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"Just french fries and a chef salad today, hon, I’ister
Cash misses his ith a blank pain in his chest, and he misses his sisters and cousins, who have known hi boy Everyone back there re, they’ve been told The old ones get to hang on the sweet, perfect past Cash was the best at cli trees; his sister Letty won the story bees The woar, was spotted one tiazine
They all kno she has thin hair and a huets to walk around Heaven, Oklaho she’s pretty and special
Which she is That’s the trouble withaway from family, he realizes You lose your youth entirely, you have only the se that is carried within the body
It shouldn’t matter so much to Cash He still has most of what he started with: a talent for schemes and friendship, and all of his hair No one can ever hold a thing against Cash, except his restlessness For thirty years, whenever Cash started talking like a white man, his ould put extra food on his plate and turn her back tenderly and a little abruptly After she got sick, Cash came untethered somehow, decided they needed to ride horses and see the Rocky Mountains She died the year after they claimed she was cured: the doctor found no more cancer in her, and she only wanted to sit down and breathe out slowly and watch her grandbaby grow, but Cash danced her around the kitchen and swore he would show her the world She told hiht Like those white birds he’s been seeing outside the , it flashes its wings and promises whatever you want, even before you knew you wanted it
Rose has nabbed a spot for thee ners who didn’t know the McDonald’s custoer wrappers "It’s party ti down in her chair
Cash nods For nine lassy shards of ice, the dirty snow piled deep and hopeless as a whole winter’s worth of laundry
Now, for five or six weeks, the laundry is done The streets sith people ill take their sunny raft trips and green- Jackson Hole as one of the places they know
The couple at the next table are speaking soreen cloth slippers that you’d think would have fallen apart long before they made it halfway to anywhere from overseas Cash knows these wo herbal, then they s, Rose tells hi in Europe, where they don’t have any Indians They ask Rose personal questions, thinking she is soe around Rose in the store, not looking, as if her clothes were terribly stained and she didn’t know Sometimes they’ll come close and snap a picture Cash has witnessed this, and he has to hand it to her for the way she sits still, holding her tongue for once The custo in one uyher layers of dyed-black hair "I feel like dropping a spoon or so just to see him pick it up"
"Rose, you have to decide if I’m your boyfriend or your daddy I can’t do both"
She flashes her eyes at him "You knoto that He is grateful that McDonald’s doesn’t give out spoons
"Just think," she says, "we could be in Paris, France or Hong Kong They have McDonald’s in every country in the world"
"That’s what I hear," Cash says, but he doesn’t feel like he’s in Paris, France, he feels like he’s in McDonald’s
"You seem depressed," Rose observes, and Cash wonders if that’s what he is, after all He thinks of the way you press dough doith your fist: take a big, round hopeful swelling and punch the rise right out of it Yes, he thinks Depressed
Cash is off work at last For the last tenover whether or not to buy so they would take their e someplace else, but Tracey rolled her eyes in a way that could not be missed, and still the couple paid no attention The man’s T-shirt said THINK