Oh? he said. And where’d you get another cook in this pissant place?
Where I got the last one, the woman said and laughed in pleasure. She pinched the girl again. Would you look at his face, she said. I told him something that time.
Ike and Bobby.
When they entered their driveway his pickup wasn’t parked in front of the house. They hadn’t expected him to be there but sometimes he came home early. They crossed the porch and went inside the house. In the dining room they stopped next to the table and lifted their faces ceilingward, listening.
She’s still in bed, Bobby said.
She might of come down and gone back, Ike said.
She might not of too.
She’s going to hear you, Ike said.
She can’t hear me. She can’t hear anything from up there. She’s asleep.
You don’t know if she is. She could be awake.
Then how come she doesn’t come downstairs? Bobby said.
Maybe she already did. Maybe she went back up. She has to eat sometime.
Together they looked at the ceiling as if they could see through it into the dark guest room where the shades were drawn down night and day blocking out the light and all the world, as if they could see her lying motionless in the bed as before, alone and withdrawn into her sad thoughts.
She should eat with us, Bobby said. If she wants to eat she can eat with us next time if she comes downstairs.
They went out to the kitchen and poured milk into two glasses and got down storebought glazed cookies from the cupboard and stood at the counter eating, standing close to each other, not talking but eating quietly, single-mindedly, until they were finished and then they drank off the remaining milk and set the glasses in the sink and went back outside again.
They crossed the drive toward the horse lot and opened the plank gate and passed through. In front of the barn the two horses Elko and Easter, one red, one a dark bay, stood dozing in the warm sun. When the horses heard the boys enter the corral they threw their heads up and watched them warily. Go on, Ike called. Get in the barn. The horses began to step sideways, sidling away. The boys spread out to head them. Here now, Ike said. No you don’t. He ran forward.
The horses broke into a high-stepping trot, tossing their heads, and broke past the boys, flowing stiff-legged along the fence past the barn, and loped across the corral to the back fence where they wheeled again and eyed the boys, watching them with great interest. The boys stopped at the end of the barn.
I’ll go get them, Ike said.
You want me to get them this time?
No. I will.
Bobby waited opposite where both halves of the door gaped open. Ike turned the horses back toward him, the horses trotting again now, their heads high up, watching the small boy standing wide-legged ahead of them in the corral dirt. Then he began to flap his arms and to shout. Hey! Hey! He looked very small in the open space of the corral. But at the last moment the two horses veered abruptly and clattered over the high doorsill into the barn, one after the other, and settled down immediately in the stalls. The boys followed them.
It was cool and dark inside, smelling of hay and manure. The horses stamped in the stalls, blowing into the empty grain boxes built into the corners of the mangers. The boys poured oats into each box and then brushed and saddled the horses while they ate. Then they buckled on the bridles and mounted up and rode out along the railroad tracks going to the west away from town.
Victoria Roubideaux.