The Kings and Queens of Roam: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

He-Ping sat in a chair along the far wall in silence, watching the goings-on without so much as a smile. Those who’d lived the big lives, the expansive lives, they were the quiet ones: Digby had seen Elijah McCallister himself now and again, and sometimes you barely even knew he was in the room. If you tried to talk to him he’d wander away. Elijah was one of the old-timers whom Digby wished would talk; oh, the stories that man could tell.
    Digby thought Fang should take a hint and shut the hell up, especially first thing in the afternoon. But it wasn’t just Fang. The bar was full of leftovers, a dozen or so, many of them laughing, yelling at one another, spitting, swapping tall tales about this thing or that. He-Ping looked like he was thinking about something, and the women (there were a couple of them) seemed to be waiting to be noticed, beams shining out of their eyes as if there were tiny lighthouses behind them. One of them smiled at Digby as he pulled a bulb cord, and he tipped an imaginary hat her way. The truth is, as much as he might like to complain, he liked their company, and they didn’t hurt what little business there was—nobody else could see them. But Digby was a bartender: he saw everything.
    “This town,” Digby said to himself and shook his head. “It’s not what it once was, but then, nothing is, is it?” He waited for someone to say something, and then answered the question himself. “No,” he said. “Nothing is.”
    “You don’t look so good, Digby,” Fang said. “You look like you just rolled out of bed.” Fang winked. Same joke over and over and over. “Get it?”
    “I get it,” Digby said.
    “Like you rolled out of bed and broke your neck. The way I did.”
    “I get it,” Digby said again.
    Fang laughed and laughed and then sighed and sat down at a table and sighed again. “So who’s up for a game of cards?”
    No one was.
    There was a commotion outside, and Fang and some of the others stood to look out the window and see what it was. A car door slammed.
    “It’s the Morgans, all packed up and everything,” Kelly Neighbors said, looking out. Kelly only had one hand; she lost the other in the factory. Digby thought it would have been nice to get your hand back when you died, but that wasn’t the deal, apparently. “And here comes Sam Morgan,”
    “I guess they’re leaving town,” Fang said. “They lived over on Abby Lane, right? The nice two-bedroom.”
    “Mattress roped to the top of their car,” Kelly said. “Wonder how long that will last.”
    The old-timers laughed. There was a mattress graveyard half a mile up Silk Road.
    Then Sam Morgan pushed through the barroom door and didn’t stop walking until he made it to the bar and the old-timers quieted down. Sam was a regular. There weren’t many regulars left: the lumberjack came in time and again, and Jonas, the mechanic, who had a thing going on with the McCallister girl—the homely one, Helen—he came in twice a week at least. Sam Morgan was among the last.
    “Sam Morgan!” Digby said. He always greeted his customers with a sense of the exclamatory, as if they were the one person out of all the people in the world he had been waiting for. “You look tired but hopeful; a thoughtful man of action. A god among men. That’s Sam Morgan.”
    Sam Morgan took a seat. His head was too big for his tiny shoulders; it looked like it belonged on another man. He had the face of a mustachioed bulldog. “Looks like I’m the first one here today,” he said.
    “And you may be the last,” Digby said. “All I know is that I’m happy to see you. What can I do you for, Sam Morgan?”
    “Something that’s wet, cold, and packs a punch,” he said. “Maybe a mug full of that Arcadian brew.”
    “The perfect elixir to imbibe before a long drive,” Digby said.
    “With two kids and a sad wife,” he said, “I’ll need more than one.”
    Digby served his customer and gave it to him straight. “Starting over