the new cold day, until from within the garage there came the shrilling of the pneumatic lug wrench, a short burst followed by the clunk of a lug nut dropped in a tin pan, or an old hubcap. Another burst of the wrench and another dropped lug.
“Well,” said Wabash. As if he were finished. But he wasn’t. “I ain’t one to stick my nose in other folks’ business,” he said, “but I run a small garage in a small town and your brother in there’s an employee of mine and so it ain’t exactly not my business either.”
Danny looked toward the garage, then back to Wabash. “I guess I’m not following you, Mr. Wabash. I don’t see how he has anything to do with it.”
“With what?”
“With whatever it is you’re saying.”
“Not saying nothin here. Just standing here talking with a feller.”
Danny nodded. “Well,” he said. “I ought to get going.”
“Will say this one thing though,” said Wabash. “Maybe you already know it, maybe you don’t.” He nodded in the direction of the garage. “But when I hired them two in there I was pretty hard up for help. I’d lost one man to retirement and another just run off heck knows where and the cars were stacking up. Didn’t need no geniuses, just needed hands on deck. Even so I wasn’t too keen on hiring them two after all that happened, and one of them being the way he is. But a man asked me to do him a favor, and I’d known that man a long time so I done it. And I ain’t been sorry. They’ve been good workers and they’ve stayed on where others have come and gone. But even so. Even now I guess I could still be sorry I done it.”
He squared himself in his black jacket and waited for Danny’s response.
Danny said, “Yes, sir. I know how much my brother loves this job. And how much it means to my mother. To our family.”
Wabash sniffed and looked away down the road. He shook his head and said, “It’s a small town, mister, that’s all I’m saying here. A real small town. I’d think a man would want to keep that in mind, that’s all.”
He looked back at Danny and when he did Danny said, “Yes, sir, I’ve kept that in mind. I’ve kept that in mind quite a lot.”
34
The day after she’d come out to his house, Gordon drove to hers, or the house that had become hers, but when he saw the unshoveled snow on the drive he stopped short of it and sat there, his hands on the wheel. Snow on the Ford sedan too, bumper to bumper, and no fresh tiretracks or even foot tracks in the snow on the drive and none on the porchsteps either. It was already three o’clock in the afternoon. A snow shovel stood on the porch, propped against the house like something no one seemed to know the use of. All the curtains were drawn. No smoke from the chimney, no steam even from the exhaust tubes in the roof. He didn’t want to go packing down the snow with his own tires before she got a chance to shovel, and then he remembered the purple cast and shook his head and cut the engine and got out.
He went up the porchsteps and stood before the door, listening. No sound inside. No one around on the cul-de-sac that he could see, no one to wonder at an unmarked white van parked in front of the sheriff’s house. Ex-sheriff’s house. No dogs barking at him from the neighbors’ windows.
He cleared off the steps first, then he shoveled the walkway and then he shoveled the drive, working around the sedan, and in the fifteen minutes this took she did not come out, did not come to a window, not that he saw anyway.
He got back in the van and backed into the drive alongside the sedan, cut the engine again and got out and opened up the rear double doors. It was a quarter-face cord, give or take, and it took him twenty minutes to get it all stacked on the porch, turning each piece for fit, and when he was finished he set the bundle of kindling in its belt of twine on top of the stack, then stood brushing the bark chips from his jacket sleeves. Then just stood there, looking out over the houses of the cul-de-sac, as the man must’ve stood a thousand