Chapter 10: The Dock

I got a job at Westerfield Freight on Thursday.

It took one phone call, and the call was a joke.

The company ran a "second chance" program for former inmates, a tax write-off Eugenia loved to mention in magazines.

It paid fifteen dollars an hour to load trucks.

The man at the hiring window took my parole papers, my name and a long look at my face.

"Mason," he said. "Reed Mason. You the one on the video?"

"That's me."

He grinned.

"Well, hell. Report at five. Don't punch anybody."

Nobody recognized me.

I had a beard now, scruffy and dark, and I wore a canvas cap and a reflective vest.

Two years earlier I would have been the boss's son.

Now I was a man with a hand truck, and I could walk through my own father's building.

On the second day, I saw the truck.

It sat at the back of the yard under a tarp that had come halfway off.

Red paint, chrome grille, a cracked windshield.

Old Number One.

I stood there with a crate in my arms, and the loader next to me said, "You like trucks?"

"My dad did."

"That's a piece of junk. Dalton wants it scrapped by the end of the month."

I didn't say anything.

I just touched the red fender once, and went back to work.

On Saturday, Westerfield Freight held its Children's Fund luncheon.

It happened every spring in the terminal's glass atrium, with white tables and flowers, and I helped set it up with six other loaders.

By noon the room was full of women in pastel suits and men with good watches.

Dalton moved through the crowd shaking hands.

His jaw had healed crooked, and it gave his smile a strange tilt.

His fiancee stood at his side, glowing.

Twice he walked within five feet of me.

Twice his eyes slid over my vest without stopping.

I carried a tray of glasses and kept my head down.

That was when I saw Katie.

She was pushing a wheelchair through the atrium door.

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