Chapter 24: The Gate Stays Open

Niall came back at midnight with his hands empty and his father gone.

I was waiting for him on the porch with two mugs of coffee.

"Where did you leave him?" I said.

"A room above a hardware store. Clean sheets. A lock on the inside."

"On the inside?"

"I thought he should know how that feels."

I handed him a mug.

He sat on the step beside me and drank without tasting it.

The yard was dark and quiet. The quarry wind smelled of cut grass.

"I said I'd ask you in daylight," he said.

"It's midnight."

"Then I'll wait."

"Wait till morning, then."

I leaned my head on his good shoulder, and we sat there a while.

At first light, I woke him with a crowbar.

"Get up."

"What?"

"The cellar. Now."

He followed me down in his boots and a T-shirt, with his hair standing up.

The oldest of the old men was already there, with his cap pushed back.

The other two were behind him, and Roxie stood in the cellar doorway in her denim jacket with a wrench over her shoulder.

"You called them?" Niall said.

"I called everyone."

The cage stood in the bare bulb's light.

The fifteen scratches ran up the wall inside it, and the torn black strip of his patch still lay on the floor.

I put the crowbar to the first hinge.

"You can't," Niall said.

"Watch me."

"It's bolted to the foundation."

"Then we unbolt it."

Nobody spoke.

Then the oldest man set down his cup and picked up a wrench of his own.

We worked all morning.

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