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into a private room half the size of
the main dining room. A crowd of thirty or forty sat transfixed by
two men on a makeshift stage, absorbed in a fierce game of
Battleship.
    The waitress came up behind him, ice rattling
in the pitcher of water she held.
    “It’s a very important match,” she whispered.
“They’ve been having this tournament every Friday for the last few
months. Tonight’s the championship.”
    Peter chuckled. “Seems pretty intense in
there. Money on the line?”
    “Actually quite a lot.”
    He returned to his table and let the waitress
stumble through the longest description of a dinner special he’d
ever endured—basically chicken-fried steak in two hundred
words.
    When she finished her spiel, he decided to
splurge—ordered the special and a glass of Woodbridge from an
unspecified vintage. The waitress disappeared into the kitchen and
returned with his wine and a basket of steaming bread.
    “You didn’t just move here, did you?” she
asked.
    “No.”
    “Hmm.”
    “What is it?” She’d told him her name when
she first brought the menu, but he hadn’t really been paying
attention. In fact, he hadn’t even looked at her until now.
    He’d be fifty-three in October, if he lasted
that long, and he put the waitress in the vicinity of
forty-five—short and slender with graying blond hair and thin lips
conservatively colored with coral lipstick that for some reason
reminded him more of an accountant. She wore a white dress shirt
and black jeans and her hair had been tugged back into a
ponytail.
    “We don’t get many folks, revise that, any folks just passing through our little piece of
prairie.”
    Peter sipped his wine, the stem of the glass
still warm from the dishwasher.
    Notes of black cherry and dish detergent.
    “No, I’ve been saving up for years to come to
Hoxie. It’s the culmination of a lifelong dream.”
    The waitress shot him a slanted stare. “Are
you having fun with me?”
    He smiled. “A little bit. I’m sorry.”
    She shook her head and started her retreat
toward the kitchen. “I can already tell,” she said, pointing her
finger at him, “I’m going to have to keep an eye on you.”
    Sudden applause issued from the banquet room,
signifying what could only mean the end of one fleet admiral’s
career. Peter leaned back and sipped his wine and basked in a
tremor of contentment, old enough at last to know better than to
analyze it, or embrace it longer than it meant to stay.
     
    He walked back to the motel a little drunk
and a lot tired. Friday night, 9:30 p.m., and Hoxie as dead as
advertised—no sound but the hum of streetlamps and crickets. He
climbed into the RV and sat for awhile in the dark on the foldout
sofa. Staring through the window into the prairie, half-expecting
to see some suggestion of residential glow out there, but not even
a porchlight disrupted the gaping darkness. Around midnight, he got
up and stepped into the closet-size john. Brushed the wine stain
off his teeth and tried to avoid meeting the eyes in the tiny
mirror. Windows to an empty house. Lobotomy eyes. He cracked a
window and crawled into bed. The sound of the wind blowing across
the prairie moved him like nothing had in days.
     
    In the morning, he brought yesterday’s coffee
to a fast boil in a saucepan and powered up the laptop. The
forecast discussion on the National Weather Service’s Goodland,
Kansas Website thrilled him—extreme thunderstorm activity expected
along the Nebraska border.
     
    Peter headed north up Highway 23 and reached
the town of Cedar Bluffs at noon, the sky still clear, the heat
intense and wet. He pulled into the parking lot of an abandoned
Pizza Hut, nuked a frozen dinner in the microwave, ate lunch, slept
off the remnants of a three-wine headache.
     
    He woke sweating, the sun blazing into the
RV. Grabbed a bottled water from the Fridge, drained it in one long
gulp.
    That familiar pang of disappointment
blossomed in his stomach as he read the updated