Some part of it, he supposed, must have started the year Alf Landon was defeated. It was a year when the words “parity income” meant that the government paid the farmers money not to plant crops when people were starving. Young men in fresh khaki came around to tell him what to plant, and how to plow, and to explain lengthily about soil conservation. Each month he took the government check he got for doing what they said down to Bakersfield, to cash it and buy supplies.
Juan carried the boxes of canned goods back to the truck while he went into the lingerie store. A girl with lip rouge on her mouth and a dead front tooth came to wait on him, smirking at him across the glass-topped display case. She giggled when he told her what he wanted.
“What size, sir?” she said.
“She’s sixteen. I guess about medium size.”
She reached under the counter and brought out a pink one, holding it up by an end. “Like this? Or we have them in white.”
“That’s all right. How much is it?”
“One fifteen.”
He snapped open his leather purse and took out a dollar, opened the other compartment and counted out the change while she wrapped the parcel for him. Outside he walked quickly toward where he had left his truck. A Greyhound Bus and a big red truck and trailer passed him with a sharp smell of exhaust fumes, and he saw Roger Denton and Mark Schuford come out of the Rancher’s Bar and Grill and cross the sidewalk to Denton’s automobile.
He averted his face so he wouldn’t have to see Denton, but then he heard Denton call his name and he looked up and nodded.
“Can I give you a lift, Baird?” Denton said. Schuford was smiling and holding the door open, an unlit cigarette tilted upward in his mouth.
“My machine’s right here,” he said. “Thanks.” As he hurried on with the package clenched tightly in his armpit he watched the new, shining automobile drive by. His face felt flushed and when he saw Juan lounging in the front seat of his old truck he gestured angrily at him. Juan leaped out with the crank, started the motor and they drove silently out the highway to the ranch.
Juan followed him up from the shed, carrying the boxes of canned goods. They passed the shack with the slanting, tarpapered roof that had been on the land when he had bought it, thirty-five years ago now, where Juan and Mary slept; passed the outhouse covered with the dead morning-glory vine Cora had planted after their marriage, the chicken coop where the old rooster herded his six hens out of the way, the mint bed beside the pump in the shade of the house. Jill scampered out of the shadow, barking and wriggling and looking up at him with eyes that were like clear glass marbles.
“Down, Jill!” he said sternly, and then the back door banged open against its stop and V ran out.
“Did you bring me anything?” she cried. She was wearing levis that were too tight and one of his old white shirts, the sleeves turned up on her brown arms. Her face was plump and clear and she wore her blonde hair in two fat pigtails that danced when she tossed her head and tried to pull the package from under his arm. He stopped to let her take it and Juan stepped around them and went up the back steps into the kitchen.
“What is it, Papa?” V said, but he put his hand on her arm when she started to tear the paper.
“Not here,” he said. He watched her run up the steps. She was growing up; she was shaped like a woman now, and she was almost as tall as he.
In the kitchen Mary had dinner on the stove and Juan was standing on a chair stacking cans in the cupboard. Baird walked past them and into V’s room. She had the package open and the paper had fallen to the floor. She looked up at him and smiled.
“It’s a nice one, Papa. Do you want me to put it on?”
“Yes,” he said. “You’d better start wearing it all the time.”
She unbuttoned the two top buttons of the shirt and stripped it off over her head. Her flesh was white above the sunburn of her arms and below that of her throat, and her breasts were surprisingly full, the nipples tiny and pink. For the first time it embarrassed him to see her like this. It seemed wrong. His tongue thickened in his mouth and he looked away as she slipped her arms into the straps of the brassiere and turned around, holding the two ends in her hand.
“Would you fasten it, please?”
He snapped the ends together, trying not to touch her back with his awkward fingers. He remembered the day four years ago when he had driven her to Manteca so that Cora’s sister, V’s Aunt Elizabeth, could tell her the things she ought to know and the things that would be happening to her soon, and the awful, silent, embarrassment of the trip home again, when he had known what V must be thinking, and she must, in turn, have known that he knew. Now she was looking at herself in the mirror, full front, and then in profile, holding her shoulders back and thrusting her chest out.
“I’m awfully big,” she said.
“Does it fit all right?”
“Yes,” she said. “It kind of binds a little but I guess it’s all right.”
Her head was cocked to one side, her lips pursed. He cleared his throat and tried to say lightly, “You’re growing up, V.”
She giggled and looked at him shyly, covering her breasts with her hands. “Did it embarrass you to buy it, Papa?”
He shook his head. He felt strangely angry. He wished he knew how to talk to her. He never knew what to say. She put her shirt back on and pushed the tails down into the top of her levis. “Can I go over to see Mr. Denton?” she asked.
“I don’t guess he’s home. I saw him in town just a little ago.”
“He said he’d be home.”
“Did you get all your chores finished?”
“Oh, I finished mending the stockings this morning, and there’s nothing more to do in the kitchen and I won’t be very long. Mr. Denton promised to let me ride Romer.”
“All right,” he said. “Don’t be late for supper, honey.”
“I won’t. Thanks, Papa.” She kissed him on the forehead and ran out. He watched her go, jealously; he watched her through the window as she ran down through the orchard in the sun. It seemed such a short time ago that she had been a little girl, and not much before that a baby, and he and Cora had taken her to Cora’s church in Bakersfield to be baptized. Vassilia Caroline Baird; she had cried when the water touched her. Today he had had to buy her one of those things and it would probably not be long before she married and went away somewhere and he would be more completely alone than after Cora had died.
When September came V had to exchange her levis and work shirt for black skirt, white blouse and black neckerchief, and return to the Priory, where she boarded five days a week. But on the weekends she was often restricted and could not come home; she did not do well in her studies. He missed her desperately during the school year. It was lonely on the ranch without her, but even when she was home for the weekend he did not see much more of her; she was always gone, out with Jill the dog, or over at Roger Denton’s.
Denton had eighty acres of land which he had put into potatoes some years before, and he had prospered raising them, and raising horses. He had a big stone house, a large stable and ring, horses for V to ride, three collie dogs and often a new litter of puppies. Denton was a bachelor almost as old as Baird, but from the few times he had spoken to Denton, Baird knew him to be an educated man. He had money, a new car every year, and Baird realized bitterly that there was nothing on his own little ranch to entertain V, or even that V liked or felt attached to, and there were many things at Denton’s.