He was quiet. “What can I do with a woman now, that I ain’t already done too much?”

I thought for a while. “If you’re on the ground, being with one might not make it so bad.”

“I hate women,” he said.

“You ever try fishing?”

“No.”

“You want to?”

“No,” he said.

“You can’t keep drinking.”

He did not answer.

“Maybe you could work in town. In the Commissary.”

I could hear the big wheels rolling and clicking along the tracks and I knew by the smooth way we were moving that we were almost out of the Dakota flatlands. Doc wasn’t talking. “Would you like that?” I thought he was asleep. “Doc, would you like that?”

“Hell no,” he said.

“You have to try something!”

He was quiet again. “I know,” he finally said.

III

JERRY EWALD, THE UNEXPECTED INSPECTOR, got on in Winachee that next day after lunch and we knew that he had the word from the Commissary. He was cool about it: he laughed with the steward and the waiters about the old days and his hard gray eyes and shining glasses kept looking over our faces as if to see if we knew why he had got on. The two hardheads were in the crew car stealing a nap on company time. Jerry noticed this and could have caught them, but he was after bigger game. We all knew that, and we kept talking to him about the days of the big trains and looking at his white hair and not into the eyes behind his glasses because we knew what was there. Jerry sat down on the first waiter’s station and said to Crouse: “Now I’ll have some lunch. Steward, let the headwaiter bring me a menu.”

Crouse stood next to the table where Jerry sat, and looked at Doc, who had been waiting between the tables with his tray under his arm. The way the rules say. Crouse looked sad because he knew what was coming. Then Jerry looked directly at Doc and said: “Headwaiter Doctor Craft, bring me a menu.”

Doc said nothing and he did not smile. He brought the menu. Danny Jackson and I moved back into the hall to watch. There was nothing we could do to help Doc and we knew it. He was the Waiter’s Waiter, out there by himself, hustling the biggest tip he would ever get in his life. Or losing it.

“Goddamn,” Danny said to me. “Now let’s sit on the ground and talk about how kings are gonna get fucked.”

“Maybe not,” I said. But I did not believe it myself because Jerry is the kind of man who lies in bed all night, scheming. I knew he had a plan.