a Better Cup of Coffee By CLIFTON THOMPSON The two men, an attorney and his client, were sipping at their mid-morning cup of coffee and discussing minor details of a coming court battle when the attorney nudged his client and nodded toward the door. "See that woman coming in?" he asked. His companion glanced toward the entrance. "You mean that old woman? She's the scrub woman at the bank building. Lives down in the shacks, I believe." "Yeah," the attorney said dryly. "Observe what happens while she's here." The little old lady, slightly stooped and dressed in an old fashioned print dress that had seen many months of wear, sat down at the counter a few seats from the two men. They noticed her gnarled, work-scarred hands and worn face. She sat near enough that the men caught her words when she spoke in a timid, hesitant tone to the tall, good-looking young man who approached to take her order. "Coffee, please," she said. "Have you got a nickel?" was the young man's immediate response, with the emphasis attached to the pronoun. "Yes," she replied meekly enough, and the young man turned to the coffee urns without another word. The little old woman followed the boy with her eyes and the two men, who were sitting between her and the urns, caught the look her eyes held. Puzzled by it, the client turned to the attorney as if to ask a question but the look in the eyes of the attorney caused him to turn his attention back to the woman. The young man set the cup of coffee before her and had turned to go to the kitchen when she spoke. "Can I have a little more cream, please?" "I gave you the regular amount," he said. "That's enough. If you don't like our coffee, you can go some other place. There's a coffee shop next to the bank." "But I like to come here," she said as if she had to explain her presence, yet realizing it was futile. "Well, we don't like to have people like you here. We try to run a place for the better class of people." The manner in which he turned his back to her as he went to serve another customer clearly implied that people like her hurt the reputation of the cafe. The attorney and his client caught the reaction in the woman's eyes, as though she had walked from a dark room to face a bright light, as she quickly lowered her head. She gazed intently into the cup for several seconds, then drank the contents and left. They sat quietly over a second cup. After a few minutes the attorney said, "Know who the young fellow is?" "Yes," his companion replied. "A big shot at the high school. Quite a football and basketball star. Understand he has a pretty good opinion of himself. Evidently he has." "Yes," the attorney said. "You know he's an orphan." "I've heard that. Adopted when he was fifteen, wasn't he?" "Yes," the attorney said. "There is quite an interesting story there. I'm one of the two or three people who know its entirety and I ran onto it quite accidentally a few years back while handling some legal matters for the home from which he was adopted. I've never said anything about it." "I'd like to hear it," his companion said, "if you wouldn't be violating a confidence." "No, I guess I wouldn't." The attorney held a match to his client's cigaret, then to his own and continued. "His father died just before he was born, leaving his mother very poor. After he was born, she scrubbed floors to provide for the child but she was having a hard time and some ladies' society decided she wasn't doing well enough. They talked the mother into putting the boy into this home until she was better prepared to care for him. By some method they got the mother to sign away all claim to her baby and she worked hard trying to get the child back, not realizing she never could." "There's nothing unusual about that," the listener said as the attorney paused. "Happens quite a lot in the big cities." "That's not all," the attorney continued. "She never gave up hope of getting her son back until he was adopted. The foster parents took him away from the orphanage and brought him out here. The mother had nothing to keep her there any longer. After a few months she traced her son and came here. She got a job scrubbing floors in the bank building. The little old woman who was in here is his mother." The client sat there for a few seconds as if he had not heard the last few words. "I noticed the way she looked at him and wondered," he said finally. "But why doesn't she . . . no, I guess not." "Why doesn't she tell him she is his mother?" the attorney asked, completing the query. "Do you think he would believe- it? Anyway would you if you were she?" "No, not after the way he treated her," he said. "I understand," the attorney said, rising from his chair, "that the coffee shop next to the bank serves good coffee. Shall I meet you there this afternoon?" "Yes," his companion replied, holding the door open. "The flavor of the coffee here isn't as good as it used to be." page twenty Otto the Ranger His pinched little face, with its beetle-brows and colorless, rain-water eyes, was melancholy and comic at the same time. By GORDON ALLRED Until the summer of 1948, I visualized the forest ranger as a cross between Tarzan, Roy Rogers and the more muscular heroes of Harold Bell Wright. He was strong and silent, tall of stature, and given to standing with his clean-cut profile turned toward the setting sun. My first acquaintance with one in the flesh quickly disillusioned me. One day in July, my cousin Bob and I, full of high hopes and the spirit of adventure, entered a neat green and white forestry building in Salmon, Idaho. The first thing that met our eyes was a small figure hunched over a desk in a corner of the room. This was our first view of Otto, who at the moment was intently at work with a well-chewed pencil stub. Bud Daniels, the head ranger in that district, performed introductions, and explained that we three, Otto, Bob and I, were to make up a trail crew, and that we should prepare to leave for the mountain that very day. Otto, who was loosely classed as a ranger, was given the somewhat dubious position of foreman. Otto extended a grimy paw in response to our greeting. "Do youse guys wanna look over that there grub list?" he piped. Despite his cowboy boots and high stetson hat, he stood a good head shorter than either Bob or I. We both sized him up as a nondescript little guy who wouldn't get in our way. It was not until we had spent a few days together back in the middle of the dark Idaho forests that we began to notice his eccentricities. His squeaky voice provided constant amusement and his pinched little face, with its beetle-brows and colorless, rain-water eyes, was melancholy and comic at the same time. He rarely made any pretense of shaving his strange furry beard, which seemed to spring from his face in unexpected places. Bob and I had come fairly well equipped for the summer's work with a large army duffle bag packed with heavy shirts, coats, gloves and cumbersome galoshes. It was not long before Otto had peevishly dubbed our duffle bag "that durned balloon." It was his job to pack the mules and the bag, which was a real trial when it came time to move camp. A small soiled flour sack carried all Otto's belongings. A faded blue levi jacket and a pair of cotton gloves worn through in the fingers were his only extra wearing apparel. Among other things in the sack was a bar of unused Palmolive soap, preserved for those occasions when he went to "town," a large bag of half melted, or as the weather changed, half frozen candy, and several dog-eared pulp magazines which he usually thumbed through during his leisure moments. I recall one that seemed to be his favorite. Every once in a while, if I entered the cook tent very quietly, I would catch him unawares, reading it avidly. Upon seeing me he'd lay it aside and look up grinning sheepishly. This special edition was yellow with age. Large flame-shaped letters like the type on "Prevent Forest Fires" signs spelled out "The Carnal Crime of the Lustful Farm Hand." Otto had neither the courage nor the intellect to argue with real people, but satisfied his small rages by growling at fires that wouldn't go, water that wouldn't boil or mules that wouldn't pack. We got used to hearing his high-pitched voice going on and on in the same monotonous refrain. "Whoa thar, mule; quit walkin' all over the damn hillside! Back's too high, neck's too low! Danged forestry service anyhow! Rope's too stiff!" he would say punctuated with repeated comments about "you fellers and your danged balloon." Otto's virtues were not conspicious, but at some distant time when he stands, eyes averted, at the Pearly Gates, his grimy hands free from the traces of Palmolive or any other soap, some one should rise and say in his defense, "Otto could sure pack a mule." page twenty-one