Plainsong

Victoria occasionally works at a gas station. Her shifts are sporadic and—aside from an incident with a deranged customer—benign. She attends occasional parties with Dwayne. Carl and Randy’s party is a loud, hectic scene. Dwayne plays cards and leaves her to wander the house. They leave at four in the morning, by which time Victoria has been “coaxed into drinking four or five vodka squirts and hits from the joint whenever it came around” (181). She wakes up hungover and feels “sick and sad” (182). She realizes that it is “what she couldn’t remember that scared her the most” (182).

Raymond attends a meeting of the local Farmers’ Co-op Elevator. Afterward, while drinking in a bar, an unknown man offers his commiserations that “that little girl didn’t work out” (183). When Raymond asks what he means, the man says, “you taking turns with her, I mean” (183). Raymond grabs the man’s wrist and tells him never to talk like that again. Raymond drives home and tells Harold that “they’re talking” (184) at the bar. Harold is unsurprised by the rumors, though Raymond is still perturbed.