Now his brother was buried in the Holt County cemetery northeast of town next to the plot where their parents lay.
IN THE DAYS AND WEEKS AFTER THE FUNERAL IT WAS nearly impossible to convince Victoria that she should return to college. She was not going to leave him, not the way he was. She said he needed her help now. This was the occasion for her to help him as he and his brother had helped her during that time two years ago when she was so alone and lost.
So she had stayed with him through the rest of October and through most of November. Then there came an evening, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, when they were sitting over the supper dishes at the square pinewood table in the kitchen, and Raymond said:
But you’ve got to have your own life, Victoria. You have to go on with it.
I have my own life, she said. I have it here. Because of you and Harold. Where do you think I would be without the two of you? I might still be in Denver or on the street. Or with Dwayne in his apartment, which would be even worse.
Well, I’m still awful glad you come back. I won’t ever forget that. But you have to go on now and do what you said you wanted to.
That was before Harold was killed.
I know, but Harold would want you to go on. You know he would.
But I’m worried about you.
I’m all right. I’m still a pretty tough old bird.
No you’re not. You just had your cast taken off. You’re still limping.
Maybe a little. But that don’t matter.
And Mr. Guthrie has stopped coming out to help you like he was before.
I told him not to. I can manage by myself now. He’ll come out again when I need him. Raymond looked at the girl across the table and reached over and patted her hand. You just got to go on, honey. It’s all right now.
Well, it just makes me feel like you’re trying to get rid of me.
No. Now, don’t you ever think that. You’ll come back in the summertime and all the holidays between now and then. I expect you to. I’ll be upset if you don’t. You and me, we’re bound together the rest of our lives. Don’t you believe that?
She stared at him for a long moment. Then she drew her hand out from under his and stood up and began to clear the table.
Raymond watched her. You must be mad at me now, Victoria, he said. I just guess you are. Is that it?
You better not try to talk me out of coming home.
Why Jesus God, honey. I wouldn’t be trying to talk you out of anything if there was some other way. Don’t you see? I’m going to be about as lonesome as a old yellow dog around here, without you and Katie.
She took up the plates and the serving dishes and glasses and silverware and carried them to the sink and slammed them into the washbasin. One of the glasses broke. It cut her finger and she stood over the sink with tears brimming in her dark eyes. Her heavy black hair fell about her face and she looked slim and beautiful and very young. Raymond rose from his chair and stood beside her, his arm around her shoulders.
And I’m not crying about this broken glass either, she said. Don’t you think that I am.
Oh, I guess I know that, honey, he said. But come on, let’s get these dishes cleaned up here before we make any more mess out of things.
I don’t like it, she said. I don’t care what you say.
I know, he said. Where’s that dishrag? I’m going to wash.
No. You go on and get out of here. At least I’m going to do this much. Go back to the parlor and read your paper. At least you can’t stop me from doing the dishes.
But you know it’s the right thing, don’t you.
She looked up at him. Raymond was studying her face, his faded blue eyes regarding her with considerable kindness and affection. I suppose I don’t have to like it, she said.
I don’t like it myself, he said. We just both know it’s got to be this way. It don’t seem to matter at all what we like. It’s how things are.
She began to wash the dishes and he went back to the parlor and sat down to read in one of the two recliner chairs, and the next day they packed her car and she returned to Fort Collins with her daughter. She moved into the apartment again and in the afternoon she went out to find her professors to see about her classes. She was farther behind in classwork than she had thought she would be. She decided to drop two of her courses and to attempt to catch up in the other three.
And now in Holt County Raymond was completely alone in the old gray house in the country. There was no one left for him to talk to. He missed the girl as soon as she was gone. He missed his brother. It was as if he didn’t know where to look or what to think about. Every day he wore himself out working and he came in at night exhausted, too tired to cook anything, so he warmed up food out of cans. And all the while the wind blew outside and birdsong drifted up from the trees, and from time to time the calling of cattle and the sudden nicker of horses rose up from out in the pastures and the barnlots, and these noises carried up to the house in the evening. But that was all there was for him to hear or pay any attention to. He did not care for the radio. He only watched television for the ten o’clock news and the nightly prediction of tomorrow’s weather.
21
SHE WANTED HIM TO COME INSIDE WITH HER AFTER school let out for the day, after they had walked home together through the park through the drifts of dead elm leaves and across the railroad tracks trailing off in the distance east and west in long silver ribbons, and when they got up to the house he said he would, and once they got inside, her mother was not herself. Mary Wells had gotten a good deal worse lately.
This afternoon when Dena went in to find her, she was sitting in her bedroom on the unmade bed, smoking cigarettes and drinking gin from a coffee cup, staring blankly out the window at the winter lawn and the dark leafless trees along the back alley. I’m home, Mom, Dena said.
Her mother looked up, her face lifted slowly as if she were waking from some dream. Are you? she said.
Yes. DJ’s with me.
You better get yourselves something to eat.
What is there?
I think we have some crackers. Where’s Emma?
She’s here too.
Do something with her, please. It won’t hurt you.
Mom, DJ’s here.
I know. You said that. Go on now.
Mom, do you have to smoke?
Yes, I do. And shut the door on your way out. Don’t forget about your sister.
She just gets in the way.
You heard me.
She went out and the three of them made peanut-butter crackers in the kitchen standing at the counter, and she found a single clean glass in the cupboard and they each drank milk from it, taking turns, and when they were finished she said: Let’s go outside.
It’s cold outside, DJ said.
It’s not that cold.
What about me? said Emma.
You can stay in here and watch TV.
I don’t want to watch TV.
You can’t come with us. Come on, she said. Let’s go if we’re going.
IT WAS COLD AND ALREADY TURNING DARK IN THE SHED at the back of the alley. They lifted the latch and went inside and lit the candles. The candles cast a soft yellow light over the shelf at back and on the flowered carpet and it reached faintly into the chill dark corners. They sat down at the table opposite each other and draped old blankets over their coats.