Page 59 of Boy Blue
“It does.” Jack’s broad smile told me, as it always did, that he didn’t care what the world thought or that I had always tried to bring him down. A habit that I wanted to stop because Jack deserved better.
Jack led me to the back of the vast store, taking me down an aisle near the bank of windows. The store had a little bit of a lot of things, from balls of string to oil-stained boxes of nails, so many things it was hard to take it in. But everything was clean, dusted, and organized. Jack’s doing, since Morgan walked witha cane and probably couldn’t get on his knees to make sure even the bottom shelves were spic and span.
Jack took me to the far corner, where a coffee station was all set up with a card table, one bench seat, several folding chairs, and a buffet with a coffee maker, cream and sugar, and a half closed box of donuts, the label of which read Donut King.
At the table, sitting there like three kings waiting to give orders, were three older gentlemen. They were dunking their cake donuts in their coffee and talking a mile a minute. When we came up to them, they lifted their heads and stared at us.
“Who’s this, Jack?” said one. The other two nodded, as if they would also very much like to know.
“Old friend,” Jack said. “This is—” He turned to me and paused, and I knew why. I knew his real name, but he didn’t know mine. His raised eyebrows asked me what I wanted to be called.
“Blue,” I said firmly. Blue Bramwell, I wanted to say, because I would never again be known as Crispin Sommerville. “Just blue.”
“Blue,” the man said, blowing out air like a stamp of approval. “Sit yourself down. There’s plenty.”
Morgan made a rude sound in his throat.
“We’ll be on our way in a bit,” one of the other gentlemen said. “Then you fellows can take a turn.”
I sat in one of the folding chairs, feeling like I’d collapsed there, and Jack brought me a coffee, sweet and white, the way I liked it.
“Real mugs,” he said with a grin, looking over at Morgan like this was a long-standing joke between them. “C’mon, everybody. There’s no ceremony to this. Just the good stuff.”
Jack was the host, taking coats, which he slung over the top of an empty shelf, and making coffee in a fancy-looking machine.Bringing out paper plates and napkins, putting the sugar packets and little cream buckets within easy reach.
Wolfe sat next to me, his chair pulled close. And perhaps he was worried that I might take off looking for Star because I could read the tenseness in his eyes. I laid my hand on his knee. He looked at me, and what I read there was warmth and steadiness and everything that was Wolfe that I’d come to adore and rely on.
Jack squeezed in next to the older gentleman, and Morgan took the other chair to my right. He sipped his coffee. Someone coughed. And then the older gentleman who’d spoken before held out his hand for me to shake.
“I’m Ambrose,” he said. “The one with the glasses and knit cap hiding his bald head is Maurice, and the quiet one guzzling his coffee is Neville.”
“Pleased to meet you,” I said, words that I’d used at many a society gathering, but which here, I felt like I meant them.
Talk rose around the table. About the weather. About snowpack levels and how the spring thaw might cause the Yellowstone River to overflow its banks. The church bazaar.
Jack, I noticed, listened intently, while Morgan seemed only to be biding his time before he could leave and get back to work. The conversation felt genial and warm, and I could see why Jack had stayed in town when I’d left him behind. I saw the ring on his finger and decided I would ask him about it later, this engagement to the man who had taken him in. How that felt.
“Welp,” Ambrose said, slapping his thighs as he stood up. “We’d best be going. Nice to meet you, Blue. Jack always had nice things to say about you.”
“Nice to meet you too,” I said faintly, thinking of the things Jack might have said about me, considering he felt I betrayed him. I hadn’t. He knew that now. They all bundled into their coats and stomped joyfully out of the store.
“They ate all the chocolate-covered ones,” Morgan said with a huff as he moved to the other side of the folding table. Jack was soon seated at his side.
“We can buy more,” Jack said, patting Morgan’s arm like he was soothing a five-year-old. Morgan leaned into the touch, his smile warm. Then Jack looked at Wolfe and me. “Here’s you a question. What’s Mabel going to say?”
“Why does Mabel need to know?” I asked.
Morgan burst out laughing. “Oh, Blue,” he said, his smile wry. “Welcome to Hysham.”
CHAPTER 27
wolfe
Jingling my keys in my pocket, I watched the red truck race out of the parking lot, spitting up two identical rooster tails of gravel and mud and flecks of ice. After that I couldn’t see the truck, but I could hear it growling, hear squeals of rubber on road.
“How fast are they going to go in that thing?” I asked, half to myself, to the universe.
“Very, very fast,” Morgan said.
