They all keep dogs anyhow, Ike said. You know that.
It was after midnight by the time they walked once more onto Railroad Street and then turned in at the familiar gravel drive at home. A while before, when they were still out on the quiet dirt road in the country, they’d seen the lights of a car coming toward them and thought it was the redhaired boy and the other one coming back, and they’d dropped down into the ditch and then the car had gone rattling past, peppering their backs with dirt and gravel and the ground had been icy cold and smelled rank of dust and weeds, but when the car passed they saw that it wasn’t driven by the high school boys. It was somebody else. A different car, just somebody going home. So they might’ve waved it down and gotten a ride, but afterward it was too late. They climbed up to the road and went on. They didn’t talk very much. They kept walking. A couple of times they heard a coyote yapping and howling, crying out somewhere in the country, and they knew there were cattle somewhere out to the west, they heard them moving about in the corn stubble across the dark. Ahead, the lights of Holt seemed to stay far away, and they were foot-weary and tired by the time they finally passed into the town limits and walked under the first of the corner streetlamps.
When they walked inside the house, their father wasn’t there. They called out but there was no answer. It made them scared again. They locked the door, dropped their coats on the floor in the front hall and went upstairs and began to wash themselves at the bathroom sink. In the cabinet mirror their faces were dirty and tear-streaked with little runnels along their noses, and their eyes looked shadowy and strange. They were bent over the sink when their father came home. They heard him call as soon as he came in.
Ike? Bobby? Are you here?
They didn’t answer.
He noticed their coats and came rushing upstairs and found them in the bathroom, the rinse water clinging to their faces, both turned toward the door, looking at him as though he’d walked in on them in some shameful ritual act.
He entered the room. Why didn’t you answer me? he said. Where’d you go? When you didn’t come home after the show I went out looking for you. I was about to call Bud Sealy.
They stood looking at him.
What is it? he said. One of you better tell me what’s going on.
They wouldn’t say anything. Yet Bobby’s eyes had welled up and the tears ran unchecked on his cheeks and he began to sob terrifically as though he couldn’t breathe, crying but uttering no words at all.
What’s wrong? Guthrie said. Here now. What is it? He took a towel and dried Bobby’s face, then his brother’s. Is it that bad? he said. He led them down the hall to their bedroom in the old sleeping porch at the back of the house, sitting between them on the bed and encircling them with his arms. Tell me what’s wrong here. What happened?
Bobby was still crying. Now and then he shuddered. Both boys were turned away from him, facing the windows to the north.
Ike, Guthrie said, tell me what’s wrong.
The boy shook his head.
Something is. You’ve gotten dirty. Look at your pants. What is it?
Ike shook his head again. He and his brother looked at the window.
Ike? Guthrie said.
At last the boy turned to him. His face appeared desperate, pent-up, as though it would burst. Leave us alone, he cried. You have to leave us alone.
I’m not going to leave you alone, Guthrie said. Tell me what happened.
We aren’t suppose to say anything. He said we can’t tell anybody.
Who said you can’t tell anybody? Guthrie said. What’s this about?
That big one with the red hair, Ike said. He said . . . We can’t talk about it. Don’t you understand?
Guthrie watched him, the boy’s eyes were red and flaring, but he had stopped talking. He would not say anything more. Not now. He was ready to cry again and he turned back toward the window.