“Your goddam pig’s feet stink,” Tom said, and spit what he had in his mouth on the floor. The bartender didn’t say anything. The man who had drunk the rye paid and went out without looking back.
“You stink yourself,” the bartender said. “All you punks stink.”
“He says we’re punks,” Tommy said to me.
“Listen,” I said. “Let’s get out.”
“You punks clear the hell out of here,” the bartender said.
“I said we were going out,” I said. “It wasn’t your idea.”
“We’ll be back,” Tommy said.
“No you won’t,” the bartender told him.
“Tell him how wrong he is,” Tom turned to me.
“Come on,” I said.
Outside it was good and dark.
“What the hell kind of place is this?” Tommy said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Let’s go down to the station.”
We’d come in that town at one end and we were going out the other. It smelled of hides and tan bark and the big piles of sawdust. It was getting dark as we came in, and now that it was dark it was cold and the puddles of water in the road were freezing at the edges.
Down at the station there were five whores waiting for the train to come in, and six white men and four Indians. It was crowded and hot from the stove and full of stale smoke. As we came in nobody was talking and the ticket window was down.
“Shut the door, can’t you?” somebody said.
I looked to see who said it. It was one of the white men. He wore slagged trousers and lumbermen’s rubbers and a mackinaw shirt like the others, but he had no cap and his face was white and his hands were white and thin.
“Aren’t you going to shut it?”
“Sure,” I said, and shut it.
“Thank you,” he said. One of the other men snickered.
“Ever interfere with a cook?” he said to me.
