She continues to go through the glove box. An opened roll of Life Savers. An owner’s manual for the Impala. The car’s registration. A parking ticket for the Gladstone street where Warren’s Furniture and Appliance is located. A folded manila envelope containing a few
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Larry Watson
cartridges. A tin Band-Aid box, but when Edie opens it, she finds prophylactics. Roy, Roy . . .
As gently as Roy closed the car door, Edie shuts the glove box. She flexes the fingers that gripped the handle of the revolver as if she needs to rid herself of the sensation of holding it. From her purse she takes out a stick of gum, unwraps it, and chews it vigorously, bringing a little saliva back to her mouth, which has gone suddenly dry.
She hears a yowl and looks up to see two girls coming around that gnawed-on corner of the house. The girls are perhaps seven or eight, both wearing brightly colored bathing suits, pink and lime green, and one of the girls carries a tortoiseshell cat in the crook of her arm. The cat is not only meowing loudly but also pawing and kicking at the air in its struggle to escape. The girl simply tightens her hold around the animal’s neck. The other girl has a towel and a galva-nized metal bucket, heavy with water.
It’s plain they intend to wash the cat, and when the one girl puts the bucket down, they manage to sponge the cat’s fur with a little soapy water. But once they lower the cat toward the pail, it manages to get its paws on the ground and in an instant leaps free and bounds off.
The girl who’d been holding the cat examines the scratches on her arm. A thread of blood trails down toward her wrist. “That little bastard,” she says.
“He got you good,” her friend says.
“That bastard.”
Then they notice Edie and the long white car and, as if of one mind, they approach together.
The little girl with the scratched arm says, “We’ll wash your car for you.”
Edie has to laugh. “Cats and cars?”
“For just a dollar,” her companion adds. Roy had mentioned the town’s unpaved streets, and the feet and ankles of these children are darkly powdered with dirt.
“Sorry,” says Edie, shaking her head.
“For fifty cents?”
“It’s not my car.”
The Lives of Edie Pritchard
15
The girl who carries the pail has a face so smeared with freckles it looks dirty. “Is it your husband’s?”
“It’s not my husband’s.”
“Is it your boyfriend’s?”
Edie says no.
The girls step back and examine the Chevy from front bumper to back, as if Edie’s relationship to the owner could best be determined by careful scrutiny of the car itself. The freckled girl smiles slyly and whispers something to her companion. The remark brings giggles from both of them.
“Go ahead,” the scratched girl says. “Ask her.”
“No. You.”
The girl who carried the cat steps close to Edie’s open window. She balances on one leg to scrape at that leg with her bare foot. She looks past Edie and into the car’s interior. “Are you a whore?” she asks.
Edie draws back. “What do you know about whores?”
The girl nods toward her freckled friend. “Her brother said . . .”
“Really? What did he say?”
The freckled girl steps forward eagerly. “Are you? Are you?”
Edie points toward the house. “Do either of you live here?”
“Her grandpa does,” the girl with the scratched arm says.
“What if I go tell your grandpa what you just said?”
“He don’t care,” the freckled girl says.
Edie makes a shooing motion with her hand. “You better go catch your cat before it gets run over.”
“He ain’t our cat,” the girl with the scratches says, but both girls back away from the car. Just before they arrive at the corner of the house, the freckled girl turns back to Edie and gives her the finger.
Then the children run off out of sight.
Edie opens her purse again. The familiar, comforting smells of spearmint and cosmetic powder rise from the interior. She clicks open her compact and surveys her features. Whore? She isn’t even wearing any lipstick or mascara today. This summer she’d cut her dark hair so short it can’t be brushed or combed, just ruffled—and now when she runs her hand over her hair, it rises and falls as if she’s
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Larry Watson
standing out in a breeze. Edie brings the mirror close to her face, and then she too raises a middle finger at that woman.
Roy startles her when he leans in the open window on the driver’s side.
“Scoot over here,” he says. “You’re the driver now.”
“Did you—?”
“I sure as hell did,” Roy says, wearing a conqueror’s smile. “Signed the papers, handed over the money, and put the keys in my pocket.
The whole shebang. Now I’m going to buy you supper.”
“Let’s just head back,” Edie says.
“Not a chance. We’re celebrating with a steak dinner. Afterward you can go back to your sick husband. I’ll bring the truck around and you follow me.”
As Roy walks away, he knocks twice on the hood of the Chevy.
The highway leading in and out of Bentrock runs right through the business district, past the pillars of the First National Bank, the wide plate-glass windows of Shipley’s Auto Supply, and the brass-handled doors of the Mon-Dak Hotel. And past both the Bison Café and Wolf’s Diner. But Roy Linderman doesn’t stop at either of those eateries. Instead he leads Edie to the Spur Supper Club and Lounge, better known to as the Spur, situated on a low bluff just outside town.
The evening has a little sunset light left to offer, but none of it finds its way inside the Spur. The dark paneled walls, the carpet the color of dried blood, the candles in their red-glass jars—there’s barely enough light to glint in the glass eyes of the deer, antelope, and elk heads mounted on the walls.
Roy’s sense of triumph hasn’t left him. He leans closer to Edie over their dinner table and says softly, “The hell of it is, the old man didn’t even want to haggle. I started him off with a number even lower than Les Moore said he might go for and, boom—he says yes, right off the bat. Hell, by this time I’m feeling a little sorry for him.
The Lives of Edie Pritchard
17
I’m about ready to tell him I could go a little higher. But there’s no sense in me carrying on both sides of the negotiations. Then after we shake hands on the deal I say, ‘You mind if I ask why you’re selling the truck?’ No farm, the old fellow says, no need for a farm truck.
Well, hell. You can’t argue with that logic.”
From their table in a dark corner of the Spur, Edie has a view of the front door and the patrons trickling in. Saturday night. All the men and a few of the women head into the bar before returning to the restaurant space to sit down for supper. The women are in bright full-skirted dresses and high heels, the men in string ties, good boots, and Stetsons. There isn’t another woman dressed like Edie, in sandals, shorts, and a sleeveless blouse. But Roy’s short-sleeved white shirt? Good enough just about anywhere in this part of the world.