Page 89 of Denied
“Give me the pan, honey, it’s my stove, and go sit down at that table, because there’s three people at it who’ve been waiting since six to say a thing to you and I’ve been on the road since four and I’d like to hear it too.”
Sunny gave her the pan.
She sat down. Dean was at the table with a coffee. Lara was beside him with her feet up and one hand on the basket. The old man was at the head with his hat on the wood, and Brody wasn’t there, because he’d been at the north tank since five with a chart and a bucket, on his father’s ground, on his father’s say-so, which had been four words at Sunday supper and a yes, sir from Brody.
“Well,” John said.
Nobody said anything.
“Dean. You’re the one who runs this place. You say it.”
Dean put the coffee down. He looked at his father, and at his wife, and at Sunny, and turned his hat over on the table once, the way he did.
“We’d like you to stay,” he said. “In the county. Not in this kitchen, that’s Helen’s, she’ll fight you for it. In the county. Lara’s got a baby and a ledger and a sister who won’t go home, and I’ve got a brother on my north tank who’s bought two sections of ground with a hole in the roof, and Dad’s got a chart on his wall he won’t let Helen take down. There’s not one of us wants to drive you to Midland on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. So we’d like you to stay. That’s all. That’s the speech. Lara wrote it and I’ve said it.”
“I didn’t write it.”
“You wrote most of it.”
“I wrote the part about the chart,” Lara said, and looked at Sunny, and her eyes were wet, and she didn’t do anything about it. “The rest was Dean. Dean’s never said that many words in a row about anything but cattle.”
Sunny sat there.
She’d been asked to stay by a man in a room. She’d been asked at a rail and asked every morning since in a house with no roof, and she’d said yes, and it was still a thing that went through her when it came from a table, from three people and a baby, in a kitchen with Helen’s coat back on the hook.
“I called the team this morning,” she said. “At six. Before you came down. I told them I’m not coming back. Not for the season, not after. I’ve quit. That’s all there was to it.” She looked at the old man. “So I’m staying. I was always staying. I told a man so at a bar and I’m telling you so at your table. I’d have told you yesterday but I wanted to call them first, so it’d be true when I said it.”
John looked at her a long moment.
“Uh huh,” he said, and picked up his coffee.
“That’s it?” Lara said. “That’s what you’ve got? Uh huh?”
“She said she’s staying. I heard her.” He drank. “Helen. Eggs.”
“I heard, John.”
“And leave the chart.”
“I wasn’t going to touch the chart,” Helen said, to the pan. “I’ve read it. It’s better than mine.”
“What’ve you uploaded to the page?” Pearl said.
“It’s photographs. Of the pie. And the counter, and Marge with the pot, and the sign in the window that says GONE FISHING, which I want to keep, and the hours, and a map.” Sunny had the laptop open on the counter between the register and the pie case, and Pearl was looking at it the way she’d have looked at a snake that had come in and sat down. “People find it on their phones. People from Big Spring. People driving through. They see the pie and they stop.”
“People stop already.”
“People from here stop. I’m talking about people who don’t know you exist.”
“Everybody knows I exist.”
“Pearl.” Marge, from the kitchen door, with the pot. “Let the girl put your pie on the internet.”
Pearl looked at Marge. Marge looked back. It went on a second longer than it needed to, and then Pearl said, “Fine. But not the picture of me. The one of Marge. Marge is better looking,” and Marge went back in the kitchen, and Sunny sat there with her hands on the keys and kept her face still.
The co-op called Friday while she was still at Pearl’s counter, and she stood by the pie case with the phone and said, “I don’t know yet. I’ll call you back,” and hung up, and Earl, at the end of the counter with his paper, said, “Co-op.”
“Co-op. They want a page. They asked what I charge.”
