Chapter 6: The Last Word

On the thirtieth day they opened the steel door and I walked out into light so bright I couldn't see.

The landlord was waiting at the end of the corridor.

He had gotten thinner in a month, and he didn't smile.

"Mason," he said. "It's the old man."

I was moving before he finished.

"They won't let anyone in. But the night nurse owes me. You've got fifteen minutes."

"Why?"

"Because half this block would be dead without Carmody," he said. "He teaches the kids to read."

I hadn't known that either.

The infirmary was a long white room with six beds and a hum of machines.

At midnight the night nurse met us at the door and looked the other way.

Amos lay in the last bed, with a tube in his arm and his skin the color of candle wax.

His glasses sat folded on the table beside him.

The taped hinge had come loose.

I pulled the stool close and took his hand.

It was cold and papery.

"Amos."

His eyes opened slowly.

"You're out," he said.

"I'm out."

"Good boy."

His lips moved.

"Katie told me. She kept coming on Saturdays. They wouldn't let her in, so she sat in the car in the lot for four hours."

He coughed.

"The new guard finally took pity."

"She was here?"

"She told me you saved her."

I didn't say anything.

"She said you were the first man in that building who looked at her like a person."

The cough hurt him.

"That's my girl. Always counting who's kind."

"Amos, you need to rest."

"I have all night to rest." His fingers tightened. "Listen. Listen close."

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