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“You’re saying it to me,” Brody said.

“You’re the only one at the counter, honey, it’s six-ten. I’d say it to the pie.”

It was the third Saturday in September and he’d come in early for coffee and a look at the paper before Owen’s calving, because Pearl’s at six-ten on a Saturday was the one place in the county a man could sit and not be talked to. That had been the theory. Pearl had a pot in one hand and the elevator crew coming in behind him, four men in caps who’d sat at the same table for thirty years, and she’d been going for two minutes and hadn’t drawn breath.

“I’m not settled,” he said.

“You’re settled, Brody Royston, you’ve got a mark on your neck. Wes. Sit down, I’ll be there. That boy’s got a mark on his neck and he’s been at the west line five days a week and home by six every night, which is a thing I’ve never seen him do in his life, and there’s one reason for this. Settled.”

The elevator crew sat down. They’d heard. They’d have heard in Lubbock.

“Pearl.”

“I’m pouring.”

“Pearl, she’s here till Thanksgiving. She’s told you. She’s told the whole —”

“She’s told the whole diner, and I wrote it on my pad, and I’ll show you the pad when it’s time.” She filled the crew’s cups without looking at them. “Three months, she said. Well. I’ve had girls say three months at that counter before, and one of them’s got a baby coming in November.”

The kitchen door opened.

Marge Whittaker came out of the back with flour on her arms and a dish towel in her hand, and stopped at the end of the counter, and looked at her sister. Brody had known Marge his whole life. He’d had her pie at every funeral and every wedding and every Sunday of his childhood, and he could count on one hand the number of times he’d heard her say anything to anybody that wasn’t the day’s special, and he’d never once seen her come out of that kitchen while Pearl was talking.

“Leave that girl be,” Marge said.

The crew stopped. The pot stopped.

“I’m sorry?” Pearl said.

“You heard me. Leave that girl be. She came here to be left be, and you’ve had her on a list and on a slate and at a dance and now you’ve got her settled to the elevator crew at six-ten in the morning, and she’s not here to say otherwise, and I am.” Marge folded the dish towel once. “Leave her be, Pearl.”

Nobody breathed. Brody sat there with his coffee and understood that he was watching a thing nobody in that county had ever watched, which was Marge Whittaker with an opinion, and that his own name was somewhere in it, and that he’d have given a great deal to be on the west line.

Pearl looked at her sister a long moment. Then she put the pot down on the counter, carefully, the way you’d put something down that you might want to throw.

“Sixty years,” Pearl said. “Sixty years you’ve stood in that kitchen and let me do the talking, and you’ve never once had an opinion that mattered to anybody, and you pick this one.”

Marge didn’t say anything. Her face didn’t do anything. She looked at her sister a second longer, and then she turned around and went back in the kitchen, and the door swung shut behind her, and swung, and stopped.

The diner was so quiet Brody could hear the coffee maker.

He put two dollars on the counter. He didn’t look at Pearl, because he didn’t think she’d want to be looked at, and he’d have been right. He went out, and the bell rang over his head, and he stood on the sidewalk in the early light with the whole county asleep and thought: Sunny’s going to be in the middle of that, and she doesn’t know it yet, and there’s not one thing I can do about it.

He went to pull calves.

Owen had six cows due and two of them were making a mess of it, and he’d called the house at five with the voice he used when he wasn’t going to ask for help and was asking.

“Mabel’s fine. Opal’s fine. It’s the two Judge covered late, and one’s a heifer and she’s got a foot back, and Liv’s been up since three.” A pause. “You said September.”

“I said September. I’m coming.”

“Bring rope. Mine’s in the truck and the truck’s got a flat.”

So Brody had gone by Pearl’s for coffee, and got a war instead, and was at the Bateman place by seven with rope and a chain and a calf puller in the bed, and Olivia was in the pens in a T-shirt and rubber gloves to the shoulder with her hair tied up in a bandana and a heifer down in the straw, and she looked up when the truck came in and said, “You’re late,” and went back to the heifer.

“Twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes is late. Get down here.”