“God damn,” Siggy said. “I’d have given my left nut to have been on the push through France.”

Goldwin fixed his always slightly dismayed gaze on the sheriff. “Failed the medical, didn’t you?”

“Chronic problems of a gastrointestinal order,” Siggy explained, ruefully rubbing his belly.

Otto snorted. “Means he got the shits every time a gun went off.” Leaning in, he added, “Had a buddy liberated them French towns told me any officer couldn’t get laid ten times a day was a sissy.”

“That true?” Goldwin searched Otto’s face with pathetic curiosity.

“Told me those girls was so desperate—”

“Officer,” Magnus interjected grandly, “was once synonymous with gentleman. My father fought in the Great War. I can hardly imagine him in the trenches. Scrupulous man. Didn’t like to mix things. When he bathed he used different towels to dry different parts of his body. Had to have his potatoes and meat and vegetables on separate plates. Didn’t like to converse. He would have you say everything you needed to say, would provide a response if one was merited, and that was the end of it. My mother adored him. She wouldn’t let anyone cut his hair but her and treated it like the hair of a Nazarene, kept every strand. After he was killed, she stuffed a pillow with it, which she slept on until the day she passed. She worshiped the very ground he walked on.”

“That why she got hitched to the first Yank she met?” Otto said.

“Maman did that for me, to get us out of France. Married the damn expectorator. What is it with you Americans and spit? I recall he spat even while my mother walked down the aisle to him. Spat into a handkerchief, which he then put back into the pocket of his tux.”

The men’s heads all turned now as Frank’s mom emerged from the back. It relieved Frank to see she wasn’t in her robe. She wore a bright shirtwaist dress, white with a pattern of red cabbage roses. Her presence set off a kind of restlessness in the men.

“Well, the world it won’t end, will it,” she said. “Not while you all in here gabbing.”

“Sweetheart, darling,” his dad simpered, “tomorrow, me and the boys, we—”

She raised a hand to cut him off. “You not going nowhere tomorrow.”

Frank noticed now that she hadn’t done her blouse up correctly. Toward the top the buttons were in the wrong holes. Where the button had been missed, the blouse had opened a little and he caught a glimpse of her bra. How could she have been so careless? He wanted to say something but didn’t want to embarrass her by drawing attention to it.

“Oh, darling, tesoro mio.” Hamming it up as ever, his dad got on his knees. The men needed his dad along because he was their jester, their whipping boy, and because he allowed them to buy beer at cost for the trip.

Magnus took hold of her hand. “Madam, we all fall to our knees before you.”