“Ain’t seen him since an hour.”
“Reckon he’s in to Clare.”
The little girl laughed, pulled the primer over her face and the chef slammed a handful of meat on the griddle. With the point of his knife he pierced the bun, slit it, laid it flat and smeared on margarine. They heard the meatcake sizzling.
Across from Estrellita’s was the Metal and Lumber Gymnasium where the welders played the linesmen, where raffles were held and any entertainment, resulting in proceeds for the town, occurred. The grilled windows were open, lights were strung over the slippery hardwood, the instrumentalists followed the scores of their sheet music bought in Clare. Luke paid his dime at the door.
h e’s here,” said Wade of the man with the red wagon.
“Saw him, did you?”
“Yes, sir, I got a look at him.”
There was a desk and a chair on rollers for the Sheriff of Clare and a cane chair for his visitor. But both men stood. In the jail office they did not face each other, rather they waited side by side, the Sheriff’s hand on the other’s arm, talking slowly, not quite in whispers. They did not move but rested on their feet, alert by standing, old now, steady, for nights which kept them from slumbering, together watchful, dimly awake..
“I knew he was coming, Wade. I heard of it.” The Sheriff gently laid down the fat, wingfolded body of his Stetson.
No move was made to sit or turn and take the few steps to the open door from which they could have seen a street, a ridge of roof, the sloping, dry and distant night. Their backs remained without effort toward those sights, dim or broad, which might have made them think men slept in safety. Facing walls, the rear of the jail, they breathed together with a faint heave as if pollen and dust tracked them — all day they inhaled the clouds raised by a passing few youths — and the air were still laden long after the setting of the sun. They waited, come to a stop in the middle of the narrow stone room where dried cigarettes lay strewn on the faded blotter of the half open desk, where a winter coat hung from a peg, and the arm of each was made easy by touching the other’s. A thin light hung above their heads from a long cord more rope than wire. Separately they stared at the floor, pausing a moment in those outer, less confining parts of a jail. They smiled.