Dust in the Heart by Ralph Dennis

Author:Ralph Dennis [Dennis, Ralph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-01-01T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Kyle waved him past the cash register. For the first time since Wilt started dropping by, Kyle didn’t seem grumpy about the free admission.

“I’ll send your favorite waitress by,” Kyle said.

Wilt wasn’t sure when Erlene had become his favorite waitress. But he couldn’t deny she was, not without putting back on her some of the pressure that being a close friend of the Sheriff had taken off her.

He skirted the pool tables and entered the main room. Erlene arrived at his table only seconds after he sat down.

“You want Daniels. Wilton?”

“Well, actually I wanted a glass of milk, but since I’m here …”

Erlene giggled and moved away.

It was a big crowd. Half the tables were taken and most of the booths. All that and the girls hadn’t started dancing yet.

Erlene leaned over him when she brought his drink. “They’re all nice to me now that they know I’m a friend of yours. Especially Miss Mills.”

“What does …?”

“She always asks how I am and how the kids are and I think she told the guys to leave me alone.”

“I thought you said they weren’t bothering you.”

“Well, you know … saying things. That’s all.”

Wilt knew that kind of verbal hassle. The kind some men might dump on a girl if they thought she was vulnerable.

“It’s not happening anymore.” Erlene’s smile was fragile, tentative.

Wilt dropped a couple of ones on her tray. “Baby might need a new pair of shoes.”

“My oldest baby is ten,” she said.

He watched her walk away, a sadness in him. Not the plastic sadness of the new country and western music. The real thing. A husband bugs out and leaves a woman with two kids to raise and she’s past the age when she interests men much or she’d let herself go during the marriage and there was too much to reclaim. And all those old hopes, what she expected when she was in high school, have soured. Old dreams to throw out with the day’s trash, the week’s trash, a lifetime’s trash.

A sadness that he had to shake off his back.

Or shock himself so that he could distance himself. What is so goodam great about your own life, Wilton Drake?

Answer that.

Erlene must have timed him. She brought another drink just as he finished the first. She hesitated. “I think Miss Mills is dancing tonight.”

“Is that right?”

“That’s what I heard.”

For the first time, he felt embarrassed. The other times he’d watched her dance, he’d come to see the body, the fine legs and the breasts. He’d been just another customer looking at the girls. That had changed now. He realized that Kyle knew why he was here and Erlene knew and God knows who else. He felt foolish and very much like a teenager.

The room lights dimmed. Colored spots washed across the stage and the first girl was announced. It was the big girl, Rachel, the one Diane had used to bait him. He watched Rachel galump around the stage and told himself, no, never, not even

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