After a time they got out and sat in the lawn chairs, facing the sun. It was past middle of the afternoon now. The women put on their sunglasses and drank the chilled wine that had been set in the tank and gave Alice a little to taste. They sat naked, drying in the sun. Willa’s long white hair hung down over the chair back.
Then some of the black cows in the pasture began to come cautiously up to drink. The cattle snorted and switched their tails, looking at the women, until one of the older cows came up and halted and advanced and came on, still watching them, and stepped heavily up onto the concrete and shoved at the stock water with her black rubbery muzzle and drank and afterward stood dripping, looking at them, and drank again. Then the other cattle came up and drank, their young black calves with them.
The women and the girl watched one nearby cow with a calf beside her.
That calf will want to eat when they go back out to the pasture, Willa said. You know how they butt and pull on their mothers.
Yes, but it’s nice to nurse, Lorraine said. You feel the world might be all right then. And you can feel it down inside you too.
What if you had to be butted like they do? Willa said. What if you were a milk cow with that great bag hanging down? Think of that between your legs, the way milk cows have to trot with that full bag.
I know, Lorraine said. But think of a man washing your tits with warm soapy water, fondling you twice a day.
She and Alene laughed.
Or a woman, Alene said. Women milk cows too.
Or a woman, Lorraine said.
Now you’re going to embarrass Alice and me, Willa said.
Are you embarrassed, Alice?
No.
No. She’s not embarrassed.
I’m going to get back in, Alice said.
The women watched her move to the tank, this young thin quiet girl, naked out in the country in the broad daylight. The cows looked at her. She climbed into the tank and lay out flat and floated and paddled her feet and came to the other side and stood. A brief gust of wind rose up, the water spouted from the pipe, and she turned her head and drank.
The women climbed into the tank with her and squatted down and lay back and floated and stood streaming. Their faces and bodies shining. Later they got out and dried off and put on their clothes and carried the lawn chairs and the empty wine bottle and walked back through the corral and across the hot gravel drive to the house. Their hair was still damp. It felt heavy and cool on the backs of their necks.
30
TWO MONTHS AFTER Alene introduced the principal to her mother in a Denver restaurant, she was buying groceries on a Saturday morning in the little town where she taught school. She was standing in the produce section when a short black-haired woman in nice clothes came up to her and without warning reached up and slapped her in the face.
Wait! Alene said. What are you doing?
But she recognized the woman. She’d never met her before, but she’d seen her picture in the newspaper once, showing the principal with his wife and their two children.
The woman began to scream. You’re filthy! You’re just a whore! I won’t let him go! I won’t ever! She raised her hand again, but Alene caught her wrists and shoved her away. The woman fell back in her high-heeled shoes and good dress against the stand of oranges and knocked some of them rolling out across the floor.
Oh! You shoved me! You can’t do that.
People were watching them now. Housewives, old single men, the stockboy. The woman rushed at Alene and tried now to hit her with her purse, swinging it. Wait, Alene said. Stop it.
Oh, don’t speak to me. Whore!
Then the grocery manager came hurrying up. What’s going on here? What’s this?
She’s sleeping with my husband. She wants to steal him. She’s a whore.