Page 61 of Devoted

Pearl's at seven Monday, and she was the only one at the counter.

"Honey."

"Pearl."

Pearl poured. Down at the pass-through Marge's arm came and went with a plate on it. The elevator men weren't in yet, and it was quiet enough to hear the grill.

"Eggs?"

"Just this. I've got twenty kids at eight."

"You've had them at eight for eight years. You could eat an egg."

"Not this morning."

"Your mama eating?"

"When she thinks I'm not watching."

"That's Edna." Pearl set the pot down, put her two hands flat on the counter, and looked at her. "I'm going to say one thing and then I'll leave you be."

"Say it."

"Whatever it is you're doing, honey, it's working." She said it soft and plain, with all the kindness she had, and it went in like a hand on a bruise. "That man hasn't finished a cup in here since Lamesa. He sits down there and drinks half and looks at the door and puts his money down and goes. Eleven years I've poured him. I never saw him look at a door."

Olivia put both hands around her cup.

"I'm not doing anything, Pearl."

"Course you're not."

"He's got cows to see to. Mine and his."

"He's always had cows, honey. He drank his coffee anyway." Pearl picked the pot up. "Drink yours. You look tired." She went down the counter with it and didn't come back.

The kitchen door swung. Marge came out through it in her apron with her sleeves pushed up, her grey hair pinned the way it had been pinned since Olivia was handing egg cartons over this counter at nine years old, and she didn't say anything. She set a jar down in front of Olivia's coffee. A small jar with a canning lid, her own salve, the one she gave the roughnecks for their hands in a dry winter. She looked at Olivia over it, once, straight, the way she'd looked at Mick Bateman when his eggs came in short. Then she went back through the door, and it swung shut behind her.

Olivia looked at the jar. She turned her hands over on the counter and looked at them. The knuckles had healed a week ago, all three of them, pink and shut, and Marge had watched them heal from the pass-through the same as she'd watched them split. The salve wasn't for her hands.

She put it in her coat pocket, finished her coffee, paid, and went and taught twenty children the letter M.

Earl's at nine Saturday was the stove and two men at it and the smell of feed, and she went down the row to the cubes without looking at anybody and got a sack up on her shoulder before she'd let herself think about who it was for.

Judge's cubes. She'd been buying them since February, and there was a bull's worth stacked in her barn for a bull that wasn't coming. She carried the sack to the counter anyway. Duke would eat them.

The slate was where it always was, by the calendar, above the parts cage. RAIN BY EASTER, in Earl's tilted hand. Under that, from February, BATEMAN PLACE GONE BY JUNE. 3 TO 1 YES, the chalk gone grey on it. Under that, white and fresh, a new line.

O. ROYSTON SAYS IT BEFORE THE SIGN COMES DOWN. 5 TO 1 NO.

She read it twice. Earl came out of the parts cage and rang the cubes.

"Ma'am. Same as last week."

She paid. She took her sack out to the truck and got in and sat there with her hands on the wheel and said it to herself once, plain.

The whole county had her and Owen Royston on a slate with odds on it, and it had him at no, and it was right. And the man who'd got the county to chalk Owen's name up there at all was the wrong cousin, and she'd put him there on purpose, and she knew exactly what she wanted out of it and it wasn't Brody's coat on her chair and it wasn't Owen's hand on a gate. She wanted him to say it. Out loud, in front of somebody, Pearl or Earl or her mama or the whole church lot, one time, so it existed somewhere besides a barn. She wasn't going to ask him. She'd asked. She was going to wait and see what he did, and she was ashamed of the method and not one bit sorry, and she was tired all the way down to her boots. She started the truck.

The trailer had always come at daylight.