Earl looked at the car, and at Walt, and at Walt's coat, which had been a good coat in 1971. "Pump for a 400 Ford, forty, fifty dollars. Hector'll do the labor fair. Maybe eighty all in."
Walt nodded as if this were reasonable. In his chest the arithmetic, which had been holding together with string, came apart and lay on the ground in pieces.
"There's a motel on Highway 26," said the old man with the crossword. "The Lazy K. Clean enough."
"How much?"
"Nineteen ninety-five."
Walt nodded again. Thirty-two dollars in his wallet. Nineteen ninety-five for one night, two nights was forty. Eighty for the car. He looked at Josie, who was standing in the snow in her red parka holding her tape recorder against her chest, watching his face with the fixed attention of a child who is trying to read an adult's weather before it reaches her.
"I've got a spare room," said the waitress.
Everyone looked at her.
"It's not much. It's a trailer out past the fairgrounds. But the couch folds out and the furnace works and I've got a cat who won't bother anybody unless you've got tuna." She was not looking at Walt. She was looking at Josie. "You'd be welcome. Both of you. Until Monday."
Walt felt the old wall go up in him before he had even decided to build it. It went up the way it always had, brick by brick, his father's voice and his grandfather's: *We are all right. We do not take. We do not owe.*
"That's kind," he said. "But we couldn't. We'll take the motel."
The waitress's face did something then that he would think about later. It did not fall, exactly. It closed, the way a hand closes, slowly, around something it has decided to keep. She nodded.
"The Lazy K," she said. "Tell Bev at the desk that Lena sent you. She'll knock off a couple dollars."
"I appreciate it."
"Earl can run you over there in the truck once Hector's hooked up the car."