Watching Gideon by Stephen H. Foreman

Author:Stephen H. Foreman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2009-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

“Mr. Jubal Pickett, meet Mr. Jack Savage,” said Abilene, smiling broadly as she introduced the two men. “And this is Gideon,” she said with her arm around the boy’s shoulders. “Shake the man’s hand, Gideon.” He didn’t have to do what she said if he didn’t want to. He did, though, shake, but he wouldn’t look at the man. He thought Jack squeezed his hand too hard and smiled too much. He wondered if the man’s gold tooth would glitter in the sun and figured, yes, why wouldn’t it?

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Pickett,” said Jack. “Mrs. Pickett’s told me good things about you.”

Jubal shot Abilene a look on that one. Mrs. Pickett?

“Call me Abby,” she said to Jack Savage smoothly while she squeezed Jubal’s arm. Jubal saw it, rightly, as a warning. She took him by the hand, grabbed Gideon’s, and said, “Come on, boys, let me show you where Momma’s gonna be workin’.”

Jack had met them in the small waiting room where Abilene had first met him for her interview. He followed the Picketts and Abilene as she led the way outside to an adjacent building. As cinder block seemed to be the generic building block of Edom, the structure itself was cinder block, squat and square, bunkerlike, but the front was framed out with wood like the entrance to a mineshaft. Douglas fir was Jubal’s guess, strong enough to support ceilings made of tons of rock. A sign advertised the place as THE HIDDEN SPLENDOR, A STAKE HOUSE, RARE CONDITIONED DINING. Jubal spotted the sign when he parked at the Quonset hut next door and wondered if anybody else besides himself had noticed that the words were spelled wrong.

Abilene, all smiles and bright energy, ushered them inside and held out her right arm as if she were showing off her new living room. “Gentlemen,” she said to Jubal and Gideon, “you are looking at the new daytime hostess of the finest steakhouse in southeast Utah.” She finished up with a little curtsy-bow. The Hidden Splendor had obviously tapped a vein in the community, because ever since day one the number of diners who went there grew exponentially, so much so that the owner, Jack Savage, added an extra shift and opened for breakfast, too, with staples of the mining country served hot, and plenty of ’em, specializing all day, every day in shit on a shingle, biscuits and gravy with chunks of deer liver, and slabs of blood-red meat two inches thick before noon with jalapeño pepper sauce if that’s what the gent wanted. Nothing too fancy-pants, but a few steps up—red and white checked oilcloths on the tables, for example, oversize blue napkins, and a mahogany bar so’s a man could belly up to luxury. This was a hardworking town. Let the folks know they’re getting something a little special. Jack had promised Abilene that if she worked a full five-day work shift he’d see to it that she got two nights as well. The tips

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