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By Root 431 0

miles out south of Holt he had been alone since that day when they were teenage boys and they’d learned that their parents had been killed in the Chevrolet truck out on the oiled road east of Phillips. But they had been alone together, and they had done all the work there was to do and eaten and talked and thought out things together, and at night they had gone up to bed at the same hour and in the mornings had risen at the same time and gone out once more to the day’s work, each one ever in the presence of the other, almost as if they were a long-suited married couple, or as though they were a pair of twins that could never be separated because who knew what might happen if they were.

Then when they had become old men, after a series of peculiar circumstances had transpired, the pregnant teenaged girl Victoria Roubideaux had come out to the house to live with them, and her coming had changed matters for them forever. And then in the spring of the following year she had delivered the little girl and her arrival had changed matters once again. So they had grown used to the presence of these new people in their lives. They had become accustomed to the way things had changed and they had got so they liked these new changes and got so they wanted them to continue day after day in the same way. Because it began to feel as if each succeeding day was good to them, as though all of this new order of things was what was pointed to all along, even if they could never have known or predicted it in any way or manner beforehand. Then the girl had finished high school and had gone off to Fort Collins to attend college, and they had missed her, missed her and her little daughter both terribly, because after they were gone it was as if they were suffering the sudden absence of something as elemental and essential as the air itself. But they could still talk to the girl on the telephone and look forward to her return at holidays and again at the start of summer, and in any case they still had each other.

Now his brother was buried in the Holt County cemetery northeast of town next to the plot where their parents lay.

IN THE DAYS AND WEEKS AFTER THE FUNERAL IT WAS nearly impossible to convince Victoria that she should return to college. She was not going to leave him, not the way he was. She said he needed her help now. This was the occasion for her to help him as he and his brother had helped her during that time two years ago when she was so alone and lost.

So she had stayed with him through the rest of October and through most of November. Then there came an evening, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, when they were sitting over the supper dishes at the square pinewood table in the kitchen, and Raymond said:

But you’ve got to have your own life, Victoria. You have to go on with it.

I have my own life, she said. I have it here. Because of you and Harold. Where do you think I would be without the two of you? I might still be in Denver or on the street. Or with Dwayne in his apartment, which would be even worse.

Well, I’m still awful glad you come back. I won’t ever forget that. But you have to go on now and do what you said you wanted to.

That was before Harold was killed.

I know, but Harold would want you to go on. You know he would.

But I’m worried about you.

I’m all right. I’m still a pretty tough old bird.

No you’re not. You just had your cast taken off. You’re still limping.

Maybe a little. But that don’t matter.

And Mr. Guthrie has stopped coming out to help you like he was before.

I told him not to. I can manage by myself now. He’ll come out again when I need him. Raymond looked at the girl across the table and reached over and patted her hand. You just got to go on, honey. It’s all right now.

Well, it just makes me feel like you’re trying to get rid of me.

No. Now, don’t you ever think that. You’ll come back in the summertime and all the holidays between now and then. I expect you to. I’ll be upset if you don’t. You and me, we’re bound together the rest of our lives. Don’t you believe that?

She stared at him for a