Free Plainsong by Kent Haruf Page A

about kill her to get her in here now. She either stuck when she was with the bull or she didn’t. She seems to think she did, since she wants over there so bad. He looked at her with the other cattle. Anyhow, she seems to of took a serious dislike to you, Tom.
    I’ll sort her out again, he said. If that’s what you want.
    No. Let her go. We’ll keep an eye on her.
    What about that cut?
    She’ll heal up. I reckon she’s too disgusted with us to go off and die. She wouldn’t want to give us the satisfaction.
    The two boys helped push the tested cattle out into a nearby pasture. The wild red-legged cow limped along in the middle of them. The two open cows were left in the holding pen and they called after the other cattle, their heads lifted, bawling, and moved over to the fence where they stood looking out through the rails. At the chutes the boys helped collect the medicine and the vaccination guns and put them away in the back of the truck. Then they climbed into the Dodge pickup and sat beside their father with the heater pushing out hot air onto their knees while he talked a little more to Harold. Raymond came around to their side of the truck.
    Roll your window down, their father said. He wants to say something to you.
    The old man stood in the cold in the sandy gravel beside the pickup and took out a soft leather purse from an inner pocket of his canvas jacket and held the purse in his hands and unzipped it. He poked around and picked out two bills. He handed them in through the opened window to the two boys. I hope that’ll be compensation, he said.
    They took the money shyly and said thank you to him.
    You boys can come back here any time, he said. You’d be welcome.
    Wait now, their father said. That isn’t necessary.
    You stay out of this, Raymond said. This is between me and these boys here. This don’t concern you, Tom. You boys, you come again any time.
    He stepped back. The two boys looked at him. At his old weather-chafed face and reddened eyes under the winter cap. He looked quiet and kindly. They held the money in their closed fists, waiting, not looking at it until their father had finally said goodbye and not until he had put the pickup in motion and they were turned back away from the cattle chutes and had driven past the house and were rattling on the county road with the gravel banging up under the fenders and then were pointed toward the west where the sky was beginning now to fade. Then they looked at the money. They turned it over. He had given them each a ten-dollar bill.
    That’s too much, their father said.
    Should we give it back?
    No, he said. He took his hat off and scratched the back of his head and put the hat back on. I guess not. That would be an insult. They want you to keep it. They enjoyed having you out there.
    But Dad, Ike said.
    Yes?
    Why didn’t they ever get married? And have a family like everybody else?
    I don’t know, Guthrie said. People don’t sometimes.
    In the pickup it was warm now, driving along the county road. Beyond the ditch the fenceline passed by, thickened and snarled with tumbleweed and brush. Above, on the cross arm of a telephone pole perched a hawk the color of copper in the lowering sun, and they watched him but his head didn’t turn at all when they passed under him.
    I just guess they never found the right girl, their father said. I don’t rightly know.
    Bobby looked out the window. He said, I guess they didn’t want to leave each other.
    Guthrie glanced at him. Maybe so, he said. Maybe that’s what happened, son.
    At the highway Guthrie and the two boys turned north and it was quieter in the pickup now because they were on the blacktop, pointed toward town. Guthrie turned the radio on to receive the evening news.

Victoria Roubideaux.
    When she said her name the middle-aged woman sitting on the other side of the window looked at her and said, Yes, Mrs. Jones called, and then she made a check mark on the chart in front of her and handed the