“Oh, I know that,” Sam said. “We’re talking dozens.” He got to his feet. “Well, good coffee, but I came over to see the mess sergeant, so I better go find him. You going into town tomorrow?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Romeo said happily. “I’m going to buy some hooks and line for a fishing pole I made and try my luck on the river.”

Chapter 30

Saturday afternoon we hit town in a celebrating mood.

Fellows scattered fast, one big group heading to the pool hall and another to the ice-cream parlor. Sam led a contingent to the library. Romeo went to buy his fishing tackle.

“Want to go to my place?” Nate asked me. “Maggie ought to be getting off work about now, and we could ride out with her since she probably drove the truck in.”

“Sure,” I said. I’d been hoping he’d ask.

But then I noticed, right across the street, the Rialto Cinema, and a line of people buying tickets for a matinee showing of The Whole Town’s Talking. “Unless,” I began, “maybe Maggie would like to go with us to . . .”

Nate said, “Not my kind of show. But if you two want to go, I don’t mind. I’ll spend the afternoon with my folks and then get the truck back to her.”

Maggie didn’t have to be asked twice. “I’d love to,” she told me, without seeming to mind one bit that Nate wasn’t going with us.

Maggie liked the cartoons as much as I did. She got impatient at a newsreel that showed a family going for a Sunday drive in a new car—“You tell me how many families you know with new cars!” she whispered. And she sighed with pleasure when the main feature, with Jean Arthur and Edward G. Robinson, started.

“I just love a good story, don’t you?” she whispered.

Afterward, we went down to Mrs. Jensen’s café for slices of pie. Though when I opened the door and the smell of good chili hit my nose, I revised my order. Truth to tell, it made me a bit homesick for Texas.

And if the chili—just meat and no beans—wasn’t enough to say where Pops’s wife was from, the photographs covering the wall were. They mostly showed people posed in front of landmarks like the Alamo. Mrs. Jensen saw me looking and came over to point out one of a pretty girl in an old-fashioned outfit.

“Me, the day I became a Harvey Girl,” she said. “You know about those?”

I shook my head.

“We waitressed in restaurants all along the railroad lines, living in dormitories. We worked hard and got to see some of the world. That’s how I met Lester.”

It took me a second to realize she meant Pops.