It was Saturday morning.
“I thought you did not like town anymore,” McEachern said.
“I reckon one more trip won’t hurt me,” Joe said.
He had a half dollar in his pocket.
Mrs. McEachern had given it to him.
He had asked for a nickel.
She insisted that he take the half dollar.
He took it, holding it on his palm, cold, contemptuously.
“I suppose not,” McEachern said. “You have worked hard, too.
But town is no good habit for a man who has yet to make his way.”
He did not need to escape, though he would have, even by violence perhaps.
But McEachern made it easy.
He went to the restaurant, fast.
He entered without stumbling now. The waitress was not there.
Perhaps he saw, noticed that she wasn’t.
He stopped at the cigar counter, behind which the woman sat, laying the half dollar on the counter.
“I owe a nickel.
For a cup of coffee.
I said pie and coffee, before I knew that pie was a dime.
I owe you a nickel.”
He did not look toward the rear.
The men were there, in their slanted hats and with their cigarettes.
The proprietor was there; waiting, Joe heard him at last, in the dirty apron, speaking past the cigarette:
“What is it?
What does he want?”
“He says he owes Bobbie a nickel,” the woman said. “He wants to give Bobbie a nickel.” Her voice was quiet.
The proprietor’s voice was quiet.
“Well for Christ’s sake,” he said.
To Joe the room was full of listening.
He heard, not hearing; he saw, not looking.
He was now moving toward the door.
The half dollar lay on the glass counter.
Even from the rear of the room the proprietor could see it, since he said,
“What’s that for?”
“He says he owes for a cup of coffee,” the woman said.
Joe had almost reached the door.
“Here, Jack,” the man said. Joe did not stop.
“Give him his money,” the man said, flatvoiced, not yet moving.
The cigarette smoke would curl still across his face, unwinded by any movement. “Give it back to him,” the man said. “I don’t know what his racket is.
But he can’t work it here.
Give it back to him.
You better go back to the farm, Hiram.
Maybe you can make a girl there with a nickel.”
Now he was in the street, sweating the half dollar, the coin sweating his hand, larger than a cartwheel, feeling.
He walked in laughter.
He had passed through the door upon it, upon the laughing of the men.
It swept and carried him along the street; then it began to flow past him, dying away, letting him to earth, pavement.
He and the waitress were facing one another.
She did not see him at once, walking swiftly, downlooking, in a dark dress and a hat.
Again, stopped, she did not even look at him, having already looked at him, allseeing, like when she had set the coffee and the pie on the counter.