Revolving slowly, the tasseled lampshade turned the men first red, then blue, and caused dots of color to walk across the brown photograph of the dam over the mirror. The trestle, with small, erect figures holding tools posed stiffly at arm’s length, wrinkled, even under glass, across the wall. Ma had always claimed to be in the picture.
“Hey, Snake-Killer!”
Luke turned and in the last green booth, blurred and heavy in the colored lights, shirt unbuttoned and pulled aslant from white chest, he saw Camper laugh, flex the fishing pole in fat hands.
“Cowboy!” He stooped heavily to draw a match sharply on the dance floor. “You didn’t expect to see me again, eh? Or the wife either, I expect. Well, she ain’t here!” With both hands he caught the edge of the bench and laughed, turning pink as a new chip of glass slipped into place. Red mosquitoes clung to the shade.
“Howdy,” said Luke, and whispering, “I’ll take my drink and chowder at the table.”
Luke grinned, pushed his hat back over one ear, and the two men shook hands strongly, the cowboy’s arm rock hard at the elbow. Camper, with three empty glasses and fishing gear neatly spread before him, flushed, and suffering the bites of insects, still deftly and without a tremble held a reel to the light and probed, tuned, with the metallic point of a miniature screwdriver.
“I couldn’t keep away from it,” he said, “even if she hasn’t got much water in her. I had to see it.”
“I wouldn’t go on her in the dark if I was you.” Luke watched the eyes; they stared between white ears battened to the skull. “There’ll be more water in it than you think in the morning.”
“Just so there’s a foot to cover that lousy yellow ground, I don’t care. Couldn’t wait for morning. I know that dam like I know my own golf course, every hole and trap in it.” He rubbed at the mosquito bites and for a moment was quiet, looking at the browned newspaper shot of the project above the bar.
“No. By sunup my wife’ll have the kid dressed in his swim trunks for traveling, the radio tuned up, the car loaded and headed towards sandstone and the line. I wouldn’t catch a thing.”