As I soaked that in, she cashed Herman’s check the same way she’d done mine, and suddenly we were flush with money of the sort we had not seen since the fingersmith preacher robbed us. Herman now was in the best of moods, twirling his finger double speed at his temple as if strenuous thinking were required for the big decision he was making.
“Guess what, Scotty. I am having a schooner, hah”—he cocked his eye at the line of spigots along the bar with blazoned handles that were a far cry from the labels of the multiple beers of Great Lakes ports, but indisputably promised the same intoxicant—“to celebrate that we are haymakers, got the smackers to prove it.” He dropped his voice. “And no posters of Killer Boy Dillinger out easy to be seen, I watched buildings careful on way in. Saving my neck, the Big Hole is.” He grinned triumphantly. “Drink to that, let us.”
Signaling the bartender from where she was busy setting up glasses of beer for the rest of the crew, he sunnily included me. “You want bottle of Crushed Orange, I betcha.”
“Not now, maybe later.” I had been weighing watching people guzzle beer against what was nagging at me, and conscience was winning out. “What I need to do is go call Gram. I haven’t for a while, and Jones doesn’t like me doing it at the ranch.”
Herman shooed me toward the swinging doors. “Go, do. I will hold fort here.”
? ? ?
AS I WAS PRETTY sure of, the Wisdom store had an arrangement common to mercantiles in those days before telephones were everywhere, a nook in the back where a wall phone was available along with an egg timer, so you could pay for the length of your call on your way out.
The familiar hum of distance, the suppressed ring at the other end, which always went on for a long time at the Columbus Hospital pavilion ward, until some busy nun set aside a bedpan or some other ministration for the nuisance of the phone, as I imagined it. Then Sister Carma Jean, who by now was getting used to my calls, briskly told me Gram would be there in a minute.
When Gram promptly came on and sounded like her old self in declaring she’d been waiting for me to call so she could share the nicest conceivable surprise with me, she skipped right past my hello to go right to her news. “I’m up and around and helping in the kitchen. Between you and me, nuns are terrible cooks.”
“Jeez, Gram,” my voice topped out in relief, “that’s really terrif—”
“That’s not the surprise, though,” she busted right in as if the other news wouldn’t keep. “You’ll never guess who I’ve heard from.” She could not have been more right about that. “Letty. She called me from Glasgow in her new job there.”
I was boggled by that, the entire picture of the lipstick-implanted bus encounter scrambled in my head. “What happened to Havre?”
“A boss who pinched her bottom one time too many. Like once. Donny, why in heaven’s name didn’t you tell me in one of your letters you met up with her on the dog bus?”
“Uhm, I had a lot I was trying to get in the letters”—utterly true—“and must have missed out on that somehow.”
“She thinks the world of you, anyway. Said you were real good company riding the bus together.” My pride started to swell at that, but Gram was not nearly done spilling the surprise. “She’s working at the Glasgow Supper Club now. Here’s even better news. She can get me on as night cook.”
“In Glasgow?” I asked dumbly. “Just like that?”
“Didn’t I say so?” she retorted, as if I’d better wash out my ears. More of me than that needed clearing to hold what she said next.
“I know it’s different country over there for us and we’d rather be on a ranch”—her voice turned honestly dubious for a moment—“but we’ll have to tough through it. Letty and I have things worked out. There’s an apartment right by hers. When you get home from Aunt Kate’s for school, we’ll be together under one roof. Doesn’t that beat all?”
Yes, no, and maybe fought over that in me. There it was, imagination more or less come true, Letty embossed into our patchy family as niftily as the name on her blouse. And even better yet, maybe Harv, too, except he was a wanted man there in the jurisdiction of that snotty little sheriff. By and large, Gram’s report was the jackpot of my wishes, but also a king hell dilemma. The best I could manage into the receiver was, “That’s—that’s really some news.”
“You sound like the air has been knocked out of you,” Gram said, perfectly pleased. “I can’t wait to see you again—you’ll have so much to tell me about your adventures back east there, won’t you.” Not if I could help it. “Donny? I think it’d be only fair if I let your Aunt Kate know how peachy the summer is working out, thanks to you being there with her and Dutch, don’t you? Call her to the phone, pretty please.”
“She’s, uh, taking a bath,” panic spoke for me. “She does that every night before bed. Boy, is she ever clean.”
“I guess you’ll have to tell her for me,” Gram resumed. “Anyway, when the doctor turns me loose for good any day now and Letty helps me get established in that apartment and you can come home whenever you want, I’d like the great Kate to know how much your stay there has meant.”
“Oh yeah, she’ll know.”