Well what the hell are you doing?
Nothing. Having a little fun.
We don’t need no more cattle. We’re trying to sell some here today.
I ain’t going to buy any. I’m just having some fun raising the price for somebody else.
What if you get stuck with them?
I won’t.
Yeah. But what if you do.
Then I reckon you’ll just have to get your pocketbook out and pay for them.
Raymond turned away. You know something, he said. You’re starting to get a little mushy in the head in your advanced years, did you know that?
Well, we got to have some fun, don’t we? Victoria’s not here no more.
But we don’t need no more cattle.
You already said that.
I’m saying it so you’ll hear me.
I hear you. But I still say we got to have some kind of enjoyment in life.
I know we do. I ain’t arguing with you about that.
A
T LAST THE AUCTIONEER CAME TO THE BLACKBALDY
yearlings the McPherons had hauled in. The steers came into the sale ring in a swirling mass, their heads down, all moving, trying to turn back into themselves to hide.
The ringman hollered: Boys, they come right off the grass. They’ll do everything you want them to do. Good stretchy steers. These are yearling kind of cattle, boys. And good ones they are!
Ninety dollars!
The auctioneer started his chant. Well all right now. You got to like them. Fifteen steers weighing a average of eight-oh-eight. They’ll hang a good carcass for you, boys. Here we go now. Hey I got a bid now, ninety-dollar bid now, ninety-na-quarter now, now a half, now a half, got seventy-five, now ninety-one, now one-na-quarter now, now half, bid’s one-na-half, now one-na-half the bid now, now seventy-five.
The McPherons watched the fifteen steers milling about in the ring below, frightened and uncertain in this great commotion and noise, their eyes rolled back, one bawling into the dust-filled air and another taking it up, the men and women in the stadium seats all looking on through the pipe-iron bars of the ring, the brothers watching from above, viewing their own cattle with a strange emotion, having brought them in to sell but knowing too well what effort they’d put into them and what trouble there’d been over the past year and with which one or two there’d been the trouble and even knowing for four or five of them which mother cow they’d come out of. But watching the two brothers, you could not have told anything by what showed on their faces. They looked on impassively at the sale of the fifteen steers as if they were attending an event of no more significance than the rise and fall of a dry little wind.
We all in now? the auctioneer cried. We all done here? Ninety-one seventy-five, ninety-two? ninety-two? ninety-two? He flipped the gavel around, taking it by the handle, banged it sharply on the wood block on the counter and sang into the microphone: I sold them out at ninety-one seventy-five to—he looked at the bidder across the ring in the fifth row, a fat man in a straw hat, a cattle buyer for a feedlot, who flashed four fingers twice—to number forty-four!
Sitting beside the auctioneer the sale clerk wrote it down in her ledger, and the ringmen released them and ran in the next lot.
Well, Harold said, looking straight ahead. That’ll do.
It’ll serve, Raymond said, looking as though he too were talking to no one, talking about not even yesterday’s news, but about last week’s, last month’s.
They stayed on in their stadium seats to watch the present lot of cattle being sold, and the next lot, then they rose and moved stiffly down the steps and out of the sale barn. The yard crew and the pen-back crew had done their work and they received the cashier’s check—less the selling commission and the charges for the brand inspection, the feed, the health inspection, the insurance, and the fee that went to the meat board. The woman in the office handed the check to Raymond and congratulated them both. Raymond looked at the check briefly and folded it once, put it in his old leather purse and snapped it shut, poking the purse away in the inner pocket of his canvas chore jacket. Then he said: Well, it wasn’t too bad, I guess. At least we never lost no money.
Not this time, Harold said.
Then they shook the woman’s hand and went home.
A
T HOME UNDER THE FADING SKY THEY WALKED DOWN TO
the horse barn and cow lots and out to the loafing shed to check on things, and the cattle and horses looked all right. So they came back up across the gravel drive to the house. But the day’s excitement was gone now. They were tired and bleary now. They heated up canned soup on the stove and ate at the kitchen table and afterward set the dishes to soak and then removed themselves to the parlor to read the paper. At ten o’clock they turned on the old console television to catch whatever news there might be showing from somewhere else in the world before they climbed up the stairs and lay down tired in their beds, each in his own room across the hall from the other, consoled or not, discouraged or not, by his own familiar time-worn memories and thoughts.
5
T
HEY CAME DOWN THE PLANK STEPS OUT OF THE TRAILER
into the bright sun in the middle of morning and rounded the corner in the packed dirt and arrived at the rusted shopping cart that waited like something patient and abiding among the dry cheatgrass and pigweed. They shoved it rattling away from the trailer out into Detroit, walking the cart ahead of them, headed downtown, Luther pushing, panting steadily, Betty coming along quiet beside. They walked paired up under the trees, with one of the front wheels of the cart flapping loose whenever it hit a crack in the concrete or a stone of any size, and passed through the intersection in front of a car delayed behind a stop sign and came one block more and crossed against traffic and entered at last the store at the corner of Second and Main.
The grocery was a long narrow brick-faced building running back to the alley with wood floors formed of old-fashioned tongue-and-groove oak boards that were oiled and darkened, a place fragrant and dusty and a little dim, with narrow aisles between shelves and tiers of foodstuffs.
Luther pushed the cart past the bins of apples and oranges, the cabbage heads and leaf lettuce next to the wall, his wife following behind in her loose dress. In the next aisle, beyond the fresh-butchered meat in the cooled trays, the frozen foods were displayed behind the tall glass doors. He stopped now and began to hand the cold boxes to Betty, who stacked them in the cart, and they moved forward and he took down more. Frozen spaghetti, cold pizza, boxes of burritos and meat pies and waffles and berry pies and chocolate pies and lasagna. Salisbury steak dinners. Meals of macaroni and cheese. All frozen in their bright hard vivid boxes.
He pushed on and she followed him up the next aisle, where they stopped to study the canned pop. He turned to her. You going to want something else this time? Or you going to stay with that same old strawberry?
I can’t make up my mind.
How bout some of this black cherry?
You’re getting me confused.
Maybe you want some of both of them.
Yes, she said, whyn’t you do that.
He lifted two cases of the pop from the shelf and stooped over to slide the cases onto the undershelf of the cart, his great hindquarters exposed above his gray sweatpants, and stood panting, red-faced, and yanked his shirt down.
You all right, dear?
Yeah. But them’s heavy when you got to bend over like that.
You better not have no cardiac arrest on me.
No ma’am. Not here. Not today.
They pushed on. Around the corner among the paperware and detergent, a plump woman was blocking the aisle, making up her mind about dish soap. Oh I’m sorry, she said, then looked up and saw who it was. She said no more but shoved her cart only a little out of the way.
That’s fine, missus, Luther said. I can make it okay. He squeezed his cart through, and Betty turned sideways, shuffling by. The woman stared after them until they had disappeared around the end and then stood fanning the air in front of her face.
In the next aisle they looked for some time among the various cereals. One of the store employees came by, a boy in a green apron, and Luther stopped him. Bud, what happened to that cereal with raisins in it? All them raisins in it.
Isn’t it here?
We been looking all over.
The boy searched among the shelves, bending over and looking up high. We might have some in back, he said finally.
We’ll wait for you, Luther said. Go ahead.
The boy glanced at him and pushed through the swinging doors into the back of the store. Then the plump woman rolled her cart up behind them.
Luther moved their cart to the side. He’s went out back to look for that cereal, he said.
What? she said. Did you say something to me?
He’s went out in back there to get our cereal. We’re just waiting on him.
She stared at him, she turned to look at Betty, then she walked rapidly away.
Cause they ain’t none of it on the shelf here, Luther called after her.
The boy came back and told them he couldn’t find any of the cereal they wanted.
Did you look everywhere pretty good? Luther said.
Yeah, I looked. If we have any it’ll be out here on the shelves.
But they ain’t none of it out here. We know that already. You got to have some of it in the back.
No. I looked. We must of sold it all.
Luther turned to Betty. He says they don’t have none, dear. Says they’re out of it.
I heard him.
What you want to do about it?
I was counting on a box of cereal to carry home.
I know. Only he says they must of sold it all.
The boy was watching them talk, his head going back and forth. You could buy a box of this other cereal, he said, and buy a box of raisins and put that in it. It’d be about the same thing.
Put raisins in the box, Luther said.
Put raisins in one of these other cereals, the boy said.
Right here, you mean?
No. When you get home. After you buy them and take them home.
Huh. Luther looked around. You want to do that, honey?
You decide, Betty said.
Well, the cereal’s here, the boy said. The raisins are over in aisle two in the middle on the right. If that’s what you want to do. It doesn’t make any difference to me. He turned and walked toward the checkout.
They studied the boxes of cereal. In the old rusted cart their cartons had begun to defrost, water condensing on the cardboard in the warm air.
I can’t see how that’d be any good, Luther said. Can you?
I don’t want none of that, Betty said.
No ma’am.
It wouldn’t taste the same.
It wouldn’t taste the same in a hundert years, Luther said.
They went on and picked up a plastic jug of milk and two dozen eggs in the next aisle and came to the bakery and took three loaves of the cheap white bread, and at last came to the front of the store and lined up behind the register, waiting for their turn. Luther pulled a magazine from the rack in front of them and looked at pictures of half-naked women in the glossy pages.
Who you looking at? Betty said. You better keep your eyes saved for me. She took the magazine out of his hands and put it back. I’m your wife.
They’s too skinny anyhow, he said. Not enough meat on them for what I like. He pinched Betty’s hip.
You better stop that too, she said, and smiled at him and looked away.
The checkout lane cleared and they began to set their groceries on the belt and Luther bent over and lifted up the cases of pop with a grunt.
The woman at the register was working briskly. How’re you folks doing today? she said.
We’re doing pretty good, Luther said. You?
I’m still above ground, the woman said. Every day above ground is a good day, isn’t it.
Yes ma’am. I believe you got that right.
We’re doing pretty good, Betty said, except for that cereal we couldn’t find.
Didn’t we have any?
No ma’am, said Luther. You’re all out.
Well. I’m sorry.
When their charges were totaled Betty took the booklets of food stamps from her purse and handed them to Luther and Luther presented them to the woman. Behind them a man with cans of beans and stew and a carton of cigarettes in his cart stood watching them. The clerk tore out the stamps and rang up and slipped the stamps under the tray in the register and made the last dollar’s change in actual coins. The boy in the green apron sacked their groceries and loaded them back in the cart.
You have a good day, Luther said, and they pushed out through the electric door onto the sidewalk.
The man behind them shook his head at the checkout woman. Would you look at that. They’re eating better than you and me and they’re on food stamps.
Oh, let them be, the woman said. Are they hurting you?
They’re eating a steak dinner and I’m eating beans. That’s hurting me.
But would you want to be them?
I’m not saying that.
What are you saying?
I’m not saying that.
On the sidewalk Luther and Betty started back toward the east side of Holt with their grocery cart. It was hotter now, the sun risen higher in the blue sky. They kept to the shade under the trees and once or twice in every block they stopped to rest, and then shoved on, homeward.
6
T
HEY WERE COLLECTED IN A CIRCLE ON THE PLAYGROUND
when he came out at noon recess. Even from a distance he could see they were from his own grade, with a few of the younger ones from the lower grades there too, gathered inside the chain-link fence beyond the end of the school building. Now and then one of them hollered something brief and excited, and he went down to see what it was about.
Two little boys from the first grade were facing each other across five feet of red gravel, and the older boys were trying to make them fight, saying things, goading them. One boy they taunted more than the other, the one whose lank brown hair appeared as if it had been cut by someone barbering with his eyes shut. He knew who it was—his classmate Joy Rae’s little brother—and inside the ring he looked ragged and scared. His outsized shirt was buttoned to his chin and had holes at the elbows, and his jeans had a purple tint as though someone had washed them together with something red. He seemed ready to cry.
One of the boys next to DJ was yelling at him: Go ahead. Why won’t you fight?
He’s a chickenshit, a boy across the ring hollered. That’s why. He flapped his arms and crowed and hopped up and down. The kids next to him hooted.
The other boy in the ring was somewhat bigger, a blond boy in jeans and red shirt.
Go on. Hit him, Lonnie.
They don’t want to fight, DJ said. Let them go.
Stay out of this. The boy next to him stepped out and shoved the blond boy forward, and he swung and hit Joy Rae’s brother on the side of the face and then stepped back to see what he’d done and her brother put his hand up to his cheek.
Don’t, Joy Rae’s brother said. He spoke very softly.
Hit him again. You better hit him.
He doesn’t want to fight, DJ said. He’s had enough.
No he hasn’t. Shut up.
The boy shoved the blond boy again, and he hit her brother and grabbed him around the neck and they went down in the gravel. The blond boy rolled over on top of him, their faces close to each other, and hit him in the face and throat, and her brother tried to cover his face with his hands. His eyes looked frightened and his nose was bleeding. He began to wail.
Then the circle was broken by a girl rushing into the ring, Joy Rae, in a blue dress too short for her. You’re hurting him, she cried. Stop it. She ran over and pulled the blond boy off her brother, but the first big boy, the loudmouthed one, shoved her and she tripped over the little boys and fell on her hands and knees in the gravel. One knee was cut but she jumped up and pulled at the blond boy crying: Let go, you little son of a bitch.
The big loudmouthed boy grabbed her and this time hurled her backward into the ring of onlookers, and two boys grabbed her by the arms.
She twisted and kicked at them. Let go of me, she screamed.
DJ stepped into the ring and pulled the blond boy off and stood her brother on his feet. He was crying hard now and his face was smeared with blood. The ringleader grabbed DJ by the arm. What do you think you’re doing, asshole?
He’s had enough.
I’m not done with him yet.
Then a boy cried: Oh shit. Here comes Mrs. Harris.
The sixth-grade teacher came striding into the circle. What’s this? she said. What’s going on here?
The boys and girls began to walk off fast with their heads down.
Every one of you come back here, she called. Come back here.
But they all went on, some of them running now. The two boys holding Joy Rae let her go and sprinted off as Joy Rae hurried over to her brother.
What’s this about? the teacher said. She put her arm around the little boy and lifted his chin to see in his face. Are you all right? Talk to me. She wiped at the blood with a handkerchief. His eyes were red and there were bruises starting on his cheeks and forehead and the front of his shirt was ripped open. What’s this about? She turned to DJ. Do you know?
No, he said.
Who started it?
I don’t know.
You don’t know, or you’re not telling me?
He shrugged.
Well, you’re not helping anybody by not telling.
I know who it was, Joy Rae said, and named the big boy who’d been out in the ring.
He’s in very serious trouble then, the teacher said.
She led Joy Rae and her brother into the school building, but DJ lingered on the playground until the bell rang.
A
FTER SCHOOL HE WAS WALKING HOME THROUGH THE
park next to the railroad tracks when two boys appeared from behind the rusted WWII tank that served as a monument. They rushed up at him across the newly mown grass. How come you told old lady Harris on me? the big loudmouthed boy said.
I didn’t.
You told her I made those little kids fight.
I never told her anything.
Then how come I caught hell from her and Mr. Bradbury? Now I have to bring my mom to school tomorrow. Because of you.
DJ looked at him, then at the other boy. They were both watching him.
I’m going to kick your ass, the first boy said.
Yeah, how’d you like to get your ass kicked, the other one said. He gave a signal with his hand and a third boy came out from behind the tank, and they took turns shoving him until one of them grabbed him around the neck while the other two hit him in the head and sides, then they threw him down and held his face in the grass.
The first boy kicked him in the ribs. You lying sack of green shit. You better learn to keep your mouth shut.
Living with a old man.
Yeah. They probably fuck each other. The boy kicked him again. You been warned, he said, then they walked off toward downtown.
He lay in the grass looking at the spaced and orderly trees in the park and the clear sky through the trees. Blackbirds and starlings were pecking in the grass around him.
After a while he got up and went home. In the little dark house his grandfather was sitting in his rocking chair in the living room.
Is that you? he called.
Yes.
I thought I heard somebody out there.
It’s only me.
Come in here.
In a minute, he said.
What are you doing?
I’m not doing anything.