Our souls at night

KENT HARUF, who died in November at the age of 71, was best known for his justly praised novel "Plainsong" (1999). Haruf set all of his books in the fictional small town of Holt, Colo., integrating his barebones descriptions of the high plains so strikingly and crucially into his plots that setting is generally the first thing people mention about his work. But this emphasis can make Haruf sound parochial. In fact, his great subject was the struggle of decency against small-mindedness, and his rare gift was to make sheer decency a moving subject. "Our Souls at Night," his final novel, opens with an evening visit that Addie Moore pays to her longtime neighbor, Louis Waters. Both are widowed - Addie is 70, Louis about the same - and Addie makes the surprising proposal that they begin sleeping together, without sex, just to talk in the dark and provide the sleep-easing comfort of physical company. They don't know each other all that well, but Addie has decided to ask at once for what she really wants. It's an odd premise, but we get to watch these two, night by night, pass through phases of awkwardness, intimacy and alliance. The town soon gossips, and Louis's daughter complains, but why should they care? They narrate their pasts to each other - the death of a child, a serious affair. The first complication is the arrival of Addie's 6-year-old grandson, sent while his parents work out a separation. Louis proves adept at tending to the shaken boy and even gets him a dog from the pound. Scenes of Louis watching over the child - during cookouts, town parades, trips into the backcountry - balance charm and a nicely spring-loaded tension. As the town assumes Addie and Louis are already having sex, the reader is left to wonder: Will they ever? When they have to spend the night apart from each other's embrace, we get this lovely bit of flirting (Haruf omits quotation marks): "Sometimes you're a pretty nice man. "I suppose we're going to have to stay like this, divided all night. "I'll think good thoughts across to you. "Don't make them too racy. It might disturb my rest. "You never know." The scene in which these two finally do approach the great, uncertain experiment of intercourse has good moments, but suffers from sparse dialogue. No one wants to accuse a writer like Haruf of underwriting - it would be like complaining that Rothko didn't use enough colors - but the unsaid might have been hinted at by access to characters' thoughts. He uses both characters' points of view throughout, but very temperately, respecting their privacy. The result is a kind of politeness that was absent from "Plainsong," where (for instance) in one haunting scene two preteen boys peek through the window of an abandoned house as a high school girl is persuaded by her boyfriend to have sex with his friend. Physical life is always before us in Haruf's fiction. In "Eventide," a rancher is battered by a bull; in "Benediction," the main character faces a slow death by cancer. "Our Souls at Night" does not avoid this candor, but it goes lighter on its subjects; in the scenes between Addie and Louis I was sometimes reminded of the famous difficulty of writing about good people. BUT ENOUGH ABOUT sex. The chief opposition this couple faces comes less from their own physical limits - they can cope, with good humor - than from the interference around them. A spoilsport, motivated by fear and greed, has his say. Addie has been adamant about not caring what the town thinks; early on, there's a nicely wry moment in which the two of them have lunch at the town cafe, sitting at a central table and flaunting their alleged torrid romance. But an intensifying pressure later threatens what is closest to her. Back story is crucial in the progress of this novel, and takes up a high percentage of pages. The recollections are most touching when the characters regret what they didn't get right, as when Addie remembers the aftermath of her husband's death and its effect on their son, Gene: "But even now I can see it all clearly and feel that kind of otherworldliness, the sense of moving in a dream and making decisions that you didn't know you had to make, or if you were sure of what you were saying. Gene was terribly upset by it. . . . It would have been better if we could have helped each other but that didn't happen. I don't think I tried too hard myself." Haruf's plots tend to turn on gruff characters evincing tenderness, so a moment like this, when they fail to do so, becomes especially poignant. In this last book, Haruf, a very loved author, seems occasionally to speak to his longtime audience directly, as when Louis offers a wry opinion of the real-life Denver Center for the Performing Arts' theatrical productions of Haruf's books: "He took the physical details from Holt . . . but it's not this town. All that's made up." This is a playful detail in a book that saves its saddest parts for the end. "Our Souls at Night" has less grit than "Eventide," with its Dickensian views of the lives of the poor, or "Plainsong," where favorite characters draw relentless spite; its tone is milder and more melancholy. But the novel runs, like his others, on the dogged insistence that simple elements carry depth, and readers will find much to be grateful for. As the town assumes these two are already having sex, readers wonder: Will they ever? JOAN SILBER'S latest book of fiction is "Fools."

1 And then there was the day when Addie Moore made a call on Louis Waters. It was an evening in May just before full dark. They lived a block apart on Cedar Street in the oldest part of town with elm trees and hackberry and a single maple grown up along the curb and green lawns running back from the sidewalk to the two-­story houses. It had been warm in the day but it had turned off cool now in the evening. She went along the sidewalk under the trees and turned in at Louis's house. When Louis came to the door she said, Could I come in and talk to you about something? They sat down in the living room. Can I get you something to drink? Some tea? No thank you. I might not be here long enough to drink it. She looked around. Your house looks nice. Diane always kept a nice house. I've tried a little bit. It still looks nice, she said. I haven't been in here for years. She looked out the windows at the side yard where the night was settling in and out into the kitchen where there was a light shining over the sink and counters. It all looked clean and orderly. He was watching her. She was a good-­looking woman, he had always thought so. She'd had dark hair when she was younger, but it was white now and cut short. She was still shapely, only a little heavy at the waist and hips. You probably wonder what I'm doing here, she said. Well, I didn't think you came over to tell me my house looks nice. No. I want to suggest something to you. Oh? Yes. A kind of proposal. Okay. Not marriage, she said. I didn't think that either. But it's a kind of marriage-­like question. But I don't know if I can now. I'm getting cold feet. She laughed a little. That's sort of like marriage, isn't it. What is? Cold feet. It can be. Yes. Well, I'm just going to say it. I'm listening, Louis said. I wonder if you would consider coming to my house sometimes to sleep with me. What? How do you mean? I mean we're both alone. We've been by ourselves for too long. For years. I'm lonely. I think you might be too. I wonder if you would come and sleep in the night with me. And talk. He stared at her, watching her, curious now, cautious. You don't say anything. Have I taken your breath away? she said. I guess you have. I'm not talking about sex. I wondered. No, not sex. I'm not looking at it that way. I think I've lost any sexual impulse a long time ago. I'm talking about getting through the night. And lying warm in bed, companionably. Lying down in bed together and you staying the night. The nights are the worst. Don't you think? Yes. I think so. I end up taking pills to go to sleep and reading too late and then I feel groggy the next day. No use at all to myself or anybody else. I've had that myself. But I think I could sleep again if there were someone else in bed with me. Someone nice. The closeness of that. Talking in the night, in the dark. She waited. What do you think? I don't know. When would you want to start? Whenever you want to. If, she said, you want to. This week. Let me think about it. All right. But I want you to call me on the day you're coming if that happens. So I'll know to expect you. All right. I'll be waiting to hear from you. What if I snore? Then you'll snore, or you'll learn to quit. He laughed. That would be a first. She stood and went out and walked back home, and he stood at the door watching her, this medium-­sized seventy-­year-­old woman with white hair walking away under the trees in the patches of light thrown out by the corner street lamp. What in the hell, he said. Now don't get ahead of yourself. 2 The next day Louis went to the barber on Main Street and had his hair cut short and neat, a kind of buzz cut, and asked the barber if he still shaved people and the barber said he did, so he got a shave too. Then he went home and called Addie and said, I'd like to come over tonight if that's still all right. Yes, it is, she said. I'm glad. He ate a light supper, just a sandwich and a glass of milk, he didn't want to feel heavy and laden in her bed, and then he took a long hot shower and scrubbed himself thoroughly. He trimmed his fingernails and toenails and at dark he went out the back door and walked up the back alley carrying a paper sack with his pajamas and toothbrush inside. It was dark in the alley and his feet made a rasping noise in the gravel. A light was showing in the house across the alley and he could see the woman in profile there at the sink in the kitchen. He went on into Addie Moore's backyard past the garage and the garden and knocked on the back door. He waited quite a while. A car drove by on the street out front, its headlights shining. He could hear the high school kids over on Main Street honking their horns at one another. Then the porch light came on above his head and the door opened. What are you doing back here? Addie said. I thought it would be less likely for people to see me. I don't care about that. They'll know. Someone will see. Come by the front door out on the front sidewalk. I made up my mind I'm not going to pay attention to what people think. I've done that too long--­all my life. I'm not going to live that way anymore. The alley makes it seem we're doing something wrong or something disgraceful, to be ashamed of. I've been a schoolteacher in a little town too long, he said. That's what it is. But all right. I'll come by the front door the next time. If there is a next time. Don't you think there will be? she said. Is this just a one-­night stand? I don't know. Maybe. Minus the sex part of that, of course. I don't know how this will go. Don't you have any faith? she said. In you, I do. I can have faith in you. I see that already. But I'm not sure I can be equal to you. What are you talking about? How do you mean that? In courage, he said. Willingness to risk. Yes, but you're here. Excerpted from Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.