“They’re loud,” Jess said.
“It’s not just that,” she whispered. “It’s the mouths on them. Hell, I’m used to loggers, and these kids even offend me. They said they were on their way to Missoula to visit some friends at the U of M, but they don’t seem to be moving very fast. Maybe I’m getting too old for this.”
Jess ordered an open-faced roast beef sandwich and a jar-the Bear Trap served nonalcoholic drinks in Mason jars-of iced tea.
While Jess waited for the short-order cook to cover white bread with presliced, shiny cuts of beef, he thought about his meeting with Jim Hearne. Hearne was a good man, no doubt about it. The banker was doing all he could to put off the inevitable and cushion Jess’s fall. He might even come up with something that would defer the fate of the ranch on a temporary basis. Jess was out of options, though. There was no way to work himself out of the hole he was in, besides selling the place. And he couldn’t yet wrap his mind around that, couldn’t yet consider it as a legitimate option.
Behind him, the din increased. A beer glass crashed to the floor, and a girl whooped. The jukebox started up. The college kids were settling in.
“Another beer, barwoman!” one of the boys shouted.
“Give me a sec,” she said tersely, sliding the plate in front of Jess. “It’s hot,” she said.
Jess absently touched the rim of the plate. No it isn’t, he said to himself.
As the proprietress filled another mug of beer from the tap, Jess overheard one of the boys say, “Dig the white meat on the poster. I could use a little piece of that.” And the other boy laughed. “Stop it,” one of the girls said, mock-alarmed.
Jess turned to see what they were talking about, saw the poster for the missing Taylor children that had recently been tacked up to a bulletin board, along with years’ worth of flyers and notices. No, he thought. They couldn’t be referring to that poster. It must be something else. Jess turned back to his plate but watched the table in the mirror, his anger rising. It had been the dark boy who had spoken of white meat.
“For sale,” the redheaded boy said in a mock rural accent, “two white-trash northern Idaho, um…urchins!”
“Urchins!” the other boy repeated, laughing, reveling in the word choice.
“We plumb ran out of uses for ’em when they cut our welfare checks,” the redheaded boy continued in the hillbilly accent. “Since Billy Bob got laid off at the lumber mill, we been eating squirrel and drinking beer. Squirrel don’t go as far as it used to…”
The girls were now laughing. Drunk and laughing. They loved the redheaded boy’s imitation of a working-class accent, even though the blonde kept saying, “Stop it, stop it, someone will hear you.”
“Look at that girl,” the dark boy said, pointing toward the flyer. “She’d get a few bucks in a white slave deal, don’t you think? Hell, we could sell her to frat boys!”
The girls laughed, the brunette covering her mouth with her hands.
Jess felt dead for a moment, as if someone had hit him with a bat. He couldn’t believe they were joking about the Taylor children, and especially the photo of Annie, whose image had broken his heart an hour before. How could they be joking about that? How was it possible? What world did they live in? Where did these kids come from, that a tragedy like this could be fodder for jokes? Sure, the kids were drunk. But how could the girls laugh at that?
Jess looked up to see the proprietress frozen at the beer tap, glaring at the table. Beer spilled out of the mug and poured into the trap. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing either, and that the mug was full and spilling over the side didn’t register with her. And there was something else, a kind of hurt-puppy look. Jess knew what it was. The college kids were steeped in that old Washington vs. Idaho view. What happened here was beneath them.
He felt something burning in his stomach and behind his eyes, and he slid off the stool. His boots clunked on the hardwood floor as he approached the table of college kids, and they didn’t notice him until he was there. Leaning down and placing his hands on the table, he nodded at each of the boys.
“You two,” he said. “I need to talk with you outside.”
Without waiting for an answer or looking back, Jess straightened up and walked across the restaurant and out the batwing doors. He could hear the redheaded boy say, “What the fuck is wrong with that guy?” and the other say, “We don’t have to go anywhere we don’t want to,” and one of the girls say, “Yeah, we have our rights.”
What rights? Jess thought. He remembered when his son returned from college. Jess Jr. had also thought he had all kinds of rights.
Jess waited on the porch with his arms crossed. He didn’t want to have to go back in and get them if they didn’t come out. He could hear them discussing it, one of the girls telling the boys to stay right where they were, that an old cowboy had no right to tell them what to do.
Finally, the batwing doors swung out and the redheaded boy stepped through them holding a half-drunk mug of beer. The dark boy followed, his face inscrutable in its slackness.
“What’s the problem, dude?” the redheaded boy said. “We just want to enjoy our lunch and soak up some local atmosphere, you know?”
Jess didn’t know where to start. He glared at them, felt a hot kind of hatred build up in him, felt himself on the razor’s edge of violence. But he kept his voice low.
“You were laughing about those missing children in there,” Jess said. “That’s not appropriate to the situation. I need to ask you to leave.”
The redheaded boy started to argue, then looked quickly at his companion, talking about Jess as if he wasn’t able to hear him.
“What’s wrong with this old dude, man? He’s got no right to give us orders like he owns the place…we’re paying customers, dog.”
The dark boy nodded his agreement, but didn’t take his eyes off Jess. There was a hint of uncertainty in his eyes, something the redheaded boy didn’t show.
Jess said, “Apparently, while they were telling you how many rights you had at your school, they forgot about teaching you any respect or decorum. What you were saying in there about those missing kids isn’t clever or funny, and it pisses me off because I’m from here.”
The redheaded boy looked back at Jess, his expression wounded. “Man…”
“I’m sixty-three years old,” Jess said, his eyes narrowing, his voice getting hard. “More than three times your age. And there are two of you. But if you don’t walk back in and get those girls, right now, and drive on down the road, I’m going to knock you both into next year.”
The boys stared back at him, frozen. Jess had no doubt that if they rushed him, it would all be over quickly, and he would be the worse for it. But in the mood he was in, he wanted them to try.
“We didn’t mean nothing…” the redheaded boy started to say.
“RIGHT NOW,” Jess said through clenched teeth.
The dark boy broke first, saying “Ah, fuck this shit” with resignation and, turning toward the door, grasped the redheaded boy’s arm. “Let’s go, Jarrod.”
“We can take this old fart,” redheaded Jarrod said. “He can’t throw us out of here. It’s a public place.”
“Forget it, man,” the dark boy said. “He isn’t worth it.”
Jess let it go. He could grant them a bit of false dignity in their cowardice.
Jess stood to the side on the porch and watched them come out, all four of them glaring at him as they passed. He was pleased that the blond girl at least looked ashamed of herself, ashamed of her companions. The brunette didn’t, though. Her face was a mask of righteous indignation. Jess heard the words white trash as they climbed into their car and threw gravel as they exited the parking lot. The redheaded boy shouted something as they pulled onto the two-lane, and raised his hand out of the window with his middle finger out.