Plainsong Read Online Free Page B

his thick middle and again at the skirts on both sides where he’d gathered up the apron to wipe his hands.
    I’m going to want me some of them pots pretty quick, he told her. Quick’s you can get em washed.
    She immediately began to clear the two gray industrial sinks, lifting out the stacked dirty pots and pans and setting them on the counters.
    And that fry basket. I put that in there for you too. It needs cleaning.
    You’ll have it in a minute, she said.
    She ran water in the sink and dipped in powdered soap from a box whose top was cut off. Steam began to rise from the swirling suds.
    I didn’t see Janine, the girl said.
    Oh, she’s here someplace. On the phone probably. Out in the office.
    The girl stood over the sink working in the hot soapy water, her hands in rubber gloves. She began to scour the pots left over from the lunch trade. She came in every weekday after school and washed the pots the morning cook had used and also the plates and cups and silverware and platters from the noon hour. The old leather-faced man who came in to wash the breakfast dishes quit at nine. There were always high stacks waiting for her in the sinks and on the counters. She worked through the afternoon until seven, through supper, and had everything clean and finished to that point, when she’d take a plate of food out into the café and sit at the end of the counter talking to Janine or one of the waitresses and afterward she would go home.
    Now, presently, Janine came into the kitchen in a brown pinafore and a white blouse and looked sharply all around and moved up beside the girl and put her arm around her waist.
    Sugar honey. How’s my girl today?
    Okay.
    The short blocky woman drew back to look at her. Well, you don’t sound okay. What’s wrong here?
    Nothing.
    She leaned close. Is it that time of month?
    No.
    Well, you’re not sick, are you?
    The girl shook her head.
    You take it easy anyhow. You just sit and rest when you need to. Rodney can just wait. She looked at the cook. Is he been bothering you? Goddamn you, Rodney. You bothering this girl?
    What are you talking about? the cook said.
    No, the girl said. It’s not him. It’s not anything.
    He better not. You better not, Janine said to him. Then she turned back to the girl. I’ll can his fat ass. She pinched the girl’s hip. And he knows it, she said.
    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