AT DAYBREAK HOYT HAD WALKED ACROSS TOWN TO ELTON Chatfield’s house. He had waited at the curb beside Elton’s old pickup until he came out, then caught a ride with him to the feedlot east of Holt. At the feedlot he entered the office and stood at the desk where the manager was talking on the phone to a cattle buyer. The manager looked up at him and frowned and went on talking. After a while he hung up. What are you doing in here? he said. You’re suppose to be riding pens.
I quit, Hoyt said.
What do you mean you quit?
I come to draw my pay.
The hell you have.
You owe me for two weeks. I’ll take it now.
The manager pushed his hat back on his head. You don’t give much notice, do you. He took out a checkbook from a middle drawer and started to write.
I’ll take it in cash, Hoyt said.
What?
I want cash. I don’t need a check.
Well, I’ll be goddamned. You expect me to come up with cash on a Monday morning.
That’s right.
What if I don’t have no cash?
I’ll take what you got.
He studied Hoyt closely. Where you running off to, Hoyt?
That ain’t none of your business.
Some woman chasing you? he said. He took out his wallet and removed what few bills there were and dropped them forward onto the desktop. Now get your ass out of here.
Hoyt stuffed the bills in his pocket. How about giving me a lift over to the highway? he said.
You want a ride?
I want to get over to the highway.
You better start in to walking then. I wouldn’t give you a lift to a goddamn dog fight. Get the fuck out of here.
Hoyt stood for a moment, looking at him, thinking if there was something he needed to say, then he turned and stepped out of the office into the fenced yard. It was already beginning to warm up, the sun risen higher in the sky, the sky completely clear and blue. He walked out past the cattle yards, where the fat cattle were all feeding at the plank troughs at the fences, and walked out onto the gravel road, headed south toward the highway two miles in the distance. There were fields of corn stubble along the road, and small birds flew up from the ditches, chittering as he approached. A pheasant cackled from across the stubble. When he reached the highway he stood at the roadside, leaning against a signpost, waiting for a ride to come along.
Half an hour later a man in a blue Ford pickup stopped beside the road. The man leaned across and rolled down the window. Bud, where you headed to?
Denver, Hoyt said.
Well, get in here. You can ride as far as I’m going.
Hoyt climbed in and shut the door and they drove west toward town. The man glanced at him. What you gone and done to your face there?
Where?
Your nigh ear.
I wasn’t looking and snatched it on a tree limb.
Well. All right then. You got to watch that.
They drove on and passed through Holt and went west on US 34. The highway stretched out before them, lined on both sides by the shallow barrow ditches. Above the ditches the four-strand barbed-wire fences ran along beside the pastures in the flat sandy country, and above the fences the line of telephone poles rose up out of the ground like truncated trees strung together with black wire. Hoyt rode with him through Norka and as far as Brush. Then he got another ride and traveled on, headed west on a Monday morning in springtime.
42
IN SCHOOL THAT MORNING THE CHILDREN WERE DISCOVERED almost at once. One of the young girls in Joy Rae’s fifth-grade class, a girl who had been briefly interested in her weeks before when she had appeared at school with lipstick on her mouth, slipped up to the front of the room in the first hour of classes and addressed the teacher in a voice scarcely above a whisper. The teacher at her desk said: I can’t hear you, come here. What is it you want?
The girl leaned next to the woman’s head and whispered in her ear. The teacher studied her and turned to look out into the classroom at Joy Rae. Joy Rae was bent forward over her desktop. Go back to your seat, the teacher said.
The girl returned to her desk at the middle of the room and the teacher rose and walked as if on some routine inspection out among the rows of students, and stopped near Joy Rae and then caught her breath, raising her hand to her mouth, but collected herself immediately and led Joy Rae out into the hall and down to the nurse.
The little boy, her brother, was called in from his classroom.
Then, as before, against their will and despite their protestations they were examined in the nurse’s room. The boy’s pants were lowered, the girl’s dress was raised, and seeing what she saw this time the nurse said angrily: Oh Jesus Christ, where is Thy mercy, and left to bring the principal into the room, and the principal took one look and went back to his office and called the sheriff’s office at the courthouse and then phoned Rose Tyler at Holt County Social Services.
THE CHILDREN WERE QUESTIONED SEPARATELY. PHOTOGRAPHS were taken and a tape was made of their remarks. They each gave the same story. Nothing had happened. They’d been out playing in the alley and had scratched their legs.
Honey, Rose said, don’t lie now. You don’t have to lie for him. Did he threaten you?
We scratched them on the bushes, the girl said.
Her brother was waiting beyond the door in the hall, and she was standing before the cot in the nurse’s room, her hands twisted in the waist of her thin dress, her eyes filled with tears. Her face looked red and desperate. Rose and the sheriff’s deputy sat across from her, watching her.
What did he threaten you with? the deputy said.
He never done nothing to us. The girl wiped at her eyes and glared at them. It was bushes.
That’ll do, honey, Rose said. Never mind now. We know. You don’t have to say anything more. She put her arm around the girl. You don’t have to lie to protect anybody.
The girl jerked away. You ain’t suppose to touch me, she said.
Honey. Nobody’s going to hurt you anymore.
Nobody can touch me.
The deputy looked at Rose and Rose nodded, and he went out to the principal’s office and phoned the judge who was on call that day and got a verbal emergency custody order. Then he phoned Luther and Betty. He told them to stay at the trailer, that he’d want to see them in a few minutes. Then he came back to the nurse’s room, where Rose had both children with her now, sitting with her arms around them, talking to them quietly. The deputy motioned for her to come out to the hall, and they went out and stood below the vivid artwork of schoolchildren taped to the tiled walls and discussed in low voices what to do next. Rose would take the children to the hospital to be examined by the doctor while he drove to the trailer and talked to Luther and Betty. Afterward they would consult again.
THE SHERIFF’S DEPUTY DROVE ACROSS TOWN TO DETROIT Street and parked the car and got out and stood for a moment looking at the trailer. The spring sun appeared to be too bright against the washed-out siding and the sagging roof, the plank porch, the unwashed windows. In the yard redroot and cheatgrass had begun to sprout up in the pale dirt. When he stepped onto the porch Luther let him in.
He sat down in the living room facing the couch where Luther and Betty sat watching him talk, studying his mouth, as if he were some preacher uttering everlasting pronouncements or the county judge himself saying out the law. He began to feel sick. He decided to make this as brief as possible. He told them they already knew about the children, what had been done to them and when and who had done it.
Betty’s pocked face went all to pieces. We never wanted him in here, she said. We told him he couldn’t come in.