"You said Whitfield. On the telephone." The old man's voice was very quiet. "Corvallis Trader. Thurman Whitfield. You're his boy."
"Yes."
Sig looked at him for a long, long time. Then he looked down at the soup and the bread as if the whole counter had been a trick and he had only now seen the wires. He put his hand in his coat pocket and took out his coins, and counted out thirty-five cents onto the counter, a quarter and a dime, and then after a moment added the nickel and the four pennies, and the Canadian dime, all of it, everything he had, and pushed it across.
"Feeding a man for nothing," he said. "And getting ready to talk to the Coast Guard." He stood up. "Just like your father."
He buttoned his pea coat to the collar, slowly, one button at a time. Then he went out. The bell over the door rang behind him, and Duncan stood at the end of the counter and watched him go down Sixth Street toward the water, walking the way old sailors walk, with his feet wide apart, as if the sidewalk might move.
Ilda had come out of the kitchen. She was wiping flour off her hands with a towel. She looked at the bowl of soup, still half full, and the coins, and then at Duncan.
"What did he say?"
"He said I was just like my father."
Ilda considered that. "Was that a good thing or a bad thing?"
"I don't know," Duncan said. "I don't know which."
He didn't come back on Friday. Or Saturday. On Monday at ten past two the window stool was empty, and on Tuesday too, and Duncan found that he was watching the door the way Sig had watched the channel, leaning a little, as if he had money on it.