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How are you makin it?
You're lookin at it. You by yourself?
Yessir.
Set down. You want some coffee?
Bell looked at the clutter on the checked oilcloth. Bottles of medicine. Breadcrumbs. Quarterhorse magazines. Thank you no, he said. I appreciate it.
I had a letter from your wife.
You can call her Loretta.
I know I can. Did you know she writes me?
I guess I knew she'd wrote you a time or two.
It's more than a time or two. She writes pretty regular. Tells me the family news.
I didnt know there was any.
You might be surprised.
So what was special about this letter then.
She just told me you was quittin, that's all. Set down.
The old man didnt watch to see if he would or he wouldnt. He fell to rolling himself a cigarette from a sack of tobacco at his elbow. He twisted the end in his mouth and turned it around and lit it with an old Zippo lighter worn through to the brass. He sat smoking, holding the cigarette pencilwise in his fingers.
Are you all right? Bell said.
I'm all right.
He wheeled the chair slightly sideways and watched Bell through the smoke. I got to say you look older, he said.
I am older.
The old man nodded. Bell had pulled out a chair and sat and he put his hat on the table.
Let me ask you somethin, he said.
All right.
What's your biggest regret in life.
The old man looked at him, gauging the question. I dont know, he said. I aint got all that many regrets. I could imagine lots of things that you might think would make a man happier. I reckon bein able to walk around might be one. You can make up your own list. You might even have one. I think by the time you're grown you're as happy as you're goin to be. You'll have good times and bad times, but in the end you'll be about as happy as you was before. Or as unhappy. I've knowed people that just never did get the hang of it.
I know what you mean.
I know you do.
The old man smoked. If what you're askin me is what made me the unhappiest then I think you already know that.
Yessir.
And it aint this chair. And it aint this cotton eye.
Yessir. I know that.
You sign on for the ride you probably think you got at least some notion of where the ride's goin. But you might not. Or you might of been lied to. Probably nobody would blame you then. If you quit. But if it's just that it turned out to be a little roughern what you had in mind. Well. That's somethin else.
Bell nodded.
I guess some things are better not put to the test.
I guess that's right.
What would it take to run Loretta off?
I dont know. I guess I'd have to do somethin that was pretty bad. It damn sure wouldnt be just cause things got a little rough. She's done been there a time or two.
Ellis nodded. He tipped the ash from his smoke into a jar-lid on the table. I'll take your word on that, he said.
Bell smiled. He looked around. How fresh is that coffee?
I think it's all right. I generally make a fresh pot here ever week even if there is some left over.
Bell smiled again and rose and carried the pot to the counter and plugged it in.
They sat at the table drinking coffee out of the same crazed porcelain cups that had been in that house since before he was born. Bell looked at the cup and he looked around the kitchen. Well, he said. Some things dont change, I reckon.
What would that be? the old man said.
Hell, I dont know.
I dont either.
How many cats you got?
Several. Depends on what you mean by got. Some of em are half wild and the rest are just outlaws. They run out the door when they heard your truck.
Did you hear the truck?
How's that?
I said did you… You're havin a little fun with me.
What give you that idea?
Did you?
No. I seen the cats skedaddle.
You want some more of this?
I'm done.
The man that shot you died in prison.
In Angola. Yes.
What would you of done if he'd been released?
I dont know. Nothin. There wouldnt be no point to it. There aint no point to it. Not to any of it.
I'm kindly surprised to hear you say that.
You wear out, Ed Tom. All the time you spend tryin to get back what's been took from you there's more goin out the door. After a while you just try and get a tourniquet on it. Your grandad never asked me to sign on as deputy with him. I done that my own self. Hell, I didnt have nothin else to do. Paid about the same as cowboyin. Anyway, you never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from. I was too young for one war and too old for the next one. But I seen what come out of it. You can be patriotic and still believe that some things cost more than what they're worth. Ask them Gold Star mothers what they paid and what they got for it. You always pay too much. Particularly for promises. There aint no such thing as a bargain promise. You'll see. Maybe you done have.
Bell didnt answer.
I always thought when I got older that God would sort of come into my life in some way. He didnt. I dont blame him. If I was him I'd have the same opinion about me that he does.
You dont know what he thinks.
Yes I do.
He looked at Bell. I can remember one time you come to see me after you all had moved to Denton. You walked in and you looked around and you asked me what I intended to do.
All right.
You wouldnt ask me now though, would you?
Maybe not.
You wouldnt.
He sipped the rank black coffee.
You ever think about Harold? Bell said.
Harold?
Yes.
Not much. He was some older than me. He was born in ninety-nine. Pretty sure that's right. What made you think about Harold?
I was readin some of your mother's letters to him, that's all. I just wondered what you remembered about him.
Was they any letters from him?
No.
You think about your family. Try to make sense out of all that. I know what it did to my mother. She never got over it. I dont know what sense any of that makes either. You know that gospel song? We'll understand it all by and by? That takes a lot of faith. You think about him goin over there and dyin in a ditch somewheres. Seventeen year old. You tell me. Because I damn sure dont know.
I hear you. Did you want to go somewheres?
I dont need nobody haulin me around. I aim to just set right here. I'm fine, Ed Tom.
It aint no trouble.
I know it.
All right.
Bell watched him. The old man stubbed out his cigarette in the lid. Bell tried to think about his life. Then he tried not to. You aint turned infidel have you Uncle Ellis?
No. No. Nothin like that.
Do you think God knows what's happenin?
I expect he does.
You think he can stop it?
No. I dont.
They sat quietly at the table. After a while the old man said: She mentioned there was a lot of old pictures and family stuff. What to do about that. Well. There aint nothin to do about it I dont reckon. Is there?
No. I dont reckon there is.
I told her to send Uncle Mac's old cinco peso badge and his thumb-buster to the Rangers. I believe they got a museum. But I didnt know what to tell her. There's all that stuff here. In the chifforobe in yonder. That rolltop desk is full of papers. He tilted the cup and looked into the bottom of it.
He never rode with Coffee Jack. Uncle Mac. That's all bull. I dont know who started that. He was shot down on his own porch in Hudspeth County.
That's what I always heard.
They was seven or eight of em come to the house. Wantin this and wantin that. He went back in the house and come out with a shotgun but they was way ahead of him and they shot him down in his own doorway. She run out and tried to stop the bleedin. Tried to get him back in the house. Said he kept tryin to get hold of the shotgun again. They just set there on their horses. Finally left. I dont know why. Somethin scared em, I reckon. One of em said somethin in injun and they all turned and left out. They never come in the house or nothin. She got him inside but he was a big man and they was no way she could of got him up in the bed. She fixed a pallet on the floor. Wasnt nothin to be done. She always said she should of just left him there and rode for help but I dont know where it was she would of rode to. He wouldnt of let her go noway. Wouldnt hardly let her go in the kitchen. He knew what the score was if she didnt. He was shot through the right lung. And that was that. As they say.