Read Online Where You Once Belonged by Kent Haruf - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kent Haruf
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paper bag, the one with his clean clothes in it—his sour socks and his old work shirts and his soiled jeans transformed now, sweet-smelling, washed and tumble-dried and still fragrant of soap, as though in the intervening week she’d managed to perform some miracle or magic. And in truth she had: she had accomplished a kind of domestic and loving alchemy.
Then Jack would say: “Thanks, Wanda Jo.” Or he might even become extravagant; he might say: “Thanks a lot, kid.”
So they’d leave her little house on Chicago Street then. They’d walk out to his car together, with Jack’s big arm draped over her smooth silky shoulder under her strawberry hair, and at the car Jack would throw the sack of clean clothes into the backseat. Then they’d go out for the night, to drink at the tavern on Main Street or to drink and dance at the Legion on Highway 34. It was all a weekly occurrence; it happened every Saturday night. And afterward, after the bars had closed and after Jack had told his last joke to the last man still there in the bar who was still sober enough to laugh in the right places, they would usually go back to Wanda Jo’s house again. Then for an hour or two there would be another kind of exchange in the back bedroom where, we understood, Jack would teach her the tricks he himself had paid to learn while he was in the Army. And none of us doubted that Wanda Jo was obliging about that too. Because she loved him. Because she still thought of him as a big black-haired man with a good sense of humor. She was willing to wait for him for all those years—for him to make up his mind about marrying her—because she still believed he would eventually. She hadn’t anything else in mind for herself. Jack Burdette was the sum total of what she hoped for in life. She told me that once.
It was on one of those Saturday nights. It was in March or April, toward the end of winter, after Jack had been back in Holt for six or seven years.
I had been working late at the Mercury rather than going home to Nora and a silent house. Nora would be reading as usual, wrapped up in an afghan in the front room, and Toni, our little girl, who was two or three then, would already be asleep in her bed upstairs under a white comforter. So I had gone back to the office after supper to try to work on an editorial I was writing for the next week’s issue of the paper, and afterward I had walked up the block to the Holt Tavern on Third and Main streets. I wanted noise and laughter; I wanted to drink a beer among friends before going home again. At the tavern I stood at the bar talking to Bob Sullivan for a while.
Bob Sullivan was a semiretired farmer who had moved to town recently, and at the moment he was seriously disappointed in his granddaughter Amy. She had married a local boy named Jerry Weaver six months earlier. “And the kid wasn’t any good for her,” Sullivan said. “I told her so. Here she’s just a year out of high school and then this Weaver kid talks her into a church wedding before she even has time to turn around good and see what else there might be in the world waiting for her.”
“How old is she?” I said.
“Nineteen.”
“It’s pretty young to get married.”
“That’s what I mean.” Sullivan said. “But do you think you can tell these kids that?”
“No I don’t.”
“Well you can’t.”
Sullivan ordered another Jack Daniel’s on the rocks. After it was on the bar in front of him he drank half of it at once.
“So,” he said, “after I see she’s going to go through with it, I decided: hell, all right, then, I’ll make it easier on her. I’ll buy her a nice double-wide trailer as a wedding present. And I did. It was brand-new too when I give it to her.”
“That was good of you.”
“Because you don’t think that kid has any money, do you?”
“His family has two or three sections of wheatland. They ought to have some money at least.”
“But do they spend it?”
“I wouldn’t
Then Jack would say: “Thanks, Wanda Jo.” Or he might even become extravagant; he might say: “Thanks a lot, kid.”
So they’d leave her little house on Chicago Street then. They’d walk out to his car together, with Jack’s big arm draped over her smooth silky shoulder under her strawberry hair, and at the car Jack would throw the sack of clean clothes into the backseat. Then they’d go out for the night, to drink at the tavern on Main Street or to drink and dance at the Legion on Highway 34. It was all a weekly occurrence; it happened every Saturday night. And afterward, after the bars had closed and after Jack had told his last joke to the last man still there in the bar who was still sober enough to laugh in the right places, they would usually go back to Wanda Jo’s house again. Then for an hour or two there would be another kind of exchange in the back bedroom where, we understood, Jack would teach her the tricks he himself had paid to learn while he was in the Army. And none of us doubted that Wanda Jo was obliging about that too. Because she loved him. Because she still thought of him as a big black-haired man with a good sense of humor. She was willing to wait for him for all those years—for him to make up his mind about marrying her—because she still believed he would eventually. She hadn’t anything else in mind for herself. Jack Burdette was the sum total of what she hoped for in life. She told me that once.
It was on one of those Saturday nights. It was in March or April, toward the end of winter, after Jack had been back in Holt for six or seven years.
I had been working late at the Mercury rather than going home to Nora and a silent house. Nora would be reading as usual, wrapped up in an afghan in the front room, and Toni, our little girl, who was two or three then, would already be asleep in her bed upstairs under a white comforter. So I had gone back to the office after supper to try to work on an editorial I was writing for the next week’s issue of the paper, and afterward I had walked up the block to the Holt Tavern on Third and Main streets. I wanted noise and laughter; I wanted to drink a beer among friends before going home again. At the tavern I stood at the bar talking to Bob Sullivan for a while.
Bob Sullivan was a semiretired farmer who had moved to town recently, and at the moment he was seriously disappointed in his granddaughter Amy. She had married a local boy named Jerry Weaver six months earlier. “And the kid wasn’t any good for her,” Sullivan said. “I told her so. Here she’s just a year out of high school and then this Weaver kid talks her into a church wedding before she even has time to turn around good and see what else there might be in the world waiting for her.”
“How old is she?” I said.
“Nineteen.”
“It’s pretty young to get married.”
“That’s what I mean.” Sullivan said. “But do you think you can tell these kids that?”
“No I don’t.”
“Well you can’t.”
Sullivan ordered another Jack Daniel’s on the rocks. After it was on the bar in front of him he drank half of it at once.
“So,” he said, “after I see she’s going to go through with it, I decided: hell, all right, then, I’ll make it easier on her. I’ll buy her a nice double-wide trailer as a wedding present. And I did. It was brand-new too when I give it to her.”
“That was good of you.”
“Because you don’t think that kid has any money, do you?”
“His family has two or three sections of wheatland. They ought to have some money at least.”
“But do they spend it?”
“I wouldn’t
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