And the children all sat and watched it again as if seeing it for the first time.
I leaned forward to whisper in Harris’s ear: “Isn’t there another reel?”
“What?”
“You know—of film. Isn’t there another reel?”
“Not unless you want to watch the news about the war. Clel’s got that one but it’s really short.”
“The war?” The Second World War had been over for nearly five years.
“Yeah—with the commie japs and all. They’re fighting like dogs over there. But it still ain’t this good. Now shut up and watch the picture show...”
He turned back to Gene and we sat through another showing of the film.
When it was done Clel reappeared with orange pop, rewound the film, and started it over.
And over.
And over.
On the fourth showing I couldn’t stand it any longer and I left the back room to watch the goings-on in the front before I fell asleep.
The room was lit by two Coleman lanterns hanging from the ceiling and full of smoke and sound. The music had gotten much louder and there was a smell of beer and sweat. It seemed that all the married couples—like Knute and Clair—were dancing in the small center of the room, leaving the tables empty, and all the old men like Louie were standing at the bar.
Some of them were talking but Louie was silent and still drinking the way he had before—a whole bottle at a time. He looked almost the same but there was a glazed look in his eyes that hadn’t been there before, and I did a little quick figuring and decided that if he’d been drinking at the same rate all along he was probably well into twenty or thirty bottles by this time.
I looked and, as Harris had said, Louie had peed his pants.
I moved toward the tables to sit and watch the band and as I walked past the end of the bar Clel magically appeared and handed me another orange pop. This made me remember my bladder was bursting. There was no bathroom inside so I went to use the one outside and stepped into total blackness and nearly broke my neck and the bottle of pop, falling from the porch.
In a moment my eyes became accustomed to the dark, and I saw that there were several young couples standing in pairs, holding hands, talking quietly. It took me some time to find the outhouse and use it and come back inside.
I sat at a table, sipping pop and watching them dance, and within a few minutes they slowed the music to a waltz and it seemed absolutely impossible to keep my eyes open.
I lay my head down on the table and closed my eyes, just for a moment, and everything from the day caught up with me and went sliding together, and within moments I was sound asleep.
I’m not sure how long I slept. When I opened my eyes Knute was carrying me in one arm and Harris in the other. He put us gently in the back of the truck. I closed my eyes and awakened a moment later to see Knute carrying Louie out to put him in the truck as well. Louie was as stiff as a ramrod, his hands still holding the last bottle of beer he was drinking.
Then not even the noise of the truck could keep me from sleep.
8
In which we educate two horses,
and I learn that the one blamed
is not always the one guilty
“Now you be like you was the fat, dumb guy and I’ll be like I was Gene.”
“I don’t know—there’s a lot that can go wrong...”
“Come on—didn’t I sit last night and watch Gene do this very thing seven times?”
“Well...”
“When’s the last time I was wrong?”
I started to say something about hitting Buzzer in the rear with an arrow but it didn’t come out. The truth was I thought what Harris wanted to do would work.
Sometimes even the grown-ups could make mistakes. Usually it was us, but on several occasions that summer they took leave of their senses and left us completely alone.
This was the first time. All of them, including Glennis and Louie, had gone to the Halversons’ to help clean up from the fire and we had been left alone at the farm.
“You bring the cows in and set up the separator when it comes time to do chores and we’ll be back in time to milk.” Clair had paused with her hand on the truck door, seemed about to say something else—I thought to warn us not to burn the house down or start a war—and then changed her mind.
And they drove off down the driveway.
Harris stood watching the truck leave, innocence all over his face, until it was out of sight, and no sooner had it turned onto the road a quarter mile away than he was running to the barn.
“Come on.”
“What are you going to do?”
He hadn’t spoken but grabbed Bill’s halter out of the barn and went into the pasture toward the workhorses. This was when we still could approach them—later in the summer, for reasons that will become obvious, they wouldn’t let us come closer than thirty yards before moving off.
Bill gently lowered his head for Harris to put the oiled leather halter on and lead him to the barn.
To be totally honest I knew by this time that we were going to do something wrong. It was not that we always did something wrong—I hadn’t, for instance, shown Harris my “dourty peectures” yet—but this had wrong written all over it. I was pretty sure we weren’t supposed to be messing with the horses, and the combination of Harris and a two-thousand-pound workhorse simply had to be
