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By Root 2114 0

reach for the bottle. What we had the fights about was going away. We couldn't leave the state until the suspended sentence was up, but after that I meant we should blow. I didn't tell her, but I wanted her a long way from Sackett. I was afraid if she got sore at me for something, she'd go off her nut and spill it like she had that other time, after the arraignment. I didn't trust her for a minute. At first, she was all hot for going too, specially when I got talking about Hawaii and the South Seas, but then the money began to roll in. When we opened up, about a week after the funeral, people flocked out there to see what she looked like, and then they came back because they had a good time. And she got all excited about here was our chance to make some more money.

"Frank, all these roadside joints around here are lousy. They're run by people that used to have a farm back in Kansas or somewhere, and got as much idea how to entertain people as a pig has. I believe if somebody came along that knew the business like I do, and tried to make it nice for them, they'd come and bring all their friends."

"To hell with them. We're selling out anyhow."

"We could sell easier if we were making money."

"We're making money."

"I mean good money. Listen, Frank. I've got an idea people would be glad of the chance to sit out under the trees. Think of that. All this nice weather in California, and what do they do with it? Bring people inside of a joint that's set up ready-made by the Acme Lunch Room Fixture Company, and stinks so it makes you sick to your stomach, and feed them awful stuff that's the same from Fresno down to the border, and never give them any chance to feel good at all."

"Look. We're selling out, aren't we? Then the less we got to sell the quicker we get rid of it. Sure, they'd like to sit under the trees. Anybody but a California Bar-B.Q slinger would know that. But if we put them under the trees we've got to get tables, and wire up a lot of lights out there, and all that stuff, and maybe the next guy don't want it that way at all."

"We've got to stay six months. Whether we like it or not."

"Then we use that six months finding a buyer."

"I want to try it."

"All right, then try it. But I'm telling you."

"I could use some of our inside tables."

"I said try it, didn't I? Come on. We'll have a drink."

What we had the big blow-off over was the beer license, and then I tumbled to what she was really up to. She put the tables out under the trees, on a little platform she had built, with a striped awning over them and lanterns at night, and it went pretty good. She was right about it. Those people really enjoyed a chance to sit out under the trees for a half hour, and listen to a little radio music, before they got in their cars and went on. And then beer came back. She saw a chance to leave it just like it was, put beer in, and call it a beer garden.

"I don't want any beer garden, I tell you. All I want is a guy that'll buy the whole works and pay cash."

"But it seems a shame."

"Not to me it don't."

"But look, Frank. The license is only twelve dollars for six months. My goodness, we can afford twelve dollars, can't we?"

"We get the license and then we're in the beer business. We're in the gasoline business already, and the hot dog business, and now we got to go in the beer business. The hell with it. I want to get Out of it, not get in deeper."

"Everybody's got one."

"And welcome, so far as I'm concerned."

"People wanting to come, and the place all fixed up under the trees, and now I have to tell them we don't have beer because we haven't any license."

"Why do you have to tell them anything?"

"All we've got to do is put in coils and then we can have draught beer. It's better than bottled beer, and there's more money in it. I saw some lovely glasses in Los Angeles the other day. Nice tall ones. The kind people like to drink beer out of."

"So we got to get coils and glasses now, have we? I tell you I don't _want_ any beer garden."

"Frank, don't you ever want to _be_ something?"

"Listen, get this. I want