Benediction (11 page)

No, I can’t do that, the boy laughed. I might like to.

She fucked you pretty good, didn’t she, the second boy said. Like you told us she
did for you.

Fucked me dry, the first boy said.

Shut your mouth, said John Wesley.

He don’t like that kind of talk.

He’s a preacher’s boy. Course he don’t. He don’t appreciate bad language.

He still never answered you.

No, he didn’t. Does she fuck you the way you want? Tell us the truth.

I said shut your stupid mouth.

Because she’s done about twenty of us by now. She don’t keep anybody for long, though.
Fuck her while you can, is what I say.

John Wesley swung and hit the boy in the face. The boy coughed and bent over and spat
in the grass. You little son of a bitch. I think you broke a tooth. He felt inside
his mouth with his fingers and looked at the bloody piece in his hand. He grabbed
John Wesley around the neck and hit him until his nose spurted blood and he fell down
on the wet sidewalk. The boy leaned over him and wadded his shirt in his fist. I ought
to beat the shit out of you. You little son of a bitch. He let go of the shirt and
John Wesley dropped back on his elbows.

Let’s get out of here. Come on. The two high school boys went back the way they’d
come, looking around at the houses to see whether anyone was watching, and crossed
the intersection and went on to the car.

John Wesley sat up and watched the Ford make a U-turn in the street and drive back
toward Main. His nose was bleeding steadily. He wiped it on his shirtsleeve and lay
back and looked overhead at
the dripping trees. The sidewalk felt cool. He began to think of Genevieve. I fought
for you. I’ll tell you about it when I see you. They were bigger than me. There were
two of them. I hit one of them for you. I hurt him and then he hit me and made me
bleed. You can see the blood on my shirt. My blood was spilled for you.

O
N THE
F
OURTH OF
J
ULY
, Lorraine went next door to Berta May’s carrying an old blanket and came out with
Alice, and then they walked out along the quiet empty street in the evening, heading
toward Highway 34 and on to the high school football field to watch the fireworks.
It was cool and fresh now after the heat of the day. Out beyond the town limits the
combines were still running in the wheat fields, their lights turned on, bright in
the fields, the grain carts and grain trucks parked off to the side, and above them
the clouds of dust hanging in the air, carrying the smell of chaff and dust and cut
wheat into Holt.

They walked to the highway and turned past Shattuck’s Café and then south at the school
grounds to go out behind to the football field. There were many other people walking
along in the evening. They arrived at the field and went in through the gate at the
chain-link fence and crossed the white-chalked lanes of the track and went out onto
the grass. The lights on the tall poles around the field were burning fiercely, making
a loud hum. The grass looked very green under the lights.

Let’s go out there, Lorraine said. It’s nicer. She led Alice out to the middle of
the field where they saw the Johnson women seated on a blanket. Hello, Willa called.
Over here. Come join us.

They walked up to their spot and Lorraine spread the blanket she was carrying and
sat down beside them while Alice stood and looked all around at the grandstands filling
up with people and the man up in the announcer’s booth above the stands, a dangling
lightbulb on a
cord above him showing him there starkly, standing by himself, and she looked past
the goalposts to the south end where the volunteer fire department was arranging the
fireworks.

Do you want to sit down with us? Alene said, and Alice sat down between the Johnson
women and Lorraine. Two boys her age came and sat in front of them. The boys turned
to look at her and Alice saw them but pretended not to notice them. They sat with
their arms wrapped around their knees. After a while the man up in the booth began
to talk into the microphone.

Folks, I want to welcome you all tonight. Folks. He stopped. Is this thing on? His
voice sounded loud and broken, scratchy.

Yeah, it’s on, somebody called. Go on ahead there, Bud.

All right then. I guess you can hear me. Well. Good evening, folks, and some of the
people sitting on the grass said Evening back to him, and he went on. This is a good
occasion here tonight. Isn’t it. We all know that. This is part of what makes us great
as a country. This day, this celebration, this yearly event, commemorated here this
evening. Now I’m going to start our program tonight by recognizing our armed service
in this troubled time for our country. I want to request anybody here tonight who
served our country to stand up. Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force. National Guard. All
of them. It doesn’t matter. They all count. Even the Coast Guard that in time of peace
is under the auspices of the Treasury Department, folks, did you all know that? and
under Defense in time of war. That’s right. Stand right up. Let us see you.

Some of the men and a few women stood up in the grandstand and there was an old man
who struggled up from a lawn chair near them in the football field.

Give them all a hand why don’t you, folks, and all around them on the brightly lighted
grass and in the grandstands people applauded. Alice watched Lorraine. She clapped
her hands once or twice and then stopped, so she stopped too.

Now I want to make special recognition of one boy in particular here tonight, the
announcer said. I won’t say out his name because he
said he don’t want me to. But he’s being sent over next week to the war over there.
Helping to take our democracy across to the desert to those people they got there.
Yes, that’s him. I see him now. Down on the left side of the bleachers there. Stand
up, will you, son? Yes, that’s right.

A boy rose and looked out at the football field without making any gesture or turning
around. A young boy, in his army uniform.

Give him a warm sendoff, people. Yes, that’s the way.

Some in the grandstand stood up to applaud and some of the people out in the grass
stood. The boy in uniform sat down beside a woman next to him and the man in the booth
went on.

Now. We have us another treat here tonight. Big Bill Jones is going to sing a selection
for us now.

Up in the booth a tall man took the microphone and began to sing “Some Gave All, All
Gave Some” over an instrumental recording. When he was done singing people applauded.
He had a good voice. Then the announcer said, Big Bill, wait right here if you would
and get us started on “America the Beautiful.” People sang along with him and they
all sang the National Anthem. For that, people stood and men took off their caps.
On the football field Willa stayed seated on the blanket. It’s too hard to get up
and down, she said. Never mind me. She smiled and looked around at them through her
thick glasses.

They sat down again and the announcer said, Now will somebody shut off these field
lights for us? They waited. Will somebody shut off these lights so we can start? Folks,
we can’t get started till the lights are turned off. After a while someone pulled
the switch and they all sat in the faint light of the evening, the afterglow of sunset
still showing to the west but everything dark now in the east. They waited and then
suddenly the first rocket shot up and it broke overhead.

There was a loud explosion and strings of light spurted out and dripped down and winked
out and white smoke drifted slowly away. Then another rocket exploded. The young boys
in front of them named each one as it went off. Come on, bust, they said, and then
the rocket burst and they said, Comet. Chandelier. Pixie Dust. Parachute. Silver rain.
Carnation. Chinese Night.

After a while, Lorraine lay back on the blanket. Then Alice did too, and presently
the Johnson women stretched out on the blanket next to them and the fireworks fired
up into the cool summer night and the ghostlike trails of smoke drifted away in the
sky, the pure blue stars far over them, all shining, above the football field on the
high plains. The boys went on with their running account. Alice slid over closer to
Lorraine.

Are you doing all right, honey? Lorraine said.

The girl nodded.

Are you cold?

A little.

Lorraine pulled her closer.

I wish my mother could have seen this, Alice said.

Yes. Raise your head for a second, honey.

Lorraine laid her arm down on the blanket and Alice lay back and Lorraine pulled the
loose end of the blanket up over them both. Alene looked over and watched Alice for
a moment. A rocket went off and she could see the girl’s face in the shimmering light.
Her eyes clear and serious. Her smooth soft girl’s cheeks. Alene’s eyes welled up
with tears, looking at the girl, but immediately she wiped the tears away. Next to
her, her mother went on watching the fireworks.

At the end there was a long chain of explosions with a final cannon boom that echoed
across the town out into the country. Then it was dark, the smoke drifting away above
them, and then the high field lights came on again. Everything seemed brighter than
ever.

The announcer came on again. That’s it for tonight, folks. Take care going home now.
Mind your step now.

On the field they stood up and folded the blankets and people came down out of the
grandstands and they all went out slowly in a crowd, not talking much, tired now and
satisfied, moving out through the gate.

Good night, dear, Alene said, and without prompting Alice went
to her and hugged her and then she hugged Willa. Afterward she walked home with Lorraine,
back on the west side of town along the gravel street under the corner streetlights
past the quiet houses, a few of them with lamps on inside, and once they saw an elderly
woman let a little white dog out and then she called it back in and shut the door.

I
T WASN
’
T THE IMAGE
of her naked beneath the thin raincoat standing in front of him in the back office
of the hardware store that Dad Lewis remembered. It was the look on her face before
she slapped him. And the pitch and the desperation of her voice on the phone three
months later in the spring when she called, screaming that Clayton had killed himself
in Denver.

When he had not stopped thinking about her a year later, he decided he had to find
her. He drove to the town a hundred miles south of Holt where she had moved with Clayton
and the two children to live with her parents. But she was not there now. The parents
did not even live there anymore. A man with a beard was renting the house. I don’t
know, he said. I just moved in. I don’t know anything about them. They left some stuff
in the basement if you want that.

He drove to the post office and the police station and talked to people at both places.
They didn’t know anything either. He returned to the street where the house was located
and knocked on the neighbors’ doors, but it had begun to snow now and the few people
who were home didn’t want to stand there talking to him with the snow blowing in.
On the opposite side of the street he finally found an old woman who told him the
parents had moved back to a town in Nebraska and that their daughter had gone off
to Denver with the two children. He thanked her and started driving back to Holt in
the gathering storm. The wind was blowing the snow across the two-lane blacktop so
hard that he had to squint to be sure that he was still on the road and he was forced
to stop every five or six miles to scrape off the windshield.

Two weeks later he drove to Denver. It was on a Sunday and he told Mary that he had
to pick up a special order. He didn’t tell her then and he never did tell her nor
anyone else what he was doing. The wind was blowing again but there wasn’t any snow
this time. He arrived in Denver in the middle of the afternoon.

From there it was almost too easy. Her name was listed in the phone book. She and
the two children were living in a one-bedroom apartment in a run-down house in the
middle of the city. He climbed the stairs and went back into the dark hallway and
knocked. There was noise inside, a TV going. Then the door opened and she stood before
him. She looked bad now. She had let herself go. She was barefoot and still wearing
a bathrobe in the afternoon, made of some thick fuzzy material, dirty at the front
and frayed at the cuffs. Her blond hair had grown out unevenly and she hadn’t yet
combed it for the day. She stood in the doorway staring at him.

You, she said. What are you doing here? Didn’t you do enough already?

I wanted to talk to you, he said.

How’d you find me?

You’re in the phone book.

Oh. Well, I don’t have a phone no more. They shut it off. I can’t afford it. What
do you want?

I come to see how you are.

I’m here, look at me. Can’t you see? What’d you think would happen?

Dad looked at her and looked away. He said, I’m sorry this happened. I’m sorry it
turned out this way.

You’re sorry.

I didn’t mean for it to turn out like this.

Jesus Christ, she said.

Can I talk to you a minute?

What do you want to talk about? You want to take me up on my offer? Is that it? You
changed your mind?

Your offer. What offer?

To let you fuck me. Pay off what he stole.

What? No. For hell’s sake. That’s not what I come for.

Well, I can’t blame you. She pulled the robe tighter. The way I look now.

It’s not that. Is that what you think? It’s not about that. I come to help you if
I can. Can I talk to you?

You just want to talk.

That’s right.

You mean you want to come in.

Yes, so we can talk a little.

Come in then. It’s a mess. But I’m not going to apologize to you. Why should I?

He followed her back through the dark living room, past the two children sprawled
on the floor like some kind of little animals in front of the television, watching
some animated movie.