Eventide - Kent Haruf [44]
Then the service was over and Raymond and Victoria and Katie and Maggie and Guthrie went back up the aisle very slowly. Raymond led them, his hat on his head again as before, limping and hobbling with his crutches. They went outside to the black cars waiting in front at the curb in the sun. After some time, when the mourners had filed past and looked at the body, the mortician and his assistant rolled out the closed casket and slid it into the black hearse. Then they all drove away in a slow procession with the headlights of all the cars turned on in the broad daylight, heading out north and east to the cemetery three miles outside of town. Beside the grave when they were seated in the metal folding chairs under the awning, the preacher said a few words more and read from scripture once again, and he prayed for the safe translation of Harold’s immortal soul into everlasting heaven. Afterward he shook Raymond’s hand. And by that time the wind was blowing so hard that the caretakers had to lean far over to do their work, and they lowered the dark casket into the ground next to the plot in which the senior McPherons had been buried more than half a century before.
Then they all drove back to town and Raymond climbed once more into Victoria’s car. Honey, you can take me home now, he said.
You’re not going back to the hospital? You’re sure?
I’m going back to the house. I won’t be going nowheres else.
So she drove him through town and out south toward the ranch. He dozed off before they had gotten far out of Holt and then he woke when she stopped in front of the wire gate. She helped him into the house, then went back and got Katie. I’ll get supper pretty soon, she said. You need to eat something.
I’m going to rest for a little bit, he said.
She took his arm and led him into the bedroom off the dining room, where Maggie Jones had changed the sheets four days earlier, and he lay down in what had been his parents’ marriage bed so many years before and until recently had been Victoria’s bed. She propped his leg on a pillow and spread a quilt over him. I’ll have supper ready when you wake up, she said. Try to get some rest.
Maybe I can sleep now, he said. Thank you, honey.
She went out to the kitchen and he lay in the old soft bed with his eyes shut but soon he opened them again, sleep would not come to him, and he turned to look out the window and then turned again to look overhead, and he realized that this room he lay in was directly below his brother’s empty bedroom, and he lay under the quilt staring at the ceiling, wondering how his brother might be faring in the faraway yet-to-be. There would have to be cattle present there somehow and some manner of work for his brother to do out in the bright unclouded air in the midst of these cattle. He knew his brother would never be satisfied otherwise, if there were not. He prayed there would be cattle, for his brother’s sake.
19
IN THE WEEK AFTER HAROLD MCPHERON’S FUNERAL, THE first-grade teacher in the elementary school on the west side of Holt noticed one morning, within the first hour of classes, that something was the matter with the little boy in the middle of the room. He was sitting peculiarly, almost on his backbone, holding himself slouched far back in his desk, and he was only playing with the worksheet she’d handed out. She watched him for some time. The other children were all working quietly, their heads bent over the sheets of paper like so many miniature accountants. After a while she rose from her desk and walked back between the rows and came to him and stood over him. He looked as undersized and ragged as ever, like some wayward orphan turned up by mere happenstance and misfortune in her class. His hair needed cutting, it stuck out behind against the collar of his shirt, which itself was not clean. Richie, she said, sit up. How can you work like that? You’ll damage your back.
When she put a hand on his shoulder to urge him forward, he winced and jerked away. Why, what’s wrong? she said. She knelt beside him. There