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.Words to songs never returned to Kirsten readily—she had to think hard just to recall a Christmas carol.“Little babies like that one,” she said, “they’ll scream all the time.Their little hands are jittery.They have terrible fits where they keep squeezing their hands real tight and grabbing the air.They can’t stop shaking, but when you try to hold them they turn stiff as a board.”“To be perfectly honest,” Lance said, “I don’t really give a fuck about those babies.”“I know.”“We just need money for gas.”“I know.”At the next house, a man answered, and immediately Kirsten smelled the sour odor of settledness through the screen door.A television played in the cramped front room.A spider plant sat on a stereo speaker, still in its plastic pot, the soil dry and hard yet with a pale shoot thriving, growing down to the shag carpet, as if it might find a way to root in the fibers.Pans in the sink he scrubbed as needed, coffee grounds and macaroni on the floor, pennies and dimes caught in clots of dog hair.A somber, unmoving light in rooms where the windows were never opened, the curtains always closed.“Some got to be addicted,” the man said, after Kirsten explained herself.“They never go away.”“That may be so,” Kirsten admitted.“I’ve thought the same myself.”He went to the kitchen and opened the fridge.“You want a beer?”“No thanks.”The blue air around the television was its own atmosphere, and when the man sank back in his chair it was as if he’d gone there to breathe.He looked at Kirsten’s breasts, then down at her feet, and finally at his own hands, which were clumsy and large, curling tightly around the bottle.“Where you staying?”“About a mile out of town,” she said.She handed the man a pamphlet.“I’ve had that same despair you’re talking about.When you feel nothing’s going to change enough to wipe out all the problem.”“Bunch of niggers, mostly.”“Did you look at the one there?”“Tar baby.”“That kid’s white,” Kirsten said.She had no idea if this was true.He didn’t say anything.Kirsten nodded at the television.“Who’s winning?”“Who’s playing?” the man said.He was using a coat hanger for an aerial.“The blue ones, I guess.”“But isn’t it enough? If you can save one baby from this life of hell, isn’t that okay?”“Doesn’t matter much,” he said.“In the scheme of things.”“It would mean everything,” Kirsten said, “if it was you.”“But,” he said, “it’s not me.” The blur of the television interested him more.“Where?”“Where what?”“Where’d you say you were staying?”“With these old people, Effie, Effie and his wife, Gen.”He dropped the pamphlet on the floor and pushed himself out of the chair.He swayed and stared dumbly into a wallet full of receipts.“Well, tonight you say hi to them for me.You tell Effie and Gen Johnny says hi.” When he looked at Kirsten, his eyes had gone neutral.“You tell them I’m sorry, and you give them this,” he said, leaning toward Kirsten.Then his lips were gone from her mouth, and he was handing her the last five from his billfold.When they returned to the farmhouse, their car was sitting in the drive and dinner was cooking.The kitchen windows were steamed, and the moist air, warm and fragrant, settled like a perfume on Kirsten’s skin.She ran hot water and lathered her hands.The ball of soap was as smooth and worn as an old bone, a mosaic assembled from remnants, small pieces thriftily saved and then softened and clumped together.Everything in the house seemed to have that same quality, softened by the touch of hands—hands that had rubbed the brass plating from the doorknobs, hands that had worn the painted handles of spoons and ladles down to bare wood.Kirsten rinsed the soap away, and Gen offered her a towel.“You don’t have any other clothes, do you?” the old woman asked.“No, ma’am,” she said.“Let’s go pull some stuff out of the attic,” Gen said.She drew a level line from the top of her head to the top of Kirsten’s.” We’re about the same size, I figure.You won’t win any fashion awards—it’s just old funny things, some wool pants, a jacket, a couple cardigan sweaters.But you aren’t dressed for Iowa.” She pronounced it “Ioway.”“I’d appreciate that, ma’am.”“Doing the kind of work you do, I don’t imagine you can afford the extras,” the old woman said, as they climbed a set of steps off the upstairs hallway.“But in this country we don’t consider a coat extra.”She tugged a string and a bare bulb lit the attic.In the sudden glare, the room seemed at first to house nothing but a jumble of shadows.” I’ve held on to everything,” she said [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]