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 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.