The Coffee Can at the Station Door

Bryce’s table

Dale Peters and Mike Wendt came in at seven, straight from the station’s back lot where they had been checking hoses on the tanker.

They got their bowls from the line, and Dale gave Rodney one nod, not friendly and not unfriendly, just a nod. Then they sat down at the table nearest Bryce’s card table.

Bryce had been holding the corner pieces back all night, in a separate pan under a dish towel. I had wondered who they were for.

He picked up the pan, holding it carefully with his wrapped arms out straight the way the nurse had shown him, and he carried it over to Dale and Mike’s table and set it down in front of them.

“These are the corner pieces,” he said. “They’re the best ones. I saved them for you.”

Dale is a big man. He has run cattle in those hills for forty years, and I had never seen him at a loss for words.

He looked at that pan, and then at Bryce’s arms, and he put his fork down.

“Well,” he said. “Well, buddy.” And that was all he could get out.

Mike, who is younger and quicker, said, “We’ll take them. But only if you sit down and eat one with us.”

So Bryce sat down between them. I watched from behind my pot.

Dale asked about Pete, and Bryce told him that Pete had singed fur on his back that was growing in white, and that the vet said he would probably always have a white stripe there now.

“I’ve got one too,” Bryce said, and he touched his chest, very lightly, through his shirt. “Mine’s going to be kind of shiny, the doctor said. Like a tan line but backwards.”

Dale laughed, a short sound that turned into something else. He put one big hand on the back of my son’s neck, very carefully, the same way he must have held him coming out of that smoke, and he left it there while Bryce ate his cornbread.

Mike looked across the bay at me and lifted his chin. I lifted mine back. Rodney, beside me, had stopped ladling. He was watching that table too.

When I looked at him, his eyes were wet, and he turned back to the pot before I could see any more.