Читать книгу The Lonesome Quarter - Richard Wormser - Страница 8

THE TRAY was too heavy, and the plates were too hot. The gray-haired lady in the hotel restaurant had been real pleased to be fixing a supper for two little children to eat in their hotel room. She’d put a plate of pickles and celery and olives on from the regular dinner, saying the hotel could spare them, and she’d put all the hot food in fancy plates that had boiling water under them, and the result was, Lon didn’t know could he make it to the elevator and press the button and get in and close the door and—

A voice said, “Let me help you, cowboy,” and there was the gal called Vera Mae, punching the button for him and steadying his elbow all at one time.

“Thanks,” he said. “I didn’t think I was going to make it.”

“It takes practice walking on carpets in high heels.” Vera Mae pulled the elevator door shut, and when he told her “four” pressed the button. “I’ll go along as a sort of a convoy.”

“You’re a nice girl,” he said. He heard himself adding, “Pretty, too.”

She didn’t answer him. Or his big mouth. Man with two kids and no clear way of making any money ought to learn he wasn’t no big catch of a beau.

The elevator stopped, and he got out. “Sure,” Vera Mae said. “And your wife doesn’t understand you.”

He stopped, the metal tray burning his hand from the boiling water. He swung around to face her. A bottle of milk nearly went over, and Vera Mae caught it with her hand, straightened it.

“My wife’s dead,” he said. “And I wasn’t trying to get fresh.” Then he grinned. “It just comes natural, I guess. I don’t have to try.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “And you weren’t fresh. But these back-country hotshots—take the kid to the rodeo, and leave the old lady home to feed the chickens.”

Lon said, “We don’t keep chickens,” and then at the look on her face, burst into laughter. She had to hold one edge of the tray for him, or he would have spilled the whole thing; they stood in the hotel corridor, holding the tray between them, laughing like fools. Then she said, “Ouch,” as the hot water reached her, and he had the whole tray again.

“Lady downstairs broke her neck trying to make the supper nice,” he said. He started toward the room, walking careful. But Vera Mae trailed along.

“Young lady?” she asked. She twisted the knob of the door he nodded at.

“Well, not so young,” he said. “Said she had a boy about my age, about forty, and me, I’m only thirty-one. Those kids are going to wash clear away.”

There was no sign of the children in the bedroom, but the splashing noises from the closed bathroom door were a pretty good sign that neither of them had drowned. Lonnie set the tray down on the bench, and kind of braced himself to go in there and lay down the law, but Vera Mae was still watching him.

She grinned and put a finger to her lips. She looked about Mike’s age herself as she snatched up the two glasses of ice water from the tray and tiptoed to the bathroom door, holding her lips together real straight so as not to make any noise. But she didn’t need to worry; Mike and June wouldn’t have heard a powder blast.

She whipped the door open, and threw the water out of the glass in two expert shots. The kids sounded like they’d been bird-shot. Then June shrieked, “Vera Mae!” and Mike’s voice, a little deeper, followed after a second.

“You two come out,” Vera Mae said. “And I mean dry. Your dad’s worn out from lugging a ton of food up to you.” She shut the bathroom door and winked at Lon; then she went over to the tray and raised the shiny metal covers.

“It’s what they asked for,” Lon said defensively. “Club sandwiches and milk and French pastry. God knows where they heard of ’em.”

“Sounds all right to me,” Vera Mae said. “Bread and meat and raw vegetables. Isn’t that what they’re supposed to eat?”

“I guess so,” Lon said. He tried to keep his voice from sounding so gloomy. “But the PTA ladies came up one time and raised hell with me. I dunno. I’d gone to a lot of trouble to get tomatoes, too.”

The kids burst out of the bathroom like a bull out of a chute. They looked pretty good, except their hair was still wet. Vera Mae went and got two towels; she threw one to Lon, and grabbed June herself. He started rubbing Mike’s head; he felt a little like he’d been kicked in the stomach.

She looked up, once, and said, “I’m not being bossy, am I?”

He said, “Naw, but the gent you were with—”

She stared at him across June’s head, across Mike’s held down in his lap. “Yeah, Lon?” He didn’t even know she knew his name; June must have told her.

“Nothing,” he said. He moved his lips very deliberately; he wasn’t going to mumble. “I just thought he might be waiting some place.”

“Let him wait,” she said. Because her voice wasn’t pretty now, it was the first time he noticed how nice it had been before. Then the bells came back into it. “No,” she said. “Duke’s downstairs—you know, I pointed him out to you; he’s with an Indian rider, an Okie we call Turk, he’s got a white hat on.” She let go of June, gave the little girl a pat on the backside and sent her toward the bed. Then she went over to the flimsy little table where the kids had been drawing houses, and took the hotel pen and a sheet of paper. She wrote something and put it in an envelope.

“G’wan down to the bar,” she said, “and give this to Duke. And have yourself a drink. But just one.”

“I gotta get the kids—”

“Woman’s work,” she said. “If you don’t trust me, send the chambermaid in.”

“The chambermaid?” he asked. Then he took a breath. “Listen, don’t be snippy. I trust you okay, it’s just—well-seems to me it’s my job to get the kids bedded down.”

“Pardon me for intruding.”

He heard himself shouting. His face, he knew, was getting red, the way it used to. “I told you not to be so snippy. I’d like to have a drink! I’m going!”

Then she was laughing at him, and he was aware of four huge eyes staring at him from the pillow. “Loud, ain’t he?” Vera Mae said, and the four eyes got normal size again. “Send the chambermaid in anyway. I want her to do something for me. That’s the lady who makes the beds, country boy.”

“I know what a chambermaid is,” Lon said, he hoped without yelling. This was the most irritating female he’d seen in a long time. He sure liked her.

And so did the kids, from the way they were grinning as she advanced on ’em in the bed, a sandwich plate in one hand, and a bottle of milk in the other . . .

It was funny, walking into a bar that way, not a care in the world. The riders she called Duke and Turk were there all right; he pushed up next to them and told the bartender, “Whatever these gents are having, and an old-fashioned for me.” He laid a five spot on the bar, and it was a long time since he’d done that. But there comes a time when a fellow can’t be a piker much longer. He’d been watching pennies an awful long time.

The rodeo riders were looking at him. Seeing he didn’t want a fight, the gray-haired one, Duke, said, “Well, thanks, Mister.”

“Gotta note for you,” Lon said. He handed it over. “From Vera Mae.”

Duke took the hotel envelope. “In the movies, a fella always says excuse me before he reads a letter. It never made any sense to me.”

Turk said, “Be a funny kind of guy that’d not read a letter. What would people send him one for, if they didn’t want him to read it?”

The bartender brought three drinks and set them down. “Thanks, Mister,” Turk said. Duke was reading the letter. Turk held Lon’s eyes, and raised his drink.

Still puzzling over the note, Duke raised his glass without looking up.

“Here’s to you, and thanks.” He drank his drink in one gulp, and said to Turk. “This here’s Lon Verdoux. Turk Lacekin. Me, I’m Duke Holloway. Vera Mae says we’re to look him over.”

“That Vera Mae,” Turk said. He took the note from Duke, said, “Excuse me, gentlemen,” and read it. He read a good deal faster than his older friend. “Yep, that’s what she says. Lon, consider yourself looked over.” He laid some money on the bar and said, “This one’s on me.”

“The hell it is,” Duke said.

“You had the one last week,” Turk said. Apparently they weren’t arguing over buying the drink. Turk shoved back from the bar, and walked toward the front of the copper-colored place.

In the back, four guys, pale but in rodeo clothes, came out through a curtain and sat down on a little platform, two of them carrying guitars and the third one a squeeze-box. They were the same ones Lon had liked out at the fairgrounds. They began to sing “Red River Valley,” and Duke bought three drinks out of Turk’s money. “You ride any?” he asked Lon.

“Not in the last ten years,” Lon said. “Me and a boy named Johnny Wheelwright traveled around some then. Southern California, Arizona, up into Colorado, and back here. I heard Johnny was still at it.”

“Seems to me I heard the name,” Duke said. “I couldn’t be sure . . . It’s a sucker kind of life. I’d like to drop a rope over my own cow sometime.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Lon said. “I ain’t no cattle baron.”

Duke laughed. “Don’t get me wrong. I never took first money at Madison Square.”

They both laughed. Lon said, “I got sixteen head, all told. Three horses to chase ’em on. Only way I make out is working for the government, summers.”

“Forest Service?” Duke asked.

Lon nodded. “If I could turn over into about ten mares, I could make money.”

Duke took a long swallow of his highball. “Never heard of anybody making money raisin’ horses.”

Lon said, “Well, I don’t like to brag unless I have to, but I’d like to give her a try.”

Turk came back and took up his waiting drink. “No trouble at all.”

Duke asked, “You her husband?”

“No,” Turk said. “Rodeo police. Told him he’d been seen with a suspect.”

“That works real good,” Duke said. “My turn to buy.”

“I thank you,” Lon said, “but I got to be upstairs. Got a couple of kids need me.”

Duke laughed. “You’ll have to fight us to get out of here. And me, I’m kind of stove-up, but Turk’s a bad man to tangle with.”

Turk shook his white hat. “Wouldn’t say that.” He thought a minute. “But Duke’s right ingenious with himself, come a tussle. Remember once, in Redding, California, how—”

“What is this, anyway?” Lon asked. “You guys drunk, or just horsing around?”

“Show him the letter,” Turk said. “Y’know, I got so much Turkish blood in me, I can’t blush. So it does me real good to see somebody else get red in the face.”

Duke thought a minute. “All right,” he said. “Of course, Vera Mae’ll lynch us.”

He handed the sheet of hotel paper over, and Lon, still looking from one to the other of them, not sure this wasn’t some sort of joke they played on country boys, took it. The bartender brought three more drinks, and took Duke’s money.

Dear Duke:—

This’ll be brought you by a guy named Lonnie Verdoux, who’ll buy you a drink. Buy him one back, but don’t get him drunk, cause I’m taking him out to supper. He is a nice guy with two kids and his wife is dead, and I don’t think he’s had much fun lately. Maybe if I do something for somebody else once in awhile, it’ll change my luck, which sure needs it.

There’s a fat faced jerk named Dutcher waiting for me in the bar. You or Turk throw him out. I’ll see you.

V.

Lon grabbed for his drink, and never felt it go down his throat.

“Boy,” Turk said. “Is he doing a good job of blushing!”