Free Benediction by Kent Haruf Page B

right then. I suppose not. He studied them for a while longer. I guess we’re done
     here. You boys want some more coffee before you go?
    We wouldn’t care to bother you.
    You don’t bother me. I just appreciate you coming. It’s good to see you.
    It’s good to see you too, Dad.
    You know I’m going to have Lorraine sit in with us next time.
    Oh? How’s that now?
    In case she takes over for me.
    They stared at him, not speaking.
    Afterward, he said. When I’m gone.
    I don’t know as we get what you’re talking about here, Dad.
    You will. Nothing’s definite yet.

14
    T HE ONLY REASON Dad Lewis was home midweek on a winter’s day thirty-seven years ago was that he had
     contracted some form of intestinal flu. And the only reason he saw Frank and the Seegers
     kid out in the corral with the horse in the afternoon was that he’d had to get up
     from bed to go into the bathroom when he thought he was going to be sick again as
     he had once in the night and twice already that morning, and it was then, when he
     looked out through the bedroom window toward the barn out across the backyard, that
     he saw the two boys. They were wearing winter coats and stocking caps, Frank a good
     head taller than the Seegers kid. The wind was blowing hard and they looked cold.
    Dad was alone in the house. Mary was gone, working at the bazaar, selling chokecherry
     jam and homemade quilts and crocheted dishcloths in the basement of the Community
     Church for an African fund-raiser. And Lorraine hadn’t come home from school yet.
    He went to the bathroom and was sick for a while and afterward returned to bed, looking
     again out the window, but didn’t see the boys this time and didn’t think anything
     of it, but when he got up from bed an hour later and looked once more and didn’t see
     them in the corral this time either, he wondered what was wrong. He thought they might
     have gotten hurt. Or were having trouble with the mare. He stood looking out the bedroom
     window for some time.
    Finally he went out across the kitchen to the back porch and watched out the window.
     He pushed open the door and stepped out into the howling raw day and cupped his hands
     and hollered toward the barn. The wind tore his voice away. He could barely hear it
     himself.He hollered again. He looked left and right and saw nothing but Berta May’s yellow
     house to the south and the empty windblown weed-grown undeveloped lots to the north
     and the raised bed of the railroad tracks. He stepped back into the house and shut
     the door. Weak and sick, he stood shivering on the back porch in his pajamas, shaking
     steadily, looking out the window.
    He put on his winter coat and boots and work cap and scarf and gloves and crossed
     the bare winter lawn in the backyard and went on into the corral. The wispy dirt was
     swept up by the wind into little drifts across the bare ground. The wind cried and
     whistled in the leafless trees. He came around the south end of the barn out of the
     weather and opened the door and peered in at the dim and shadowy center bay. Shafts
     of sunlight from the cracks in the high plank barn walls fell across the dirt floor.
     Dust motes and chaff drifted in the air. There was the rich smell of hay and the good
     smell of horse. He stood for a moment to allow his eyes to adjust. Then he could see
     Frank and the Seegers kid.
    They were mounted on the mare, riding her around in a circle in the closed area of
     the dirt-floored barn, Frank behind the other boy, their heads close together, and
     each of them was dressed in one of Lorraine’s frilly summer dresses, trotting in and
     out of the shafts of sunlight. Riding the horse bareback, bouncing, their thin bare
     legs clutching the mare’s shaggy winter-coated barrel. Frank held the reins in one
     hand and his other hand was wrapped around the Seegers kid.
    Then Frank saw Dad standing in the barn doorway. He reined the mare in sharply. Dad
     stepped inside and moved over to