“Agnes Wilson,” Wenzel said. “He went over to Agnes Wilson, that big hefty gal with pink hair and them big legs that some boys claim is soft as pillows. Anyway, she ain’t been working at the tavern long—come over here from Norka when her husband run off to Denver with some telephone operator. She’s got that kid that got hisself kicked out of school for playing with ladies’ corsets.”
Then for the first time that afternoon I said something. I had been listening to them talk and watching Wenzel spit tobacco, but now they were talking about something I knew about. I said, “No, Mr. Gerdts, I believe it was garter belts.”
Wenzel Gerdts looked at me as if he was shocked, as if someone had come up behind him and buzzed him with a cow prodder. He seemed to have forgotten that all that time I had been standing there with them in front of Wandorf’s Hardware Store. It was as if I was a stray calf that had suddenly decided to speak, even if all I had to say was: “Garter belts.”
“Was it?” Wenzel said, looking at me. “I heard it was corsets.”
“No, I believe it was garter belts all right,” I said. “He was making slingshots with them and selling them to kids for a nickel, three for a dime.”
“Did you buy one?” my dad said.
“No, sir,” I said. “The elastic was all pooped out. It was too stretched.”
My dad started laughing then, and Wenzel Gerdts choked a little on his Red Man chewing tobacco. I didn’t know what I had said that was funny, but I grinned and felt pleased that I had been able to make my dad laugh. He didn’t laugh much, not openly or loudly. The amusement would show in his eyes, but I don’t remember him laughing very often. He laughed that time, though, and maybe because I was the cause of it is the reason why I remember that afternoon so well.
Anyway, when Wenzel stopped choking, he took a silver half-dollar out of his overall pocket and gave it to me. My dad said I could keep it, and Wenzel said, “Now you can buy you a slingshot that ain’t already had the stretch pooped out of it.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “But not right now. I want to stay here.”
“That’s right, son,” my dad said. “I believe Wenzel’s about done storytelling anyway.”
“Sure,” Wenzel said. “There ain’t much more to tell.”
But before Wenzel Gerdts went on, he stood there and chewed a while. All along Main Street men were still talking in groups, and here and there a woman was carrying a box of groceries out to a car parked diagonally at the curb. While we waited for Wenzel to continue, a yellow dog came sniffing along the cars, wetting hubcaps and tires, until a man in a straw hat yelled at it, then the dog looked up and trotted across the street and began to work its way back up the block towards the railroad tracks, wetting wheels as it went.
Anyway, after a minute or two Wenzel seemed to have worked his wad to the right pitch and he went on. He told us that when Lyman stood up from the booth where he had been drinking their beer and taking their money, he walked over and stood directly in front of Agnes Wilson. He didn’t say anything to her, though. He just stood there hang faced and bashful. Of course he still had that yellow tie on and that black Sunday suit, so the only change in him from when he first put foot inside the tavern door was that his eyes had turned to glass marbles, or more like bloody egg yolks now, because by this time he had drunk more than just three beers. But again, it was as if he was starting over; he didn’t know what to do with himself after he had somehow made the first effort. But that didn’t seem to matter this time either: Agnes Wilson figured it out for both of them. She said something to him and he nodded, then she set her bar tray down and took his hands and showed him where to put them, one on her soft waist and the other in her white hand, and they began to dance.
“That is,” Wenzel said, “if you can call what Lyman was doing with her dancing.”
“Why?” my dad said. “Couldn’t Harry Barnes write that down for him too? How to dance, I mean.”