A Single Shot

John bites his tongue. He folds the ticket, then puts it in his wallet. “Can I get out now?” he asks, reaching for the door. “Go about my business?”

“Maybe I ought to see if you can walk a straight line.”

“I’ll piss one if you want me to.”

Dolan closes his ticket book, then slips it into his back pocket. “Just don’t cause no trouble at Puffy’s, John.”

“I’m gonna eat lunch.”

“Way I hear it,” says Dolan, adjusting his wide-brimmed hat, “she don’t want to be bothered.” John steps out of the truck. “Not by you, anyway.”

John smiles, though it’s the last thing he feels like doing. “You oughta run for sheriff again next time around, Ralph,” he says. “I’ll bet the same two people voted for ya before would again.”

“Fix that goddamn muffler, Moon,” says Dolan, waddling back to the cruiser.

His three hundred twenty pounds engulfed in a cloud of blue-white smoke, Jerry Puffer bobs the burning cigarette between his lips at John, who answers with a curt nod. In response to a few other greetings, he barely grunts.

He sits in Moira’s station, at the end of the counter opposite Puffer, and next to a thin, toothless man eating soup.

He grabs a menu, pretends to read it, then puts it back on the counter. He drinks some water, then picks up a napkin and coughs into it. He puts his fingers onto his temples where his head still hurts, and pushes. The smoke is stifling around the counter. He wonders how Moira, who wouldn’t allow smoking in the trailer, stands it.

Carrying a tray of sandwiches and french fries on one shoulder, she abruptly bursts through the swinging kitchen doors. Spotting John, she raises her eyes, gives a tiny side-to-side shake of her head, then charges right past him, twenty feet or so down the aisle, where she starts distributing food to patrons in three or four different booths.

Seeing her, John feels his spirits raised and lowered at the same time. He remembers her once saying that she loved in him what the world couldn’t see—a gentle soul and a kind heart that injured easily and took forever to heal. She was good with words and could easily have gone to college, yet had married John, who didn’t even graduate from high school. John thinks now that he had always believed she would one day tire of him and leave and that this became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Watching her going about her job, he imagines that her movements now contain a self-assuredness that says, louder than words, “I am going forward into the world and not looking back.”

She comes around the counter again, passes the tray she’s carrying to a set of hands behind the swinging doors, then walks over to where John sits, pulls from the front pocket of her wrap-around green smock a pencil and paper pad, and as if John is just another customer, asks him what he would like.

“A cheeseburger,” says John. “Medium rare. Fries. Coffee.”

“What kind of cheese.”

“You know what kind.”

“And a side of slaw, right?”

“I don’t want slaw.”

“No slaw?”

“Tossed salad.”

“Tossed salad? You hate tossed salad.”

“I’m going to give it another shot. Doctor says it’s good for me. Make it a large tossed salad.”

She smiles, barely, and writes down tossed salad. John sees Puffer owlishly peering through the smoke at them. “I just come from my lawyer’s.”

She blows at a strand of hair that’s fallen from the bun atop her head into her eyes. “Who’d you get?”

“Daggard Pitt.” John studies her face for signs of inward laughter, but doesn’t see any. “I told him to tell your guy I’m ready to go to one them couns’lors.”

“Well. I think you ought to.”

“I mean together.”

“Oh, John.”

“Was you who wanted to.”

“That was before.”

“Before what?”

“We separated.”

“We didn’t separate. You moved out.”

“Whatever.”

“I got some things home for you and the boy. I’ll drop them by later.”

“What things?”

“Food things. And money.”

“Can’t you give it to me now?”

“What?”

“I’ve got a class until eight o’clock.”

“What sort of class?”

“I told you, John.”

“Tell me again. I forgot.”

“A college class. Night school. I’m studying to be a teacher.”

“I’ll come by after, then.”

“I’d rather you wouldn’t tonight, John. I might not be there.”

“Why? You got a date?”

“I don’t want to talk about this now, John.”

“And you don’t want to talk about it later. When do you want to talk about it?” Lifting one hand to gesture with, John accidentally nudges the toothless man just as he’s lifting a spoon to his mouth. The spoon flies from his hand, clattering onto the counter. Soup splashes into the man’s lap.

“Sorry,” says John.

“The hell you say.”

Moira picks up John’s spoon and hands it to the man. “Chris’ mighty,” he mouths. “Go fetch me another bowl of soup there, missy. On the house.”

“I don’t know,” says Moira.

“You don’t need more soup,” says John. He sees Puffer grimacing at him through the smoke, his ox-like head angled precariously forward. “You didn’t lose but a spoonful.” He looks at Moira. “I’ll come by and see Nolan then. He’ll be there, right?”

“It’s not such a good time, John. I wish you’d called ahead.”

“I need to see him. And you.”