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Owen put his hat back on.

"Well," Remi said, from the tailgate. "That was a considerable number of words."

"I've got more," Owen said, and went to help Brody with the rest of it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Pearl's was full at twenty to six.

It was always full at twenty to six. The elevator crew had the far end and the two tables by the window. Earl had the third stool from the door, back half turned so he could see who came in. Wes Fewell was telling everybody about a stallion. Bea Nunley had the booth with the good light. Delia Voss was at the register counting out for a pie she was taking to somebody. Marge's arm came and went at the pass-through, and the grill went the whole time, and everybody in there was talking at once.

Edna Bateman was on the second stool with a plate in front of her and her cane hooked on the counter edge.

Brody was down at the far end with a cup and a newspaper he wasn't reading. He'd said he'd be in it. He didn't look up when Owen came in, and he didn't look up after, and Owen was grateful to him for both.

The bell went when Owen came in and nobody looked up, because nobody had looked up at that bell in forty years.

He got the stool beside Edna because it was the one that was open.

"Honey," Pearl said, and had the cup down before he had his hat off.

"Pearl."

"You want an egg?"

"No, ma'am."

"You want the pie?"

"No, ma'am."

"Then you want something," Pearl said, and poured, and moved on down the counter with the pot.

He drank about half of it. The room went on around him. It had gone on around him twice a week for eleven years, and he'd sat in it the whole time with his hat on the counter and his mouth shut. Wes Fewell was still going about the stallion.

Owen put the cup down and got up off the stool.

His heart was going the way it went in a chute with a bad cow coming up. Thursday he had done this in a yard in front of six people who loved him. There was nobody in there who owed him a thing. Earl had sold his family wire for forty years and had never asked him a personal question in his life.

"Olivia Bateman," he said.

He said it at the size of the room, which he had never done in his life. Wes kept on. Then Bea Nunley's head came up out of the booth. Two of the elevator men quit talking. Wes heard what was behind him and stopped halfway through his story. The grill went on going, because Marge couldn't hear a thing back there over it.

"I've been in love with Olivia Bateman since I was seventeen years old," Owen said.

The pass-through door came open. Marge came out of her kitchen with a spatula in her hand and did not say one word.

"I've never told her. I've told her the opposite." He had his hands at his sides and he made himself leave them there. "In March she asked me a straight question at two in the morning in her mama's barn and I lied to her, and it's the only lie I ever told that woman, and I've been sick with it since."

Nobody said anything. Earl had turned all the way around on the third stool.

"The bull every April is mine, not her daddy's. The fence along Edna's line is mine. The catalogs are mine. She never asked me for any of it and I never told her why she was getting it, and that's not a kindness, that's a man who wanted the credit without the cost." He stopped and got it level. "I'm telling y'all because I've let this room talk about that woman and me since January and I've stood in it and⁠—"

"I have stood in here," he said, "and let it be said, and said nothing. That's finished."

He picked his hat up off the counter.

"That's all of it. Y'all can do what you want with it."