I’ve been at this since six this morning. Why wouldn’t I be?
Well, you might just bust something. You better take it easy.
When would I do that?
I don’t know, Harold said. That’s the question. You got any specials going on?
Everything’s special. What have you got in mind?
Well, he said, I’ve been considering the noble pig. I’ve seen about enough of these blackbaldy steers the last couple days to put me off beef for a week.
We have ham steak and there’s bacon if you want that. We could make you up a ham sandwich.
Bring me a ham steak. And mashed potatoes and brown gravy and whatever else comes with it. And black coffee. And some punkin pie if you would.
She wrote rapidly in her pad and looked up. Raymond, what about you?
That sounds about right, he said. Just bring me the same as Harold. Only what other brand of pie you got?
I have apple blueberry butterscotch lemon. She glanced over at the counter. I think I got one piece of chocolate meringue.
Blueberry, Raymond said. But take your time. There isn’t any rush about this.
I just wish he’d hire another girl, she said. That’s all it’d take. You think Ward’s ever going to do that?
I can’t see it happening.
Not in my lifetime, she said, and walked toward the kitchen and said something to two men at another table as she passed by.
She returned balancing two cups of coffee and a bowl of lettuce salad for each of them and a plate of white bread with little pats of butter and set it all down and went away again. The McPheron brothers took up their forks and began to eat. While they were eating, Bob Schramm came over. Anybody sitting here? he said.
You, Harold said. Set down.
Schramm pulled out a chair and sat and took off his black hat and placed it crownside down on the vacant chair and put a finger to each ear and turned up the plastic dials in his hearing aids, then smoothed the hair on the top of his head. He looked around the crowded room. Well, I just heard old John Torres died.
When was this? Harold said.
Last night. Over to the hospital. Cancer, I guess. You knew him, didn’t you.
Yeah.
He was something, old John was. Schramm looked at them, watching them eat. Here he was, what, about eighty-five, he said, and the last time I seen him he’s bent over so bad his chin about catches on his belt buckle and I says how you doing, John, and he says oh, pretty good for a old fucker. That’s good, I say, at least you’re still fuckin, and he says yeah, but I been having trouble splitting this cottonwood, it’s soft in the middle, kind of spongy and you can’t get it to split right. You shove the wedge in and it’s like sticking a fork in a pan of this caliche mud. Well, you can see where I’m going with this, Schramm said. Here’s old John still trying to split firewood at his age of life.
Sounds about like him. Harold reached for a piece of bread and buttered and folded it and bit a large half moon out of the middle.
Well, he smoked two packs of Lucky Strikes every day, Bob Schramm said, and he never mistreated a human being in this world. I always set down with him and when I poured my coffee I poured him one too. This one time he come in and he says how you doing, and I says oh not too good, I got something on my mind, some people upsetting me. And he says who is it, you want me to take care of them, and I says oh no, that’s all right, I’ll take care of things, because I knew what he’d do or have somebody else do for him. They’d wake up with their throats cut, is what I’m talking about. Well, he come out of San Luis Valley. You didn’t want to fool with him. Even if he never hurt nobody before, it don’t mean he couldn’t arrange for it to happen this time, even if he wasn’t going to be the one doing it himself.
The waitress arrived at the table carrying two big platters of ham steak and mashed potatoes and gravy and green beans and apple sauce. She placed them in front of the McPherons and turned to Schramm. What about you, what are you going to have?
I haven’t even give it any thought yet.
I’ll have to come back, she said.
Schramm watched her leave and looked around, gazing over at the next table. Don’t they give you menus here no more?
It’s above the counter, Raymond said. On the wall there.
I thought they used to give you menus.
It’s up there now.
Is menus that expensive?
I don’t know how expensive menus are, Raymond said. You mind if we go ahead and eat?
No. Hell. Don’t wait on me. He studied the menu printed on pasteboard above the counter while the McPheron brothers leaned forward over their plates and began to eat. He reached in the hip pocket of his pants and withdrew a blue handkerchief and blew his nose, shutting his eyes all the while, then folded the handkerchief and put it away.
The waitress came back and refilled the coffee cups. Schramm said: Oh, just bring me a hamburger and fries and some coffee, why don’t you.
If you want any dessert you better say so now.
I don’t guess so.
She walked off to another table and poured coffee there and went on.
When’s the funeral going to be? Harold said.
I don’t know. I don’t even know if they was able to locate his kinfolk yet, Schramm said, to tell them he died. But there’ll be a lot that wants to attend.
People liked him, Raymond said.
Yeah, they did. But here you go. I wonder if you ever heard this one. There was this time old John was carrying on with Lloyd Bailey’s wife. I seen them myself once, they was in her new Buick hid out down in the bar ditch alongside the tracks out at the Diamond T crossing, the car lights all shut off, that Buick bouncing on its springs a little and the radio turned down low playing something Mexican out of Denver. Well, mister, they was having theirselves a good time. Well, so that fall old John and Lloyd’s missus jumped up and run off to Kremmling across the mountains there and holed up in a motel room. Shacked up, living like man and wife. But it wasn’t nothing to do there unless you was a hunter and wanted to take a potshot at a deer or a bull elk. It’s just a little place, you know, along the river, and ruttin in a kingsize motel bed can get tiresome after a while, even if you can lay the room off on somebody else’s credit card. So after a while they come back home and she went back to Lloyd and says to him you going to let me come back or do you want to divorce me? Lloyd, he slapped her so hard it spun her head around, and he says all right then, I guess you can come back. Then Lloyd and her went off on a running drunk. They got about as far as Steamboat Springs, I guess, and turned around. When they come back they was still together. I believe they still are. Lloyd, he said it took him all of a two-week drunk to wash old John Torres out of his system.
How long did it take to wash him out of the wife’s system? Harold said.
That I don’t know. He never said. But that’s one thing about him for sure. Old John could get to you.
I don’t guess he’s getting to nobody now, is he.
No sir. I reckon his day is over.
Still, I guess he had his fun, Raymond said. He had himself a good run.
Oh, he did that, Schramm said. None much better. I always thought a lot of old John Torres.
Everybody did, Raymond said.
I don’t know, Harold said. I don’t imagine Lloyd Bailey thought that much of him. Harold put his fork down and looked around the crowded diner. I wonder what become of that punkin pie she was going to bring me.
WHEN THEY HAD FINISHED LUNCH AND LEFT MONEY ON the table for the waitress the McPherons moved next door into the sale barn for the one o’clock start. They climbed up the concrete steps into the middle of the half circle of stadium seats and sat down and looked around. The pipe-iron corral of the sale ring lay below, with its sand floor and the big steel doors on either side, the auctioneer already in place behind his microphone sitting next to the sale barn clerk in the auctioneer’s block above the ring, both of them facing the ranks of seats across the ring, and all the animals sorted in pens out back.