"I’ve got plenty to say."
CHAPTER 4: The Ledger And The Soil
The hydraulic jack screeched as Thomas lowered the front axle onto the spare rim, the sound shearing through the quiet that followed the cruisers' departure. The blue strobes had faded past the southern pines ten minutes earlier, taking Lyle Vance and his sealed evidence pouch toward Watkinsville, leaving behind only the sulfur reek of scorched brake pads and the sharp resin of crushed wild mint.
Jesse tightened the last lug nut with two sharp, downward thrusts of the four-way wrench. He didn't toss the tool back onto the bed; he set it down on the tailboard without a sound, his forearms smeared with red road grease up to his rolled sleeves.
"She’ll hold twenty miles, Dad," Jesse said. He wiped his hands on an oily shop rag, his breath coming even now, but his eyes stayed fixed on the dark rise of Route 44 where the tire tracks cut deep into the ditch shoulder. "Take it slow across the creek culvert. Thomas and I will stay fifty yards back with the hazards on."
"I don't need fifty yards of nursery light," I told him, stepping out of the cab for the first time since Vance had barred my way. My left knee popped—stiff from an hour locked at an angle against the clutch pedal—and my boots sank half an inch into the clay. "I just want that pump rebuilt before the morning heat turns the cistern stagnant."
Thomas wiped his forehead with the back of his canvas glove and pointed the beam of his pocket light at the granite marker near my rear bumper. The letters GFC stood out stark and pale against the scrub. "Lyle knew that stone was there, Arthur. He didn't drift out here because he lost his bearings on the county line. He picked this stretch because the road narrows between the ditch and the timber cut, where an old man with bad eyes can’t see a shadow until it’s standing on his running board."
"He picked it because he thought nobody on this ridge had paper to answer him with," I said.
We moved out in a slow three-truck procession, our low beams boring yellow tunnels through the ground fog rising off the creek bottoms. My steering wheel shivered against my palms—the rim wasn't balanced, and the old steering box Vance had cursed still had its stubborn five-degree drift to the left—but the iron frame kept true between the white lines. In my rearview mirror, Jesse's forestry truck and Thomas’s utility rig kept pace like two quiet hulls riding a swell, their amber safety lights pulsing across the dark fence lines of farms where people were already asleep behind drawn shades.
We reached the home place twenty minutes before midnight.
The farm didn't look like much under the moon. Three generations of my people had pulled timber, milked scrub cows, and plowed the red earth down to the limestone hardpan, and every fence post showed the weather. But the cistern pump sat down in the hollow by the springhead, its cast-iron casing bolted to two creosoted timbers above the water basin.
Jesse didn't wait to wash up. He walked straight down the tractor track with the wooden toolbox from his truck, set a Coleman lantern on the flat rock beside the pump, and pumped the brass plunger until the twin mantles flared white.
"We need the bronze impeller out of the spare housing," Jesse said, kneeling in the damp moss with a box wrench. "The brass sleeve Lyle kicked didn't touch the manifold, but the vibration rattled the seal seat loose. If we don't seat the gasket tonight, the morning draw will pull air."
Thomas leaned against the stone coping of the spring box, shining his light down into the dark throat of the well. "Lyle’s wife’s people came by my shop back in August, Arthur. They wanted to know if the county had an easement across your lower timber parcel to widen the drainage right-of-way. I told them the state reserve held the reversionary deed. They didn't like hearing it."
"They wanted the timber cutoff for the gravel quarry expansion," I said, handing Jesse the flat scraper to clear the old cork gasket. "Lyle’s uncle sits on the regional development authority. If they could paper me with three safety violations and an abandoned-equipment lien, the county could condemn the roadside frontage without paying state timber valuation. Lyle wasn't just pocketing five hundred dollars for beer and pocket knives. He was building an enforcement history on my registration."
Jesse didn't look up from the iron casing, but his wrench slipped an eighth of an turn against a rusted stud before biting clean. "He tried it on four other haulers out of Crawford last month, Dad. Two of them paid the impound fee in cash behind the feed mill just to keep their milk routes running. Neither of them had an emergency band in the cab."
"They didn't have a boy working the state repeater desk," I replied quietly.
We worked for an hour in the cold lantern glare, our knuckles skinning against the wet iron, the smell of graphite lubricant and spring water mixing together in the hollow. By half-past one, Jesse torqued the four corner bolts down to thirty foot-pounds, reached over to the breaker box on the cedar post, and flipped the heavy knife switch.