Dale goes behind the counter to drop the coins from his pocket into the cash register, and though Ora always gets it right, he has to push the cash drawer in three times before it latches. Beside the register he sees the magazine that Ora has left out on the counter, a copy of Life from August, the cover a photograph of a uniformed army officer kissing a well-dressed woman on the cheek. The caption reads “A Soldier’s Farewell.” Dale blinks. He thinks of January, when the three of them piled into the Bantam and silently drove down to New Orleans, Ora trembling, Tobe resolute, Dale himself hardened against any emotion at all. He can picture the boys gathered against the curb when they got there, waiting for the bus that would take them off to training. They wore blue jeans, not uniforms. Their mothers wept. Their fathers, for the most part, looked uncomfortable. Dale had been. He gazes down at the magazine cover, the uniformed man, the stoic woman. “A Soldier’s Farewell” indeed.
The bell sounds above the door, and when Dale looks up he sees that Benny Mayes has arrived for his shift to man the pump by night. The boy is Tobe’s age, the youngest of Art Mayes’s ten, all of them brought up on land a few miles over that Art still farms at eighty. “Just lettin’ you know I’m here,” Benny says.
Dale nods in greeting, turns the magazine over cover side down. “You’re early,” he says. “Ain’t yet six o’clock.”
Benny shrugs. “Nothin’ else to do,” he says. He approaches with a paper bag, which he hands to Dale across the counter. “Ma sent these,” he says. “Figs. Got a couple of trees busting with ’em.”
Dale takes the bag. “Thank her for me,” he says.
“She’s happy to be rid of ’em.”
“Well, happy to have ’em.” Dale sniffs. “How’s your ma doin’? Ain’t seen her lately.”
“She’s doin’ fine.”
“Pa?”
“He’s all right.”
Dale clears his throat. “That nigger working out for him?”
“Seems to be.”
“And how’s his knee?”
Benny shrugs. “Good enough. He’s driving again, anyway. Driving over to St. Martinville tonight to see them execute that boy. Said he wouldn’t miss that for the farm.”
Dale scratches his head. “Chair’ll be inside the jail, is what the paper said. Ain’t gonna be much to see.”
Benny shrugs, and for a moment, they are quiet.
“Anyway,” Benny says, finally. “I’ll be out waitin’ in the truck.”
“Right,” Dale says, and watches the boy go.