"Arthur, you let go of that manual throw," Garrett said. He had the voice of a man who had presided over county commissioner meetings and high school football banquets for a quarter of a century—deep, melodic, and completely unhurried. He walked forward three steps into the crushed stone, his polished eight-inch patrol boots crunching evenly against the shale. "You're trespassing on an active rail easement during a municipal safety inspection. You've got no business on this siding."
"This isn't an easement, Garrett," Arthur said. He did not shield his eyes against the spotlight. He stared straight down the bright white tunnel of the beam. "This is the southern approach to the federal levee reserve. You parked your personal truck forty feet inside the statutory clearance line so your road crew could drop ten loads of illegal shale across the spur before the seven o'clock postal route opened."
Garrett let out a short, wet breath that curled into the cold air like pipe smoke. He didn't look back toward the highway, where the muffled thud of the backhoe blade still tore through the roof joists of our diner. He tilted the spotlight beam down until it caught the smear of crimson running into Arthur's beard.
"Ray told me you got clumsy behind the counter," Garrett said softly, taking another step up the slope of the track bed. "Said you took a header into the brass work when the county inspector came to post the condemnation order. I told him he should have called the rescue squad from Glenville, but you always were too stubborn to sit on a gurney."
"Hollister didn't post an order," I yelled, stepping out from the shadow of the siding shed. My voice shook with a fury that felt like hot glass in my throat. "Hollister hit him with a weighted baton and threw him into the pie case! He stole the blue occupancy permit off the wall and dropped the Blackwood contract under the grease trap!"
Garrett didn't flinch. He turned the spotlight beam three inches to his left, catching me in the glare until my eyes watered. His expression did not change; it was the same flat, cold patience he used on drunks outside the county fairgrounds.
"Luke," Garrett said, his voice dropping into a register that sounded almost like family concern. "You ought to keep your mouth shut before you talk yourself into an accessory charge on a Class Two state property obstruction. That boy Ray is a little rough with the paperwork, but he's carrying the county seal. Your granddad's diner hasn't turned a certified tax dollar into the Mercer general fund since the flood of ninety-eight. The county commission took that parcel by emergency vote on Tuesday to clear the road sightlines for the school buses."
"You took it for Blackwood Aggregates," Arthur said. He reached inside the left breast of his field jacket with two fingers, pulling free the yellow carbon copy of the agreement Hollister had dropped on the kitchen floor. He didn't wave it. He held it flat against his thigh, the paper snapping sharply in the damp wind. "You took twenty-five thousand dollars from their corporate treasurer in Charleston three years ago to pave the sheriff’s annex, and you pledged this half-acre right-of-way to secure their limestone transit line without a single public docket entry."
Garrett stopped walking. He stood ten feet away, balanced on the loose ballast stone between the two parallel rails. The long shadows of his boots stretched out behind him, swallowed by the oncoming glare of the locomotive. The engine was less than two hundred yards out now, its iron brakes beginning to bite into the steel with a high-pitched, screaming moan of friction that threw sparks off the flanged wheels.
"That paper doesn't mean a damn thing out here in the swamp, Arthur," Garrett said. The warmth left his voice entirely, replaced by the dull, flat gray of county power that had never met an obstacle it couldn't bulldoze. "You give that carbon to me. Now. You give me that carbon, and I'll tell Ray to leave the walk-in freezers on the slab. I'll give you until noon tomorrow to pull your grandmother's china out of the back room, and I'll see to it the county magistrate drops the assault charge Ray's writing up right now on his clipboard."
"There wasn't an assault," I said, moving closer to Arthur's shoulder. "We've got the original sixty-eight deed in the truck."
"The deed is fifty years old, boy," Garrett snapped, his eyes flicking to me for a split second, cold and dismissive. "And the county courthouse holds the master roll. Whatever is stamped in the clerk’s vault at nine o'clock this morning is the law in Mercer County, and there isn't a judge between here and the Ohio River who's going to question a signature from the Vance family trust."
"The Vance family trust died with Father," Arthur said. "And you know it."
"Father gave me the power of attorney when his mind went in the home," Garrett said, his jaw tightening as the diesel locomotive slowed to a crawl fifty yards away, its massive cowcatcher pushing a wave of wet fog and dirty rail ballast ahead of it. "He gave it to the brother who stayed behind to keep the roads open and the drunks locked up while you were running around the Pacific playing hero."