“Come on,” said Wesley. “These girls.”
Then, as though neither gun nor girls were there, as though he were simply speaking to his three hungry friends, as in fact he was, Lester said, “I ordered you all fried ham sandwiches and tomato soup. If that ain’t what you want, you go tell her. She’s back there making pies. The other lady didn’t come in today because of the weather. That’s how come she didn’t take our order right away. She’s doing it all herself.”
Frank had slid even closer to Anna, and, hunched over in his chair, he was talking softly to her, low and steady, and while he spoke he flicked his finger up and down on the hem of her dress. The motion looked idle, playful, unconscious, but each time he moved his finger her dress rode a fraction of an inch higher on her brown leg and then fell again. “Maybe you could show us your school,” he said. “Or where do you like to go? I’d like to see. Or we can go back to the hotel.... Keep us company. Tell us what it’s like in this part of North Dakota....” He nodded in Beverly’s direction. “She doesn’t have to come. If she’s worried about her boyfriend getting jealous. I understand. I don’t have a girlfriend myself right now, but I know how it is....”
Something moved outside. Wesley turned his head and saw the truck, suddenly there in front of the Buffalo Cafe, the smoke of the exhaust whipping away in the wind. The truck’s side window was frosted over, and Wesley couldn’t see the driver.
Beverly saw the truck too, and she jumped from her chair with amazing speed. She grabbed her friend’s arm and tried to pull her from her chair. “Let’s go!” Beverly said.
But her friend didn’t get up fast enough, and as Beverly went past, Tommy reached for her. He caught her by the coat, pulling it halfway off one arm. She tried to twist away from him, and her own grasp on her friend gave way just as Tommy released her.
Whatever the cause—her own momentum, or a wet spot on the floor where snow from someone’s shoe or boot had melted into a puddle, or a kinked corner of a rug, or Tommy’s foot thrust out to trip her up—Beverly fell, and fell hard. One arm had been occupied grabbing her friend and the other tangled in her coat, so she didn’t have time to get her hands under her to break her fall. She landed headfirst. The thud was as loud as a chair toppling over, and Wesley felt the floorboards vibrate.
Anna bent to help her friend, but before she could touch her Beverly was on her feet again and running toward the door, towing Anna behind her.
With both Frank and Tommy shouting after them, the girls ran from the cafe, slamming the door behind them. The glass rattled in the door, and the bell continued to ring nervously long after they went out.
Wesley watched them run to the truck. Anna stumbled in the street and almost slipped under the front of the truck, but Beverly jerked her upright and both of them scrambled into the cab of the truck. Their door wasn’t even shut before the truck began to move off.
They were out of sight before Wesley felt the chill that had entered the cafe when the door opened.
“Lookit!” said Lester. “Look what you did waving your goddamn gun around.” He pointed over by the door. One of Anna’s oversized galoshes stood there, right where the girl must have stepped out of it in her haste to get out of the cafe.
“You scared her right out of her fucking boots,” Lester said and laughed.
Then it was Frank’s turn to point. His finger was aimed at the floor where Beverly had fallen. A six-inch smear of blood glistened against the wood.
Wesley stood. He had no idea where he was going or what he was going to do; he just knew he needed to move.
“She might as well be gone then,” Tommy said. “We got no use for her if she’s on the rag.” He couldn’t hold his straight face any longer, and he broke up with laughter.
Frank looked up at his brother. “Where you going this time?”
“I don’t know. . . .”
“Sit down then. I told you before. We’re not in the jurisdiction.”
Lester had gotten up too. He went over to the blood spot, bent over, and stared closely at it. “Do you think that’s what it is?”
“Where the hell’s the food?” asked Tommy. He picked up the salt shaker, sprinkled salt over his gun, and pretended to take a bite from the barrel. He chewed for a while then slipped the pistol back into his coat pocket.
“You can still fuck ’em when they’re on the rag,” Frank said.
“Kind of messy,” Tommy said as if he were wise in these matters.
“Hey, I’m having the tomato soup,” protested Lester.
“My dad arrested a man for murder a few years back,” Frank said. “Or manslaughter or something. Fellow busted in on this woman, an old girlfriend or maybe she used to be his wife. He was planning on screwing her but then he found out she had her period. He flipped her over and did her up the ass. Then someone found her dead. Big mystery. Dad figured it out. When this fellow had her pinned down he pushed her face into the pillow. Smothered her. Maybe they got him for rape and murder. Some such.”
“Was this an Indian gal?” asked Tommy.
“I don’t believe so. They sent him up for life in Deer Lodge.”
Lester couldn’t stop shaking his head. “Who was the fellow?”
“Some Frenchy. Down from Canada, I believe. Wasn’t from Montana.”
Tommy moved his coat to shift the weight of the gun in his pocket. “That’s probably how them Canucks like it.”
“Dad told you that story?” Wesley asked his brother.
“Yep.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. A year or two ago. We were going somewhere in the car. I don’t remember.”
“He never told me.”
“So? I just did.”
Wesley couldn’t be sure what shocked him more, the story with its mingling of sex and murder, overlaid with sodomy, an act whose existence was known to him and his friends but rarely spoken of, even in their willingness, their eagerness, to discuss almost all matters sexual, or the fact that the story came from his father.
Julian Hayden was a man who swore freely and made no attempt to rein in his tongue in the presence of his sons, but his talk—overrun as it was with profanity—was free of sexual references. As Frank himself once said, their father’s speech was shit-covered but fuck-free.
Now this story. Wesley felt he had to readjust not only his view of his father and his work, but also of his father’s attitude toward him. Why could his father tell this story to Frank but not to his younger son?
The gray-haired woman came out from the kitchen carrying a platter of food. “I wasn’t sure,” she said as she approached their table, “if you boys got so tired of waiting you up and left. Or if maybe you just dried up from hunger.”
Wesley looked again at the blood on the floor. Would she see it?
She put the soup bowls down first, then the small crockery plates holding the sandwiches of fried ham between slices of diagonally sliced white bread. Finally she put down spoons.
“I’ll get you some milk,” she said but made no move to walk away. “As soon as the pies are done I’ll bring you each a piece. Free, for making you wait so long.”
They began to eat while she stood there, watching them intently as though her pleasure depended upon seeing others consume her fare.
She crossed her arms. “Them girls’ ride come?” Without waiting for an answer, she nodded.