Oh.
The McPheron brothers and the girl stood looking at one another.
I guess I can get unpacked, the girl said.
McPherons.
When supper was finished they sat on in the dining room in the quiet. The table had been cleared already and the dishes washed and rinsed and left to dry. Raymond sat at one end of the table bent over the Holt Mercury newspaper spread out before him, reading, licking his finger when he turned the pages, his wire glasses low down on his nose. While he read he rolled a flat toothpick back and forth in his mouth without once touching it. Harold sat at the other end of the table. He was turned out from it, his knees spread open, and he was rubbing Black Bear Mountain mink oil into the thick leather of a work boot. Beside his chair the other boot was flopped over empty on the patterned and cracked linoleum.
Outside the house the wind had risen higher than it had been in the afternoon. They could hear it crying around the house corners, heaving and whining in the bare trees. The dry snow was lifted by the wind and blown past the windows and it carried in sudden gusts across the frozen yard under the farmlight that hung from a telephone pole out back. The snow swirled and sped in the bluish light. In the house it was quiet.
Across the room the door was closed. She had gone into her bedroom after supper and they had not heard anything from her since. They didn’t know what to think of this. They wondered privately if all seventeen-year-old girls disappeared after eating supper.
When he had both boots oiled to his requirements Harold stood up and set them out in the kitchen where they gleamed mutely against the wall. Then he came back and crossed to her door and stood listening with his head canted and his eyes staring. He knocked on the door.
Victoria? he said.
Yes.
Everything all right in there?
You can come in, she said.
So he entered her room. It was hers already. She had made it so. It was female now, cleaner and tidier, with little things set out in place. For the first time in half a century someone had taken an interest in the room. The old cardboard boxes were pushed under the bed and the clothes in the closet had been shoved back farther into the dark. Against the wall the old mahogany chest of drawers, its oval mirror darkened and finely cracked at the edges, had been dusted and polished, and her belongings were now arranged on it, hair ribbons and comb and brush, lipstick and liner, hair clasps, a little cedar box of jewelry whose lid was closed by a tiny brass lock.
She herself was sitting up in the bed in a square-necked winter nightgown with a sweater pulled over her shoulders, a schoolbook and a blue notepad propped up in her lap, while the lamp beside the bed cast yellow light onto her clear face and her shining dark hair.
I just was wondering, he said. If you was warm enough in here.
Yes, she said. It’s fine.
They’re saying how it’s suppose to get kind of cold tonight.
Is it?
And this old house ain’t very warm.
I’m fine, she said again. She watched him. He was standing just inside the door, his hands poked into his pockets, his weather-blasted red face shining in the lamplight.
Anyhow, he said. He peered around. You think of something, you can let us know. We don’t know much about this sort of thing.
Thank you, she said.
He looked at her once more, quickly, as some shy country animal might, and closed the door.
In the dining room Raymond sat at the table waiting, curious, the newspaper held up captured in his hands. She all right? he said.
I guess so.
She need more blankets?
She never said she wanted any.
Maybe we ought to get her some anyhow. In case.
I don’t know. You about done with that paper?
It’s going to be a goddamn cold night tonight.