Eventide - Kent Haruf [32]
He looked into her face. He wanted to tell her one thing more but for a moment he couldn’t speak. He had told her most of what he had to say on the phone. Honey, he said, you know Harold he was talking about you at the end. You and Katie. The last thing he had on his mind was you and that little girl. I think he would of wanted you to know that.
Thank you for telling me, she whispered. The tears ran down her cheeks, and she ducked her head and her dark hair fell about her face. She held his hand and sobbed quietly.
Guthrie said softly: Raymond. Why don’t Maggie and I go on now. We’ll come back later tonight.
I’ll still be here, Raymond said. I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere else for a while.
Maggie returned the little girl to her mother and she and Guthrie went out of the room into the hall.
Victoria settled the child on her lap. Raymond looked at the little black-haired girl in her red coat and long stockings and he reached up and took hold of her foot. She was frightened by him and drew back.
Oh, honey, Victoria said. He won’t hurt you. You know who Raymond is. But the little girl turned and faced away, hiding her head in her mother’s neck. Raymond put his hand back under the sheet.
It’s just that she’s scared to see you this way, Victoria said. She’s never seen anyone in a hospital bed before. We’re all frightened to see you this way.
I don’t imagine I look like much, Raymond said. Nothing you’d care to study.
GUTHRIE AND MAGGIE LEFT THE HOSPITAL AND DROVE first to Guthrie’s house across the tracks on the north side of Holt on Railroad Street. Inside the house he left a note on the kitchen table for his two boys, Ike and Bobby, telling them to do their chores at the barn and then to heat up some soup on the stove, that he’d be home later in the evening. He explained that Raymond McPheron was in the hospital and needed his help but that he’d call them later from the ranch or the hospital lobby. Then he and Maggie drove in Guthrie’s old red pickup back through town and out south on the two-lane blacktop to the McPheron place. The sun was setting now and all the flat country around them was cast in gold, with long shadows fallen out from behind the ordered fence posts above the bar ditch.
They turned off the blacktop onto the gravel road and then south again down the lane going back to the house and stopped at the wire gate. Maggie got out and went up to the house and Guthrie drove on and parked by the barn and got out into the cold evening air. The six bulls stood waiting in the corral, their backs to the wind, and he walked around to the gate to the pasture, climbed over the fence, and shoved the gate open. The bulls looked at him, and first one and then the others began to move heavily out of the corral. He stood back and watched as they trotted through the gate. There was the one that came limping and even in the darkening light he could see the patch of dried blood caked on its hip. Moving into the pasture, the bulls slowed once more to their own heavy unhurried pace, and he shut the gate behind them and checked the water level in the stock tank, then went back to the barn and drove the pickup over to the south and threw open the barbed-wire gate and passed through, rattling and jarring out into the pasture as he looked at all the cows and calves and heifers. The cattle faced him in the headlights, their eyes shining like bright rubies. When he approached they shied away from the pickup, the calves galloping off with their tails up, and he saw nothing of concern. Two old blackbaldy cows followed him but soon they stopped and stood still, staring after the pickup as he came bouncing back across the rough ground, the headlights picking up the clumps of sagebrush and soapweed ahead, and he came through the gate and shut it behind him, and then walked the saddle horses into the barn and forked hay to them from the loft, and once more got into the pickup and drove up to the house.
The lights were all on inside the house now. Maggie Jones had already washed the dishes and had