Chapter 3
Roman
The foundry smells like a hundred years of iron and, since June, like primer.
That's Izzy. She's got the whole east wall stripped back to brick and a scaffold up in the pour room, and she has informed us — informed, not asked — that the club is not permitted to use the old crucible track as a coat rack anymore.
Nobody's argued. Nobody's going to. Kasimir stands behind her while she says these things with his arms folded like a man supervising weather.
He still doesn't talk much. He talks more than he did. Last week he said four sentences in a row at dinner and Cricket dropped a fork.
I asked him about it once, out on the loading dock, the two of us and a cigarette I wasn't smoking.
"You don't have to," I said. "Talk. If it's the—"
"It's not."
"Okay."
Long pause. Long enough that I figured we were done.
"Everybody wants me to say something about it," Kasimir said. "The face. So they can be kind about it. So I don't."
"That's a lot of years of not."
"Yes."
"And now?"
He thought about it the way he thinks about everything, which is at the speed of continental drift.
"Now there's somebody who doesn't want me to say anything about it," he said. "So I've got room."
That's the most anybody in this club has ever said to me about love, including me.
We hold church in the annealing room because it's the only room in the building where you can shut a door.
Eleven men at the table. Should be sixteen. We'll get to that.
"All right," I said. "Ash."
Ash Delacroix leaned back with his boots crossed. He's got a way of sitting that makes you feel like you're already losing an argument you haven't started.
"Bly land," he said.
"Bly land."
"Somebody's on the porch."
"Wendell Pike."
Half the table went still. Not the young ones. The young ones don't know the name. But Tobin's forty-eight and he put his hand flat on the table.
"Pike," Tobin said.
"Grandson. Nephew. Something. Same house, same blood, same chin."
"And he's wearing—"
"He's wearing Deacon's cut," I said.
Nobody said anything.
You have to understand what that is. When a man dies patched, the cut goes in the box with him, or it goes on a wall, and that's not a rule somebody wrote down, it's a thing that's true the way gravity's true.
Deacon Ross went in the ground in 2011 with his colors on.
I carried the left front corner of that box.
So either somebody dug him up, or somebody who was in that room in 2011 sold it.
I've had three weeks to think about which is worse.
"Say it," Ash said.
"It's a message."
"From."
"You know from."
"Say the name, Prez, we're all grown."
"Callum Vane," I said.
And there it was, out on the table with the ashtrays.
Cricket, at the far end, where prospects sit and don't talk: "The lawyer guy?"
"He's not a lawyer," Ash said.
"He's got a lawyer face."
"He's got a lawyer coat," I said. "He's a consultant. That's the word on the paperwork. What he actually is, is a man buying a county."
I put the map down. I'd had it in the office two weeks and I'd been not putting it down for two weeks, which is its own decision.
Ridge, north to south. Fourteen parcels. Nine of them shaded.
Fourteen months I've been listening to this county talk about Callum Vane and not one man has ever described him the same way twice.
Duane at the feed store says he's a gentleman.
The woman who runs the title office in Beaver Falls says he's the most patient man she's ever dealt with, and she said patient like it was a diagnosis.
A sheriff's deputy I've known since school said he'd met him twice and both times had come away feeling like he'd been interviewed and hadn't noticed starting.
He's thirty-eight. He was ten years old in October of 1998.
I want that in the minutes too, because it's the thing that keeps me up. Whatever he is, we made a piece of it.
"Vaughn place, sold in March," I said. "Kesler, April. The two mineral tracts behind the water tower, May. The Sanderson farm and the church camp, June. He's got the whole north spine and about half the south, and he's paying over, and he's paying fast, and he's not developing a goddamn thing."
"So what's he want it for?"
"He doesn't want it for anything," Ash said. "He wants us to not have it."
"That's half right," I said.
I put my finger down in the middle. The one parcel not shaded. The one sitting across the waist of the whole ridge like a thumb on a windpipe.
"Forty acres," I said. "Odile Bly. And every road out of the north end runs through it, and it's been running through it since 1968, and for twenty-eight years nobody's had to think about that, because nobody was ever going to buy the Vaughn place."
"Until."
"Until."
Tobin said, "So we buy it."
"With what?" said Ash.
"With—"
"With what, Tobe." Ash didn't raise his voice. He never does. "Say the number. Go on."
Tobin didn't say a number.
Here's where I have to put something down in front of you the way I put it down in front of them, because I'd been not saying it for eleven months and I'd gotten very good at not saying it.
The Grimm Riders are broke.
Not broke like tight. Broke like the transport work dried up when the Ohio charter burned in the spring, broke like we spent forty thousand on Kasimir's hospital and would do it again, broke like the foundry mortgage is a thing I personally signed and the payment is nineteen hundred a month and this month it came out of the fund we keep for widows.
Sixteen patches down to eleven, and three of the five didn't die. They just went and got jobs. That's the part nobody puts in a song.
I said all of it. Numbers, dates, the mortgage, the widows' fund.
"Say the widows thing again," Tobin said.
"Tobe."
"Say it again, Prez."
"August payment came out of the widows' fund."
"How much of it."
"All of it."
Tobin sat back and put both hands on top of his head, which is what he does instead of shouting, and which is worse.
"Marla Ross gets four hundred a month out of that fund," he said.
"She got it."
"Out of what?"
"Out of me," I said.
Nobody looked at anybody.
"That's not better," Ash said quietly.
"I know it's not better."
"That's worse. Roman, that is materially worse, because now there's a widow in this county who thinks the club's taking care of her and it's one man's checking account, and if you go under a truck on Route 9 she finds out in about five weeks."
"I know."
"Does she know?"
"No."
"Does anybody—"
"Nobody knew," I said. "That's the entire confession. Nobody knew. That's what I'm standing here doing."
The room got very quiet and very old.
"You should've told us in March," Ash said.
"Yes."
"You should've told us in January."
"Yes."
"That's it? Yes?"
"What do you want, Ash. You want me to fight you on it?
I was wrong. I sat on it because I thought I could fix it before anybody had to carry it, and that's the same thinking that gets a man's house repossessed while he's out buying scratch-offs.
" I put my hands flat. "So now you're carrying it. Congratulations, it's heavy."
Somebody laughed. It broke about eight percent of the tension, which is eight more than we had.
"Okay," Ash said. "So Vane knows."
"Vane knows to the dollar. That's what the cut's about. He's not threatening the old woman. He's showing me a thing from 2011 to say I have been in your house longer than you think."
"And she won't sell."
"She won't sell."
"To him."
"To anybody."
"You sure?"
I thought about a kitchen with a pot on the stove.
"I'm sure."
"Question," Cricket said, and then went the color of a boiled shrimp when eleven men looked at him.
"Go on," I said.
"If she won't sell — like, if she just says no forever — what does he actually do? Legally. He can't make her."
"No."
"So we're fine."
"Cricket," Ash said, "what happened to the Sanderson place?"
"They sold."
"Why?"
"...They wanted to?"
"Wayne Sanderson had a note at First Keystone that got bought in February by an entity in Delaware," Ash said.
"In March, that entity called the note. In April he sold to Vane at a price he was happy about, and he is happy about it, that's the thing, ask him.
He'll tell you it was the best deal of his life.
And it was. That's how it works. Nobody gets threatened.
Everybody gets helped, right up until they've got one door left and there's a man standing in it holding it open for them. "
The room absorbed that.
"So what's Odile Bly's note," Tobin said.
"She hasn't got one," I said. "Place is free and clear since 1991."
"Then what's her door?"
I didn't answer that, because I'd been not answering it for three weeks, and because the answer had gotten off a bus on Tuesday in a red hoodie.
Ash uncrossed his boots. Here it came.
"Who's on it?"
"I am."
The room did a thing. A small thing. A settling, like a truck taking a bump.
Ash smiled. That's the worst one. When Ash Delacroix smiles you should already be leaving.
"Say that again."
"I'm taking the Bly place."
"The president is going to go sit on a farmhouse porch."
"That's right."
"For how long?"
"As long as it takes."
"Roman." He leaned in. "There is a woman on that property who fed you when you were sixteen years old and you have not turned up that drive in four years. Four. I've watched you do it. I've ridden behind you while you did it, and I never said a word, because a man's got a right to a locked door."
"Ash."
"And now Pike's boy is in her yard and suddenly you're free every afternoon."
"Ash—"
"And there's a girl," Ash said.
I didn't say anything.
"There's a girl," he said again, to the table now, so it was on the record, because that's what a vice president is for and I have never once been able to say he did it wrong. "Twenty-four years old, off a bus, and our president put a prospect on her and sat in a gas station lot for two hours."
"Say what you're saying."
"I'm saying you're going out there for one reason and telling yourself it's the other one, and I don't care which is which, Prez, that's the thing — I don't care if you're going for the old lady or the girl or the deeds. I care that you don't know."
Eleven men looked at the table.
I let it sit. You have to let it sit. A president who answers fast is a president who's scared, and I have been in enough rooms to know that the man who talks first in a silence is the man who loses it.
"You're right," I said.
Ash blinked.
"That's — okay."
"You're right, and I'm still going." I stood up.
"Because there is one thing on that ridge worth more than the land and it isn't the road and it isn't the girl, and every one of you is going to be told what it is when I've got it in my hand and not one minute before, and if that's not good enough then take a vote and I'll go work at the Pump and Pantry. "
"Nobody's taking a vote," Tobin said.
"Somebody could."
"Nobody's taking a vote."
Ash held my eye. Long time. Then he tipped his chin, once, and picked up his cigarettes, and that was that, and we'll be having the rest of that conversation for the next fifteen years.
"Cricket," I said.
The kid nearly came out of his skin. "Prez."
"You stopped at the bottom of the drive."
"I — she said—"
"I know what she said."
"...Yes, Prez."
"You did right."
He looked like a dog that had been braced for a rolled-up newspaper and got a biscuit.
"Sorry?"
"If you'd walked her up, Pike sees a prospect. Pike counts you and knows we're sending kids." I put my jacket on. "You did right by accident. That's still doing right. Do it on purpose next time."
We broke. Men went out into the pour room where Izzy had the radio on and was arguing with Kasimir about a window sash, and Kasimir was losing, and enjoying it.
"It's original," she was saying.
"It's rotten."
"It's original and rotten. Those aren't the same category, Kaz, you can't just—"
"It fell out."
"It didn't fall out, it was encouraged—"
"By what?"
"By gravity! Which is a natural process—"
Cricket, passing with a bucket: "Should I get a new window?"
"NO," said Izzy.
"Yes," said Kasimir.
Cricket looked between them, made a decision, and left the building entirely.
Ash caught me at the door.
"One thing," he said.
"Go."
"What's the one thing worth more than the land?"
I looked at him.
"Ask me in a week."
"Roman."
"A week, Ash."
He nodded slowly. Then: "Deacon told you, didn't he. Before."
"Deacon told me nothing."
"Then who—"
"An old woman," I said, "who locked me in a cellar, and I have not been able to walk past a bolted door since, and I am about to go sit on her porch. So if you want to know why I stopped turning up that drive, there it is, and you can put that in the minutes."
Ash didn't say anything for a second.
Then he said, "You want company?"
And that's the whole reason he's my VP, right there, and I'd have gone to the ground for him before that and I'd go twice as far after.
"Not yet," I said.
Izzy caught me at the truck bay with a heat gun in her hand like a pistol.
"Roman."
"Izzy."
"How's the old lady?"
"Sharp."
"That's not what I asked and you know it isn't."
I looked at her. Six months in this club and she's already got Kasimir talking and the crucible track polished and a line item called STRUCTURAL, and she stands with her weight on both feet in a way that says she is not going to be the one who moves.
"She's seventy-nine," I said, "and she's alone on forty acres with a man on her porch, and I've got eleven guys and nineteen hundred a month."
"Okay. So put somebody out there."
"I'm going out there."
"I mean besides you." She shut the heat gun off. "Roman. I did the Kettle Road house in the spring for a man who was scaring me and I told exactly nobody for eleven days, and you know what that got me?"
"Izzy—"
"It got me a very bad Thursday," she said. "So. Somebody besides you."
"Noted."
"That's a word men say instead of yes."
"It is," I agreed, and she pointed the heat gun at me, and I left.
I rode out to the ridge at five in the afternoon with the light going long and orange over nine miles of nothing.
Pike's chair on the porch was empty.
The girl in the red hoodie was on the roof of the barn with a hammer.
I sat there at the bottom of the drive with the engine idling and looked up at her, up on a thirty-year argument about a roof, hitting it, and she saw me and did not wave and did not stop.
Then she yelled, down the whole four hundred feet:
"THIS IS A TERRIBLE ROOF."
"I KNOW," I yelled back.
"DID YOU KNOW?"
"EVERYBODY KNOWS."
And I turned up the drive for the first time in four years.