Bobby walks through the cafe door with the biggest shit-eating grin you ever saw.  He shoots a thumb over his shoulder towards the entrance and says, "Ol' man Jimmy just beat the living hell outta Tom Wits.  I ain't never seen a whooping that bad in my entire. . . .  It was like Tom didn't know it was coming and then WHAM!"  Bobby grinds a fist into his palm and his smile opens up so wide we can see the silver bridge resting on his good back teeth.

Dean and I step over to the door's square window and look out into the parking lot.  There are a couple of pickups, covered in red dust, but otherwise, there isn't another person to be seen.  The lunch crowd has cleared out, and the station hand next door beats a blown tire off its rim.  We can hear the high, metal ring, but there's no sign of anybody:  no sign of ol' man Jimmy's rusty bronco, no sign of Tom's thick neck and wide shoulders.  "Ain't a goddamn thing out there, Bobby," says Dean, returning to his table and picking his cigarette from the ashtray.

"Didn't happen out front, Dean," says Bobby, "I just rode in from checking my leases, thought I'd get a bite to eat."  He scratches the stomach of his blue work-shirt with his fingers.  "So hungry I could eat the ass-end out of a dead horse," he says and then pulls out a chair across from Dean.  After sitting down and pushing back his cap, he rolls up his sleeves, lays an oil-stained arm on the laminate tabletop, and then, using his free hand, he heaves one leg up on top of the other.  He picks a handful of napkins from the dispenser and begins rubbing them, one after the other, over his fingers like he's polishing a hood ornament.

"That's tomorrow's special," Dean says.  "Special today is 'surprise with fries,' but it ain't no surprise and there ain't no fries -- just a burger patty stuffed in a tortilla and covered with beans."  Dean says this loud enough that the cook can hear him.  The cook leans through the kitchen door and points a greasy spatula at him.

"You're the 'surprise' winner," she says, "shouldn't bitch about the food 'til after you eat."

"Honey, it ain't no surprise what you're serving," he says, turning to Bobby and me, but with his voice still loud, "but I'll take care of it with some of these ulcer pills I got from Mexico."  He takes a prescription bottle from his shirt pocket and holds it up so she can see.  When she's gone, he leans in close, "Now," he says quietly, "is it the food or the pills giving me the trots?"  At this, he slaps his meaty hand down on his knee, flipping cigarette ash on his grimy jeans, and lets out a donkey bray so loud that Bobby grinds his false teeth together.  "So where'd it happen?" he continues, "I don't believe a shit hook like the ol' man could take down a bull like Tom.  I hope you ain't making this story up . . . you know what'll happen if word gets back to him."  Everyone knows about Bobby's run-in with Tom -- the bridge on his teeth and so forth -- and none of us want Tom to take a fall more than Bobby, but Dean's right:  it isn't wise to spread rumors.

"Honest to god, no bullshit," says Bobby.  "I was driving back from the Peabody ranch -- got some bad oil in one of my wells -- and I'm trying to get treat it myself," he says, rubbing at the soot-like oil under his nails, "that's why I smell so gamey."  "Anyway," he continues, "I saw the two of them stopped in front of the cattle guard leading to the Peabody."  Dean nods at him; we can all picture that cattle guard:  so beat to pieces you can only cross it in four-wheel drive, and still, you have to worry about bursting a tire on the rusted, broken ruts.  The guard's supposed to keep in the cattle, but mainly it just keeps strays and hunters out.

"They're both outta their trucks . . . the ol' man's standing chin-to-chest with Tom, and Tom's face is bright red," Bobby says.  "I pull alongside the ol' man's bronco, roll down my window. . . ."  The cook rounds out the door with our specials, sets mine down nicely, and drops Dean's in front of him with a bang.  The plate's weight rocks the table spilling Dean's bowl of chili macho over his tortilla and onto the tabletop.  Red juice from the hot sauce splatters the table and pepper shaker.

"Goddamnit, Tina," he says, pulling napkins out of the dispenser, "you know I don't eat chili macho -- my ulcer can't take it.  You trying to kill me or something?"

"Surprise," she says flatly, giving him a smirk, "if you don't like how we serve it, go someplace else."

Dean grumbles as he wipes at the bottom of his tea glass with the soiled, red napkin.  He looks from Tina to me to Bobby searching for a comrade.  I look at the tortilla surrounded by Spanish rice and green beans; Bobby looks at his reflection in one of his polished fingers.  "Why do you have to be so goddamn mean, Tina," Dean asks, even though we all know he started it.  It's an ongoing affair, this bickering, but being the only decent cafe for thirty miles, Dean has no choice but to eat what she gives him.  With a face full of defeat, he looks up at Tina, "could you get me another tortilla, at least?"

Tina has a pad of paper in her hand, but she's turned her attention to Bobby, ignoring Dean.  "You want the special, Bobby," she says, more statement than question.

"Yes, ma'am," he says, and pointing towards me, "but can I get it like his, instead of like Dean's?"  Bobby smiles at her, his new straight-from-Mexico pearly-whites shining, "I'd like mine to stay on the plate."  The leathery skin around Tina's mouth wrinkles up into something between a smile and a hyena laugh, then she turns around and walks back toward the sizzling sounds of the kitchen.

Bobby finishes polishing the last of his ten hood ornaments.  He has balled up each of the napkins into little, black lumps like charred meatballs.  He stares at them, stacking them into pyramids, trying to figure out how to end up with none left over, and as he's doing this, he says, "I keep my window up until the dust from my pickup floats by.  When I roll it down, I can hear the ol' man talking real slow to Tom -- like he's got something important he wants him to hear."

"Jimmy talks like that most of the time anyway," Dean says, and we all know it's true.  He's a slow talker from way back, and that's one of the reasons the name has stuck for so long.  Ol' man Jimmy didn't get his name from being old; he got it one day when the driver from a pulling rig told Jimmy that he needed to stop chasing so much tail or he would wind up an old man before his time.

I remember it:  we were all sitting around our respective tables, Tina was complaining about Bobby tracking in mud.  Jimmy walked in the door looking like something not even the coyotes would drag off the road.  He sat down at the far end of the bar that runs from the kitchen to the door, and when Tina asked him why he looked like day old dogshit, all he said was, "Coffee, black."

Now, we all knew he was high on this Jackson girl staying the summer at her Uncle Peabody's, but none of us were willing to poke fun at him because he was a short, wiry fella, and we supposed he probably had a chip on his shoulder.  That's when the rig driver looks at Jimmy and says his line.  At that, the whole cafe went silent.  Twenty grown men waiting for Jimmy to beat the living hell out of this mouthy rig monkey.  Jimmy turned to the kid, put one of his small, solid hands on the kid's shoulder.  The kid laughed nervously.  "I tell you what," said Jimmy, real slow and methodical, "my back creaks, my balls have shriveled on the vine, my hips cramp like arthritic elbows, and because of her, I'm getting five hours of sleep a night.  Old men have it better than I do -- they don't have to look at you poor bastards everyday."

With that, Dean yelled to him, "Well, ol' man Jimmy, pull up a rocking chair and sit over hear with us old farts."  He gestured towards Bobby and me and then laughed his donkey bray.  The men, sure that the show was over, went back to chewing their burgers and sugaring their tea.  Jimmy sipped his coffee slowly; the rig driver paid his bill, skipped the tip, and left.

"It was about that goddamn Jackson girl, wasn't it," Dean asks, sopping up the rest of the chili macho with a handful of napkins.  His tortilla has turned a vague shade of red, and his rice floats in jalapeno juice.  "CAN I GET A GODDAMNED TORTILLA?" he yells back to the kitchen.

"No," Bobby says, "I hear from reliable sources that the Wits have leased the Peabody, and they want to fire ol' man Jimmy from taking care of it.  Tom's gonna take over maintenance, but he wants the uncle off the place by the end of the month."

Dean says, "the ol' man's been taking care of that place for years now, but it's always been more of a burden than a blessing, if you know what I mean."  At first, you would think he's referring to the neglected state of the place, but everyone knows that ol' man Jimmy was in line to it take over when the uncle got tired of pushing the livestock from one pasture to the next.  In return for being next in line, the uncle got himself a Stepin Fetchit.  If what Bobby says is true, then things aren't looking so good for the Peabody, the ol' man, and his frisky tart.

"I kill the engine to hear them better, and the ol' man is telling Tom that it ain't right for his father to be bringing up old debts on the uncle.  He tells him real slow, 'Tommy, your daddy ain't got nothin' doing with this place.  He can't raise a decent head of cattle, ain't a drop of good oil or gas, but he's pressured Uncle Peabody into leasing.  Now, Tom, you're gonna fix it, or there's gonna be hell to pay.'  Word for word, that's what he says."

"What kinda old debt they got there," Dean asks.  "I thought he'd paid back all them government loans he got for buying the land and putting cattle on it."

"From what I hear, he did," says Bobby, "but he lost his subsidies because someone heard he was working illegals."

"Every damn ranch in this part of the state uses illegals," Dean points out.  "Who called the immigration on his ass. . . ."

"Get this," Bobby says, stirring another packet of sugar into his iced tea, "I hear that Tom's daddy has leased that side of the road from Arlo all the way to New Mexico."  He raises his eyebrows at us, dips his finger into his glass, puts the finger in his mouth, and says, "Perfect . . . Tina makes the best damn tea in the whole state of Texas."

"What's he gonna do with all that pasture," Dean says.  "There's nothing there but dead grass and mesquite bushes . . . you can't even raise jackrabbits on that shit."  Dean has flayed back the tortilla, and he cuts the burger patty into jagged chunks of meat.  He forks some refried beans off the tortilla and skewers a piece of meat.  He shovels it into his mouth and packs a piece of white bread behind it.

Tina sets Bobby's plate down in front of him, refills his glass of tea, and asks Dean, "Would you like a new tortilla?"  The hide around her mouth wrinkles back into her dangerous smile, and Dean shakes his head, yes.

"Do I eat this like a burrito?  Or should I use my fork," Bobby wonders aloud.  Then, he says, "I hear the reason is that Mr. Wits wants to raise a head of longhorns and sell them up north to a bunch of petting zoos."

"Sounds like someone's selling you a bridge, Bobby," says Dean.  "So, what you're telling me is they leased the Peabody to raise longhorns?  I thought longhorns was dead."

"No, this is a special breed that's supposed to be able to live off mesquite beans and coyote shit," Bobby says, lifting a forkful of green beans to his lips.

"Well, they're eating better than we are," Dean says just as Tina walks through the kitchen door with a truce tortilla.  With that, she turns around and heads back into the kitchen.  "Putting my foot in my mouth again," he says.  "Goddamnit," he sighs, standing up and heading back towards the kitchen to ask for another piece of white bread.

We hear him talking to Tina in the back, bantering with her about the food, and Bobby leans close to me, "I didn't want Dean to hear this, but I think it's more than just this longhorn scheme."  He looks at the kitchen door quickly, turns back toward me, and says:  "Right before the ol' man hit Tom, Tom said that before long his family was going to own every goddamned soul in this county and that the ol' man wouldn't dare touch him, and then WHAM!"  He picks up the folded tortilla, dips one end in his bowl of chili macho, and takes a bite.  "It all happened so quick that I didn't even have time to get outta my pickup . . . Jimmy was on top of him, hammering his face with them small fists of his.  I jump out, pull him off, and Jimmy's crying and mumbling bullshit about the wrath of god and so forth . . . he's always been one of them types.  I think he might try to do something crazy.  You heard it from me -- something crazy."

Dean sits back down at the table, fresh tortilla in hand, and begins to transfer his patty and beans to it.  "So, can the Wits get subsidies for raising pets?  Seems like there oughta be a law against it, doesn't there?"  Bobby looks at me, little flecks of black oil dot his pores, and he raises an eyebrow to acknowledge our shared secret.

"I think they're gonna bring in a bunch of legals and settle them down in this county.  You know the county election is next year, and Mr. Wits really wants to get elected to the county commissioner's seat," Bobby says.  "Hell, all of us voted against him last time, and do you remember what he said the next time he came in here?  Remember him talking about how we didn't know what was best for ourselves and how the new commissioner didn't know a damned thing about what it was like being a oil hand or a rancher.  I think he's got a plan to take over everything, cut back on subsidies, and run all of us the hell outta here."

"You're a paranoid bastard," Dean says as he slaps his knee and lets loose a loud bray.  The plate in front of him is a disaster, like a child who doesn't want to finish his supper, everything is pushed around, mixed up, hidden.  Dean ashes his cigarette in the plate and leans on the table with his elbows, "but this isn't good news at all, and I think you might be making sense for once in your life."  Dean looks at me, but I can tell he's only thinking about his fifty head of cattle and the tiny piece of land he watches over.  "Do you think ol' man Jimmy knows about this?"

"No, he's just worried about losing what he's entitled to," Bobby says, "and he's probably gonna lose that Jackson girl, too, now that she doesn't have a place to stay for the summer."  Pouring the chili macho dregs over his Spanish rice, Bobby mixes up a few globs of refried beans with the rest of the mess and heaps the last of it on his slice of white bread.  "Things could be changing for all of us," he says, raising his oil-soot eyebrows then chomping into the sandwich.

"What can we do about this," Dean asks.  He knows that some things are so inevitable that they are only worth talking about.

"We could kill Mr. Wits," Bobby chuckles, "but Tom has that same cutthroat, business attitude.  We can't call the sheriff because it's all fairly legal."  Bobby stretches his back against the chair, pats the stomach of his blue shirt, and belches quietly.  "Goddamned good food," he says.  Tina weaves through the door, arriving at our table with three bowls full of dessert.

"Mr. Wits underwrit the loan on the cafe and station," she says flatly, "but he's never be nothing but kind to my husband and me."  In her usual way, she hasn't damned the Wits, but we all know that she's as fearful as everyone else in this county.

Bobby holds the tiny dessert under his chin, mechanically spooning brown pudding into his mouth.  As he sets down the bowl, the station hand kicks the heavy door open scaring all of us out of our wits.  He says this in a very matter-of-fact voice:  "Looks like another tanker's gone up . . . there's a fire out north of town towards New Mexico."  Looking at Bobby, he says, "You came from that way, didn't you, Bobby?"

Standing up from our chairs, we shuffle outside, Bobby leading the five of us.  Along the horizon, north of Arlo, we can see the high black smoke of an oil tank fire.  We test the wind with our noses, trying to sample the fragrance of burning crude, but there's only the twinge of creosote, mesquite, red dust.  Tina steps back into the cafe, heading towards the kitchen to call the foreman at the Peabody place.  "I hope that ain't one of my wells," Bobby says, "I just checked them a few hours ago, gauges were fine."  He shuffles from one foot to the other like he has to piss.  "Shit," he says, "guess I better head back out that way."  Getting into his truck, Bobby turns back to look at us, "Tell Tina I'll get her when I come back through."  He pushes his cap down over his forehead, turns the key in the ignition, and rumbles away.

Dean and I stand on the metal grate in front of the door staring at the burning horizon.  Tina appears beside us with a pair of binoculars, and says, "Just talked to the foreman at the Peabody, he says the fire's south, but it ain't just a tanker, he says it's spread to the brush.  He's got the Mexicans digging trenches around the house and moving their cattle to the other side of the road."  After she's done looking through the goggles, she hands them to Dean.

"Looks like trouble," he says, walking back through the cafe door.  "Looks like the shit's just hit the fan."

As I'm staring at the boiling cloud of smoke spreading out across the horizon like water, I can imagine the heat bearing down on every inch of the earth, scorching it clean of the wrongs we have done each other.  I'm watching the red tendrils snaking through the black smoke when the popping sound of a diesel-engine bronco comes roaring past the cafe.  I pull the binoculars away from my eyes, and as they adjust, I see the tail end of ol' man Jimmy's bronco turning north, heading towards the Peabody.

Back inside the cafe, Dean is in the kitchen talking loudly to someone on the phone.  "It ain't just a well . . . think it was started by someone on purpose . . . looking for ol' man Jimmy. . . ."  He steps out of the kitchen and looks at me, "Sheriff Donner's looking for the ol' man -- they think he set the place on fire after his row with Tom."  I nod my head at this, and Dean sits down beside me.  "Was that Jimmy that drove by a minute ago?"  I nod again and look at the remnants of my meal.  "I don't suppose he did it then," Dean says, "but I suppose we'll never know the whole truth."  With that, he lifts his tea glass towards the kitchen and says, "Tina, would you be so kind as to get me another glass of tea; I ain't leaving here until this whole goddamned thing blows over."  I think about Bobby and his stories, how one man's stories ain't always the same as another's, how we get hooked into this shit by just watching and listening.  I decide we're in it for the long haul -- all of us.  God damn us.