This Side of Jordan by Monte Schulz Read Free Book Online

to wear a floppy hat and a long-sleeved shirt buttoned to the collar. The hat made the girls along the shore think he was bald. He already suffered his affliction; now he had the hat, too. It was humiliating. My dear son, we all have our crosses to bear, his mother told him, but what did she know? She worked in her garden everyday and hardly ever needed a sunbonnet.
    The attendant came out of the filling station, a freckle-faced towhead hardly older than Alvin himself. “What’ll it be, fellows?”
    â€œShoot some gasoline into our tank,” Chester said, handing the boy a couple of dollar bills.
    â€œYes, sir.”
    â€œWe’ll be back in about ten minutes.”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    Chester gave Alvin a nudge. “Let’s go, kid.”
    They entered a narrow one-room building across the street where three men in suspenders and blue overalls sat hunched over a game of checkers at a table by the front window. The one kibitzing was smoking a three-for-a-nickel stogie and held a punchboard on his lap. Except for the old fellow in the white chef’s hat, reading box scores from the morning sport sheets beside the cash register, they were the only people in the building. Six empty tables were arranged along one wall parallel to a short order counter that ran from the front of the building to the rear. Chester chose a seat at the table next to the back door. Alvin took the chair across from him and studied the lunch program hung on the wall behind the cash register: meatloaf, lamb, beefsteak, roasted chicken, baked ham and tomato soup—each dinner for 50¢.
    â€œDo we have time to eat?” he asked, feeling a queasiness in his stomach that was either nervousness or hunger, probably both. He’d crammed down five hardboiled eggs, smoked bacon, a plate of toast and three cups of coffee for breakfast, but was already hungry again. His appetite was strange since he had gotten sick. Some days he never felt like eating a bite; the next day he couldn’t keep his belly quiet.
    â€œNope.” Chester took a package of Camel cigarettes from his vest pocket. He called to the man at the cash register. “Say, dad, how about a couple of Coca-Colas?”
    The old fellow nodded and went to get the drinks from an icebox under the counter. They had drawn the attention of the men playing checkers. Chester lit his cigarette and gave them a friendly wave. The old fellow in the chef’s hat brought two opened bottles of Coca-Cola and set them down in front of Chester. “That’ll be ten cents, please.”
    Chester dug into his trousers and came up with a nickel and a handful of pennies which he sprinkled out onto the counter. “Take your pick.”
    After the fellow had gone, Chester took a sip from one of the Coke bottles. “See those three onionheads over there by the window?”
    Alvin nodded. In fact, he had been trying to ignore them. He didn’t know much about folks in Missouri and what they thought of strangers. Were they friendly here?
    â€œWell, I’ll lay they’re trying to figure out whether we’re bootleggers or drugstore cowboys,” Chester continued, “and we both know they couldn’t tell a bootlegger from Hoover’s grandmother. But what they’re worried about are their birdies. That is, whose we’ll be loving up this afternoon and whose we’ll be ignoring. Trust me, kid. Losing their dames is the first thing folks get muddleheaded over when fellows like us come into town. We could go out and rob them blind, and while they’ll be plenty sore, they’ll start forgetting about it in a month or so. But if we were to drive off into the sunset with a couple of Hadleyville’s sweeties, they’d hunt us down like animals, shoot us full of holes, and cut our carcasses up for the hogs.”
    Four more men wearing denim overalls came into the lunchroom and said hello to the old fellow at the cash register and