“Where’d you find the squaw, Caney?”
“What?” Caney said, momentarily distracted by a popping noise coming from the ice machine.
Sam tilted the nearly empty bottle and used it to point toward Vena. “Nice ass,” he said, then downed the last of the beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Real nice-looking piece of ass.”
Caney was surprised to feel his jaw tighten with anger. He shifted forward in his chair, his face just inches away from Sam’s.
“You figure that’s any of your business, Sam? Seems to me—”
“Caney!” Molly O yelled.
Caney pivoted to see Molly O standing in a puddle of water running from beneath the ice maker.
“Look at this mess,” she said.
But Caney was, at the moment, little concerned with busted tubing spouting water onto the floor.
When he turned back to the counter, Sam was already out the door. Through the front window, Caney saw him brush against Vena as he walked to his truck.
A minute later, when Vena came back inside, Caney found he still had Sam’s two dollars wadded tightly in his fist.
At seven-thirty Vena picked up her last customers of the night, a couple in their sixties drinking whiskey from paper cups. They had intended a quick stop to use the john, but when they encountered Vena at the curb, they decided to stay. After their business inside the Honk was finished, they returned to their car where they ordered steak finger baskets, glasses of ice and Coke.
Though the food was largely ignored, they reordered fresh set-ups twice and stayed until closing time.
When Caney turned off the sign at nine, the pockets of Vena’s jacket jangled with change, tips which totaled eleven dollars and eighty-three cents.
“You want to buy some of this silver?” Vena asked Caney as she dropped two handfuls of change onto the counter.
“Sure. I’ll take whatever you got.”
“Well, you didn’t exactly make your fortune, did you?” Molly O
said, barely able to keep the I-told-you-so tone out of her voice.
“No,” Vena answered as she stacked quarters four high, “but it’s better than nothing.”
Molly O, who usually left around seven, the tail end of the supper run, had spent the past two hours finding work that demanded her attention. She had emptied all the salt and pepper shakers, then washed and dried each one before she refilled them. As soon as Life Halstead had cleared out, she wiped down all the stools at the counter with Pine Sol. She reorganized everything in the freezer, then changed the shelf paper in a cabinet where they kept clean cups and saucers.
Caney had asked her a couple of times why she was staying so late, but rather than admit her determination to outlast Vena, she had pointed out work long overdue, work she couldn’t put off any longer.
Now, with Vena about to make an exit, Molly O got busy cleaning the plastic menu covers stacked on the counter, a job that would keep her as near Caney as possible.
“Here’s ten dollars,” Vena said, shoving stacks of silver across the counter.
Caney opened the cash register. “Look,” he said as he handed her two fives, “I don’t feel right not paying you a salary, but—”
“I told you I’d work for tips.”
“Well, at least let me feed you. I can sure as hell afford to do that.”
“I’ve already cleaned the grill,” Molly O said.
“That’s okay. I’m not hungry.”
Caney said, “You haven’t had a bite since you got here.” Then he pushed a package wrapped in foil across the counter to Vena. “I fixed you a couple of ham-and-cheese sandwiches.”
“Thanks.”
“How about a cup of coffee?” Caney offered.
“Just emptied the pot,” Molly O said.
“I’ve got to go, anyway.”
“You want a Coke?” Caney asked. “A bottle of beer?”
Vena shook her head. “I’ll just go get the dog,” she said as she turned and walked away.
Earlier in the day, right after her first customers left, Vena had settled the dog in a small utility room next to the kitchen. Each time she’d checked, the dog was asleep. But she’d had to wake it twice—once for the medicine and again when she replaced the soiled pad inside the blanket.
Now, though, the dog was awake, and as Vena eased it into a cardboard box she’d found behind the cafe, it began to whimper.
“It’s okay,” she said as she shouldered her duffel bag and cradled the box beneath her arm. “Don’t be scared.”
“How’s she doing?” Caney asked when Vena came from the back.
“Not so good.”
“You think she’d eat some ground beef ?”
“No. She couldn’t handle that right now.”
“How about—”
“I’ve got something for her.”
Vena stuffed the sandwiches inside her bag while she headed for the door.
“Why don’t you let Molly O give you a ride?” Caney said. Then, to Molly O, “You’re about ready to leave, aren’t you?”
“Not yet. I’ve still got a few more things to do.”
“I’ll walk.” Vena said. “It’s not that far.”
“Okay.” Caney shrugged. “I guess we’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Sure.” Then, as she was closing the door, Vena said good-bye.
Caney, rolling his chair to the window, watched her as she crossed the parking lot. She moved quickly, away from the light, like an animal sensing safety in the cover of darkness.
Molly O finally broke the silence when she picked up the menus and tapped them against the counter until they fell evenly, between her fingers, into a neat stack. But Caney, undistracted, continued to stare out the window even after Vena had disappeared into the night.
“Well,” Molly O said, her voice tinged with relief, “we’ve seen the last of that one.”
“You don’t think she’ll be back?” Caney asked, still peering into the shadows edging the road.
“Not if we’re lucky.”
Caney turned then, studying Molly O’s face. “What’s going on with you, huh?”
“With me?”
“Yeah. You’ve been pissed since she walked in. I don’t get it.”
“No.” Molly O slapped the menus onto the counter, sending most of them flying to the floor. “Apparently you don’t.”
“Then why don’t you tell me.”
“She’s trouble, Caney. Real trouble.”
“She didn’t cause me any trouble, but she’s damned sure got you riled up. What I don’t know is why.”
“Why?” Molly O pulled off her apron, jerking at ties and clawing at straps like a woman coming out of a straitjacket. “Because she’s a liar and a thief.”
“What are you talking about?”
“When Wilma asked her where she was living—”
“Oh, hell. Wilma was snooping around, hoping to make her ten percent on one of those cracker box apartments she rents out.”
“The point is, she told Wilma she’d found a place west of town.”
“So?”
“ ’Case you didn’t know it,” Molly O said, pointing in the direction Vena had taken, “that’s east.”
“Aw, she probably just got turned around.”
“Her kind don’t get turned around.” Molly O worked at a knot in one of her apron strings. “Woman like that, she always knows exactly where she’s going.”
“Maybe she needed something from the Texaco. She might’ve decided to walk down there before she went home.”
“The Texaco?” Molly O shook her head at the suggestion. “What for? A tank of gas?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Maybe she went to meet her boyfriend.
Maybe she went to look for another job. A
real
job.”
“But doesn’t it seem fishy to you, her saying she lived west, then striking out east? Doesn’t that make you just the least bit suspicious?”
“Nope. But then I’m not the suspicious type.”
“Well, you’d better be glad one of us is, ’cause if I hadn’t had my eyes open, which you obviously did not, then she would’ve walked out of here with more than a candle.”
“That’s what this is about? A damned candle?”
“Caney, a thief is a thief. If she’ll take one thing, then she’ll take another.”
“Yeah, you’re right. We’d better count the pickles.”
“Listen. If she walked in here with a gun and said, ‘This is a stickup,’ then—”
“Don’t make any sudden moves,” Caney said as he shaped his hand into a pistol, pointing it at Molly O. “Just hand over your candle.”
Molly O waved his hand away, a gesture emphasizing her seriousness. “If she said, ‘Empty that cash register,’ it wouldn’t matter whether she made off with a dollar or a thousand. She’d still be a thief.”
Then, with the posture of an attorney winding up her closing argument, Molly O squared her shoulders, offered her hands, palms up, and said, “In this case, we were lucky. All she got away with was a candle.”
“Well, since she didn’t hold us up at gunpoint, how did she manage to make off with our candle?”
“She snatched it out of the cabinet in the utility room.”
“Molly O, we’ve used those candles for years. You drag them out every time the electricity goes out.”
“That don’t matter, Caney.”
“They’re nothing but nubbins now. Hell, some aren’t as long as my thumb.”
“What’s important here is that she took what didn’t belong to her.”
“And how do you know? Did you see her take it?”
“No, but—”
“Did you have them counted?”
Molly O shook her head. “I saw it in that bag she carries.”
“Jesus Christ.” Caney shook the last cigarette from the pack he’d opened that morning. “I can’t believe you went through her stuff.”
“I didn’t go
through
it. I just unzipped it and looked inside. It was right there on top.”
Caney crushed the empty Camel package, then hurled it against the wall.
“Maybe I’m not as trusting as you are, Caney, but—”
“Look. The woman is working for nothing, wouldn’t even eat a meal. She worked seven, eight hours, turned some business and—”
“Oh, honey.” Molly O brushed Caney’s hair away from his forehead like a mother forgiving a misguided child. “She just took the business from in here. If she hadn’t got to them out there, they would’ve come inside.”
“I don’t know about that.” Caney pulled back, out of Molly O’s reach, opened the cash register and began pulling out bills. “I’d say we ran thirty or thirty-five dollars over most Thursdays.”
“Well, it’s neither here nor there now, is it?”
“How’s that?”
“She left here headed for the interstate. Chances are she’s already cozied up next to the fool who picked her up.” Molly O took the bills from Caney’s hand and stuffed them inside a bank bag. “By this time tomorrow night, she’ll be God knows where, carrying that pitiful dog around until she finds someone else who’ll give her a handout.”
“I didn’t give her a damned thing.”
“And in case you didn’t notice, she didn’t say ‘good night.’ She said ‘good-bye.’ ”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“Trust me, Caney. We’ve seen the last of Miss Vena Takes Horse.”
“I don’t know,” Caney said, once again staring out into the night. “I think she’ll be back.”
T
HE SCHOOL BUS sat at the far edge of a ravine less than a quarter mile behind the Honk. Vena had spotted it earlier in the day while she was out back, getting a box for the dog. She’d wanted to get a closer look, see what condition the bus was in, but when she saw Molly O watching her from the kitchen, she decided to wait until the cafe closed, hoping the night would shield her from view.
She followed the road until it curved away from the Honk before she cut back and crossed an open field. As she crawled through a barbed-wire fence to reach the ravine, she heard a horse snuffle from somewhere nearby.
From what she could tell, the bus hadn’t been moved for years.
Scrub brush had grown up to the fenders, and trumpet vines snaked over the hood and grille. A couple of windows near the front were cracked, but she didn’t see any broken ones, so she supposed the inside might be dry. Still, she didn’t expect much.
She hadn’t been inside a school bus since she was eleven, when she whipped Braz Iker, a fight that left her facing an angry princi-pal who suspended her bus privileges for a week, a suspension she considered to be a reprieve rather than a punishment. After that, she and Helen never rode the bus again, preferring instead to hitch rides when they could catch them and to walk when they couldn’t.
But the fight on the bus wasn’t the only time Vena and Braz had tangled.
Their first confrontation took place when Vena was in the third grade, the day he called Helen a blanket ass, laughed at her braids and made her cry, an experience which prompted Vena to stab him with a pencil. The skirmish that ensued left Vena with a swollen lip and sprained ankle.
Then, having discovered his power over the Takes Horse sisters, Braz never passed up a chance to get to them.
When he taunted Helen for wearing shoes bought for a quarter at his cousin’s yard sale, Vena wrestled him to the floor of the bus where he punched her in the stomach and made her throw up.
When he ripped open Helen’s lunch sack and produced what he claimed was a buffalo sandwich, Vena shoved him down the steps of the cafeteria, for which she paid with a black eye. And when he fooled Helen into believing she’d been invited to a Halloween party given by one of the town girls, Vena hit him in the neck with a rock, a lucky throw for which Braz retaliated by repeatedly slamming her head against the jungle gym.
Though she always came away from such confrontations bruised and bloody, she knew Helen suffered more . . . Helen, who chopped off her braid and flung her yard sale shoes into an abandoned well; Helen, who went hungry at lunch rather than bring a bologna sandwich from home; and Helen, who cried herself to sleep because she was the only girl in her class not invited to a Halloween party.
But Vena was tough in a way that Helen would never be, tough enough to take on a boy two years older and thirty pounds heavier than she was, the boy she finally whipped the day after her mother was first taken away to the state asylum.
Vena was sure that the news about her mother would have spread quickly after she was found mutilating herself in the Indian church, strapped into a straitjacket and hauled away by an ambulance with sirens blaring. Still, she thought that the Iker family might not have heard since they lived ten miles out on the river road.