A1

The Johnson brothers pulled into a steak house late at night somewhere outside of Abilene; the waitress, Jill, looked at the Arkansas plates on their truck and rolled her eyes. She was interested in one of them, though, a tall kid who’d gone to college; his name was Earl and he was probably the oldest. The second, Jake, looked like a farmer who was part of the truck itself (it was a dirty farm truck), and the third was all muscles and dressed in an army outfit. From talking to them she learned that he, Pete, was the youngest brother, and Earl and Jake’s job was to drive him back to his base on the coast and turn around and bring the truck straight back. Lord knows why they didn’t fly. She knew that the El Paso 656 sign was right around that exit; maybe they realized that it would be a good eight or nine hours before they’d even get out of the state.

They ordered steaks and got into talking, and she joined in. There was a little talk about money, but apparently the father had given them a credit card to get out to the coast and back, and he’d given the soldier kid a crisp hundred-dollar bill which he’d pulled from his pocket at some point, somewhat embarrassed. The soldier kid was mighty quiet, but he was probably on his best behavior on account of being in uniform and all. He seemed a little impatient with the other two, as if he’d joined the service in order to get away from the farm, the brothers, the whole thing. But he was also the hungriest; when the steaks came he poured the A1 steak sauce on his and dove right in and was about done before the others had even started.

This was partly because Jake had made a comment about how they were going to check and see if the steaks passed mustard, and Earl jumped on him for it. Earl said that the proper expression was “pass muster” and there was no such thing as “pass mustard,” only an idiot would say that. Jake, embarrassed and red in the face because he could tell that everyone, especially Jill, could hear everything, said that he didn’t believe “muster” was a word and if it was he had never heard it, though you kind of got the sense that if he’d never been off the farm, how could he have heard it. It may have even been that Earl grumbled something to that effect; he was the older brother, clearly impatient with Jake’s general ignorance, and he went into a long-winded, condescending explanation of how passing muster meant a kind of passing inspection, having your shoes shined and all that.

It was a small steak house, a lot of tension in it, and Jill watched them for a minute, admiring Earl but wondering if she could actually live with his mirth. She often did that; in the process of filling salt shakers and A1 jars, she'd watch the customers and observe little details. Earl, now, was driving his point home, that muster was some kind of word that everyone should know, but what he should have realized was that in the process of putting Jake down be’d basically driven poor Pete over the edge, and suddenly Pete came down hard with his fist, right in the middle of the tiny table. Glasses of water went flying everywhere and broke on the floor. One boy lost a half a steak because he wasn’t finished, and it went flying on the floor too, plate breaking and its pieces flying across the room. Jill hid behind the counter but continued watching. With the back of his hand Pete swept everything else off the table, or almost everything else, and the room became silent. His brothers stopped yammering about “passing muster,” or whatever, and all eyes were on him, Pete. With a flourish, but silently, he removed the hundred-dollar bill from his pocket, set it on the table, and walked out. His older brothers followed him, somewhat sheepishly. It would apparently be a long ride over to El Paso, but it was time to go; what choice did they have? Jill took one last look at Earl and thought, this guy could be dead by morning, but, on the other hand, maybe he’ll stop by on his way back east, in about a week. She smiled to herself, pocketed the money, and went about cleaning up pieces of glass.