The plump girl turned to her friend with an expression that seemed to Wesley to be beseeching. She wanted to, Wesley knew, but her friend wouldn’t have anything to do with them.
“I was going to ask you to show us around town,” Frank said. “But I better not. You’re just too damn unfriendly.”
Tommy squirmed in his chair and began to protest over what Frank said. Didn’t Tommy know? thought Wesley; didn’t he know what Frank was doing?
“Who’s unfriendly?” the plump girl asked indignantly.
“You haven’t even told us your names,” Frank answered. He said it as though he were pouting.
The plump girl looked around as if she were afraid of the punishment that might come to her if she gave their names to these four boys from Montana.
“I’m Anna. This is Beverly.”
Lester got up and angrily pushed his chair back to the table. “Enough of this shit. I’m going to see if we can’t get some food out here.”
“Last names,” said Frank. “What are your last names?”
Anna pointed to her friend. “Tuttle.” She put her hand up by her throat. “Tall Horse. Anna Tall Horse.” Wesley noticed a blush rising to her cheeks when she said her name. Only when she spoke her name did her smile diminish, as if the act of naming herself required all the seriousness she could summon.
Tommy said, “Tall Horse, huh. I believe I could ride a tall horse. Get those stirrups adjusted and it don’t matter how high or low the horse is.” He burst into laughter. Then he lifted his boot high enough for everyone to see. “But I ain’t wearing spurs. You got nothing to worry about.”
“Jesus, Tommy,” Wesley said.
“Jesus yourself. You ain’t getting us anywhere. Why don’t you go with Lester and see about getting the grub.”
Wesley looked over at Beverly Tuttle. If she heard him try to intercede on behalf of her and her friend, she gave no sign. She kept right on staring out the window, though Wesley knew there was nothing for her to see but blowing snow and a late afternoon that couldn’t hold its light against all the forces that wanted to shut it down.
I’m not like them, he wanted to say. They’re just after you to see what they can tear off you or stick in you. They don’t even see how beautiful you are; they don’t even care. But I—I’d be happy to just stare at you. I don’t want to hurt you or take advantage of you. You can trust me. You can talk to me.... But hot on the heels of those thoughts came these: Wesley knew he wasn’t going to speak to Beverly. And he knew she wouldn’t see him as any different from his brother and his friends. Why should she? For although he held these noble impulses toward Beverly he also wished that she would come back to the hotel with them, that she would drink so much of their whiskey that she would let them—Wesley included—do what they wanted to her. Wesley closed his eyes and dropped his head into his hands, wishing he could squeeze from his mind all but the nobler thoughts.
When he lifted his head and opened his eyes, Tommy was putting the matter directly to Anna. “You come back to the hotel with us and we’ll give you a drink of whiskey. What do you say to that?”
She was shaking her head no, but Wesley thought her smile said she was not entirely averse to the proposal.
By now Frank had slid his chair over so that he was sitting closer to the girls’ table than his own. “What are you saying?” he said to Tommy. “These are Sacred Heart girls. Sacred Heart girls don’t drink whiskey.” He smiled wickedly at Anna. “Do they?”
“You got a moving picture here?” asked Tommy. “We could take you to the moving picture.”
Anna shook her head. “There’s one over in Henton.”
“You been?”
She shook her head again.
“Want to go? How far’s Henton? We can drive over to Henton to see a moving picture. You gals come on over to the hotel with us and we’ll take you to Henton.”
“Tonight?”
“Or don’t Sacred Heart girls go to the moving pictures either?” asked Tommy.
“In the snow?”
“We drove in, didn’t we? How far’s Henton?”
“She’s got a boyfriend,” Anna said, nodding in Beverly’s direction.
Tommy looked to the right and the left. “Where? I don’t see him.”
Anna lowered her voice. “They’re going to get married.”
“Well, they’re not getting married tonight, are they?” said Frank.
“I’d think she’d want to be with a cowboy before she was married,” Tommy said. “Once anyway. Find out what she was missing.”
“Jesus Christ,” Wesley said. “She’s sitting right there.”
“You better watch your mouth there, brother. These are Sacred Heart girls.”
“Watch my mouth? Did you hear what he said?”
Anna wagged her finger in Tommy’s direction. “If her boyfriend heard you talk....”She shook her head gravely.
“Am I supposed to be scared?” asked Tommy.
Anna’s voice shifted and became like a little girl’s. “He’s coming to pick us up.”
“In a car?” asked Frank. “Or a wagon?”
Without taking her eyes from the window, Beverly spoke up. “He’s got a truck.”
In a falsetto, Tommy said, “A truck. He’s got a truck.”
“As soon as she graduates,” Anna volunteered. “That’s when they’re getting married.”
Tommy reached into his coat pocket. “We got to do something about this boyfriend.”
Frank leaned toward Beverly. “You’re awful young to be an old married woman.”
Tommy dropped the pistol on the tabletop and gave it a spin. The gun rumbled on the wood like far-off thunder. As it slowed, Anna and the boys watched to see where the barrel would finally point. It stopped—aimed just to the left of Tommy—and Wesley saw it clearly.
It was a .38 revolver, nickel plated, but the plating had worn off in so many places the gun was as black as it was silver. The black checkered grip was partially broken off and exposed the steel and the screw of the handle.
Wesley had seen it before. It was Tommy’s pistol—he had won it in a poker game from a classmate—and a sorry one at that. The cylinder wobbled and didn’t always line up the cartridge just right, and the action was so balky that the hammer might not fall with sufficient force to fire the gun. Frank had warned Tommy about the gun, telling him that it might blow up in his hand someday or send lead spraying out that loose cylinder.
All of them except Lester had handguns, and occasionally they brought them on a hunting trip so they could do a little target shooting with them or practice drawing and shooting from the hip. But they did not carry them into town, and they did not bring them into cafes.
Tommy picked up the pistol and held it loosely by his ear. “Now where’s this boyfriend?”
“How long you been carrying that?” asked Frank.
“Right along.”
Wesley twisted around in his chair, trying to get a better look at the gun. He wanted to see the end of the cylinder, to see if there were nothing there but black empty chambers or if there were the dark glinting nubs of bullets.
Anna said, “You better not let Mrs. Spitzer see you with that.”
Tommy sighted the gun out the window. “Do I wait for him to come in or should I drop him as soon as he drives up?”
“I don’t believe that will be necessary,” Frank said. There was a pitch of nervousness in his brother’s voice that Wesley hadn’t heard before.
Wesley didn’t want to look away from Tommy but he stole a glance at Beverly. She was sitting as still as ever, her hands on her lap, her eyes fixed on the street. She reminded Wesley of an old woman in Bentrock, Mrs. Gamble, who spent so many long hours in her porch swing—just sitting, not reading or sewing or shelling peas or counting rosary beads—that sitting came to seem an act of great endurance.
Tommy swung the pistol away from the window, and, just as he had earlier with an imaginary rifle, sighted in on the buffalo. ?
??What do you bet I can take out one of those glass eyes?”
“You fire that thing in here,” said Frank, “and we’ll never get waited on.”
At that moment Lester returned to the table. He had seen Tommy waving the gun about. “Yeah, shoot up the place. That’d be real fucking smart.”
“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. “I just don’t like for them to use my phone like that.”
They sat quietly on the floor of their hotel, smoking cigars and sipping whiskey. They were pleased with their behavior, and often in the last two hours, ever since they arrived back in the room, one of them had commented on their maturity, on how they were able to enjoy a gla
ss of whiskey for its taste rather than simply drinking to get drunk as many of their peers would do. Wesley, however, had begun to feel shivery and unsteady from the drink. He knew if he closed his eyes he might topple over into sleep.
They had long since stopped discussing the Indian girls. The argument finally ended when Frank, conceded as the authority on such matters, announced that it was not Tommy bringing out the gun that ruined their chances with the girls but the fact of Beverly’s boyfriend. As long as she insisted on remaining loyal to him, she could not be persuaded to come with them. And Anna would not come without her friend. “Sacred Heart didn’t help either,” Wesley added.
“No, it sure didn’t,” agreed his brother.
When the knock came, it was so soft—three taps almost like brush strokes—Wesley thought, and he was sure the others did too, that they had been wrong. The girls had decided to come after all! Tommy jumped to his feet to answer the door, while Lester had the presence of mind to cork the whiskey and roll it under the bed and to throw his coat over their glasses.
Standing in the doorway was a portly man of average height wearing a wool overcoat with a black mouton collar. Visible beneath his open coat was a three-piece suit of heavy salt-and-pepper tweed, white shirt, and tie. He wore a fedora tilted back. His large moon face was split by a wide smile.
As soon as the door opened, the man lifted his hand in a casual salute. “Howdy, boys.” His voice was as high pitched and soft as a woman’s.
Wesley could see why the knock on the door was so faint. The man wore bright yellow buckskin mittens with fur-lined cuffs that came halfway up his forearms. Wesley had seen similar mittens, designed especially for hunters, but the ones he had seen had the trigger finger cut free. The man’s rimless spectacles were well down his nose; no doubt he had tilted them down when he came in out of the cold and they steamed up in the sudden warmth of the hotel. “I’m Sheriff Cooke,” he said. “And might you be the boys from Montana?”
In the silence that followed only Wesley was able to find his tongue. “That’s us,” he said. As soon as he spoke he felt as though he had already admitted to some guilt.