“Arch,” Burdette said, “it was hot. You just wouldn’t believe how hot it was.” He began to laugh. “And hers was too,” he said.
Then Withers drove away, across the gravel out onto the road and over to Main Street to Bradbury’s Bakery. For an hour before going home again, before returning to the tractor waiting for him in the half-plowed field which he admitted he had left for too long already over this damned business, he sat drinking black coffee and eating cream-filled doughnuts while he told some of us what he had just heard. He said he believed that Burdette had stopped laughing as he drove away but that he was pretty sure Burdette was still grinning.
“So,” one of us said. “He’s married now, is he? Well hell’s bells.”
“Except you mean wedding bells, don’t you?” one of the others said.
“No, I don’t. I mean, that son of a bitch. I wonder what she looks like.”
As a result of all this there was a considerable crowd at the Holt Cafe on Main Street that Thursday noon. People in Holt knew Burdette ate lunch there and they hoped that his new wife would join him. They wanted to see this new woman for themselves. They wanted to examine her and confirm their expectations. By twelve o’clock all of the tables and booths at the cafe were occupied and there was an increasing number of people standing up at the front door waiting for the possibility of a vacated table. Meanwhile the special of the day—Swiss steak and potatoes and green beans and hot apple pie—had already been used up.
Then a little after twelve Burdette walked in. He stood just inside the doorway a moment, scanning the tables and booths, looking across the steamy overfilled room for a place to sit. A couple of the local men waved at him, motioning for him to come join them at a center table opposite the salad bar. He acknowledged the men, but then he walked past their table and over to a booth in the corner. There was a young woman sitting in the booth, alone.
She had come in earlier. I believe she had been there for about thirty minutes; maybe more than that. When she had entered the cafe late that morning people had noticed her—anyone new in town would be noticed—but I don’t think they had thought much about it. I suppose they—we—had all assumed that she was just some single woman from out of town who was passing through Holt on Highway 34 and that she had only stopped for lunch and maybe for an hour of rest at the cafe. Still there were people who were annoyed with her too; those men and women who were standing up at the doorway kept glancing at her, indicating by their quick harsh glances that she ought to have the decency to get up and leave. She was occupying an entire booth by herself, a booth which they themselves had more immediate and urgent need of.
Then Burdette did something which surprised everyone in the cafe. He sat down with her—not across from her but beside her—and he put his arm around her. He pulled this new unknown young woman to himself and kissed her.