Return to Oakpine Read Online Free PDF Page B

dressed in a blue oxford cloth shirt and khakis, and he watched Mason step up and sit two stools down at the bar.
    â€œA dumb fat lawyer walks into a bar.”
    â€œWhat’s that?” the bartender said. He was forty and thin-haired and pale. He was the owner. Mason could tell by the way he’d handled the glasses.
    â€œJust a draft of Fat Tire,” Mason said. “And a shot of whatever whiskey goes with it.”
    â€œThey’ve all learned to go with it,” the barman said.
    â€œAny then.” Mason turned to the other patron. “You want any Any?” he asked. “I’m buying.”
    â€œI don’t know,” the man said.
    â€œOh-oh,” Mason said feeling suddenly like arguing. He’d been floating all day since he’d dropped off the keys to his loft with Allison at the office, and now he wanted to argue. “A truth teller.”
    â€œYeah, pour me one, Gene,” the man said.
    â€œHow long have you had the place?” Mason asked Gene.
    â€œWhat’s your guess?”
    â€œI guess one year. The place is polished up, no dust on the shoulders of the bottles, even the old blue brandies, and optimism is in the air.”
    The man sitting at the bar turned, “And you’re a realtor or a professor.”
    â€œI was a lawyer,” Mason said.
    â€œI won’t ask,” the man said. When Mason held his glance, the man said, “I manage the little satellite TV store in Farview.”
    â€œThat’s hardly bar-fight material,” Mason said.
    â€œDid you come in to fight?” Gene said. “Is that why you wore the sport coat?”
    â€œI don’t know. I don’t know how I started the day. But since we’re talking, I think I came in here to get hit.”
    The television representative shook his head. “You deserve to be hit?”
    â€œCertainly,” Mason said. “Should I provoke you?”
    â€œOh, I’m provoked,”
    â€œGene, your new bar is a powder keg.”
    â€œWe haven’t had a fight in here since I bought the place.”
    â€œPeople don’t fight anymore,” the man down the bar said. “They swear and they shoot each other later, but they won’t fight. It’s too genuine.”
    Mason tossed back his whiskey. He lifted his beer. “You want to hit me?” he said to the man.
    â€œLet me just say it,” the man said. “I wouldn’t know how. I’d hurt myself, and I’m not provoked enough to want that.”
    Mason put a hundred-dollar bill on the bar and said, “Let’s have another. Gene, can I buy you a drink?”
    â€œThen you ask me to hit you? No thanks.”
    â€œNo hitting,” Mason said. “I can’t remember the last time I made a fist. Is that good news or bad?”
    Gene set the beer bottles out and poured the Jack Daniel’s.
    â€œWhere you from?” Gene asked Mason.
    â€œDenver. I’m out for a drive.”
    â€œYes, you are.”
    Mason took in the room now that his eyes had adjusted, and he noted the four mismatched pool tables and the old red banquettes along the wall, and above each, high in the cinder-block wall, were windows made of six glass bricks. Those windows and the girder ceiling made Mason turn back to the barman.
    â€œIs this the old Annex? Was it called the Annex?”
    â€œIt was called the Emporium and built by Wallace Debans when he came back from the war, and he sold furniture to all the ranchers out of this building, including washers and dryers, and as he used to say, the washer and dryer won the West. By that he meant that they had made this windy place habitable for women, and I think he also meant that he sold thousands of them and was able to retire. He’s still alive and lives in Brook. Do you know where that is?”
    â€œAnd then it was the café, the Annex, right?”
    â€œYou’ve been in here before.”
    â€œI was in this