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Tommy’s pistol—he had won it in a poker game from a classmate—and a sorry one at that. The cylinder wobbled and didn’t always line up the cartridge just right, and the action was so balky that the hammer might not fall with sufficient force to fire the gun. Frank had warned Tommy about the gun, telling him that it might blow
up in his hand someday or send lead spraying out that loose cylinder.
    All of them except Lester had handguns, and occasionally they brought them on a hunting trip so they could do a little target shooting with them or practice drawing and shooting from the hip. But they did not carry them into town, and they did not bring them into cafes.
    Tommy picked up the pistol and held it loosely by his ear. “Now where’s this boyfriend?”
    â€œHow long you been carrying that?” asked Frank.
    â€œRight along.”
    Wesley twisted around in his chair, trying to get a better look at the gun. He wanted to see the end of the cylinder, to see if there were nothing there but black empty chambers or if there were the dark glinting nubs of bullets.
    Anna said, “You better not let Mrs. Spitzer see you with that.”
    Tommy sighted the gun out the window. “Do I wait for him to come in or should I drop him as soon as he drives up?”
    â€œI don’t believe that will be necessary,” Frank said. There was a pitch of nervousness in his brother’s voice that Wesley hadn’t heard before.
    Wesley didn’t want to look away from Tommy but he stole a glance at Beverly. She was sitting as still as ever, her hands on her lap, her eyes fixed on the street. She reminded Wesley of an old woman in Bentrock, Mrs. Gamble, who spent so many long hours in her porch swing—just sitting, not reading or sewing or shelling peas or counting rosary beads—that sitting came to seem an act of great endurance.

    Tommy swung the pistol away from the window, and, just as he had earlier with an imaginary rifle, sighted in on the buffalo. “What do you bet I can take out one of those glass eyes?”
    â€œYou fire that thing in here,” said Frank, “and we’ll never get waited on.”
    At that moment Lester returned to the table. He had seen Tommy waving the gun about. “Yeah, shoot up the place. That’d be real fucking smart.”
    â€œCome on,” said Wesley. “These girls.”
    Then, as though neither gun nor girls were there, as though he were simply speaking to his three hungry friends, as in fact he was, Lester said, “I ordered you all fried ham sandwiches and tomato soup. If that ain’t what you want, you go tell her. She’s back there making pies. The other lady didn’t come in today because of the weather. That’s how come she didn’t take our order right away. She’s doing it all herself.”
    Frank had slid even closer to Anna, and, hunched over in his chair, he was talking softly to her, low and steady, and while he spoke he flicked his finger up and down on the hem of her dress. The motion looked idle, playful, unconscious, but each time he moved his finger her dress rode a fraction of an inch higher on her brown leg and then fell again. “Maybe you could show us your school,” he said. “Or where do you like to go? I’d like to see. Or we can go back to the hotel.... Keep us company. Tell us what it’s like in this part of North Dakota....” He nodded in Beverly’s direction. “She doesn’t have to come. If she’s worried about her boyfriend getting jealous. I understand. I don’t have a girlfriend myself right now, but I know how it is....”

    Something moved outside. Wesley turned his head and saw the truck, suddenly there in front of the Buffalo Cafe, the smoke of the exhaust whipping away in the wind. The truck’s side window was frosted over, and Wesley couldn’t see the driver.
    Beverly saw the truck too, and she jumped from her