But she had made the smart choice, going for a man who had never suffered a moment’s doubt or defeat over a small-town mechanic in his oily overalls. Frank felt rage now—at her a little, but mostly at himself: celibacy for these two years. He listened to his friends, their crude stories about how far they got with this or that girl; what they had done. Most of it was lies, he knew, but Esta meant so much to him he couldn’t even bear to mention her when such things were being talked about. Wasted years. So many girls who liked him. Kiefer’s sister threw herself at him that night after they had seen Tip Riley and His Colored Orchestra at the Kar-a-Nova. He thought of the evening he had driven Linus’s girlfriend, Hattie, home from a game because it had started to rain. He was happy she and Linus had got together. She wasn’t that pretty, but she was a sweet, friendly, funny girl. She seemed to adore Linus, and Linus adored her. But when he pulled up outside her house, she didn’t leave his truck, just kept talking nonsense, staring at his lips, playing with her hair. She laughed so hard at a couple of dumb things he said that she fell into him. He felt it then, gouging its furrow through him—lust, which that visiting preacher had said was a kind of self-hatred, like all the deadly sins. As the rain sealed them in, adding to the pressure, he tried to hold out by thinking about Esta, who had just started to allow him to kiss her neck, and of Linus, his oldest friend. In this way he resisted long enough that she was forced to say something she might never have said: She liked Linus but was really only seeing him because she felt kind of sorry for him. Remembering the horror, guilt, and deep hurt he had felt as a kid when Linus had finally come out of the hospital with that useless arm, he told Hattie coldly that he had to get home. Flushing with shame, she asked him not to tell Linus what she had said. After getting out of his truck, she walked to her door as if she had forgotten how to walk properly. How strange and diminished she looked, but his lust still clung to her, and he watched her as one might watch an ember, as she entered her house, going out.

Now he felt he should have taken every chance—Kiefer’s sister, Hattie, every girl who ever caught his eye. If he had, he wouldn’t hurt like this.

At last he got out of his truck and entered the store. Bennet stood at the counter with all his cronies: tall Magnus, who tipped his hat; Otto, Bennet’s foreman, a bitter raw-skinned knuckle of a man; Goldwin the barber, ever fussing with the fragile stands of hair he kept swept over his bald crown; Irish Finn, his mournful, deeply creviced face suspended between jug ears; and pregnant Sheriff Siggy, whose expression was that of a tough guy forced to walk his wife’s Chihuahua.