Maggie looked in her cup. Maybe some milk?
He brought a jar of milk from the refrigerator and set it on the table and sat down again. She took the lid off and poured a little into her cup.
All right then, Harold said. You got our attention. You say you don’t want money. What do you want?
She sipped from her coffee and tasted it and looked in the cup again and set it back on the table. She looked at the two old brothers. They were waiting, sitting forward at the table across from her. I want something improbable, she said. That’s what I want. I want you to think about taking this girl in. Of letting her live with you.
They stared at her.
You’re fooling, Harold said.
No, Maggie said. I am not fooling.
They were dumbfounded. They looked at her, regarding her as if she might be dangerous. Then they peered into the palms of their thick callused hands spread out before them on the kitchen table and lastly they looked out the window toward the leafless and stunted elm trees.
Oh, I know it sounds crazy, she said. I suppose it is crazy. I don’t know. I don’t even care. But that girl needs somebody and I’m ready to take desperate measures. She needs a home for these months. And you—she smiled at them—you old solitary bastards need somebody too. Somebody or something besides an old red cow to care about and worry over. It’s too lonesome out here. Well, look at you. You’re going to die some day without ever having had enough trouble in your life. Not of the right kind anyway. This is your chance.
The McPheron brothers shifted in their chairs. They watched her suspiciously.
Well? she said. What do you think?
They didn’t say anything.
She laughed. I believe I have robbed you of speech. Will you at least think about it?
Hell, Maggie, Harold said at last. Let’s go back to the money part. Money’d be a lot easier.
Yes, she said. It would. But not nearly as much fun.
Fun, he said. That’s a nice word for what you’re talking about. More like pandemonium and disruption, you mean. Jesus God.
All right, she said. I tried. I had to do that much. She stood up and buttoned her coat. You can let me know if you change your minds.
She went outside to the car. They followed her and went down the little walk and stood at the wire gate in the freezing wind, waiting for her to back up and come forward in the rutted driveway and drive back out past the house toward the county road. As she passed she waved at them. They lifted their hands and gestured back to her.
When she had gone they didn’t talk to each other but returned to the kitchen and drank down the coffee in their cups and put on their winter caps and gloves and pulled on their overshoes and buckled them, and then went back down the porch steps into the yard to return to work as mutely and numbly as if they had been stunned into a sudden and permanent silence by such a proposal.
But later, when the sun had gone down in the late afternoon, after the sky had turned faint and wispy and the thin blue shadows had reached across the snow, the brothers did talk. They were out in the horse lot, working at the stock tank.