“Not a bit,” she said, and pushed out her hand.
He folded his battered fist around her slim fingers, grinned once more, and said, “We’re gonna get along.”
He started moving around, picking out pots and pans, reaching, into the grub box. There wasn’t so much as a wasted motion. He didn’t seem to be particularly in a hurry, but he accomplished things in an incredibly short time.
Helen and I tried once or twice to help, but he brushed us aside impatiently. “This ain’t goin’ to be no feast,” he said. “We ain’t goin’ to set no table or have no style. We ain’t got enough water to do a lot of dishwashin’, and there ain’t goin’ to be many dishes, but the grub’s goin’ to stick to your ribs.”
A few moments later, a breath of desert wind wafted an odor of beans over to our nostrils, beans with a touch of garlic and the smell of fried onions.
“Louie,” I asked, “what is that?”
“That there,” he said with pride, “is a dish of my own invention. You cut up a couple of onions fine, put ’em in a little water, and let ’em boil down to a dry pan. Then you add a little grease and fry ’em up. Put in a little garlic, then open a can of beans, and put in some syrup. That there grub will stick to your ribs, and it ain’t goin’ to taste bad.”
Helen and I sat side by side on the blankets watching the western sky as some invisible artist went about painting a desert sunset, working swiftly with vivid colors, and a bold brush.
We were still watching the colors when Louie pushed steaming plates into our hands. “Here you are,” he said, “all dished up. You eat it on the one plate, arid what I mean is you clean it up.” And he grinned at us.
We went to work on the grub. It tasted better than any cooking I’d had for months, with fresh sourdough French bread to sop up the gravy that was left in the plate after we’d cleaned out the mixture of beans, onions, and garlic.