“I’ll have a beer,” he said.
“Good man,” Mike replied.
After ordering beers for each of them, LeRoy asked the bartender where they might find a whorehouse.
“Ain’t nothin’ exactly like that in Braggadocio,” the bartender replied. He pointed toward the stairs. “But we got a top floor here with private rooms and beds, and half-a-dozen whores that look as good as any you’re goin’ to find in some big city somewhere.”
As the bartender was talking, he saw Jules take a sip of his beer, then make a face at its bitterness. The bartender looked at LeRoy as he pointed to Jules.
“Ain’t this here boy kinda young to be runnin’ with you fellas? Most especial if you are talkin’ about whores and such.”
Jules’s eyes narrowed. “Mister, you got somethin’ to say about me, you say it to me. Don’t be talkin’ around me.”
“All right, I’m tellin’ you, I think you are still a little too wet behind the ears to be in here.”
Jules took another swallow of his beer, this time making certain not to react to the beer’s bitter taste. “You know, I heard there was lots of young fellas no older’n me killin’ and dyin’ in the late war. If it was to come down to that again, do you think I would be old enough to go to war?”
“Well, I reckon you might be,” the bartender admitted.
“So that means I’m old enough to die?” Jules asked.
“I suppose so.”
“That makes me old enough.”
The bartender had a puzzled look on his face. “How does that make you old enough?”
“Well, now, a fella doesn’t get any older than dead, does he?” Jules asked.
Suddenly, the bartender laughed. “I reckon you got a point there, boy,” he said. “Yes, sir, I reckon you got a point.”
“Whereat is a good place to eat?” LeRoy asked.
“Jenny’s Place, just next door,” the bartender replied.
“Well, sir, me an’ my friends is goin’ over to this here Jenny’s Place to get us somethin’ to eat,” LeRoy said. “Then we’re goin’ to come back for some serious drinking and to make a run on them whores. Don’t you let them get away.”
“Oh, don’t worry none about that. They’ll be here.”
The cowboys left the saloon, then turned into Jenny’s Place, which was next door. Their orders came quickly, but while Mike, Andy, and LeRoy wolfed down their meals, Jules merely picked at his food.
“You plannin’ on eatin’ the rest of them taters?” LeRoy asked Jules. When Jules shook his head, LeRoy took Jules’s plate and shoveled the uneaten potatoes off onto his own.
LeRoy spent the rest of the meal instructing Jules on the proper techniques of whoring. “You’re prob’ly thinkin’ you should get yourself a real young whore, ain’t you? Maybe someone about your own age?”
“I don’t know,” Jules replied in a mumble.
“Come on, boy, pay attention,” LeRoy said. “I’m tryin’ to learn you somethin’ about whorin’ here.”
“LeRoy, leave the boy alone,” Mike said.
“I ain’t doin’ nothin’ wrong,” LeRoy replied. “I’m just tryin’ to learn the boy a few things. You got no trouble with that, do you, boy?”
“No,” Jules said. “It’s just that…”
“It’s just what?”
“If Pearlie was still here, I don’t think we’d be doin’ this.”
“Doin’ what?”
“Talkin’ about goin’ with whores and such,” Jules said.
“Yeah, well, Pearlie ain’t here,” LeRoy said. “And he didn’t say don’t go with no whores now, did he?”
“No.”
“So that takes care of that. Now, how ’bout what I asked you a while ago? If you was to have your choice betwixt a young whore and a old whore, which one would you choose?”
“I’d choose the young whore, I reckon.”
“Why?”
“Well, ’cause I’m young,” Jules said.
“Uh-huh, and that’s just where you’d be makin’ a big mistake,” LeRoy insisted.
“Why would that be a mistake?” Jules asked.
“Because if she’s that young, she won’t be a’knowin’ a whole lot more about it than you, for all that she is a whore,” LeRoy explained. “What you need is to find yourself the oldest one in the place. See, that way, there ain’ no kind of way she ain’ never been rode, an’ no kind of man she ain’t never throwed. Besides which, the older the whores get, the younger they like their men. An old whore would be a real good one for breakin’ you in.”
