You can open this can of beans, Raymond said, so I can heat it up. Maybe one of you boys can find some milk.
They stood about in the kitchen watching him cook, and when he was finished at the stove they sat down at the table to eat. He carried the big heavy frying pan to the table and forked two hamburgers onto each plate, the meat was badly overcooked, black and hard as something poked out of a campfire. Then he set the pan on the stove and sat down. Go on ahead and eat, he said, unless somebody wants to pray. No one did. He looked around at them. What are you waiting on? Oh hell, I forgot to buy hamburger buns, didn’t I. Well shoot, he said. He got up and brought a sack of white bread to the table and sat down again. You boys can eat these hamburgers without buns, can’t you?
Yes sir.
Okay then. Let’s see if any of this is worth our attention.
They passed the dish of heated beans around the table and poured ketchup on the hamburgers. The ketchup soaked through and made pink circles on the bread. The bread turned soggy and came apart in their hands so that they had to lean over and eat above their plates. There was not much talking. The boys looked once at their father, and he nodded toward their plates and they ducked their heads and went on eating. When the beans came around again they each spooned out a second large portion. For dessert Raymond got down four coffee cups and opened a big can of grocery-store peaches and went around the table to each place and spooned out bright yellow quarters into each of the cups and poured out the syrup in equal quantities.
Meanwhile Guthrie was looking about the kitchen. There were pieces of machinery and bits of leather and old rusted buckles collected on the chairs and in the corners.
Raymond, he said, you ought to get out of the country now and again. Come into town, have a beer or something. You’re going to get too lonesome out here.
It does get kind of quiet sometimes, Raymond said.
You better drive into town one of these Saturday nights. Have a little fun for yourself.
Well, no. I can’t see what I’d do with myself in town.
You might be surprised, Guthrie said. You might find some manner of interesting trouble to get into.
It might be some kind of trouble I didn’t know how to get out of, Raymond said. What’d I do then?
AFTER LUNCH THEY WENT OUTSIDE AGAIN AND THE TWO boys mounted their horses and rode into the pasture among the cows and located the tall black cow and dropped a rope on her calf and dragged the stiff-legged calf back into the big pen with the rest. The cow made a run at them there, but they were able to turn her away and take the calf inside.
The cattle were all still bawling as before. They would go on bawling and milling for three days. Then the cows would grow hungry enough to move farther out into the pasture to graze and their bags would dry up. As for the calves, Raymond would have to fork out brome hay in the long row of feed bunks in the holding pen and bucket out ground corn on top of the hay, and he’d have to watch them carefully for a while or they might turn sick.
WHEN GUTHRIE AND THE BOYS DROVE OUT TO THE county road to return to Holt, they could still hear the cattle from a mile away.
They’re all right, aren’t they? Bobby said.
Yeah, they’re all right, Guthrie said. They’re going to have to be. It happens every year like this. I thought you knew that.
I never paid it any attention before, Bobby said. I never was a part of it before.
Those cows and heifers are already pregnant with their next year’s calves, Guthrie said. They’d have to wean these calves themselves if we didn’t do it for them. They’ve got to build up their strength for next year’s crop.
They make an awful lot of noise, Ike said. They don’t seem to like it much.
No, Guthrie said.