The tables had green checked cloths, and the early crowd was already eating, plates of fried fish and little bowls of coleslaw. Out the window, the snow was going blue in the last of the daylight.
Gil was behind the bar. He’s three years older than Russ, balding the way their dad went bald, thick through the shoulders. He had on a flannel shirt with a black apron tied over it, and he was drying a glass with a dish towel and laughing at something an old farmer had said.
There were two empty stools near the corner of the bar, where a couple had just gotten up. Grandma went straight for them like she had planned it, and maybe she had. I helped her up onto the stool and stood beside her in my camel coat, with one hand on her back.
Gil saw us. His face lit up at first, the way it always did when family came in.
“Shari! And is that Mrs. Duda? Well, look at you, Flossie, all dressed up. What can I get you ladies? Fish? We got perch tonight, lake perch, it’s beautiful.”
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“Two Cokes, please, Gilbert,” Grandma said. “In the glass bottles, if you’ve still got them.”
“Two Cokes it is.” He reached into the cooler under the bar and came up with two of the old-fashioned glass bottles, popped the caps on the opener on the side of the bar, and set them in front of her. “On the house, for you.”
“Oh, no, honey. I’ll pay.” She opened her pocketbook and handed him two dollar bills, and he took them because she held them out until he did. “I’d like to pay for what I order.”
Something in her voice made him stop. Not much. Just a little hitch.
How Is It Doing
Grandma took a small sip from one bottle and set it down very precisely on its own ring of water. Then she looked up at Gil and smiled at him, the sweetest smile I have ever seen on her face, and she did not lower her voice even a little.
“Gilbert, Russ tells me you’ve had my money since November.”
He was still holding the dish towel. He stopped moving it. Everything about him stopped.
“Forty-three thousand dollars,” Grandma said, in the same pleasant tone she’d use to ask about his mother’s hip. “From my husband Walter’s land. I gave it to my granddaughter and her husband for a house.”
The three men around the corner of the bar turned their heads. Then the table behind them. And behind us, I heard the fish fry crowd go quiet in a way I have never heard a Wisconsin bar go quiet, one table at a time, like a wave going out.
Men turned around in their chairs with their forks still in the air.
“So I came in tonight to ask you,” Grandma said, and she took another little sip. “How is it doing?”
Gil’s face went red from his collar all the way up to the top of his head. He looked at me. I don’t know what he saw on my face. I know I did not look away.
“Flossie,” he said. His voice came out rough. “Mrs. Duda. I didn’t know you were coming in.”
“I know, honey,” she said. “That’s why I came.”
Somebody’s fork clinked against a plate somewhere in the back. Nobody else made a sound. Even the kitchen had gone quiet, and through the pass-through window I could see the cook standing with a basket of fish dripping over the fryer.