Читать книгу Pale Harvest - Braden Hepner - Страница 11

4

WITH THE MURMURING APPROACH OF AUTUMN came the corn harvest. Elmer pulled the chopper through the distant field and Jack and Seth ground the gears of the old woodsided dump trucks and made them belch black diesel smoke to make the switches in time. The trucks groaned up the lane full of crop and rattled back down empty. They dumped their loads under the rapacious gaze of Roydn Woolums, who worked the three-sided earthen silage pit with the loader tractor and with a newborn pride barely contained. He pushed and leveled his self-made mountain of kernel cob and leaf and tromped it down with the heavy wheels. Throughout the day the chopper rarely stopped. As the roaring tandem took the corn several rows at a time small groups of deer bolted from what had been summer protection, bounding across the field as if on springs. Full days of Jack and Seth driving back and forth, Roydn tromping, Elmer chopping, and Blair spelling his son during the hottest part of the day and in the evening after milking to allow him rest. The work went on late into the night every night, headlights moving up and down the dusty lane and the lights of the tractor scouring the black field. Upwards of forty times a day Jack drove back and forth past her house while rusted springs poked through the mouse-eaten seat and into his thighs. He dumped chopped corn at the mouth of the silage pit, drove back down the lane, and clattered and bounced his truck along the trenches of leveled corn rows toward the creeping green tractor and its hungry implement. It was this kind of field that spoke to him, that he had always loved for its desolation. And loved the entire landscape this way, in autumn, the trees stark and skin-stripped, a land laid waste and all things barren. The ground breaking down annual life to humus and skeleton. A land of ferment and sweet odorous decay. The land spoke a truth in autumn.

On the third day Roydn leapt out of his tractor and walked to the dump truck and said, Let me take that truck for a round, Selvedge. I’m getting bored here.

—You ever been in it before?

—It don’t take an idiot to drive one.

Jack got out and Roydn climbed in. He shut the door and gave Jack a salute and Jack stood watching him. Roydn looked around for instructions on which gears were where. Finding nothing he pushed the clutch in and revved the engine and jammed the gear shifter down into the wrong gear and the truck lurched forward and stalled. He started it up again and ground the gears. Jack watched him push the stick around, a terrible sound coming whenever he pulled down or pushed up, unable to find a gear. Finally he studied the bald knob that topped the gear shifter as though an answer might be found there. He cursed and looked at Jack.

—Get your ass out of there, said Jack.

Roydn climbed out, got back on his tractor, and ran the throttle up.

It was past dark when the last stalk fell. Jack dumped a load at the pit and gave Roydn the finger and as he drove back down the lane he saw Seth coming, who flashed his lights and honked the truck’s horn to signal they were finished. The corn gone, its shorn stalks standing like a field of tombstones, marked the end of one season and the beginning of another. The field stood open again and would till next spring, its fortress reduced to rubble and stocked away for feed. As he pulled into the McKellar driveway to turn around it seemed like the last chance for something, that she might be in there to hear the truck’s engine rattling the cups in the cupboard. He had not seen her since that day he drew her milk.

At the barnyard they gathered on Elmer’s parched lawn and waited for Blair to roll up with the chopper. They could hear his tractor coming in the distance. Carrie came out with reheated pizza, bought earlier that day in anticipation of ending the task, and an iceless cooler of some generic cola, and Jack was not too tired to curse their frugality in a low voice. They lay themselves out on the lawn in a ragged picnic, suns and planets wheeling brightly overhead. Seth stretched out on his back and fed himself from above. Roydn sat cross legged and hunched over, his back curved in the moonlight. He sniffed a few times, his head bending farther toward his open crotch to determine if it was indeed from there that the dark stench came. No one spoke. There were sounds of guzzling throats and stifled burps, long tired sighs, and then a noise atop the front step of the house and Jack turned to see the boy, Edward Elmer, crouching in front of the door in his pajamas like a misplaced lawn gnome. Carrie turned and said, Go back to bed, Edward. Go tell Daddy to put you back to bed.

The boy rose and went inside without a sound. Blair chugged up, bringing dust with him, and killed the tractor. He left the tractor in the middle of the lane and walked over stiffly. His face was haggard and dusty. He managed a foolish smile for them all and said something foolish, but had no appetite for the pizza. They all parted in a feeling of silent congratulations at the job done, and as the two men entered the farmhouse they found it empty. Jack sat down at the kitchen table to wait. When Blair did not return he walked into the hallway and through the darkness saw the shape of his grandfather standing by the bed with his back toward him, staring downward, his arms hanging at his sides.

Despite the hopeful whispers he heard, the body of the deceased did not look good, it did not look peaceful. It was a corpse, less alive than the dirt it would be buried under. The force that had made it something more was fled, drawn from its nostrils by the perpetual breeze. The eyelids were the colors of bruises, the cheeks sunken, the skin waxy and pale, the lipstick, applied by the hand of a dark artist, flawless. Blair stood alone at the coffin, staring into it as he had into the bed a few nights before, studying its contents. He reached his hand inside and rested it on the remains and before Jack could turn his head for what he saw coming he bent and kissed them. When Jack looked back Blair’s shoulders were buckling, a physical change taking place like a mountain shaken by earth tremors and sliding. The wail that came from the old man’s throat made the joints of the wooden pews buzz and the silence that followed as he pulled in wind was stricken and terrible. He sobbed, his body heaving with the force, and then it was over. He stabbed his eyes with a blunt finger and thumb and turned them red-rimmed upon the gathered. Bleary of face and small-eyed like an aggrieved beast, those two points of red misery searching the congregation for what, Jack?

The day was bright and blustery and ringing with autumnal tones as they carried the body out of the chapel after the service and the procession made its way out of town, west across the tracks, past the co-op. For the number of deaths visited upon the town its cemetery was meager, a small rectangle, not seventy yards long and not fifty across. It sat on a high knoll, the town beneath and the river beyond, and for the sharp curve of the earth you could not see the whole of it anywhere you stood. It had been planted with oaks, which had been watered well and were grand trees. They seemed larger than the cemetery itself and stretched their arms over the ground. Their limbs moved in the wind and the noise rushed around the group. Windbeaten gravestones stuck up like crooked teeth in the grass, some old and thin from when the first settlers had perished as they coaxed crops from the land. There were more attendant than were buried here.

Heber and Seth left after the burial service, seeming uncomfortable in their suits among the woeful tenor, and Jack walked away from the departing group to his parents’ graves. He looked down at their single gravestone and turned and leaned against it. He watched the people and listened to the trees sigh. He had not been to a funeral since his parents’. Even at age fourteen it had seemed a sick thing to display a corpse, or a pair of them, in front of a congregation. There was nothing wrong with the service then, or the one this day, nothing wrong but the corpse at the front of the chapel. It was a dread thing that drew the eye repeatedly to it like a dark smudge in a photograph.

Rebekah stood at the open grave and now she left her mother’s side and walked toward him. Not a few heads turned to watch her walk. She wore a black dress just past her knees with a black shawl over her shoulders and she stepped across the yellowing grass with her feet arched in spiked heels and her slim calves flexing with each step. Her dress moved in the breeze. Her beauty fit the day, raw with sincerity, cold with solemnity. Dark strands of hair blew across her face and she brushed them away. Her large eyes were lightened like shallow puddles in sunlight.

—I’m sorry for your loss, she said.

—We knew it was coming.

His tie lifted in the breeze. She reached to tuck it into his suit coat and her hand moved up to his neck for a warm moment before it fell to pull her shawl tighter around her shoulders. It was a quick, sure action, done naturally and without thought. The licking wind stole the warmth of her hand from his neck, and as she turned and leaned against the gravestone with him he looked to the layout of his small world, fields of harvested crops, the little cluster of his town, the simple homes. Autumn had come on fully, turning the leaves before felling them, and the land itself was bright with death. The leaves on the oaks would soon be yellow. Stripes of cottonwoods already yellowed in the small creek beds that led down from the mountains. The scrub oak in the foothills would become red and were also turning. Vast fields of wheat stubble lay ready to be burned, some fields already scorched black and plowed under. Oblique light slanted across the land. Balls Murphy’s old backhoe, which he ran on the side as the town’s gravedigger, sat in the bordering grass and sagebrush, covered in faded yellow paint bubbled and chipped and revealing spots of dark rusted metal. The landscape, the cemetery, and the girl lent a strange beauty to this death. He felt little emotion, no urge to weep. He had braced himself for a wind and received a breeze. Though he had certainly loved the woman in her time, that love had cleared like smoke, and there had been time since to prepare for this and it was no surprise. It occurred to him that things might come out, even that evening. He imagined that those things had been settled firmly and cleanly sometime in the past and that this day when the old woman was put in the ground would be the day his future at the farm would be revealed. It would be momentous if it came out in the immediate wake of the burial, it would seem his mantle, magnifying the drama of the passing, honoring it even, and he did not know how he would respond. He did not know if he would be able to think clearly should it come that way. The emotion of the moment might suade him in a direction he was not sure he wanted to go. Did he want the farm? To stay here alone in this town and work a lonesome and obscure life out in the same fields, gathering milk twice a day, beating his life out upon this ground—this was the natural course of things, the path that would unroll before him in some laissez-faire of fate were he only not to interfere. Was this the future he had envisioned for himself? This farm was both a boon and a curse, then. The boon was the curse. But the dignity of having that option should not be denied him. He should be given it if only to reject it, if that was what he chose, a small matter of human dignity and a symbol of gratitude. Human dignity among the eternal and ubiquitous odor of cow shit and fermenting corn silage. If he were given his right share this would be his living, his life, and how long could he last at that. With this girl could he do it? Even with her here now he viewed the world differently, even this death. The town was changed for the presence of her spirit and this change beat in his blood. He tried to envision her as a dairyfarmer’s wife and could not. He tried to picture her living out her life in this town and could not. These unwelcome revelations crossed him like shadows as she leaned beside him on the gravestone. He saw Blair sitting him down at the kitchen table after milking and feeding were done, telling him, Son, you’ve worked hard for this farm. Here you go. He placed Rebekah in this future and it was a dream. He blinked his stinging eyes, his mind full of the vision, and Rebekah turned him away from the departing group. With an arm around his waist she walked with him toward the back edge of the cemetery where the wild yellow grass grew.

Heber wore a red and black checked flannel jacket over his broad shoulders and huddled himself down to ward off the cold of the night. When any one of them shifted, the dead brown grass crackled and rasped beneath them. Heber let fall an unopened pack of cigarettes on his palm and the steady tap was a drumbeat as they sat under the trees at the park and looked out at the leveled field adjoining. Heber and Seth smoked and held bottles in their laps and were enjoying themselves and being redblooded and vulgar. They were comfortable.

—Good beer, Seth? said Heber.

—Good beer.

—You wouldn’t know good beer if it bit you on the ass.

—This is good beer.

—What makes it good?

—It’s just good beer, Rafuse. I know good beer.

—You’re a few years shy of twenty-one and you know good beer.

—Am I drinking a beer right now Heber? Do I got a beer in my goddamn hand?

—Better than what you usually have in your hand, said Heber. And don’t forget where you got it. And don’t drink it so damn fast. Enjoy it.

—I’ll drink it as damn fast as I feel like it, said Seth.

—In this town a boy picks up his habits of vice and mayhem early, said Heber, like embracing new friends decreed by fate. But you, Seth, you’ve collected them late and desperately. You defy the relaxing manner these habits naturally inspire. If you’re not meant to be together you’ll couple by force, won’t you. These vices are supposed to bring a measure of peace, but you haven’t found it. You’ve done it wrong. You’ve gone from one frenzied consciousness to another. Traded each for each. Poor fella.

—Piss up a rope, said Seth.

—And now I hear you’re riding bulls. And your mother will feel new ulcers bloom in her stomach as she drops more often to her knees in what must be as fervent prayer as there ever was.

—You want her prayers, you can have um, said Seth.

—There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked, said Heber. What of the wicked then? Are they not at peace? Do they not peacefully enjoy their lives? We do. Compare us.

—Just let me enjoy my smoke, said Seth.

Heber looked at him for a moment, then at Jack.

—Here’s to the late and dear Adelaide Selvedge, he said, holding up his bottle. Here’s to her, John.

Jack raised his Pepsi and they all touched bottles.

—She was a fine lady, said Heber. That we’d all be lucky enough to find someone like her.

—You didn’t hardly know her, said Seth.

—I knew her enough to say we’d all do well to find someone like her. A bit younger maybe.

—You’d take it from her corpse on the right weekend.

—Hey now, that’s off limits. Tell him that’s off limits, John.

—Where’s Geneva? said Seth. I ain’t seen her in a while.

—Welcome to the present hour, Seth. Where the hell have you been? I quit with her before summer.

—Hm. I liked her.

—So did I.

—Did she leave yuh?

—It was mutual.

—So she left yuh.

—I said it was mutual.

—She left him, he said to Jack. No shit. She still in Salt Lake?

—Finishing law school. She’ll be done in the spring.

—Maybe I’ll go look her up. Marry me a lawyer.

—You want my sloppy seconds?

—That’s what you get with most girls, said Seth. Or fifths and sevenths and so on. Can’t be too choosy. If she’s a lawyer, that’ll do.

—Will it?

—She was all right. I thought she could be pretty sexy once in a while.

—Once in a while, he says. Ignoramus.

—Why’d she end it?

—She wanted what I couldn’t provide, said Heber. She wanted to get married and get back to the church, after we were through sinning. Wanted me to move to the city too. Can’t practice law in Juniper Scrag, can you.

—What’s wrong with moving to the city?

—Nothing. I can’t go back to church.

—You should of done it for her.

—That ain’t it, said Heber. He leaned forward, close to Seth. Do you realize the damage that is done, the rending, the tumult, the casualty of soul in hoping for obedience or progress, knowing a thing is required of you and knowing at the same time that you cannot do it?

These words were low and passionate and he leaned back against the tree.

—The atonement is rhetorical labyrinth and riddlecraft. Why must we be ritually cleansed of the natures God gave us? Do you beat a dog for being a dog? It’s a fable designed to create guilt and the power that relies on it. Church government. Moral authority. Hierarchies of power. We are commanded to be good, yet destined to fail. We are told that we have sufficient within us to withstand evil, but we do not withstand evil. By some inexplicable justice we are held accountable for a fall we had no part in. And we seem to believe there is a line beyond which grace can come no farther. What is grace then? What of all the counsel and the guilt? Sermon and scripture alike bring it on like a shitstorm. We are made to feel interminably guilty when we can’t leave natural behavior behind, something God put in us like a vital organ and asked us to wrench free and discard. What man seeking the joy he is meant for can break the restraint of everlasting guilt? This man, he said, thrusting both thumbs into his chest. We are creatures subject to our natures, like all creatures. This is what God and the world show us. We possess reason and conscience, which should give us an adequate measure of restraint, but when we spend our control on petty fabrications that confuse and supplant the conscience, which fabrications are beyond the basics of conscience and reason, we build ourselves a cage of falsehood, within which we reside like dreaming halfwits. This false construct creates its own brand of fear, anxiety, behavior, work, and counterfeit guilt.

—A lot of people seem happy in it though, said Seth. It ain’t for me, but why tell another man how to live?

—If I tell you something that isn’t true, said Heber, and this false knowledge brings you joy, the joy you feel is true. And if you never discover the deceit, the true joy remains, and so does the deceit. Whatever joy is created is true whether the thing that created it is true or not. This is the system, and the system is flawed, unnecessary, and not of God. If a man can be as good a man without the belief system, of what necessity is the system, and of what necessity is belief? If you can answer that question satisfactorily, I’ll step down. There are two alternate scenarios, then. There is the man who has learned to be good without a church, and there is the man whom religion has shaped into being good, and believing in this goodness per se, he no longer needs his religion. This is common sense, though mostly we fail to see it. We somehow blind ourselves to sense in favor of its opposite, and when having faith in something ceases to be reasonable, which does a rational being abandon, faith or reason? What would a rational god expect his subjects to choose? The god we claim to know is a god who would be obeyed, with those who will not obey cast off. The problem is, no one can be certain of the rules. Where is he now? He’s distant from us. Any town that’s not on fire looks peaceful from a distance. But walk the streets, know the people, listen to the talk, read the local paper, and you’ll see the poverty of soul, the disorder, the horror. Our god will let things get worse as we move toward the end, withholding his intervention, although you can be sure the chaos and destruction are indeed his doing, his passive vengeance—guilty by way of indifference. Where are the miracles, the intercession? Where is the peace from the Prince himself? They are withheld, and for good reason. The more degenerate the world, the more welcome the salvation and the more heroic the carrier. The stage must be set in the end for high drama. Bedlam. Carnage. Depravity. The devil’s reign of blood and horror at its zenith. And then, in the middle of it all, who is that coming from the clouds, heralded by trumpets and carried on a sunbeam, coming to us across the bloodsoaked sand of the desert? And does he carry in his hand salvation or doom?

—Evil, said Heber. It makes us gladder for his arrival. There is a plan, no doubt, but does this plan win your approval? And yet God keeps sending them down where they struggle and moan and gnash their teeth and fester toward their horrific end. That he may do his work, his strange work. Everything is part of the plan simply by virtue of the existence of God. It’s just a poor plan. Perhaps God is subject to some higher, natural law and is merely waiting for the terrible day of accounting over which he must preside. People pretend that such a god would not be worthy of worship, but God is God, and we have no other option. We’ll take what we can get, I suppose, in the end. He may be a god of order, but the world he’s created is not in order. He has set things in motion and has let them go on to what pandemonium must follow such a sophisticated and dangerous thing left to itself, and perhaps this is the way it must be. Perhaps he can only watch with great futility and some regret what we will do with ourselves. What we have done.

Heber paused to shake a cigarette out of the pack and put it in his lips. He lit the cigarette and inhaled and let smoke trail slowly from his nostrils.

—Jack knows, he said. He knows it’s best to keep away from the fire that would purify us as gold. We don’t need to be reminded. I give my demons rein. I give them rein. Most say too much rein, but if they only knew how I pull back. If I could change one thing about my life it would be to unshoulder this burden of truth. I weep sometimes when I’m alone and get to thinking about it. It’s when I can no longer believe that I need belief the most, but I cannot undo my unbelief, and I did not seek it out. And for this we pretend to want truth, but when truth comes to us we would murder it, would crush its terrible beauty under our heel like a purple flowered thistle. Truth kills mystery and requires action—two things that don’t agree with us. We want mystery, and we don’t want to be required to act, to change. When truth is realized it leads a man either to his salvation or his damnation, both terrifying prospects. We’ve all got demons, and it takes something marvelous to tame them, if they’re ever to be tamed at all. Jack may have found his remedy. The god he has shunned has not shunned him. You’ve got something special there and I hope you get what might as well be yours. It’s not good for man to be alone. What are you without a woman? I wash my sheets. Do you wash your sheets?

Jack thought of his holey gray sheets that used to be white and realized that he had not once washed them. It struck him like an idea newly given to humankind. His bedding was a set of torn, stained, fetid, ragged, grease-shined pieces of a fabric. He had bought sheets some years back in a weird splurge at Kmart and it was probably time for another set now.

—I wash my sheets, Heber went on. It’s proof of a civilized nature, of at least occasional female company through my days and nights. What would you be if you were alone in a house, either one of you? You’d get crazy. You’d wonder what you could get away with in whatever crude dwelling you called home. Your meager collection of dishes would clog the kitchen sink and counters because it could, and you’d half-assedly wash one at a time as you needed it, only to deposit it back in the sink dirty. The bathroom would fill with whiskers, nail clippings, little tumbleweeds of pubic hair. You’d start smelling the crotch of your pants crumpled in the corner to see if they were clean enough to wear. What couldn’t you do alone in that place? Satisfy any perverse craving, entertain any bizarre impulse. You might have something, John. How lucky you’d be to have something to lift you up. At the funeral we were waiting for you in my truck when she came up to you, and we watched while you both walked away. She took you to the wild grass and that was a beginning. But you shouldn’t talk to her about your feelings, if that’s what you’re thinking.

—I’m not thinking that.

—There was a serenity about her at the funeral that would lure a wretched man like you to spill everything, but it’s only rocks there and if you go in she will break you.

—How often do you see her? said Seth.

—She comes to get milk sometimes.

—I’ll bet she’s got some good milk, said Heber.

—Think she’s a virgin? said Seth.

—A question for all times and peoples, that one, said Heber. He settled down against the tree and said, But she’s not.

—The hell do you know about it? said Jack.

—None of us know her history. She’s a slow river. Who knows what’s beneath the surface? But clever girls are perceived how they wish to be perceived. I know it ain’t what you want to hear, but if she’s that type—then my god man, you’ve got your hands full.

—And that proves it, does it? said Jack.

—You get a feeling from girls, whether they are or not. They behave in certain ways that betray the state of their virtue. This is a girl with some experience. I watched her grow up. She had a slow-burning beauty, a grace you can’t teach, even then, and I said watch out. Watch out for that one. Girls like her can’t stay pure.

—Maybe you see what you want to see, said Jack.

—Maybe you do too, said Heber.

—I used to want a virgin, said Seth. Hell yes, I did.

—This purity, it’s not the only road of value. There’s reason to value also a girl with experience. To two virgins it’s a mystery—the kind you don’t want—and without drawing on the accumulated knowledge of millennia of collective effort, it may forever remain so. They are children smashing a hotdog and bun together. Imagine spending those precious first months, years, not having figured it out, this thing that drives the very will of mankind, this reckless thing that God has inserted within each of us and told us to use with care, but which he uses just as recklessly to populate his worlds. It’s no detriment to find a girl who has screwed around a little. Give me a warm tart over a frigid virgin any day.

—Is anyone even listening to this? said Seth. He raised his bottle to his face and examined its dregs.

—Regardless of all your theory and speculation, that doesn’t mean she ain’t, said Jack.

—Some part of us all wishes for that, said Heber. But have you ever considered that this virtue takes its very meaning from its loss?

—That sounds ass-backwards, said Seth.

—Some believe it can last in its rooted form indefinitely, but the greater tragedy than seeing it plucked is to see it wilt, to see its value fade until it is a nonfactor, nothing at all like it was and worst of all, forgotten. Tell me, Seth, do you feel the same for any girl’s virtue? Do you pine and mourn over every rushed undoing, or is it only for the beautiful ones? It seems that some girls are so desirable that there ought to be a national monument erected when they are deflowered, said Heber. And the fellow that did it properly ought to have a parade. And yet we’d gladly murder the fool who takes it from one of these selected before it is proper. But when it happens this latter way we are absolutely mystified. We brood about it, obsess over it. What is this element, this virtue, and can it replenish? Put it on the Periodic Table. What is this deep mystery that stirs both our loins and our spirits so profoundly? It is God at his most mysterious and abstruse. And when God is crucified afresh with each spoiled flower, we are deeply shaken. But we also lust with a regret deeper than our sorrow that we had been the spoiler.

—Hey, you all know a girl by the name of Erica Birch? said Seth. From Hansel?

—I knew her from school, said Jack.

—Not that I ultimately give a damn, but what do you think?

—Good looking, said Jack. Definitely no virgin.

—That’s just it. Girls that smoke are easy. She works at the Horseman. I see her there when I go in.

—Well, said Heber. That’s something else. It’s not every day. You wet your wick yet?

—My wick? At least I ain’t hung like a grease zerk.

—That’s me, is it? said Heber.

—I need some advice, said Seth, and since I can’t get any around here but from a assclown like you, tell me what you know.

—What do you want? said Heber.

—Give it all to me.

For a moment Jack felt the sadness Seth’s mother must have felt every time her son deliberately burned another moral bridge under her stern vigil. It was the glee with which he watched the flames, as if they alone were the pursuit. Heber was comfortable tonight playing the sage, if they cared to listen. Seth was drawn down to humility and innocence as he asked Heber questions about basic female anatomy. Heber began explaining, folding his legs beneath him and shaking two cigarettes out for them to smoke.

Jack wanted to take her down to the river to watch it move its brown mirth past the banks. There was something raw about the river, something primal and ancient. There was a duckblind down there, a shack like a lone, derelict temple, sitting on what was almost an island for the river’s curve. When it came to getting a woman the farm was a fetter, though Elmer had done it. Blair once called that event an act of God. Divine intervention. Carrie worked hard at a man’s labor when they needed her, washing the barn, milking some mornings, driving tractor, feeding, moving pipe, and Jack felt pity for her, was softened toward her, even though he felt he hardly knew her and her demeanor toward him was civil at best. And their boy, there was their boy to consider.

—What’s up, John? said Heber. You look like you got your peter knocked in the dirt. I tell you I saw her the other night, right before the funeral?

—Where at?

—I walked here to the park to sit under this tree, and directly I heard the chains of the swings going. So I got up and wandered over and there she was. She seemed distrustful of me at first.

—You seen yourself lately?

—I learned a little about her. She’s studying botany.

—All right.

—They left a bad husband and father. Abusive, probably, though she was reluctant to spell it out.

—Yes.

—She’s active in the church. She’s trying to live righteously.

—Yes. I know all this.

—She told you?

—No.

—Who told you?

—Woolums.

—Woolums told you? What does that asswipe know about anything?

—All of what you just told me, and a lot sooner.

—Did he tell you if she’s a virgin?

—Dumbass, said Jack.

—Who? Me or him?

—I’d put you both on that train and wave goodbye.

Heber said, Tell me with a straight face that you expect her to be a virgin and I’ll tell you you’re seeking something that no longer exists, and that you can’t demand it. Tell me you’re ready to throw that worn out scruple to the wind.

—If there are no girls like that around anymore then God himself has also left us, said Jack.

—He hasn’t left us. He’s as bent over his work as he’s ever been. But what you see around you is his work.

—I guess there’s nothing wrong with looking for it, if you want it.

—Do you think you deserve it?

Jack looked at him.

—You’re marooned on a remote set of standards that you’re neither close to nor willing to forsake, said Heber. How long will you keep it up?

—In my estimation she’s got what I’m looking for.

—Spoiled goods, said Heber. You don’t want spoiled goods.

—I didn’t say that.

—Be that as it is, in my opinion there is great glory in either possibility. You might try it. She might give you her kingdom. You’re still in the market for kingdoms, aren’t you? She has pearls, does she not? Indeed.

Heber resettled himself on the ground and let out a guttural grunt of satisfaction. He chuckled to himself and said, Would it change your view of her if you found out she’d fucked a score of men through high school and college, that she tasted it at fourteen and hasn’t gotten enough since?

—You make a passable dipshit, said Jack.

—My guess is somewhere close to but under fifteen. She’s got the attention for it, no doubt. Question is, how’d she respond to it.

—She’s a good girl, said Jack. There ain’t many like her.

—My estimate is only so conservative because she’s the kind that will stick with one partner for a while. But I’ll bet she’s been fucked hundreds of times.