Benediction (9 page)

Yeah. All right. He looked out the window and looked back. You want something to go
with that coffee, you boys?

No thanks, Rudy said.

You, Bob?

No thank you, I don’t think so. It’s still pretty early in the morning.

All right then. Let’s see what you got there.

Rudy stood up and set the file in Dad’s lap and sat back down. Dad took out the reading
glasses from his shirt pocket and fit the thin bows over his ears and studied the
pages. The two men bent forward and sipped their coffee, watching him.

After a while Dad looked up. Any problem with any of this? he said.

No. Not to speak of.

Anything we do need to speak of, then?

No. Don’t believe so, Dad.

How many lawn mowers we sold this summer by now?

Ten, Rudy said. He looked at Bob. Wasn’t it?

That sounds about right.

Last summer we sold fifteen, Dad said.

Things have been slower this year, Rudy said.

Why’s that now?

They’re not building no new houses in town. That’s mainly it. That’s how I account
for it.

What do you say, Bob?

It’s like what he said. And it’s this new mower we ordered in. It costs more.

It’s a better machine, Dad said.

Yeah. But it costs more.

Well yeah, it costs more, Bob. Goddamn it, it’s got to cost more.

Bob inspected his hands. People don’t like to spend too much money on a lawn mower.

All right, Bob. I take your point. Dad opened the file again. He
found the line he was looking for. What about this accounts receivable? How come that’s
still so high?

That’s old Miss Sprague, Rudy said.

What about her?

She bought that freezer.

I remember she bought it. She bought it before I got sick.

Well. She stopped paying anything on it.

Did you call her?

Yes sir. I called her. Called her two times.

Then did you go to see her?

I went.

Well. Why don’t you just go ahead and tell me, Rudy. This ain’t some kind of mystery,
is it?

No, but it’s a bad mess, Dad. He stared across the room for a moment. I figure I can
go over to her house and get it back if that’s what you want.

You mean repossess it.

Yes sir. Repossess it.

How come?

You ever been in her house?

About thirty years ago.

Well, I doubt she’s thrown anything away since then. Dad, it’s just an all-out bad
situation. She sits in her rocking chair or walks up and down in that mess and confusion
all day long. She’s left herself little narrow trails to walk in. And she’s put that
freezer out on the back porch loaded up with things. It ain’t even food that she’s
got inside. She’s put her old leftover bank papers and family letters and old yellowed
newspapers in it. And she’s got it plugged in and turned on, keeping it running, keeping
the papers cold. She showed me. She insisted on it. I didn’t want to look at it. I
didn’t know what I’d see. Why hell. It just kind of made me feel sick to myself to
see all those papers iced up like that. You want me to take her freezer back?

You think she’s lost her mind now? Is that it? Gone over the hill?

I guess that’s what it is. Or just pure old age.

You don’t think she’s going to pay.

I don’t think she can pay. It don’t look likely to me, Dad.

Well. We don’t want it back. We don’t ever want to have to take anything back.

She’s just all alone over there, is mostly what it is.

Nobody to take care of her? Nobody to talk to?

No sir. Not that I know of.

Well. We can’t take back her freezer. It’s like she had some idea but whatever it
was she forgot it. Let her go. It’ll be laid onto bad debts, that’s all.

Yes. That’s the best way.

What else? Anything happening around town or out in the country?

You heard they started cutting wheat, Bob said.

They should. It’s almost the start of July.

You heard about that custom combiner from Texas.

I don’t know. I guess. You mean that fellow that claims when you cross into Oklahoma
it makes you want to steal?

You heard his story about old Floyd.

I don’t guess I heard that.

Well, as he says, last year they come into this little town down in Oklahoma just
before the Fourth of July and the hands, they all wanted a day off. He said he didn’t
trust them but they’d been working pretty hard and deserved some vacation. All of
them was pretty much a bunch of alkies, he said. Anyway so they was down there in
this little place and he let them go for the one day like they asked. Then the next
day when they come back one of the men isn’t with them. What happened to Floyd? he
says.

Well, one of them says, he’s sort of scratching his foot in the dirt, I guess we lost
old Floyd.

What do you mean you lost old Floyd?

Well. We went out fishing in a boat on this lake and I guess we had a little bit to
drink and then old Floyd, he falls in. He never rises back up.

Goddamn. Didn’t you look for him?

Yeah. We looked for him. But we couldn’t find him.

So finally this Texas guy telling the story he says he had to call Floyd’s mama to
tell her they’d lost old Floyd. His mama tells him, Well, just give his things to
the hands.

Dad shook his head, grinning. Hell of a deal. I guess it’s funny, in a sort of way.
He stared for a moment at the two men sitting on the couch. They say drowning is the
way to go, isn’t that right? But how anybody would know that I don’t know.

That’s right, Bob said. How would they know?

But you boys now, you could take me over to Bonny Dam and tip me in, couldn’t you.

Hell now, Dad, Rudy said. That ain’t no way to talk.

It ain’t no way to talk maybe, but it would settle things. It wouldn’t be a lot of
trouble for you.

They looked down at their coffee cups. It ain’t that it would be any trouble, Rudy
said. That ain’t at all the point, Dad.

All right then. I suppose not. He studied them for a while longer. I guess we’re done
here. You boys want some more coffee before you go?

We wouldn’t care to bother you.

You don’t bother me. I just appreciate you coming. It’s good to see you.

It’s good to see you too, Dad.

You know I’m going to have Lorraine sit in with us next time.

Oh? How’s that now?

In case she takes over for me.

They stared at him, not speaking.

Afterward, he said. When I’m gone.

I don’t know as we get what you’re talking about here, Dad.

You will. Nothing’s definite yet.

T
HE ONLY REASON
Dad Lewis was home midweek on a winter’s day thirty-seven years ago was that he had
contracted some form of intestinal flu. And the only reason he saw Frank and the Seegers
kid out in the corral with the horse in the afternoon was that he’d had to get up
from bed to go into the bathroom when he thought he was going to be sick again as
he had once in the night and twice already that morning, and it was then, when he
looked out through the bedroom window toward the barn out across the backyard, that
he saw the two boys. They were wearing winter coats and stocking caps, Frank a good
head taller than the Seegers kid. The wind was blowing hard and they looked cold.

Dad was alone in the house. Mary was gone, working at the bazaar, selling chokecherry
jam and homemade quilts and crocheted dishcloths in the basement of the Community
Church for an African fund-raiser. And Lorraine hadn’t come home from school yet.

He went to the bathroom and was sick for a while and afterward returned to bed, looking
again out the window, but didn’t see the boys this time and didn’t think anything
of it, but when he got up from bed an hour later and looked once more and didn’t see
them in the corral this time either, he wondered what was wrong. He thought they might
have gotten hurt. Or were having trouble with the mare. He stood looking out the bedroom
window for some time.

Finally he went out across the kitchen to the back porch and watched out the window.
He pushed open the door and stepped out into the howling raw day and cupped his hands
and hollered toward the barn. The wind tore his voice away. He could barely hear it
himself.
He hollered again. He looked left and right and saw nothing but Berta May’s yellow
house to the south and the empty windblown weed-grown undeveloped lots to the north
and the raised bed of the railroad tracks. He stepped back into the house and shut
the door. Weak and sick, he stood shivering on the back porch in his pajamas, shaking
steadily, looking out the window.

He put on his winter coat and boots and work cap and scarf and gloves and crossed
the bare winter lawn in the backyard and went on into the corral. The wispy dirt was
swept up by the wind into little drifts across the bare ground. The wind cried and
whistled in the leafless trees. He came around the south end of the barn out of the
weather and opened the door and peered in at the dim and shadowy center bay. Shafts
of sunlight from the cracks in the high plank barn walls fell across the dirt floor.
Dust motes and chaff drifted in the air. There was the rich smell of hay and the good
smell of horse. He stood for a moment to allow his eyes to adjust. Then he could see
Frank and the Seegers kid.

They were mounted on the mare, riding her around in a circle in the closed area of
the dirt-floored barn, Frank behind the other boy, their heads close together, and
each of them was dressed in one of Lorraine’s frilly summer dresses, trotting in and
out of the shafts of sunlight. Riding the horse bareback, bouncing, their thin bare
legs clutching the mare’s shaggy winter-coated barrel. Frank held the reins in one
hand and his other hand was wrapped around the Seegers kid.

Then Frank saw Dad standing in the barn doorway. He reined the mare in sharply. Dad
stepped inside and moved over to them. The Seegers boy was a redheaded twelve-year-old
kid, skinny, his neck scrawny above the square-cut yoke of the pink dress. He looked
cold and scared. He and Frank both had lipstick on their mouths.

Get down from that horse, Dad said.

Dad, Frank said. It’s all right.

Get down from there.

Frank slid down, then the other boy slipped off. They stood waiting, watching Dad.

What in the goddamn hell do you think you’re doing? he said.

We weren’t hurting anything, Frank said.

You weren’t.

No.

Let me have the goddamn horse. And get the hell out of those goddamn dresses.

Dad took the reins and led the mare across to the big sliding door and shoved it open
and jerked the bridle free and slapped the mare hard on the rear, and she trotted
out across the empty lot, then he came back. The boys had removed the dresses and
were working at getting the brassieres off. They looked like thin hairless animals,
frightened and cold. They turned their backs to him and took down Lorraine’s silky
underpants and stepped shivering over to the manger to their own clothes draped on
spikes and got into their pants and shirts and coats.

Are you going to tell my mom? the Seegers kid said.

What? No. But if I see you in here again, by God, I’m going to whip you.

The boy looked at Frank once, quick, and stumbled across to the door and hurried outside.
They could hear him running across the corral.

You want to tell me what this is about? Dad said.

There’s nothing to tell, Frank said.

Those were your sister’s dresses.

Yes.

Does she know you took them?

No. But we weren’t doing anything to them.

You think she’d see it that way?

Frank looked at him and looked out the open door where the boy had gone. She wouldn’t
care, he said.

Why wouldn’t she care?

She just wouldn’t.

How do you know that?

I don’t know it for sure.

Have you talked to her about this, what you’ve been doing?

No.

She doesn’t know anything about it? How you two were wearing her dresses?

No.

Jesus Christ. He looked at Frank, watching his face. What am I supposed to do about
this?

Leave me alone.

Leave you alone.

Please.

Dad stared at him. Christ, he said. What are you anyway?

I’m just your boy. That’s all I am.

Dad grabbed him and shook him, hauling him around in the cold air, they staggered
in and out of the bars of light fallen across the floor, and then Dad stopped shaking
him and grabbed the bridle reins and whipped at him. Frank pulled away, and in his
wildness Dad whipped him once across the face and then he suddenly threw the reins
away and grabbed the boy, holding him in his arms, hugging him and sobbing. Oh my
God, oh my God, oh my God.

Frank held himself rigid in his father’s arms and finally Dad let him go, then Dad
hurried out of the barn, stumbling across to the house into the bathroom and was sick
and then went back to the bedroom, his head aching and throbbing now. When he was
lying in bed he turned his head and looked out the window. The sun was going down.
His eyes welled up and he straightened his head on the pillow and folded his arm over
his face in the darkening room.

After a while he heard Frank enter the house and climb the stairs to the second floor.
He could hear him in his sister’s room where he must have been hanging up the two
dresses in the closet, and putting away her underwear, then he heard him cross the
hall to his own bedroom and he thought he could hear the bed as he lay down, and he
thought he must be touching at his cheek now, fingering where the welt was.