talk very much. They kept walking. A couple of times they heard a coyote yapping and howling, crying out somewhere in the country, and they knew there were cattle somewhere out to the west, they heard them moving about in the corn stubble across the dark. Ahead, the lights of Holt seemed to stay far away, and they were foot-weary and tired by the time they finally passed into the town limits and walked under the first of the corner streetlamps.

When they walked inside the house, their father wasn’t there. They called out but there was no answer. It made them scared again. They locked the door, dropped their coats on the floor in the front hall and went upstairs and began to wash themselves at the bathroom sink. In the cabinet mirror their faces were dirty and tear-streaked with little runnels along their noses, and their eyes looked shadowy and strange. They were bent over the sink when their father came home. They heard him call as soon as he came in.

Ike? Bobby? Are you here?

They didn’t answer.

He noticed their coats and came rushing upstairs and found them in the bathroom, the rinse water clinging to their faces, both turned toward the door, looking at him as though he’d walked in on them in some shameful ritual act.

He entered the room. Why didn’t you answer me? he said. Where’d you go? When you didn’t come home after the show I went out looking for you. I was about to call Bud Sealy.