Longspur by Mark Teppo

Author:Mark Teppo
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-63023-149-1
Publisher: 51325 Books
Published: 2022-07-04T15:26:44+00:00

18

With exaggerated care, the Judge put his lips on the rim of his cup and sucked air and coffee with equal measure. He swallowed, sighed contently, and resolutely placed the cup on the table—firm punctuation to his non-verbal exclamation. He looked about the public room, his gaze lingering on the pair of heavies by the door, and then launched into the whole routine once more. Lift, slurp, swallow, sigh, replace.

“You going to do that all morning?” Elm asked.

“Do what?” the Judge asked.

Elm was sitting across the Judge, trying to eat a plate of dingy hash. He, too, had a cup of coffee, and having sampled it, he knew it wasn’t as euphoria-inducing as the Judge was pretending. He pointed at the Judge’s cup with his fork. “That drama there.”

“Oh, I am merely enjoying this bountiful—”

“Are you going to pitch a hissy when your cup is empty?” Elm asked.

“A what?”

“A hissy.” Elm waved his fork. “Bang your fists on the table. Leap out of your chair. Tear your hair out. You know: pulpit play-acting.”

“Ah, that sort of hissy.” The Judge took another noisy slurp. “It depends,” he said after he had returned the cup to the table.

“Can I finish eating before you flip the table?”

The Judge gave Elm’s request some thought. “Perhaps,” he offered.

Elm resumed shoveling food around his plate. He made no effort to eat faster. “Is this drama for that fellow behind the counter?” he asked.

“Is he watching?”

Elm raised his eyes briefly. The man standing behind the counter was not the young man from the night before. When Elm had wandered down and inquired about breakfast, the man had looked blankly at him. His clothes were roughly made, but functional, and Elm noted the sidearm hanging from his belt. His beard was untamed and his hair had been shaped by a hat a size too small. It bunched on his head like a plume of rough feathers.

Elm made a show of noticing the other men in the room, who were, generously speaking, cut from similar cloth. I’ll get it myself, Elm said, and he turned toward the kitchen. The man decided he didn’t like the idea of Elm being in the back room and grudgingly agreed to fetch some food. And coffee, Elm reminded him.

Elm suspected the man spat in one, if not both, cups before bringing them over to the table. He decided not to dwell on what the man might have put in the food. He simply added the affront to the list of injuries one sustained while traveling with the Judge.

It was a long list.

“The help in this establishment lacks polish,” the Judge noted. “One would think their mothers might have beaten a rudimentary notion of decorum into them before throwing them out into the world.”

“I’m not entirely sure they had mothers,” Elm pointed out. He let his gaze roam around the public room. He and the Judge were the only real patrons. The dour man behind the bar and his friends weren’t here for food or drink.

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