Always taking a joke too far.”
“Jesus Christ, Roy.”
“And then for a minute there I thought . . .” Roy stubs out his cigarette. “Well. It doesn’t matter what I thought.”
The waitress arrives with two platters of sizzling meat. The potatoes are on separate plates, and she isn’t sure who had the hash browns and who the baked potato.
The Lives of Edie Pritchard
21
“We’ll straighten it out,” Roy says, waving the waitress away.
He unfolds his napkin and tucks it inside his shirt collar. He does this with such a flourish it isn’t clear whether this action is also supposed to be a joke.
“I hope I don’t embarrass you,” he says. “I’m so damn hungry, I might pick up this steak with my hands and start gnawing away.”
He doesn’t of course. He cuts his meat into small pieces before he takes a single bite. Just like his brother.
Edie pries open her beef patty and examines its interior.
“Something wrong?” asks Roy. “You didn’t eat any salad either.”
“Not much of an appetite.”
“You feel sick? Maybe you have what Dean has.”
“I don’t.”
“You want to order something else?”
Edie shakes her head no.
“Suit yourself.” He spears another piece of steak and swipes it through the bloody juices on the platter before lifting the meat to his mouth.
And then there it is. The look that’s in the high school yearbook.
The same look that’s in Edie and Dean’s wedding album as well. In the snapshot taken at their wedding reception, she and Dean were sitting on the couch in front of a stone fireplace, and Edie—Mrs.
Linderman for less than an hour—had just turned around to look at something or someone who had commanded her attention.
Eyes open wide, the sensual mouth unsmiling—it might as well be called the Edie Linderman Look. And she has it trained now on the entrance to the Spur, where two burly young men stand just inside the door and survey the restaurant.
They look as if they could be twins, with their identical crew-cut blond hair; their moon faces; their thick, short necks; their power-ful chests and shoulders. They’re both wearing short-sleeved white shirts, though one is a T-shirt and the other a dress shirt like Roy’s.
Their inspection of the room passes over the two older couples who are laughing because one of the women has decided to begin her meal with dessert; over the gentleman who carries on a more animated
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Larry Watson
conversation with the young man who came to clear away their dishes than with the woman sitting across from him; and over the young couple that had to bring their baby to the Spur. Then the man in the T-shirt points to the corner of the restaurant where Roy and Edie sit.
Even their walks are identical, with their muscular arms curled slightly at their sides and held away from their torsos.
“I think we have company,” Edie says, but by then the two men have arrived at the table and loom over Roy and Edie.
The man in the dress shirt asks, “Are you Linderman?”
The young man in the T-shirt stares at Edie, who of course could answer yes to the question but keeps silent.
Roy puts on that smile that’s supposed to bring everyone over to his side. “I’m Roy Linderman,” he says. He extends a hand, but when no other hand comes out to meet his, Roy pulls his back and removes his napkin from his shirt collar as if that’s what he intended to do all along.
“What can I do for you gentlemen?”
Up close it’s apparent that these men are brothers all right but not twins. The man in the white dress shirt is obviously older, though both men appear to be in their thirties. He’s taller too, by at least a couple inches, and the better looking of the pair, but both brothers have the small eyes that, in their ruddy round faces, give them a porcine look.
“You buy a truck today?” the older one asks.
“More like, did he cheat someone out of a truck today?”
“Whoa!” Roy tilts his chair back as though he needs a longer perspective on his interrogators. “I don’t know where you’re getting your information, but that deal was on the up-and-up. Nobody cheated anyone.”
“Bull. Shit,” says the younger man. He has a mouthful of bad teeth, and they lean and slant every which way like old stone mark-ers in a graveyard.
“You two must be related to Mr. Bauer,” says Roy.
“He’s our grandpa,” the younger man says, but his older brother thrusts out a hand to silence him as if he doesn’t want that information revealed.
The Lives of Edie Pritchard
23
“I don’t know what your grandfather told you,” Roy says, “but he agreed to the price I offered. We shook hands on the deal and we signed the papers. And he accepted the money. If that’s not your idea of a fair deal, I don’t know—”
“You know that truck’s worth more,” says the older brother. “You goddamn well know that.”
“And it ain’t his to sell anyway!” the younger brother says. When he speaks he has to manipulate his lower lip to keep it from snagging on a tilting lower front tooth. “That truck was meant to be ours.”
“Look,” Roy says, gesturing toward Edie’s plate and then his own,
“we’re trying to have supper here.”
“Eat up,” says the younger brother. “We ain’t stopping you.”
“Excuse us then,” Roy says, and he picks up his knife and fork and turns back to his meal. But before taking another bite, he lays his silverware aside and then pushes his platter away. “Maybe you fellows want to find a table of your own?”
“We want,” the younger man says, “the keys to the fucking truck.”
Roy shakes his head, a little sadly. “I wish I could help you out there, but the deal’s done.”
“Well, now we’ll undo it,” says the younger brother.
Once again the older brother holds out a calming hand. “Here’s the thing,” he says, lowering his voice and trying to find a reasonable tone. “Our granddad more or less promised that truck to us. And we went ahead and made plans, and the truck was part of them. I don’t have any idea where he got that wild hair to sell, but he sure as hell never consulted us. What do you say we give you your money back and we call it square?”
“Can’t do it,” Roy says. “I might be willing to go for that, but it’s not up to me. I’ve already got a buyer for the truck. I’m here more or less as his representative.”
This little speech might be nothing more than a negotiating tactic on Roy’s part, but he wears such a pained expression it’s difficult to believe he’s anything but sorry.
“And did this fellow send you up here to screw an old man out of his truck?” the younger brother asks.
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Larry Watson
Throughout the entire push-pull of this conversation, Edie has sat quietly, demurely, not touching her food, not looking at the men hovering over her. She’s kept her hands in her lap and said nothing.
But now she looks at the three men in quick succession.
“This is ri dic ulous!” she says.