Let her come back then, he said.
From where they were sitting they could see Bob inside behind the front counter waiting on some man. The man paid, they watched him remove his wallet and put money out and Bob take it and ring the sale and make change and tear off the receipt. Then he ducked out of sight behind the counter and he reappeared with a brown paper sack in his hand and put the purchase—something silver, not shiny, a pipe wrench maybe—in the sack, slipping the receipt in with it, speaking to the man, thanking him, nodding his head, then something more, and the man saying something in return, and then the man swung around and came out through the open doors onto the sidewalk with the paper sack in his hand, coming directly toward them in the car, so near that they could see the buttons on his summer shirt, before he turned and went up the block in the bright sun.
Who was that, Daddy?
I can’t think of his name. But I know him. I’ll think of it, he said. His voice sounded odd and then suddenly he began to weep.
Daddy, what is it?
He covered his face with his hands, his shoulders shaking. Mary leaned forward and put her arms around him.
Dear, it’s all right. What’s wrong? What are you thinking? What happened?
He shook his head. He went on weeping as they sat in the car in front of the hardware store on the hot Saturday morning, with people going by on the sidewalk. Lorraine watched her father and looked forward toward the storefront and Mary kept her arms around him and rested her head against the side of his head. After a while he stopped and wiped his face.
Oh, Lord, he said. Well, we can go on now, if you want. I’m sorry.
Are you all right, honey?
Yeah. I’m going to be.
Where to now, Daddy? Should we go home?
No. Out in the country. Out south. I want to show you something. I was thinking about it last night.
They backed out into Main Street and went around the block and back to the highway, past the Chute Bar and Grill and the grocery store, and turned south on the blacktop. There was wheat stubble shining in the sun and waist-high rows of corn, very green, and then pastures with black cattle scattered out in the native grass and sagebrush and soapweed, and presently Dad said, Slow down. Turn here, please.
Lorraine steered them onto the unpaved road. They could hear the gravel kicking up under the car. There were barrow ditches on both sides and above them the long run of telephone poles and the four-strand barbed-wire fences.
Careful, Dad said. You don’t want to go too fast.
She slowed down and they came to an old place set back off the road behind a front pasture. The road leading back to the house was closed off by a padlocked gate. Below were outbuildings and a horse barn and loafing shed and some stunted cedar trees. Everything looked to be in good repair but it didn’t seem as if anyone were living in the house.
Stop here a minute, Dad said.
Lorraine shut off the engine and they looked out across the hot pasture at the old paintless house.
This here is where those old brothers lived, Dad said. The ones that had that high school girl come out and live with them. She was pregnant, then she had the baby and went off to college, and after that the one old brother got killed by a Angus bull in the corral back there with his brother right there seeing it all and not being able to do a goddamn thing to stop it. They’re both dead now.
I didn’t know this was their place, Mary said.
I knew them a little. They traded at the store. After the one brother got killed the other one went out with a woman in town and he and her stayed together till he died. I believe she’s still in Holt. A nice woman, I understand.
I’ve known all that, Lorraine said. But I never heard what became of the girl and the baby she had.
They’re up in the mountains someplace. The baby’s grown up by now, of course. The neighbors look after the ranch.
Nobody lives here?
No. And she won’t sell it or let anybody else operate it.