McPherons.

There was no school between Christmas and New Year’s. Victoria Roubideaux stayed out in the country in the old house back off the county road with the McPheron brothers, and the days seemed slow. The ground was covered in thin dirty patches of ice and the weather stayed cold, the temperature never rising above freezing, and in the night it was bitterly cold. She stayed inside the house and read popular magazines and baked in the kitchen, while the brothers came and went from the house, haying cattle and chopping ice in the stock tanks, paying close attention all the time to the steady advance of pregnancy in the two-year-old heifers, since they would be the most trouble during calving, and returned to the kitchen from the farm lots and pastures, ice-bound and half frozen, with their blue eyes watery and their cheeks as red as if they had been burnt. In the house Christmas had been quiet and there were no particular plans for New Year’s.

By the middle of the week the girl had begun to spend long hours in her room, sleeping late in the morning and staying up at night listening to the radio and fixing her hair, reading about babies, thinking, fiddling in a notebook.

The McPheron brothers didn’t know what to make of this behavior. They had grown accustomed to her school-week routine, when she had gotten up and eaten breakfast with them every morning and then gone to school on the bus and afterward had come home from her classes and was often out in the parlor reading another magazine or watching television when they came in for the evening. They had begun to talk more easily with her and to rehearse together the happenings of the passing days, finding the threads of things that interested them all. So it bothered them now that she’d begun to spend so many hours by herself. They didn’t know what she was doing in her room, but they didn’t want to ask her either. They didn’t think it was their right to ask or query her. So instead they began to worry.

Late in the week, driving back to the house in the pickup in the evening, Harold said, Don’t Victoria seem kind of sorry and miserable to you lately?

Yes. I’ve noted it.

Because she stays in bed too late. That’s one thing.

Maybe they do, Raymond said. Young girls might all do like that, by their natures.

Till nine-thirty in the morning? I went back into the house for something the other day and she was just getting up.

I don’t know, Raymond said. He looked out over the rattling hood of the pickup. I reckon she’s just getting bored and lonesome.

Maybe, Harold said. But if she is, I don’t know if that’s good for the baby.

What isn’t good for the baby?

Feeling lonesome and sorry like that. That can’t be good for him. On top of staying up all manner of hours and sleeping all morning.

Well, Raymond said. She needs her sleep.

She needs her regular sleep. That’s what she needs. She needs regular hours.

How do you know that?

I don’t know that, Harold said, not for a certified fact. But you take a two-year-old heifer that’s carrying a calf. She’s not up all night long, restless, moving around, is she.

What are you talking about? Raymond said. How in hell does that apply to anything?

I started thinking about it the other day. The similarities amongst em. Both of them is young. Both of them’s out in the country with only us here to watch out for em. Both is carrying a baby for the first time. Just think about it.

Raymond looked at his brother in amazement. They had arrived at the house and stopped on the frozen rutted drive in front of the wire gate. Goddamn it, he said, that’s a cow. You’re talking about cows.

I’m just saying, is all, Harold said. Give it some thought.

You’re saying she’s a cow is what you’re saying.

I’m not either saying that.

She’s a girl, for christsakes. She’s not a cow. You can’t rate girls and cows together.

I was only just saying, Harold said. What are you getting so riled up about it for?

I don’t appreciate you saying she’s a heifer.

I never said she was one. I wouldn’t say that for money.

It sounded like it to me. Like you was.

I just thought of it, is all, Harold said. Don’t you ever think of something?

Yeah. I think of something sometimes.

Well then.

But I don’t have to say it. Just because I think of it.

All right. I talked out before I thought. You want to shoot me now or wait till full dark?

I’ll have to let you know, Raymond said. He looked out the side window toward the house where the lights had been switched on in the darkening evening. I just reckon she’s getting bored. There’s nothing to do out here. No school nor nothing else now.

She don’t appear to have many friends to speak of, Harold said. That’s one thing for sure.

No. And she don’t call nobody and nobody calls her, Raymond said.

Maybe we ought to take her in to town to a picture show sometime. Do something like that.

Raymond stared at his brother. Why, you just flat amaze me.

What’s wrong now?

Well, do you want to attend a movie show? Can you see us doing that? Sit there while some Hollywood movie actor pokes his business into some naked girl on the screen while we’re sitting there eating salted popcorn watching him do it—with her sitting there next to us.

Well.

Well.

Okay, Harold said. All right then.

No sir, Raymond said. I didn’t think you’d want to do that.

But by God, we got to do something, Harold said.

I ain’t arguing that.

Well, we do, goddamn it.

I said I know, Raymond said. He rubbed his hands together between his knees, warming them; his hands were chafed and red, cracked. It does appear to me like we just did this, he said. Or something next to it. That night when we was talking to her about the market. I tell you, it seems like you get one thing fixed and something else pops up. Like with a young girl like her, you can’t fix nothing permanent.

I hear what you’re saying, Harold said.

The two brothers looked toward the house, thinking. The house was old and weathered, nearly paintless, the upstairs windows looked down blankly. Next to the house the bare elm trees blew and tossed in the wind.

I’m going to tell you what though, Harold said. I’m beginning to have a little more appreciation for these people with kids nowadays. It only appears to be easier from the outside. He looked at his brother. I think that’s the truth, he said. Raymond was still looking toward the house, not saying anything. Are you listening to me? I just said something.

I heard what you said, Raymond said.

Well? You never said nothing.

I’m thinking.

Well, can’t you think and talk to me at the same time?

No, I can’t, Raymond said. Not with something like this. It takes all my concentration.

All right then, Harold said. Keep thinking. I’ll shut my mouth if that’s what it takes. But one of us had better come up with something pretty damn quick. Her staying in that bedroom all the time can’t be any good for her. Nor for that baby either she’s carrying inside her.

That night Harold McPheron put in a call to Maggie Jones. Harold and Raymond had decided that he should do that. It was after the girl had gone back to her bedroom for the night and had shut the door.

When Maggie picked up the phone Harold said to her, If you was to buy a crib, where would you think to get it?

Maggie paused. Then she said, This must be one of the McPheron brothers.

That’s right. The good-looking smart one.

Well, Raymond, she said. It’s nice of you to call.

That’s not as comical as you think, Harold said.

Isn’t it?

No, it ain’t. Anyhow, what’s your answer? Where would you buy a crib if you was to need one?

I’m to understand that you don’t mean a corn crib. You wouldn’t have to ask me about that.

That’s right.

I believe I’d drive over to Phillips. To the department store. They’d have a baby section.

Whereabouts is it?

On the square across from the courthouse.

On the north side?

Yes.

Okay, Harold said. How you doing, Maggie? You doing all right?

She laughed. I’m doing fine.

Thanks for the information, he said. Happy New Year’s to you, and hung up.

The next morning the McPheron brothers came up to the house from work about nine o’clock, covered up against the cold, stomping their boots on the little porch, taking their thick caps off. They had purposely timed their return to the house so as to find the girl still seated in the dining room at the walnut table, eating her solitary breakfast. She looked up at them where they stood hesitating in the doorway, then they came in and sat down across from her. She was still in her flannel nightgown and heavy sweater and stockings and her hair was shining in the winter-slanted sun coming in through the uncurtained south windows.

Harold cleared his throat. We’ve been thinking, he said.

Oh? the girl said.

Yes ma’am, we have. Victoria, we want to take you over to Phillips to do some shopping in the stores. If that’s all right with you. If you don’t have something else planned for the day.

This announcement surprised her. What for? she said.

For fun, Raymond said. For some diversion. Don’t you want to? We thought you might appreciate getting out of the house.

No. I mean, what are we shopping for?

For the baby. Don’t you think this little baby you’re carrying is going to want some place to put his head down some day?

Yes. I think so.

Then we better get him something to do it in.

She looked at him and smiled. What if it’s a girl though?

Then I guess we’ll just have to keep her anyway and make the best of our bad luck, Raymond said. He made an exaggeratedly grave face. But a little girl’s going to want a bed too, isn’t she? Don’t little baby girls get tired too?

They left the house about eleven that morning after the McPheron brothers had finished the morning feeding. They had come back in and washed up and changed into clean pants and clean shirts, and by the time they had put on the good handshaped silver-belly Bailey hats that they wore only to town the girl was already waiting for them, sitting at the kitchen table in her winter coat with the red purse looped over her shoulder.

They set out in the bright cold day, riding in the pickup, the girl seated in the middle between them with a blanket over her lap, with the old papers and sales receipts and fencing pliers and the hot wire testers and the dirty coffee mugs all sliding back and forth across the dashboard whenever they made any sharp turn, driving north toward Holt, passing through town and beneath the new water tower and carrying on north, the country flat and whitepatched with snow and the wheat stubble and the cornstalks sticking up blackly out of the frozen ground and the winter wheat showing in the fall-planted fields as green as jewelry. Once they saw a lone coyote in the open, running, a steady distance-covering lope, its long tail floating out behind like a trail of smoke. Then it spotted the pickup, stopped, started to move again, running hard now, and crossed the highway and hit a section of woven fence and was instantly thrown back but at once sprang up again and hit the fence again and at last in a panic scrambled up over the wire fence like a human man would, and ran on, loping again in the open, traversing the wide country on the other side of the road without once pausing or even slowing down to look back.

Is he all right? the girl said.

Appears like it, Raymond said.

Until somebody gets after him, Harold said, chasing after him in a pickup with coyote dogs. And shoots him.

Do they do that?

They do.

They drove on. There were farm houses scattered and isolated in the flat sandy country, with barns and outbuildings down below them, and dark windbreaks of trees in the far distances, showing where a farmstead was now or once had been. They drove past one farm beside the highway where there were quarter horses and a red barn and where the man had poked worn-out cowboy boots upside down over the tops of the fence posts along the road for an eighth of a mile, for decoration. At Red Willow they turned west and drove on, past the country schoolhouse at Lone Star and across the high open wheatland, and after a while they topped a rise and could see down into the South Platte River valley, wide and tree-lined, the cliffs far away on the other side, with the town laid out below. They fishtailed down, crossed the interstate highway and entered the outreaches of Phillips.

By now it was about one-thirty. They parked at the curb across from the courthouse and went into a little local café for lunch and sat down at a table with a green tablecloth quartered over it. The noon-hour rush was finished and they were the only customers. In a moment a woman got up from the counter where she’d been smoking and resting and brought them water glasses and menus. The girl ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup. Raymond said to her, You better get you more than that. Don’t you think, Victoria? It’s a long time till supper.

The girl asked for a glass of milk.

Bring her a tall glass, would you, ma’am? Raymond said.

What about you two gentlemen? the woman said.

Both of the McPheron brothers ordered chicken fried steaks which came with mashed potatoes and green beans and canned corn and a carrot Jell-O salad.

Them are good to eat, the woman said.

That so? Harold said.

I like em myself, she said.

That sounds encouraging, if the help eats the food, he said. What kind of gravy comes with it?

Yellow.

Put some of that on the steaks too, would you?

I can tell him. I don’t do it myself.

If you would, he said. And some black coffee too, when you get a decent chance. Thank you kindly.

The woman put in their order and brought their coffee and milk, and in a short while she brought out their platters of food. They sat at the table in the little café and ate quietly, deliberately. When the brothers were finished they ordered themselves and the girl Dutch apple pie with a scoop of ice cream on top, but she could only eat half of hers. They paid the bill and walked up the block to the department store.

The shop windows out front had sets of bedroom furniture and living room sofas and lamps on display. They went inside the store and were met at once by a brisk short middle-aged woman in a brown dress. May I help you? she said.

We’re looking for the crib section, Harold said.

Baby cribs?

Yes, ma’am. We’re in the market for one. He winked at the girl. We want to consider your selection.

If you will follow me, the woman said.

They followed her back through the store aisles to a far corner. Here you see what we offer, she said. There were a dozen new baby cribs assembled and set up, fitted with mattresses and baby blankets, displayed among matching chests of drawers and changing tables. The brothers surveyed them and were astonished. They glanced at the girl. She stood aside, not saying anything at all.

Maybe you better just tell us about em, Harold said.

I’d be happy to, the woman said. The features you look for in a baby crib include this nontoxic easy-care finish. This plastic teething rail. This one side which raises and lowers for easy access. These hooded casters. This one-piece mattress support here. The brackets like these on this model so the mattress can be adjusted to various levels. This one offers a rail which lowers by knee pressure while the rail on this one lowers when you release these two catches. This model here permits you to convert it to a toddler’s daybed by removing the rail altogether.

She stopped and waited, her hands behind her back. Did you have any questions?

Why ever would you want hooded casters? Harold said.

For decoration.

Ma’am?

It looks better.

I expect that’s important, how the wheels look.

It’s an added attraction, she said. Some people prefer it.

I see, he said.

The McPheron brothers approached the baby cribs and began to inspect them closely. They manipulated the moveable sides, raising them and lowering them, and walked around each of the cribs and adjusted the height of the supports and peered underneath, and they pushed them and rolled them forward and backward. Raymond leaned over and punched down on one of the crib mattresses, causing it to bounce.

What do you think, Victoria? he said. How about this one?

It’s too expensive, she said. Every one of them is.

You let us worry about that. Which one of these do you like best?

I don’t know, she said. She looked around. This one, maybe. She indicated the least costly one.

That’s a nice one, Raymond said. I kind of like this one here, myself. They went on looking.

Finally the McPheron brothers chose the crib which converted to a daybed, the most expensive of the lot. It had carpenter-turned spindles and actual wood headboards. It seemed substantial to them and the side that was adjustable moved easily on its slides. They believed the girl would have no difficulty with it.

You have this in stock, I guess, Harold said.

Surely, the woman said.

Why don’t you bring one of em out.

But you understand it doesn’t include the mattress.

Doesn’t?

No. Mattresses are not included. Not at this price.

Well, ma’am, Harold said. We need a crib. And we’d rather to have a mattress to go with it. This girl’s going to have a baby and it can’t sleep on a board. Even if the board can be adjusted to three different levels.

Which one would you care to have? the woman said. They come in these possibilities.

She began to show them the mattresses. They chose a solid one which felt sufficiently firm when they squeezed it and turned it over, and afterward they selected several crib sheets and warm blankets.

The girl watched it all from a kind of abject distance. She had grown increasingly quiet. At last she said, Can’t you wait? It’s too much. You shouldn’t be doing all of this.

What’s the matter? Harold said. We’re having us some fun here. We thought you was too.

But it’s too expensive. Why are you doing this?

It’s all right, he said. He started to put his arm around her, but stopped himself. He looked down into her face. It’s all right, he said again. It is. You’ll just have to believe that.

The girl’s eyes filled with tears, though she made no sound. Harold took out a handkerchief from the rear pocket of his pants and gave it to her. She wiped at her eyes and blew her nose and handed it back to him. You want to keep it? Harold said. She shook her head.

The woman said, You do still want these?

Harold put the handkerchief away and turned to face her. That’s right, ma’am. We haven’t changed our minds. We still want em.

Very well. I just wanted to be positive.

We’re positive.

She called a stock boy and sent him back to the storeroom and he came out wheeling two large flat cardboard boxes on a dolly. He drew up at the counter.

The woman rang up their purchases. She said, Will this be cash or charge?

I’ll sign you a bank check, Raymond said. He bent over the counter, leaning on his elbow, and wrote stiffly into his checkbook. When he had finished he inspected what he had written, then he folded it once and tore it off and blew back and forth over it and handed the check to the woman. She looked at it.

May I see some identification, please?

He took out his old wallet from the inner pocket of his coat and picked out his driver’s license. She read it, then she looked up at him.

I didn’t know they would allow you to have your picture taken with your hat on, she said.

They do in Holt, he said. What’s the trouble? Don’t it favor me?

Oh, there’s a clear resemblance, she said.

She handed the license back to him and he put it away. Then she finished ringing up their purchases and gave them the receipt. And we thank you very much, she said.

The stock boy started toward the front of the store, dollying the new mattress and the new crib in the flat cardboard boxes printed with the bright factory lettering, moving out into the main aisle in a flourish. He advanced only a short way.

Son, Harold said. You can hold up there. That won’t be necessary.

I was going to take them out for you.

That’s all right.

The McPheron brothers hefted the two boxes and together carried them ladder-fashion under their arms, one old man in his good hat following directly behind the other, out onto the sidewalk and up the block toward the pickup. The girl came after, with the store bag of sheets and blankets. Together they made a kind of parade. People on the square, shoppers, women and teenage girls and old retired men, watched them pass, turning to stare as the two old men and the pregnant girl went by. Out in the winter air it was colder now and the sun was already starting to lean toward the west, while across the street the granite-block courthouse loomed up gray and solid under its green tiled roof. At the curb they set the boxes in the bed of the pickup and lashed them down with yellow binder twine from the toolbox. Then they backed out into the street and drove slowly out of town, riding up out of the South Platte River valley onto the cold winter flatlands of the high plains.

It was evening when they got home. The early dark of late December. That low sky closing down. As they drove up over the last little rise before the turnoff to the house they saw that there were cattle out on the gravel road. Their eyes glinted red as rubies in the headlights—one of the old mother cows and three of the heavy-bodied two-year-old heifers. Wait up, Raymond said.

I see em, Harold said.

The cow stood broadside in the middle of the road, her head lifted in the lights, staring as the pickup came closer, then she wheeled and dropped down into the ditch and the heifers dropped down with her.

You make it four?

Harold nodded.

They drove past them slowly, watching them, and took the girl back to the house and went inside with her and put on their work boots and coats and warm caps, and then they went back into the cold and located the cows and headed them trotting in the ditch alongside the road until they passed the gate. Raymond got out and swung the gate open and Harold gunned the pickup ahead and turned the cattle back. They whirled back along the fence in the bright headlights of the truck, moving in the ditch weeds, their bellies swinging, their flanks swaying, their feet thrown out sidways in that awkward bovine manner and kicking up clots of snow. Raymond stood out in the road waiting. When the cattle got up to the gate he hollered and flapped his arms and without any trouble they trotted in. He climbed into the cab and they pushed the cattle farther into the pasture away from the fence. They watched for a while to see which way they’d go. By now it was completely dark and hardcold. They drove out of the pasture and when they got up to the house the yardlight had come on, shining purplish-blue from the lightpole next to the garage.

They mounted the porch steps and scraped their feet. But as soon as they entered the kitchen they stopped. They discovered that the girl had the room warm and brightly lighted, and on the stove she had supper already heated up and ready to be served and the square wooden kitchen table was set for the three of them with the old plates and the old silverware already ranged in order about the table.

Well, by God, Harold said. I want you to look at here.

Well, yes, Raymond said. It makes me think of the way Mother used to do.

If you want to sit down, the girl said. She stood next to the stove with one of the white dish towels tied about her thickening waist. Her face looked flushed from the cooking, but her black eyes shone. It’s all ready, she said. Maybe we could eat out here tonight. If that’s all right. It seems homier.

Well, surely, Harold said. I don’t see why not.

The brothers washed up and the three of them ate together in the kitchen and talked a little about the trip to Phillips, about the woman in the store with the brown dress and the boy with the dolly, the look on his face, and after supper the girl read the page of directions while the two McPherons assembled the crib. When it was finished they stood it up against a warm interior wall in the girl’s bedroom with one of the new sheets stretched tight on the mattress and the warm blanket folded down neatly. Afterward the brothers went out back to the parlor and watched the ten o’clock news while the girl washed the supper dishes and cleaned up in the kitchen.

Later, when the girl was lying in the old soft double bed that had once been the elder McPherons’ marriage bed, she lay awake for a while and looked with pleasure and satisfaction at the crib. It gleamed against the faded pink-flowered wallpaper. The varnish shone. She imagined looking at a little face lying there, what that would feel like. At ten-thirty she heard the brothers mounting the stairs to their bedrooms and heard them overhead on the pinewood floorboards.

The next morning she stayed asleep in her room until midmorning, as she had the previous six days of vacation, but it was different now. It was all right now. The McPheron brothers had decided that seventeen-year-old girls did that. It didn’t matter. They couldn’t say what they would do about it even if they still wanted to do something, and now they didn’t care to.

Two days later it was New Year’s, and school started again the day afterward.