He hung up. He waited for his money to come jingling into the return slot. Nothing happened. He pushed the coin-return button. Nothing happened. He hammered on the phone with his fist. Useless. He poked his little finger up the slot, feeling for a wad of cotton. The cotton was there but when he removed it no money followed. He dialed the operator and got a busy signal. Tried again. Still busy. He bought another glass of beer at the bar and returned to the phone booth. It was occupied. He sat down nearby, staring at the man inside the booth, pointedly waiting. The man ignored him. Henry went outside to a public phone on the street, one of the new economical installations shielded from rain and wind by nothing but a little plastic hood. Yelping teenagers in eight-cylinder Camaros with four-barrel jets and overhead cams, gigantic trailer trucks hauling uranium ore to the mill, bearded bandits on snarling Kawasaki motorcycles—all raced by on the street, six feet from where he crouched with his head inside the tiny quasi phone booth designed evidently for midgets and Filipinos. After a while he obtained an operator’s ear—one finger in his own—and explained his problem. The unrefunded two dollars and eighty-five cents. She needed to know both numbers again, the one called, the one called from. He asked her to hold on, dashed into the bar. The inside booth was still occupied. He tried to peer through the glass to read the number on the telephone. Could not be done. The man inside the booth scowled at Henry, revealing yellow fangs and molars full of lead. Henry backed off, ordered another beer, waited. Finally he got a second chance at the inside booth. He dialed the operator again and asked for the return of his two dollars and eighty-five cents. The operator asked for Henry’s name and address.

Address? he said. I’m in Woody’s Bar.

We’ll have to mail you the money, she explained.

He asked her, in that case, to give him credit and he would simply repeat the call to Denver. Do you have a Mountain Bell credit card? No I do not have a Mountain Bell credit card, that’s not what I meant, he explained, what I meant was that you give me credit for the money that this telephone—this goddamned telephone machine right here in Woody’s Bar—stole from me about fifteen minutes ago. Sorry, sir, she explained, no credit calls without a credit card. Then all right, mail me the fucking goddamned money. It’s a violation of federal law to use obscenities over the telephone, the operator said.

Listen, ma’am, Henry said, you take that two dollars and eighty-five cents and you go to the bank and get it changed for two hundred and eighty-five bright new copper pennies and you go home with them pennies and get a wooden mallet and you lie down on the floor and wrap your legs around your ears—are you listening to me, operator?