Maybe I do, he said.
It was an old red coffee can. He could see that now and she was poking around to see what was inside. In the dim light he studied her soft unknowable face, a girl’s face. Didn’t you hear me? he said.
What.
I said maybe I do.
I heard you, she said.
Part Two
10
SHE HAD THE AUNT WHO LIVED OUT IN THE COUNTRY east of Holt and she had the uncle who lived in town, who was Hoyt Raines, on her mother’s side.
On a windy afternoon at the beginning of October he was waiting on the front porch of their trailer when they came home from Duckwall’s. He was wearing a black baseball cap with purple trimming and his face was hidden beneath the bill.
He was a tall thin man with the same dark lank hair that Betty had and he had her own pale blue eyes. He worked in town and out in the country on construction outfits and for tree-trimming operations, and in the summer months he joined harvesting crews that began cutting wheat in Texas and finished in Canada. He almost never worked at any one job longer than a single season. He’d work a while and get laid off for one reason or another, or he’d get disgusted and quit on his own. When he was out of work he’d lounge about in his rented rooms on the south side of Holt, living on his last paycheck until the money ran out. The past five or six months he’d been milking cows for a dairy north of Holt, and for him this was almost heroic, the way he kept on. Even so—and this was more like him—every three weeks or so he’d come into the milking parlor at six or seven in the morning, arriving in his own good time, arriving late and still drunk and still wooden-eyed, smelling of the cheap bar whiskey he’d drunk the night before, and in this stupefied state he’d begin milking the expensive Holstein cows, cleaning the milk-dripping udders with a wet rag and attaching the milker-cups in clumsy haste, and the last time this had happened, it was two weeks ago, he had milked one of the sick cows into the fresh tank and the manager had had to empty the entire tank or risk being discovered and fined. Fourteen hundred gallons of fresh milk had had to be run out into the floor drain. The manager fired him on the spot—told Hoyt to go home, said he was never to come back, he didn’t want ever to see his miserable face again. Well goddamn it, Hoyt said, what about my paycheck? You still owe me for this week’s pay.
It’ll be in the mail, you sorry son of a bitch, the manager said. Now get the hell out of here.
That day he went back to town still smelling faintly of whiskey, with also the reek of the milking parlor, that peculiar intense distinct odor which hung on in his clothes and hair and which even soap and water couldn’t remove, and made his first stop at the Holt Tavern on Main Street though it was still only the middle of morning. There he began to drink and to explain to anyone who would listen—three old men and a couple of sad-eyed old women were already there—what had happened.
Now he was sitting on the porch step in the sun, smoking a cigarette, when his niece and Luther walked up across the weedy yard.
Looky who’s here, Luther said.
I wondered when you two would decide to come home, Hoyt said.
We been downtown buying a new phone.
What do you want a phone for? Who’s going to call?
We got to have a phone. I’m starting a business.
What kind of business?
A mail-order one. Home-based.
Hoyt looked at him. Well, he said, if you want to believe that. He stood up and turned to Betty. Aren’t you going to give your uncle a hug?
She stepped toward him and he hugged her hard, then let her go and slapped her sharply on the rear.
Don’t, she said. My husband don’t like people messing with me.
You think Luther cares?
You better mind your manners.
That’s right, Luther said. You ought to mind your manners around here.