Return to Oakpin(12)

            “No hitting,” Mason said. “I can’t remember the last time I made a fist. Is that good news or bad?”

            Gene set the beer bottles out and poured the Jack Daniel’s.

            “Where you from?” Gene asked Mason.

            “Denver. I’m out for a drive.”

            “Yes, you are.”

            Mason took in the room now that his eyes had adjusted, and he noted the four mismatched pool tables and the old red banquettes along the wall, and above each, high in the cinder-block wall, were windows made of six glass bricks. Those windows and the girder ceiling made Mason turn back to the barman.

            “Is this the old Annex? Was it called the Annex?”

            “It was called the Emporium and built by Wallace Debans when he came back from the war, and he sold furniture to all the ranchers out of this building, including washers and dryers, and as he used to say, the washer and dryer won the West. By that he meant that they had made this windy place habitable for women, and I think he also meant that he sold thousands of them and was able to retire. He’s still alive and lives in Brook. Do you know where that is?”

            “And then it was the café, the Annex, right?”

            “You’ve been in here before.”

            “I was in this building thirty years ago on a night when we were coming back from a football game in Chadron, and our team ate at two long tables that were set along the wall there and there. I played junior varsity one year. I think this was a big chicken restaurant.”

            “The Annex was famous for chicken. Sundays were crazy. People would drive, sometimes from Denver, to have the deep-fried chicken.”

            “What town was it?” the man down the bar asked Mason.

            “Oakpine. I grew up there.”

            “I’ve got an aunt in Oakpine,” the man said. “Or used to.”

            “Where is it?” Mason said. “From here.”

            “Two hours and some. North on twenty-one until you cross the state line, and then you’ll see the signs.”

            The owner, Gene, leaned on the back bar and folded his arms. “You going home?” he asked Mason.

            Mason looked at the man. “I am now,” he said. His voice had a shadow in it, and the barman looked at him seriously.

            “What’s the matter with you?” he said.

            Immediately something rose in Mason to deflect this inquiry, and he had nothing ready in a second, the nothing he’d used like a windshield all his life, but the question touched the quick, and he knew his face had registered its canny accuracy, and he had another thought rise up: Why hide it? Wherever you are, it’s there too.

            “Five things or six,” Mason said. “But the real thing is that I am simply over with the one life, I guess. I thought I wanted it, but what? Not really.” He had to whisper the last.

            All three men were still in the big room. And the silence ran along until the cooler motor shuddered on and the silence ran under that, and then Mason said quietly, “Do not say anything. I regret my remarks. It’s okay.”

            The silence bore on almost another minute, and then the man down the bar said, “I’m sorry, man.”

            Mason used the blow to lift and drink his whiskey. “I’m not a drinker. And I’m not a fighter. I’m a lawyer who until ten minutes ago was lost in the West.” And he knew that until ten minutes ago he was another man choking on his sublime unhappiness. The mathematics of everything had grown murky and was now impossible.