Are you thinking of staying here?
I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t tell yet.
After breakfast she kissed him and went home and he started back to Denver. When she got out of the car she saw that her mother had set the sprinkler going on the north side of the house and her father was sitting in his chair at the window.
Daddy, you’re up already.
You’re late, he said. It’s the middle of the morning.
It’s only eight o’clock.
You’ve been out all night with him.
What’s wrong, Daddy?
He looked at the tree shade outside and she came across the room and sat on the arm of his chair.
I was worrying about you, he said. That’s what it is.
What are you worried about? If I’ll manage the store?
No. Hell. You will or you won’t. That’s not worth worrying about anymore. It’ll happen or it won’t.
What is it then?
He looked up at her face. I just was wanting you to tell me if you was happy or not. I’d like to know that before I’m gone out of here.
She rose and drew a chair close to him, facing him, and took one of his hands. No, she said. I’m not happy. If you want to know. Can I tell you that even now?
If that’s what the truth is.
It is. Since Lanie died. I never have been what you’d call truly happy.
You don’t get over it, do you. When a child goes. You never do.
I think about how we would be now. I want to talk to her. I want there to be long talks between my daughter and me. I have things I want to tell her. That boy that drove the car and killed her, I could do something terrible to him right now today. I swear I could.
Her eyes were shiny. Dad squeezed her hand and they sat quietly, both of them looking at the tree outside the window.
After a while he said, So what about this Richard?
I don’t know, Daddy. He’s okay. He’s just wants to have a good time, go out drinking and take me to bed afterward.
I don’t have to hear that part of it.
You asked.
Well, are you in love?
No. There’s no one that way. I don’t know if I’ll ever find that kind. I’m too torn up inside.
I was hoping this morning you’d tell me you was happy.
I’m sorry, Daddy.
I’m sorry too. For you, I mean.
What about you?
Well, yeah, I been happy. Sure. Except for the one thing.
Frank.
Yes.
I know more about that than you think.
I figure you know a lot, Dad said.
I know what happened here with you. And other things that happened in town.
He told you.
Yes. A long time ago.
21
THE HIGH SCHOOL GIRL drove up to the house after dark. He was watching for her as always from the front room of the parsonage, his father and mother were back in the kitchen and didn’t say anything to him anymore when he left the house. He went out across the porch to the car and got in beside her. She looked no different than she had the other nights, still dressed in black with the red lipstick dark on her mouth. He wouldn’t have been able to tell that something was going to happen.
They drove for an hour up and down Main Street and along the residential streets of town and then turned out north on the highway. The farm lights were lit up in the night, the headlights of her car bright on the narrow highway ahead of them. Then she headed the car off on a gravel road and he sat looking at her with the air coming in through the open window, her music playing, she wasn’t talking very much but sometimes she didn’t, then before they got to the place where they had parked once or twice before under a cottonwood tree she stopped the car and reached and turned off the music and they sat in the road with the engine running.
What are we doing? he said. Somebody could hit us here.
She was staring ahead over the steering wheel. I’ve decided it’s time to stop this.
What? Why?
School’s starting next month.
I know. But we can go on after classes start.
No. I’m going to have to work more than I ever have before, to get into a good college.
She wouldn’t look at him. The headlights shone very brightly out ahead of the car on the gravel.
I don’t understand what you mean, he said.
There’s nothing to understand. Just accept it. We had a good time and now we’re done. This is the last night.
You can’t just do this, he said.
Of course I can.
No you can’t. What about me, what I want?
I’m the one who started it, she said. Not you. So I’m the one who ends it.
It’s two of us here now. Not just you.
You’re such a child. She looked at him for a moment. Just a little boy.
I’m only two years younger than you.
Two years make all the difference at this age.
They were right, then, he said. They said you’d do this.
Who did?
The ones I fought you for. They told me.
You didn’t fight for me.
I fought that one. I hit him.
You hit him once by surprise and then he knocked you down and pinned you down.
I protected your name. I spilled my blood for you.
What?
I saved your name with my blood.
Oh Christ. That’s just bullshit. I don’t need anybody to save me.
You don’t believe me. I love you. And you don’t even care.
Well, I’m sorry. She took hold of the steering wheel. That’s how it is. This is the last night.
Why can’t we still see each other once in a while? Can’t we at least do that?
No. That never works.
You do this with all of them, don’t you. You fuck them all. Then you quit them.
You stupid little shit, you’re starting to make me sick. She jerked the car into reverse and roared backward, turning sharply to go back to Holt, and she ended up jamming them into the barrow ditch, the car suddenly stopped, stuck, high-centered. She raced the engine and the back wheels spun, throwing gravel up behind them, and the car sank lower.
Goddamn it! she screamed, racing the engine.
Quit doing that! he said. You’re making it worse.
Shut up. Just shut your goddamn mouth.
She shoved her door open and they both got out. The back wheels were buried to the hubcaps and the rear end had settled into the broken ditch weeds. They went back up to the road and stood in front of the car. The lights of Holt were twenty miles away to the south and the lights of a farmhouse a half mile in the other direction. She shut off the engine and the headlights. It was all dark around them.
Are you coming with me or staying here?
Where are you going?
Over to that house.
I’m coming.
Let’s go then.
What about dogs?
What about them?
She began walking toward the farmhouse and he followed a little behind her. The wind was blowing and whistling in the barbed wire fence and the only other sound was their shoes scraping in the gravel. They didn’t talk. When they approached the farmstead they could see a machine shed and garage and a metal building and near the road the white house itself with a stand of locust behind it. A dog had started barking.
I told you there would be a dog, he said.
So there’s a dog.
When they walked into the driveway the dog came out from the house barking at them. They could see him in the yard light, some kind of Australian blue heeler.
Here, she said. Here, boy.
The dog backed up and growled.
Now what? he said.
Wait, she said.
The porch light came on above the back door. A man stepped out and peered at them.
Who’s out there? he called.
We’re stuck, she called back. Up the road here.
What?
The dog kept growling.