Read Online Two-Gun & Sun by June Hutton - Free Book Online

already composed it in my mind yesterday, leaving out all mention of Lousetown or Parker or this man just now. I don’t know why. Because they might worry. Because they might comment. But as I watched his retreating back from my shop door I could see the headline: Coal likes company.
    *
    That afternoon, lavender outfit bundled under my arm, I plodded through the gloom to Parker next door. I sniffed the air for a hint of ocean but coughed on the grit kicked up by the motorcycles and their sidecars. An incessant whine. I wanted to smack them with a fly swatter.
    Parker was up a ladder, stocking shelves.
    Don’t climb down, I called out. Just here to ask a question.
    Done anyway, he said, stepping down and rolling the ladder to the corner. He rubbed his hands on his backside as he returned to the counter.
    You survived your trip to Lousetown, I see.
    I switched the lavender bundle from my right side to my left, wondering what he might have heard.
    Yes, but all that walking took its toll on this suit. I need to take it to the laundry, if you can direct me. The post office, too.
    Same place. The hotel.
    They have a dining room, too, don’t they? I might stop in.
    They have a menu with a list of meals. Mouth-watering concoctions. Trouble is, they don’t have ’em.
    Then why list them?
    Who’d go to a place that advertised tins of peas and ham? They might as well come here.
    For the pleasure of a crowded room, perhaps.
    Parker hooked his thumbs under his arms and rocked on his feet.
    Nicest person there is the dark fella that runs the kitchen. The rest? Nothing but crooks, cowboys and idiots. There’s your competition, if you can call him that. Runs
The
Bugle.
Named after the Boston newspaper that fired him. Head in his plate of food, usually. Never could decide if it’s food or pomade that puts his hair in stripes. Like this.
    He released his thumbs from under his arms and drew a set of bars across his head.
    There’s another newspaper? I asked.
    I didn’t like that. I didn’t like it that
Bugle
was so close in lettering to
Bullet
, either.
    Not much of a newspaper, he said. A sheet of mining figures and facts.
    That was a relief, and I said so.
    Silver Evans, he continued. What passes for a lawman in this town, hired out of New York City by the largest of the mining interests, The Black Mountain Coal Company. People call him the sheriff and he has taken to the title. Wears a uniform of his own making, postman’s trousers and his father’s jacket with badges from a bygone war.
    Parker held up his thumbs and rubbed them against his fingertips.
    Wears his moustaches twirled to points, he said.
    His descriptions made me laugh, but Parker remained straight-faced.
    One more thing, I asked, do you sell notebooks? This one’s filling up.
    I held it aloft, the pages between the two covers swollen with scribbling and folded corners.
    He smacked one down on the counter.
    You find yourself a printer?
    I might have, I said. I’ll let you know.
    *
    The fronds of the potted plant were not enough to hide me, but there was only one customer and his face was buried in the crook of his arm, an empty glass by his ear. Good. I had inadvertently entered by way of the bar, instead of via the dining room. Not my fault, when the sign in the window said simply
The Bombay Room
, which could be the name of a café. A happy mistake, though. I could use a drink.
    I had never been in a drinking establishment before. Drank behind the barn with my brothers, yes. Still, it was easy to see that the polished, wood counter running the full length of the room was a bar, with a row of bar stools that looked suspiciously like motorcycle seats. I sat on one and was reminded of a saddle. A tiger skin was tacked to the rippled tin wall. A fan turned slowly, its wide blades taken from the snout of an airplane. Ebony elephants at each end of the counter. An oriental rug.
    The tiger’s head bared its fangs at