Plainsong by Kent Haruf

arms, and she was the color of cream all over and pink-toned and they looked at her in surprise and something akin to religious astoundment and awe. Lying next to her there was a big hard-muscled red-haired boy who was as naked as she was, only he was wearing a gray tee-shirt that had its sleeves cut off. He was from the high school too. They’d also seen him before. And now he was saying, That’s not it. Because it’s only this once.
    Why? the girl said.
    I told you. Because he come along with us tonight. Because if he did I told him he could.
    But I don’t want to.
    Do it for me then.
    You don’t love me, the girl said.
    I told you I did.
    Like hell. If you did you wouldn’t make me do this.
    I’m not making you, he said. I’m only saying for a favor.
    But I don’t want to.
    Okay, Sharlene. Fuck it. You don’t have to.
    The high school boy got up from the mattress. The two boys watched him from outside the house. He stood in the candlelight in the sleeveless tee-shirt, bare-legged, muscular, tall. His was big. The hair was red too, but lighter, orange looking, above it; it had a purple head. He bent and picked up his jeans, stepped into them and hauled them up and buckled the belt.
    Russ, the girl said. She was looking at him from the mattress, watching his face.
    What?
    Are you mad?
    I already told him, he said. Now I don’t know what I’m going to tell him.
    All right, she said. I will, for you. I don’t want him to, though.
    He looked at her. I know, he said. I’ll go tell him.
    But you better appreciate this, goddamn it.
    I appreciate it.
    I mean you better appreciate it afterwards too, the girl said.
    He went out through the open door and in the dark from outside the house they watched her by herself now. She turned on her side toward them and shook cigarettes from a red pack and lit one leaning forward toward the flame of the candle, her breasts swinging free, cone-shaped, her slender thigh and girl’s flank sleek in the dancing candlelight, and lay back and smoked and blew the smoke straight up above her into the room and flicked the ashes onto the floor. She lifted her other arm and inspected the back of her hand and ran her hand through her blond hair and brushed it back away from her face. Then there was another boy standing in the doorway looking at her. He came into the room. He was a big boy too, from the high school.
    The girl didn’t even look at him. This isn’t on account of you, she said. So don’t get any idea that it is.
    I know, he said.
    Just so you do.
    You going to let me set down?
    Well I’m not going to stand up, she said.
    He squatted on the army blanket and looked at her. After a moment he reached out and with the extended fingers of one hand touched one of her dark nipples.
    What are you doing? the girl said.
    He said it was all right.
    It’s not fucking all right. But I told him. So hurry up.
    I’m going to, the boy said.
    Take your clothes off, she said. For christsakes.
    He kicked his shoes off and unbuckled his belt and dropped his pants and underwear, and from outside the house they watched him now, and they could see he had hair too. The one he had was bigger and it was swollen-looking, sticking straight up, and without saying any word at all to her he stretched out on her, lying between her legs while she had her knees up, spread again, adjusting under his weight. He started moving on her at once. They could see his pale ass cheeks rising and falling. Then quicker and then beginning to pound and after a brief time he shouted something wild and unintelligible as if he were in pain, crying some kind of words into her neck and he jerked and shivered and then he stopped, and all the time she lay wordlessly and still, looking at the ceiling with her arms flat at her sides as if she were in some other place and he was not in her life at all.
    Get off, she said.
    The big boy raised up and looked in her face and rolled from her body and lay on his back on the blanket. In a