"I don't need to go to Cold Springs," I told him. "I need to go to the lumber yard on Route 9. The crew has been sitting on the loading ramp since six, waiting on the payment to clear the cedar posts for the township fence."
"The township fence contract is stayed," Thomas said quietly. "The entire township board is under an administrative freeze until state auditors finish reviewing the interdiction revenue fund. There won't be any fence built around the substation this winter, Arthur. There may not even be a substation by spring."
I didn't answer him. I pulled my denim coat tight against my bruised ribs, buttoned the surviving horn buttons up to my throat, and walked out down the concrete steps into the rain.
The Ford’s cab was cold and damp, the smell of grease and wet wool hanging thick in the enclosed space. The starter turned three times, slow and ragged, before the engine caught and settled into its familiar, unbalanced idle. I backed out of the fire station gravel, swung the nose north toward the bypass, and drove past the town square.
At the intersection of Mill Street and the highway, the two state cruisers were parked bumper-to-bumper behind Marcus Vance’s white county car. The driver’s side door of the township cruiser was wide open to the rain. Marcus Vance was standing with his hands cuffed behind his back, his yellow slicker stripped off and lying in the wet mud near the rear tire. A state trooper was unbuckling the leather gun belt from Vance’s waist, slipping the heavy holster free and carrying it toward the trunk of the lead patrol vehicle.
Vance saw my truck approach. He didn't turn away. His hair was plastered flat against his forehead by the sleet, and his heavy jaw was set like a block of gray stone. As the Ford rolled slowly past the intersection, our eyes met through the glass of the truck's rolled-up window.
There was no smirk left on his face. There was no casual county power, no talk of weight limits or civil interdiction ordinances. He was just a thick, aging man standing in the mud in his wet shirt sleeves, watching the only thing he had ever used to scare his neighbors get unhooked from his hips and tossed into an evidence trunk.
I didn't honk the horn. I didn't slow down to watch him climb into the rear cage of the state cruiser. I pushed the accelerator down, felt the transmission shift smoothly into third, and drove past the municipal sheds toward Miller County Supply.
The yard gate was wide open when I pulled in. Roy Gidley was standing on the covered loading dock, a cup of black coffee in his hand, watching three of our yard hands load sixteen-foot cedar stringers onto the back of an old flatbed with a manual hand-truck.
When I stepped out of the cab, Roy didn't ask about the money, and he didn't ask about the cut on my chin. He reached into his apron pocket, pulled out a small brass tally pencil, and held it out across the tailgate.
"The timber man from across the river called twenty minutes ago," Roy said, his voice flat and steady. "He said Clara Henderson walked into the bank this morning, saw three state detectives standing in front of the teller counter, and went straight to the branch manager with her deposit log from yesterday afternoon. The lumber’s paid for, Art. The bank covered the draft against their own bonding fund until the state releases your cash."
I took the tally pencil, laid my palm against the rough, fragrant surface of the wet cedar stacked behind the cab, and looked down the long, quiet lane of the timber yard. The drizzle was slowing now, the clouds breaking into thin white ribs over the south ridge, letting a pale, cold sliver of morning sun touch the tops of the white oak ties.
My knee still hurt, and my neck would carry the bruise from Marcus Vance’s forearm for another two weeks. But the trucks were moving, the diesel smoke was rising straight and clean into the November air, and the men were working under their own names on land that didn't owe a dime to the county line.
FINAL THANK-YOU NOTE
Thank you for making room for these pages today.