Page 5 of The Drifter

They came in three steps and stopped, and they did the thing.

They read the room end to end. Slow. Deliberate. Booth by booth, face by face, all the way down one wall and back up the other. Then, the register, and then, the hallway to the restrooms, and then, the door they'd just come through.

Civilians don't do that. Civilians walk in and look for a table.

They weren't casing the till. There was nothing in that till worth the trouble and they'd have known it. They were looking for a badge. They were looking for a county cruiser in the lot and a deputy at the counter with his hat crown-down on the stool beside him. When they didn't find one, something in both of them came down a notch, and they sauntered.

Career men. I'd have bet the pack on it.

The first one had jailhouse work up both arms and disappearing into his collar—the blue-black stuff, homemade, done with a motor out of a Walkman and a guitar string, the ink gone soft and blurred under the skin the way it does after fifteen years. Barbed wire. A woman's name I couldn't read. He had the swagger of a man who'd been the biggest thing in a very small building.

The second one had a scar.

It came down off the outside corner of his right eye and ran the length of his cheek and hooked in under the jawbone. It hadn't been stitched. Somebody had let that close on its own, which meant it hadn't happened anywhere with a doctor. Knife. Coming across, not down—somebody had swung wide and he'd turned into it instead of away, which told me two things about him, one of them almost admirable.

They took the last open table. Middle of the room. Backs half to me.

A couple of the old boys gave them a long look, the kind that used to mean something. It was ignored, and the ignoring was easy.

June brought my plate. Pancakes, eggs over medium, bacon burnt the way I like it and hadn't asked for. She set it down and she glanced at the new table. Then, she glanced at it again on her way back to the kitchen.

"Thank you," I said.

"Mm-hm." She was already gone.

I ate slow. There's no reason to eat fast. I've got nowhere to be and I've had nowhere to be for a long time.

The plan, such as it was: two days in town. A room somewhere with a shower that ran hot. See what turned up. Something always turns up. That's not me looking for it, whatever my brothers think. The world is what it is and I'm just standing in it a little longer than most people. If you stand still in the world long enough, it comes to you.

I figured it had just come in the door.

June went over with her pad.

They looked her up and down like they were pricing her. Both of them, from the shoes to the ponytail and back. The scarred one wet his lips.

They ordered coffee and pancakes and the biggest mess of sausage the kitchen could put on a plate. Then, they laughed—both of them, at the same time, at the same nothing—and it was a private laugh. I've heard that laugh in five languages and it never means anything good.

June wrote it down. She turned.

And the one with the tattoos slapped her backside.

The crack of it went across that dining room like a shot. She jumped a foot and spun around with her order pad up against her chest. The whole place—the four-top, the counter, the old boy in the Marine Corps ballcap by the door—turned to look.

The jukebox went right on playing. Morgan Wallen, "I'm the Problem."

Nobody said anything. Somebody set a fork down.

The two of them looked back. That's all. They just looked back at that room, one slow half-circle. It took maybe four seconds. One by one, those old men went back to their eggs.

I didn't blame them. Every man in that room was seventy years old and had been hard once. Being hard once buys you exactly nothing. They had wives at home and hips that didn't work, and they made the calculation.

I made a different calculation.

I was two booths away and I didn't move.

I watched them instead. I watched the way the tattooed one settled back into his chair with his elbows out, taking up room, because his whole life has been about taking up room. I watched the scarred one laugh at his coffee. I watched the hands.

The scarred one's left hand shook.