“Just busy,” I answered. That was what Reba said too. The place was quiet: nobody in the dining room but Reba and a new girl and one customer, drinking beer, Reba in all her big yellow diamonds but wearing a wrapper instead of the evening gown she would have had on if it had been Saturday night. It was a new wrapper but it was already fastened with safety pins. I answered the same thing too. “Just busy,” I said.
“I wish I could return the compliment,” she said. “I might as well be running a Sunday school. Meet Captain Strutterbuck,” she said. He was tall, pretty big, with a kind of roustabout’s face; I mean, that tried to look tough but wasn’t sure yet how you were going to take it, and hard pale eyes that looked at you hard enough, only he couldn’t seem to look at you with both of them at the same time. He was about fifty. “Captain Strutterbuck was in both wars,” Reba said. “That Spanish one about twenty-five years ago, and the last one too. He was just telling us about the last one. And this is Thelma. She just came in last week.”
“Howdy,” Strutterbuck said. “Were you a buddy too?”
“More or less,” I said.
“What outfit?”
“Lafayette Escadrille,” I said.
“Laughing what?” he said. “Oh, La-Fayette Esker-Drill. Flying boys. Dont know anything about flying, myself. I was cavalry, in Cuba in ‘98 and on the Border in ’16, not commissioned any longer, out of the army in fact: just sort of a private citizen aide t Blackjack because I knew the country. So when they decided to send him to France to run the show over there, he told me if I ever got across to look him up, he would try to find something for me. So when I heard that Rick—Eddie Rickenbacker, the Ace,” he told Reba and the new girl, “the General’s driver—that Rick had left him for the air corps, I decided that was my chance and I managed to get over all right but he already had another driver, a Sergeant Somebody, I forget his name. So there I was, with no status. But I still managed to see a little of it, from the back seat you might say—Argonne, Showmont, Vymy Ridge, Shatter Theory; you probably saw most of the hot places yourself. Where were you stationed?”
“Y.M.C.A.,” I said.
“What?” he said. He got up, slow. He was tall, pretty big; this probably wasn’t the first time both his eyes had failed to look at the same thing at the same time. Maybe he depended on it. By that time Reba was up too. “You wouldn’t be trying to kid me, would you?” he said.
“Why?” I said. “Dont it work?”
“All right, all right,” Reba said. “Are you going upstairs with Thelma, or aint you? If you aint, and you usually aint, tell her so.”
“I dont know whether I am or not,” he said. “What I think right now is—”
“Folks dont come in here to think,” Reba said. “They come in here to do business and then get out. Do you aim to do any business or dont you?”
“Okay, okay,” he said. “Let’s go,” he told Thelma. “Maybe I’ll see you again,” he told me.
“After the next war,” I said. He and Thelma went out. “Are you going to let him?” I said.
“He gets a pension from that Spanish war,” Reba said. “It came today. I saw it. I watched him sign his name on the back of it so I can cash it.”
“How much?” I said.
“I didn’t bother with the front of it. I just made damn sure he signed his name where the notice said sign. It was a United States Government postoffice money order. You dont fool around with the United States Government.”
“A postoffice money order can be for one cent provided you can afford the carrying charges,” I said. She looked at me. “He wrote his name on the back of a piece of blue paper and put it back in his pocket. I suppose he borrowed the pen from you. Was that it?”
“All right, all right,” she said. “What do you want me to do: lean over the foot of the bed and say, Just a second there, Buster?”—Minnie came in with another bottle of beer. It was for me.
“I didn’t order it,” I said. “Maybe I should have told you right off. I’m not going to spend any money tonight.”
“It’s on me then. Why did you come here then? Just to try to pick a fight with somebody?”
“Not with him,” I said. “He even got his name out a book. I dont remember what book right now, but it was a better book than the one he got his war out of.”
“All right, all right,” she said. “Why in hell did you tell him where you were staying? Come to think of it, why are you staying there?”
“Staying where?” I said.
“At the Y.M.C.A. I have some little squirts in here now and then that ought to be at the Y.M.C.A. whether they are or not. But I never had one of them bragging about it before.”
“I’m at the Teaberry,” I said. “I belonged to the Y.M.C.A. in the war.”
“The Y.M.C.A.? In the war? They dont fight. Are you trying to kid me too?”
“I know they dont,” I said. “That’s why I was in it. That’s right. That’s where I was. Gavin Stevens, a lawyer down in Jefferson, can tell you. The next time he’s in here ask him.”
Minnie appeared in the door with a tray with two glasses of gin on it. She didn’t say anything: she just stood in the door there where Reba could see her. She still wore the hat.
“All right,” Reba said. “But no more. He never paid for that beer yet. But Miss Thelma’s new in Memphis and we want to make her feel at home.” Minnie went away. “So you’re not going to unbutton your pocket tonight.”
“I came to ask you a favor,” I said. But she wasn’t even listening.
“You never did spend much. Oh, you were free enough buying beer and drinks around. But you never done any jazzing. Not with any of my girls, anyway.” She was looking at me. “Me neither. I’ve done outgrowed that too. We
