Plainsong by Kent Haruf Page A

little while he said, Hey.
    She took up her cigarette from the jar lid where she had placed it when he had come in and she puffed on the cigarette but it had gone out. She leaned toward the candle flame and lit it again.
    Hey, he said again. Sharlene?
    What?
    You’re good.
    Well, you’re not.
    He lifted up onto his elbow on the mattress to look at her. Why is that?
    She didn’t look at him. She was lying back again, smoking, looking straight up toward the spot where the candlelight was flickering on the filthy ceiling. Why don’t you get the hell out of here.
    What’d I do that was so bad? he said.
    Will you just get the hell out of here. She was almost shouting now.
    He stood up and put his clothes on, looking down at her all the time. Then he went out of the room.
    The first boy came back in, fully dressed. He was wearing a high school jacket now.
    The girl looked at him from the mattress.
    How was it? he said.
    Don’t be ridiculous. You could at least come here and kiss me.
    He squatted down and kissed her on the mouth and fondled her breast and put his hand in the hair between her legs.
    Quit, she said. Don’t. Let’s get out of here. It’s starting to give me the creeps in here.
    From beyond the window the two boys watched the big high school boy leave the room. Then they watched the girl step into her underpants and pull them up and fasten her white brassiere, her elbows pointed out from her body, her hands working behind her back, then she shook the brassiere, and then she stepped into her jeans and pulled a shirt over her head, and lastly she bent and blew out the two candles. Instantly the room went dark and they heard only her footsteps going out across the bare pinewood floor. Outside they slid forward toward the front of the house and hid in the dark against the cold clapboards and watched without a word when the girl and the two big boys came out into the overgrown lot and crossed under the trees and got into the car and then drove away in the dark on Railroad Street, leaving only the red eyes of the taillights diminishing in the faint dust above the road as the car rushed away toward Main Street and downtown.
    That son of a bitch, Ike said.
    That other one too, Bobby said. What about him.
    They stepped out into the ragweed and dry sunflowers and started home.

McPherons.
    They had the cattle in the corral already, the mother cows and the two-year-old heifers waiting in the bright cold late-fall afternoon. The cows were moiling and bawling and the dust rose in the cold air and hung above the corrals and chutes like brown clouds of gnats swimming in schools above the cold ground. The two old McPheron brothers stood at the far end of the corral surveying the cattle. They wore jeans and boots and canvas chore jackets and caps with flannel earflaps. At the tip of Harold’s nose a watery drip quivered, then dropped off, while Raymond’s eyes were bleary and red from the cow dust and the cold. They were almost ready now. They were waiting only for Tom Guthrie to come and help, so they could finish this work for the fall. They stood in the corral and looked past the cattle and examined the sky.
    I reckon it’s decided to hold off, Raymond said. It don’t appear like it wants to snow anymore.
    It’s too cold to snow, Harold said. Too dry, too.
    It might snow tonight, Raymond said. I’ve seen it happen.
    It’s not going to snow, Harold said. Look at the sky over there.
    That’s what I’m looking at, Raymond said.
    They turned back to surveying the cattle. Then without saying anything more they left the corral and drove to the horse barn where they backed the pickup into the wide sliding door of the bay and began to load the vaccination guns, the Ivermec, the medicine vials and the cattle prods into the back end. They lifted the smudge pot in with the other gear and wired the tall blackened smokestack to the sideboards, and returned to the corral to the squeeze chute and set the equipment out on the