Eventide - Kent Haruf [21]
What do you want to ask?
Could you borrow me a quarter?
I think so. Why?
I want to call Betty and say I didn’t mean her no kind of hurt. I want to tell her to come back home.
You could call from here.
No, I better go downtown. I been rained on already.
She took a quarter from her purse and handed it to him, and he thanked her and told her how he’d pay her back, then walked off toward Main Street. She watched as he passed under the streetlamp at the corner, a great dark figure splashing through the shining puddles in the wet night; his black hair was plastered over his head and he went on in the rain, bound for a public phone booth on a corner.
9
ON A SATURDAY AFTER BREAKFAST, AFTER HE HAD DONE up the dishes, he came outside and without specific intention or any direction in mind started up the street in the bright cool morning and passed the vacant lot and the houses where the old widows lived in individual silence and isolation. Dena and Emma were out in front of their mother’s house, and they had a new bicycle that they’d bought with the money their father in Alaska had sent. Dena knew how to ride already but Emma was only learning. Dena was on the bicycle now, riding on the sidewalk, and she stopped in front of DJ and stepped down, straddling the bike. Her little sister ran up beside them. You want to ride? she asked him.
No.
Why not? Don’t you know how?
No.
You could learn, Dena said. Look at me, I’m already riding.
I don’t know anything about it.
Haven’t you ever tried before?
I don’t have a bike, he said.
Why don’t you? Emma said.
I never bought one.
Don’t you have any money?
Be quiet, Emma.
But he said —
Never mind, Dena said. You want to ride this one?
It’s a girl’s bike. I ought to learn on a boy’s bike.
You want to or not? She got off and held the handlebar out to him and he looked at her and took hold of the rubber grip and stepped over the low crossbar. When he tried pushing the bike forward the pedal came around and hit him in the back of the leg.
How do you? he said.
Get this one pedal to come up. Now step down on it.
The bike went forward and wavered and stopped.
Do it again.
He went ahead a little farther.
Get your other foot up at the same time on the other pedal.
He went forward once more and wobbled and put both feet down.
You have to keep pedaling. You don’t stop.
He pedaled down the block on the sidewalk and the two girls trotted beside until he veered off into a bush and tipped over. He got up and pulled the bike upright. How do you stop it?
Dena put her foot up. Like that, she said.
Don’t you have hand brakes?
No. Just the pedals.
He started again and rode down the driveway into the street and rode along pedaling steadily as they ran beside him. The bike stammered and wobbled and he almost hit them once. They screamed in delight, their faces pink as flowers, and he pedaled away. Dena called: Try and stop, try and stop. He stood up on the pedals and braked suddenly, then put his feet down to catch himself. They ran up beside him.
It’s easy, Dena said. Isn’t it?
I know.
He rode up and back in the street and turned and rode toward them and lifted one hand from the handlebar to wave and put his hand back quickly and rode past and came back once more, but he was too fast this time and drove the bike into the two sisters in the middle of the street and hit the older girl hard and they crashed over, sprawling out in the pavement, the bike over them. He had torn the skin from his elbow and knee and the girl was hurt in the hip and chest. She was crying a little, holding her hip. He felt sick to his stomach. Blood trickled down his arm and the knee of his pants was ripped. He got up feeling sick and lifted the