Machine Dreams

hot. He’d burn himself being a goddamn waitress.
    Clayton nodded. “Costello is a damn tight Talie, and crooked besides. But goes to Mass every whipstitch. Here, give me that toast. I reckon I can butter my own bread.” He took the plate and heated the knife on the toast before slicing the butter. It wassomething he did Mitch liked to watch. “Dagos are close-knit. I was surprised he let you have that job.”
    “He brags how he hired every experienced vet that applied, just so I don’t get a swelled head. It’s an education, rooming there on Dago Hill.”
    “Dagos aren’t bad people,” Clayton said. “They just aren’t our people.” He ate the bread slowly; Mitch knew he wouldn’t finish it.
    Jam. Mitch got the jam from the shelf and put it near Clayton’s plate. Damn if he didn’t get nervous, talking about work with Clayton. Might as well be a teenager again. He leaned back from the table and looked out the window at his car. Now was as good a time as any.
    “You know, Clayton, while I was gone I used to think you and me ought to start up a business. A war over and room for new people. Look at Costello—he’s cleaning up.”
    “What’d you have in mind?”
    “Oh, a supply business, maybe concrete. Did a lot of that work in New Guinea—and I can keep about any engine running.”
    He didn’t look at Clayton but at Clayton’s hand on the tablecloth. The hand was big and finely shaped, the fingers tapered, the fingernails so perfect they looked manicured. And when he raised his eyes, Clayton was watching him with that still, contemplative gaze Mitch had thought about in the war, wondered about.
    “We’ll see, Mitch,” he said. “Things calming down now. We’ll see.”
    They sat while Clayton finished the coffee. There was an easy silence in the room. Only the sound of the clock, and a car going by in the alley.
    Mitch hadn’t gone to the Elks’ much before the war but now he went for lunch nearly every day he was in Bellington. The aura of the back barroom was overpoweringly familiar: smells of tobacco and men, the sound of men’s voices. He liked the ritual of the locked door with the triangular window, the card he stuck in the slot beneath the doorknob, the official sound of the buzzer as the door unlatched. The people were always the same, the food modest and cheap. Past the dining room, it was just the men.Mitch paused a moment at the swinging door to the bar, hearing a low hum of conversation, then walked on through into an ocher, interior shade.
    The Elks’ barroom was always a little dark, dark enough that the electric beer signs along the back wall shone with a pale night-light glow even at noon. Windows along the single row of booths were draped with dark green pleated curtains that kept the sun out; behind the drapes the window glass was thick and patterned, opaque as bottle bottoms. The wall behind the bar was almost solidly covered with clippings, jokes from men’s magazines, newsprint photos. Scattered heroics: twenty years of high school sports wins; service news of local boys; color photos of Roosevelt, MacArthur, Patton. Patton was a favorite of McAtee’s, the bartender; a miniature Fourth of July flag bordered Patton’s picture. On the far end of the wall, near the mirror, McAtee had tacked up
Life
newsprint of Patton’s funeral, wrinkled black and white images of a blurred cortege. Directly below, the plastic Schlitz beer wagon lamp looked like a battered toy, the illuminated horses gone white in patches where color had flaked away.
    Mitch and Reb habitually sat at that end of the bar. Reb wasn’t here yet; Mitch walked back and sat down as McAtee brought him a draft.
    “Cowboy, my favorite bachelor. How goes it?” McAtee wiped the already polished bar top and set the frothy beer in front of Mitch.
    “Not bad, McAtee. Where’s our Doc? Fell asleep over his operating table probably. Out causing trouble last night.”
    “Yeah?” McAtee gestured toward the door. “Don’t let him get away with that. Here he is now.”
    “Hey, Old Man Hampson.” Reb saluted as he walked toward them, then shook hands as he reached Mitch. His hands always felt cold and dry and clean; the alcohol, Mitch guessed, sterile hands. “Clayton up yet?”
    “Just barely,” Mitch said.
    McAtee grinned as Reb sat down and leaned on the bar, sighing with satisfaction. “Home,” Reb said.
    Mitch watched the two men; he raised his eyes to McAtee’sjovial face and glimpsed behind him