Eventide - Kent Haruf [61]
It sure helps, he said.
You old bastard, she said. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Acting that way in front of this boy. She went off to get their drinks.
I believe she’s warming up to me, the red-faced man said.
She’d warm up to your bank account a lot faster, one of the others said.
Maybe she would. But a woman like her, you wouldn’t mind spending a little money on her. You got to.
What about her ex-husband?
That’s what I’m talking about. She’s older now. She’s not going to just fold her hands up and sit at home. She wants something better out of life. She knows there’s something more coming her way than a dryland farm out south of Norka.
And you could give it to her.
Why not.
Well, I kind of remember you complaining just last week about how you couldn’t get something in your undershorts to cooperate no more. After that operation you had, where the doctor cut on you.
Well, yeah, he said. There is that. The men at the table all laughed. But a woman like her, he said, she might put some new life in you. She might even manage to raise the dead.
The man next to him slapped him on the back. You just keep thinking that way.
DJ looked toward the bar where the woman was setting out glasses on a tray. Under the blue lights she appeared tall and pretty.
She brought the coffee and corn chips and the whiskey to the table, and his grandfather reached inside the chest pocket of his overalls and drew out his old soft leather wallet and removed his pension check.
What’s this? she said.
My check. From the railroad.
She turned it over and looked at the other side. You want me to cash this?
That’s the usual custom.
You’ll need to sign it, she said.
She handed him a pen, and the old man leaned over the table and stiffly signed his name and gave the pen back together with the check.
I’ll have to see if they will accept this, she said.
They will. I been cashing checks here for years.
I’ll just see, she said, and walked away toward the bar.
What the hell’s a-wrong with her?
She’s just doing her job, Grandpa, DJ whispered.
The old man lifted his tumbler of whiskey and took a long drink. Drink your coffee there, he said to the boy. It won’t do you no good once it gets cold.
The woman came back with a handful of bills and some change and handed the money to the old man. He drew out a dollar bill and gave it to her. Thank you, she said. I never should of questioned you, should I?
No, ma’am, he said. I’ve been coming in here a long time. Longer than you, I imagine. I plan on coming a while yet too.
And I hope you do, she said. Can I bring you anything else?
You can bring me another one of these after a while.
Of course, she said. DJ watched her walk away to another table.
As the old men around the table began to talk, the boy drank some of his coffee, then set the cup beside his chair on the floor and ate a few of the corn chips and took his math assignment from his coat pocket and got out a pencil and laid the sheets of paper on his lap. One of the old men said: Speaking of people getting cut on, and began to tell a story about a man he knew who couldn’t get his equipment to work anymore, so he and his wife went to the doctor. The doctor examined him and then presented him with a sterile needle and vial of fluid to inject into the skin alongside his business, just before he and his wife tried again, and told them to come back afterwards and say how it all went. The couple came back a week later. How’d it go? the doctor said. The man said: Pretty good, it stayed up for forty-five minutes. So what’d you do, the doctor said, and the man said: Well, we did what you’re suppose to, you know. Then after we was finished I went out to the front room and set down on the couch, watching TV and eating salted popcorn, waiting for it to go down again so I could go to bed. The doctor turned to the man’s wife. That must have been pretty good for you too, he said. Like hell, she said. He only had enough wind for five