Free Eventide by Kent Haruf Page B

brought water from his grandfather’s house, carrying the bucket between them, their hands together on the wire bail, the water sloshing cold against their pants, and in the dark shed beside the alley they washed the dust off the single window and swept out the dirt and the trash with a short stub of a straw broom. Together they hauled out the pieces of scrap iron that were covered with dust and rolled out the whitewalled tire and pushed the old mower and the garden tiller under the mulberry bushes next to the Desoto. Then they swept the dark oily dirt floor a second time and sprinkled water in the corners and scrubbed down the walls of rough-sawn lumber. When they were finished the shed smelled clean, of damp earth and wet wood.
    Then they began their search. In the afternoons after school and on succeeding Saturdays they collected things, foraging out into the alleys of Holt. At first they searched only the alleys of their own neighborhood, but after a few days they began to move into the alleys four and five blocks away.
    They found a discarded kitchen chair and a wooden table with a splintered leg, then two old china dinner plates together with three silver forks and a serving spoon and a single steel-bladed knife. The next day they discovered a cast-off framed picture of the baby Jesus, with fat legs and fat feet, and a halo shimmering above his brown curls, altogether naked save for a white cloth draped about his hips. There was a sweet look of entreaty on his face, and they carried the picture back and hung it on a nail.
    And five blocks away they discovered a rose-patterned carpet beside a trash can in the alley behind a brick house. The carpet was stained the color of coffee at one of its corners. They hauled it out into the alley, studied it, walked on it, then rolled it up and began lugging it home. But it turned out to be too heavy and down the alley they dropped it. I’ll go get something, he said. He went back to his grandfather’s house and returned with the wagon he had received as a present at Christmas when he was a first-grader and they balanced the carpet on the wagon and started back, both ends dragging in the weeds and gravel.
    In the next block an old lady was standing at the back of her house in a black scarf and a man’s long black overcoat. When they approached she stepped out into the alley. What are you kids doing? What’s that you have?
    It’s just a rug.
    You stole it, didn’t you.
    They looked at her. One of her eyes was blue and clouded and her nose dripped.
    Let’s go, DJ said. They started on around her.
    Stop where you are, she said. She began to trot after them, wobbling in the red gravel. Thieves! she cried. Stop now!
    Now they ran, the wagon bouncing behind them, the carpet leaping and scraping in the gravel until it finally tipped off. Panting, they looked back. She stood in the middle of the alley far behind. She was calling to them but they couldn’t tell what it was. Just then she removed the black scarf from her head and waved it at them like a flag or warning, and without the scarf they could see her head was as bald as a brass ball.
    You better watch out for her, Dena said.
    She’ll find you, he said. She’ll come to your house.
    They laughed, then lifted the carpet onto the wagon and carried on at a calm pace. At the shed they spread the carpet over the dirt floor, the stained end turned under, and swept it clean. Then they set the table on the carpet and placed the chair beside the table in the exact center of the room where the afternoon sun shone in through the window and the dust motes danced in the air like tiny creatures in dim water.
     
    O N THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED THEY WENT OUT AGAIN. One Saturday morning they found a second chair. Another day they turned up five red candles in a cardboard box and a glass candle holder that was only chipped at one corner. Back in the shed they lit one of the candles and sat down and looked at each other. It was late afternoon,