One Good Deed(6)

“You’re not from here,” said the banker. His silver hair was cut, combed, and styled with the precision available only to a man who had the dollars and leisure time for such tasks. His face was as flabby as the rest of him, and also tanned and creased with lines in a way that women might or might not find attractive. For such a man, the thickness of his wallet and not the fitness of his torso was his main and perhaps only aphrodisiac for the ladies.

“I know I’m not,” replied Archer, sipping the Rebel and letting it go down slow, the only way to drink bourbon, or so his granddad had informed him. And not only informed but demonstrated on more than one occasion. He tipped his hat back, turned around, bony elbows on the bar, his long torso angled off it, and studied the banker, then flitted his gaze to the lady.

The banker’s smirk broadened—he was reading Archer’s mind, no doubt.

“I like this town,” said the banker. “And everything in it.”

He patted the lady’s behind and then his hand remained perched there. She seemed not to mind or else had grown accustomed to this fondling, or both. As the man’s fingers stroked her, she took a moment to powder her nose while looking in a mirror attached to a shiny compact. The lady next shook out a tube of lipstick from her clutch purse and repainted her mouth before once more taking up what looked to be a murky martini with three fat olives lurking mostly below the surface, like gators in a bog.

“Been in Poca City long, have you?” inquired Archer.

“Long enough to see what’s good and what needs changing. And then changing it.”

He closed his mouth and eyed Archer from under tilted tufts of eyebrow.

“You gonna keep me in suspense?” said Archer finally.

The banker laughed and swallowed some of his whiskey. His eyes flickered just a bit as the drink went down, like wobbly lights in a storm.

Archer’s mouth eased into a smile at this weakness, but the man didn’t seem to notice. Or care.

“Poca’s growing. This used to be just cattle land. And farming. Now that’s changing. Business and money coming in. Not too much riffraff.”

“How do you decide about riffraff? See, I might fall into that category and then where do we go with this happy conversation?”

The lady laughed at this, but the banker did not. She shut her mouth and sipped her bog.

The banker intoned, “Fact is, a man can make money here if he’s willing to work. With the war over, we have winners and losers. I aim to make certain Poca falls on the winner’s side of the ledger. See, I was here before the war, trying to make things work. Place was an armpit then. Now the country is rebuilding, hell, we’re putting the bricks and glass back up all over Europe, too. Had that damn Berlin Airlift feeding all them folks. Commies taking over in China. That Stalin fella getting half o’ Europe under his iron thumb and testing them damn nuclear bombs. Now, Truman said we’d all be getting a fair deal here, but I don’t take no man’s word for that, president or not. Folks are heading west again, making their way to new lives, new fortunes. And in Poca, we’re sort of at the crossroads of all that. Betwixt old America where most now still live and new America that lies west of here. People pass through. Some stay. Most keep going because we can’t compete with the likes of Los Angeles and Frisco and that gambling haven in Las Vegas. But opportunities still abound here. And I’m well positioned to take advantage of every one of them. And I am, by God.”

Archer listened to all this, nodding, his mouth twitching back and forth as he processed the man’s many words.

He said, “Saw the fountain with the babies, and the geezers playing checkers. Kinda odd sight.”

The man laughed. “Old and the new. Before long there won’t be time for people to be sitting around playing checkers.”

“No water coming out the fountain though.”

“We’ve had a drought,” the man said. “For a long time now.”

“People gonna come to a place where there’s no water?”

“Not if your livelihood depends on raising cattle and crops. That’s why we’re changing our ways. We use the water for drinking and bathing and such and not cattle and crops, we’ll be fine. You know how damn much a cow drinks?” He laughed.

Archer nodded and took another sip of the Rebel and let it slide down his throat like lava over fresh dirt. “I guess I can see that,” he replied.

“Look, where you coming in from?”

“A seven-hour slow, dusty bus ride from the east.”

The banker squinted as he calculated. “That’s a fair stretch of road, mister.”

“I figure you for a banker type, but I’d like to be sure.”

“Why, you looking to rob me?”

They all three had a laugh at that, but Archer’s died out before the other two had finished guffawing.

Archer glanced at the woman, who was doing the tongue-on-lip thing again. She was in her late twenties with silky, dark hair in a Veronica Lake peekaboo. The sheet of hair fell off the side of her head like a waterfall at night, which contrasted sharply with her pale complexion. Archer could smell her scent across the span of the banker’s cologne. It was spicy and warm and tapped something in him that prison had never inspired. She had on a tight, late-day, thunder-blue dress with a wide, deep neckline that revealed things she evidently wanted to reveal, and a black dog leash belt encircling her small waist. She had on white wrist-length gloves, and a matching narrow-brimmed hat with a small bow. Her heels were high enough to muscle her calves. She wore a small necklace with a rock of diamond in the center. She kept fingering it like she wanted to make sure it was still there.