Alice Munros Best

the porch – and said, “I don’t think we should –” but Trixie got in her way and the man ducked round her to bang on another door.
    “Here he is,” he said – still at the top of his voice, though the door had opened. “Here’s Harold in here.” At the same time Trixie rushed forward, and another man’s voice said, “Fuck. Get that dog out of here.”
    “Lady here wants to see some pictures,” the little man said. Trixie whined in pain – somebody had kicked her. Eve had no choice but to go on into the room.
    This was a dining room. There was the heavy old dining-room table and the substantial chairs. Three men were sitting down, playing cards. The fourth man had got up to kick the dog. The temperature in the room was about ninety degrees.
    “Shut the door, there’s a draft,” said one of the men at the table.
    The little man hauled Trixie out from under the table and threw her into the outer room, then closed the door behind Eve and the children.
    “Christ. Fuck,” said the man who had got up. His chest and arms were so heavily tattooed that he seemed to have purple or bluish skin. He shook one foot as if it hurt. Perhaps he had also kicked a table leg when he kicked Trixie.
    Sitting with his back to the door was a young man with sharp narrow shoulders and a delicate neck. At least Eve assumed he was young, because he wore his hair in dyed golden spikes and had gold rings in his ears. He didn’t turn around. The man across from him was as old as Eve herself, and had a shaved head, a tidy gray beard, and bloodshot blueeyes. He looked at Eve without any friendliness but with some intelligence or comprehension, and in this he was unlike the tattooed man, who had looked at her as if she was some kind of hallucination that he had decided to ignore.
    At the end of the table, in the host’s or the father’s chair, sat the man who had given the order to close the door, but who hadn’t looked up or otherwise paid any attention to the interruption. He was a large-boned, fat, pale man with sweaty brown curls, and as far as Eve could tell he was entirely naked. The tattooed man and the blond man were wearing jeans, and the gray-bearded man was wearing jeans and a checked shirt buttoned up to the neck and a string tie. There were glasses and bottles on the table. The man in the host’s chair – he must be Harold – and the gray-bearded man were drinking whiskey. The other two were drinking beer.
    “I told her maybe there was pictures in the front but she couldn’t go in there you got that shut up,” the little man said.
    Harold said, “You shut up.”
    Eve said, “I’m really sorry.” There seemed to be nothing to do but go into her spiel, enlarging it to include staying at the village hotel as a little girl, drives with her mother, the pictures in the wall, her memory of them today, the gateposts, her obvious mistake, her apologies. She spoke directly to the graybeard, since he seemed the only one willing to listen or capable of understanding her. Her arm and shoulder ached from the weight of Daisy and from the tension which had got hold of her entire body. Yet she was thinking how she would describe this – she’d say it was like finding yourself in the middle of a Pinter play. Or like all her nightmares of a stolid, silent, hostile audience.
    The graybeard spoke when she could not think of any further charming or apologetic thing to say. He said, “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Harold. Hey. Hey Harold. Do you know anything about some pictures made out of broken glass?”
    “Tell her when she was riding around looking at pictures I wasn’t even born yet,” said Harold, without looking up.
    “You’re out of luck, lady,” said the graybeard.
    The tattooed man whistled. “Hey you,” he said to Philip. “Hey kid. Can you play the piano?”
    There was a piano in the room behind Harold’s chair. There was no stool or bench – Harold himself taking up most of the room between the piano and the table – and inappropriate things, such as plates and overcoats, were piled on top of it, as they were on every surface in the house.
    “No,” said Eve quickly. “No he can’t.”
    “I’m asking him,” the tattooed man said. “Can you play a tune?”
    The graybeard said, “Let him alone.”
    “Just asking if he can play a tune, what’s the matter with that?”
    “Let him alone.”
    “You see I can’t move until somebody moves the truck,” Eve said.
    She thought, There