Plainsong by Kent Haruf

Author:Kent Haruf
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780375726934
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2001-04-02T22:00:00+00:00

Victoria Roubideaux.

In December the girl appeared in the doorway of Maggie Jones’s classroom during the teacher’s planning hour. Maggie was sitting at her desk, marking student papers with a red ink pen.

Mrs. Jones? the girl said.

The teacher looked up. Victoria. Come in.

The girl entered the room and stopped beside the desk. Nobody else was in the room. The girl was heavier now, beginning to show, and her face looked wider, fuller. Her blouse had drawn more tightly over her stomach, making the material appear polished and shiny. Maggie set the papers aside. Come around here, she said. Let me look at you. Well, my yes. You’re getting there, aren’t you. Turn around, let me see you from the side.

The girl did so.

Are you feeling all right?

It’s been moving lately. I’ve been feeling it.

Have you? She smiled at the girl. You seem to be eating enough. Is there something you wanted? You don’t have a class now?

I told Mr. Guthrie I had to be excused to the rest room.

Is something wrong?

The girl glanced around the room and looked back. She stood beside the desk and picked up a paperweight, then put it back. Mrs. Jones, she said, they don’t talk.

Who doesn’t?

They don’t say more than two words at a time. It’s not just to me. I don’t think they even talk to each other.

Oh, Maggie said. The McPheron brothers, you mean them.

It’s so quiet out there, the girl said. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. We eat supper. They read the paper. I go into my room and study. And that’s about it. Every day it’s like that.

Is everything else all right?

Oh, they’re kind to me. If that’s what you mean. They’re nice enough.

But they don’t talk, Maggie said.

I don’t know if they even want me out there, the girl said. I can’t tell what they’re thinking.

Have you tried talking to them? You know you could start a conversation yourself.

The girl looked at the older woman with exasperation. Mrs. Jones, she said, I don’t know anything about cows.

Maggie laughed. She laid the red pen down on the stack of student papers and leaned back in her chair, stretching her shoulders. Do you want me to talk to them for you?

I know they mean well, the girl said. I don’t think they mean any harm.

Two days later that week, in the afternoon, after school was let out for the day, Maggie Jones discovered Harold McPheron standing in front of the refrigerated meat case at the rear of the Highway 34 Grocery Store on the east side of Holt. He was clenching a package of pork roast to his nose. She walked up beside him.

This look recent to you? he said. He held the meat out toward her.

It looks bloody, she said.

I can’t tell if it smells good. They got it wrapped up in all this goddamn plastic. You couldn’t tell the working end of a skunk with this stuff on it.

I didn’t know you ate skunks.

That’s what I’m talking about. I can’t tell what I’m eating with this goddamn plastic wrapped around it.

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