"Jimmy?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm here." His son's voice had gone strange, thick. "Did you eat it, Pop?"
"What?"
"The sandwich. Did you eat it?"
"I ate it. What kind of question is that?"
"Good," said Jimmy. "That's good. Listen, I've got to go, this is costing you —"
"It's costing you, it's collect."
"Right. Then it's costing me. Listen. Stay put till Monday. Don't — just stay put, okay? Don't do anything stupid. I'll call the diner tomorrow. Tell Jo I love her. Tell her I'll have a Christmas tree up when she gets here. Pop?"
"I'm here."
"I love you," said his son, who had not said that to him on the telephone in his entire life, and hung up.
Walt stood holding the receiver. Behind him the jukebox had gone quiet. When he turned around, the waitress was standing at the end of the counter with the coffeepot in her hand, and she had been watching him, and she looked away.
* * *
The motel room at the Lazy K had two double beds with chenille spreads the color of canned peaches, a television bolted to the dresser that got two channels and one of them was snow, a print of a cowboy roping a calf, a Gideon Bible, and a wall heater under the window that rattled for five minutes every time it came on and then settled into a sulky roar. Bev at the desk had taken four dollars off without being asked, and given Josie two Tootsie Rolls from a jar.
Walt paid with a twenty and got back four dollars and five cents, and counted the bills in his wallet when Josie was in the bathroom. Sixteen dollars. If Hector did the labor fair. If God liked him.
Earl had sent them off from the diner with a white paper sack. "Leftovers," he'd said, gruffly, thrusting it at Josie, not at Walt. "Clean out the cooler." Inside were two ham sandwiches, a carton of milk, two slices of cherry pie in a foam box, and a banana. Walt knew a cooler that was being cleaned out and he knew one that wasn't, and this one wasn't, and he took the sack anyway because Josie already had it, and because something in him had gone quiet since the gravy, and the wall did not go up as fast as it used to.