Justice. Larry Watson
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plump girl looked around as if she were afraid of the punishment that might come to her if she gave their names to these four boys from Montana.
“I’m Anna. This is Beverly.”
Lester got up and angrily pushed his chair back to the table. “Enough of this shit. I’m going to see if we can’t get some food out here.”
“Last names,” said Frank. “What are your last names?”
Anna pointed to her friend. “Tuttle.” She put her hand up by her throat. “Tall Horse. Anna Tall Horse.” Wesley noticed a blush rising to her cheeks when she said her name. Only when she spoke her name did her smile diminish, as if the act of naming herself required all the seriousness she could summon.
Tommy said, “Tall Horse, huh. I believe I could ride a tall horse. Get those stirrups adjusted and it don’t matter how high or low the horse is.” He burst into laughter. Then he lifted his boot high enough for everyone to see. “But I ain’t wearing spurs. You got nothing to worry about.”
“Jesus, Tommy,” Wesley said.
“Jesus yourself. You ain’t getting us anywhere. Why don’t you go with Lester and see about getting the grub.”
Wesley looked over at Beverly Tuttle. If she heard him try to intercede on behalf of her and her friend, she gave no sign. She kept right on staring out the window, though Wesley knew there was nothing for her to see but blowing snow and a late afternoon that couldn’t hold its light against all the forces that wanted to shut it down.
I’m not like them, he wanted to say. They’re just after you to see what they can tear off you or stick in you. They don’t even see how beautiful you are; they don’t even care. But I—I’d be happy to just stare at you. I don’t want to hurt you or take advantage of you. You can trust me. You can talk to me.... But hot on the heels of those thoughts came these: Wesley knew he wasn’t going to speak to Beverly. And he knew she wouldn’t see him as any different from his brother and his friends. Why should she? For although he held these noble impulses toward Beverly he also wished that she would come back to the hotel with them, that she would drink so much of their whiskey that she would let them—Wesley included—do what they wanted to her. Wesley closed his eyes and dropped his head into his hands, wishing he could squeeze from his mind all but the nobler thoughts.
When he lifted his head and opened his eyes, Tommy was putting the matter directly to Anna. “You come back to the hotel with us and we’ll give you a drink of whiskey. What do you say to that?”
She was shaking her head no, but Wesley thought her smile said she was not entirely averse to the proposal.
By now Frank had slid his chair over so that he was sitting closer to the girls’ table than his own. “What are you saying?” he said to Tommy. “These are Sacred Heart girls. Sacred Heart girls don’t drink whiskey.” He smiled wickedly at Anna. “Do they?”
“You got a moving picture here?” asked Tommy. “We could take you to the moving picture.”
Anna shook her head. “There’s one over in Henton.”
“You been?”
She shook her head again.
“Want to go? How far’s Henton? We can drive over to Henton to see a moving picture. You gals come on over to the hotel with us and we’ll take you to Henton.”
“Tonight?”
“Or don’t Sacred Heart girls go to the moving pictures either?” asked Tommy.
“In the snow?”
“We drove in, didn’t we? How far’s Henton?”
“She’s got a boyfriend,” Anna said, nodding in Beverly’s direction.
Tommy looked to the right and the left. “Where? I don’t see him.”
Anna lowered her voice. “They’re going to get married.”
“Well, they’re not getting married tonight, are they?” said Frank.
“I’d think she’d want to be with a cowboy before she was married,” Tommy said. “Once anyway. Find out what she was missing.”
“Jesus Christ,” Wesley said. “She’s sitting right there.”
“You better watch your mouth there, brother. These are Sacred Heart girls.”
“Watch my mouth? Did you hear what he said?”
Anna wagged her finger in Tommy’s direction. “If her boyfriend heard you talk....”She shook her head gravely.
“Am I supposed to be scared?” asked Tommy.
Anna’s voice shifted and became like a little girl’s. “He’s coming to pick us up.”
“In a car?” asked Frank. “Or a wagon?”
Without taking her eyes from the window, Beverly spoke up. “He’s got a truck.”
In a falsetto, Tommy said, “A truck. He’s got a truck.”
“As soon as she graduates,” Anna volunteered. “That’s when they’re getting married.”
Tommy reached into his coat pocket. “We got to do something about this boyfriend.”
Frank leaned toward Beverly. “You’re awful young to be an old married woman.”
Tommy dropped the pistol on the tabletop and gave it a spin. The gun rumbled on the wood like far-off thunder. As it slowed, Anna and the boys watched to see where the barrel would finally point. It stopped—aimed just to the left of Tommy—and Wesley saw it clearly.
It was a .38 revolver, nickel plated, but the plating had worn off in so many places the gun was as black as it was silver. The black checkered grip was partially broken off and exposed the steel and the screw of the handle.
Wesley had seen it before. It was Tommy’s pistol—he had won it in a poker game from a classmate—and a sorry one at that. The cylinder wobbled and didn’t always line up the cartridge just right, and the action was so balky that the hammer might not fall with sufficient force to fire the gun. Frank had warned Tommy about the gun, telling him that it might blow up in his hand someday or send lead spraying out that loose cylinder.
All of them except Lester had handguns, and occasionally they brought them on a hunting trip so they could do a little target shooting with them or practice drawing and shooting from the hip. But they did not carry them into town, and they did not bring them into cafes.
Tommy picked up the pistol and held it loosely by his ear. “Now where’s this boyfriend?”
“How long you been carrying that?” asked Frank.
“Right along.”
Wesley twisted around in his chair, trying to get a better look at the gun. He wanted to see the end of the cylinder, to see if there were nothing there but black empty chambers or if there were the dark glinting nubs of bullets.
Anna said, “You better not let Mrs. Spitzer see you with that.”
Tommy sighted the gun out the window. “Do I wait for him to come in or should I drop him as soon as he drives up?”
“I don’t believe that will be necessary,” Frank said. There was a pitch of nervousness in his brother’s voice that Wesley hadn’t heard before.
Wesley didn’t want to look away from Tommy but he stole a glance at Beverly. She was sitting as still as ever, her hands on her lap, her eyes fixed on the street. She reminded Wesley of an old woman in Bentrock, Mrs. Gamble, who spent so many long hours in her porch swing—just sitting, not reading or sewing or shelling peas or counting rosary beads—that sitting came to seem an act of great endurance.
Tommy swung the pistol away from the window, and, just as he had earlier with an imaginary