It was evening when they got home. The early dark of late December. That low sky closing down. As they drove up over the last little rise before the turnoff to the house they saw that there were cattle out on the gravel road. Their eyes glinted red as rubies in the headlights — one of the old mother cows and three of the heavy-bodied two-year-old heifers. Wait up, Raymond said.
I see em, Harold said.
The cow stood broadside in the middle of the road, her head lifted in the lights, staring as the pickup came closer, then she wheeled and dropped down into the ditch and the heifers dropped down with her.
You make it four?
Harold nodded.
They drove past them slowly, watching them, and took the girl back to the house and went inside with her and put on their work boots and coats and warm caps, and then they went back into the cold and located the cows and headed them trotting in the ditch alongside the road until they passed the gate. Raymond got out and swung the gate open and Harold gunned the pickup ahead and turned the cattle back. They whirled back along the fence in the bright headlights of the truck, moving in the ditch weeds, their bellies swinging, their flanks swaying, their feet thrown out sidways in that awkward bovine manner and kicking up clots of snow. Raymond stood out in the road waiting. When the cattle got up to the gate he hollered and flapped his arms and without any trouble they trotted in. He climbed into the cab and they pushed the cattle farther into the pasture away from the fence. They watched for a while to see which way they’d go. By now it was completely dark and hardcold. They drove out of the pasture and when they got up to the house the yardlight had come on, shining purplish-blue from the lightpole next to the garage.
They mounted the porch steps and scraped their feet. But as soon as they entered the kitchen they stopped. They discovered that the girl had the room warm and brightly lighted, and on the stove she had supper already heated up and ready to be served and the square wooden kitchen table was set for the three of them with the old plates and the old silverware already ranged in order about the table.
Well, by God, Harold said. I want you to look at here.
Well, yes, Raymond said. It makes me think of the way Mother used to do.
If you want to sit down, the girl said. She stood next to the stove with one of the white dish towels tied about her thickening waist. Her face looked flushed from the cooking, but her black eyes shone. It’s all ready, she said. Maybe we could eat out here tonight. If that’s all right. It seems homier.
Well, surely, Harold said. I don’t see why not.
The brothers washed up and the three of them ate together in the kitchen and talked a little about the trip to Phillips, about the woman in the store with the brown dress and the boy with the dolly, the look on his face, and after supper the girl read the page of directions while the two McPherons assembled the crib. When it was finished they stood it up against a warm interior wall in the girl’s bedroom with one of the new sheets stretched tight on the mattress and the warm blanket folded down neatly. Afterward the brothers went out back to the parlor and watched the ten o’clock news while the girl washed the supper dishes and cleaned up in the kitchen.
Later, when the girl was lying in the old soft double bed that had once been the elder McPherons’ marriage bed, she lay awake for a while and looked with pleasure and satisfaction at the crib. It gleamed against the faded pink-flowered wallpaper. The varnish shone. She imagined looking at a little face lying there, what that would feel like. At ten-thirty she heard the brothers mounting the stairs to their bedrooms and heard them overhead on the pinewood floorboards.
The next morning she stayed asleep in her room until midmorning, as she had the previous six days of vacation, but it was different now. It was all right now. The McPheron brothers had decided that seventeen-year-old girls did that. It didn’t matter. They couldn’t say what they would do about it even if they still wanted to do something, and now they didn’t care to.
Two days later it was New Year’s, and school started again the day afterward.
Guthrie
It appeared to him there were ruffles everywhere. Ranged around both bedroom windows, sewn on the bedcover, tacked on the pillows. Still more surrounding the mirror over the chest of drawers. Judy must get something out of it, he thought. She was in the bathroom doing something to herself, inserting something. He smoked a cigarette and looked at the ceiling. A pool of light was showing directly above the bedside lamp on the pink plaster.
Then she came out of the bathroom wearing a little nightgown and nothing under it and he could see the dark medallions of her nipples and the outlines of her small breasts and the dark vee of her hair below.
You didn’t need to do that, he said. I’ve been cut.
How do you know what I’ve been doing?
I assumed.
Don’t assume too much, she said. Then she smiled. Her teeth shone in the light.
She got into bed with him. It had been a long time. Ella and he hadn’t slept together for almost a year now. Judy felt warm beside him in the bed.
Where’d you get this scar? she said.
Where?
This one on your shoulder here.
I don’t know. Fence wire, I guess. Don’t you have any scars?
Inside.
Do you?
Of course.
You don’t act like it.
I don’t intend to. It doesn’t do much good, does it?
Not in my experience, he said.
She was lying on her side looking at him. What made you come over here tonight?
I don’t know. I was lonely, I guess. Like you said at the Chute the other night.
Aren’t we all, she said.
She raised up higher and leaned forward and kissed him and he brushed her hair away from her face, and then without saying anything more she moved over on top of him and he could feel her warm against himself and he felt up under the back of her nightgown with both hands, feeling her small waist and her smooth hips.
What ever became of Roger? Guthrie said.
What? She laughed. You’re asking about him at this time?
I got to wondering about him while you were in the bathroom.
He left. It was better for everybody.
So what was his story?
How do you mean? she said.
Well, how did you meet? Guthrie said.
She pushed herself up and looked at him. You want to talk about that right now?
I was just wondering.
Well. I was at this bar in Brush. It was a long time ago. A Saturday night. I was younger then.
You’re still young. You said that the other night too.
I know. But I was even younger then. I was at this bar and I met this guy who turned out to be my husband. He was a sweet talker. Old Roger sweet-talked me into seeing things his way.
Did he?
Then after a while it wasn’t sweet anymore.
She looked sad suddenly and he was sorry he’d said anything. He brushed her hair away again. She shook her head and smiled, bent to kiss him. He held her for a while and she felt very warm and smooth. In the bathroom she had put on cologne in addition to the nightgown. She kissed him again.
What if I was to ask you something else? Guthrie said.
What is it?
How about taking your nightgown off?
That’s different. I don’t mind that.
She raised up again and pulled the nightgown over her head. She looked very good in the lamplight.
That better?
Yes, Guthrie said. I believe it is.
Two hours earlier that evening he had driven past Maggie Jones’s house and all the lights had been turned off. So he’d driven around Holt awhile and had stopped and bought cigarettes and a six-pack of beer and afterward he’d driven out of town a ways, and about five miles south of town on the narrow highway he had made up his mind and turned around and driven back and stopped at her house, at Judy’s, the secretary from school. When she opened the door and let him in she smiled and said, Well, hello. Do you want to come in?