He Let Her Wear His Shirt, So I Froze the Club's Money novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Softail

By noon on Friday sixty-one people stood in the clubhouse yard with their hands out.

Gus had pulled the yard meeting up from Sunday week to payday, because payday was the one day nobody would stay home.

Every one of them knew I was the man who had spent their money on a motel room.

I stood at the gate in my blank cut, with a cashier's check folded in my fist.

I had sold the Softail the night before.

I'd bought it as a wreck at nineteen, and Gus had stood next to me in his garage for a whole winter while I rebuilt it.

The dealer in Shawnee gave me twenty-eight thousand dollars for it and did not ask why I was crying in his lot.

Add eleven from my savings, and it came to thirty-nine.

That was every dollar I had.

The yard was loud with the kind of fear that does not shout.

Wives held their purses in front of them, and a prospect held a toddler on his hip.

Gus stood on the porch step with his hands raised.

"I'll say it plainly," he told them. "The payroll account is empty. I did not do that. A woman who has been through a terrible time put holds and disputes on this club's money, and when the bank sorted it, the funds went back to where they started."

He did not say where they went.

"I'm making calls. I'll find the money. But there are no checks today, and I'm sorry."

A murmur ran through the crowd.

"And whose fault is that?" said a woman near the front.

Gus let the silence do his work.

I walked into the yard.

It was a hundred feet to the cooler where Hallie had once left her ring.

Nobody stopped me.

I climbed up on the lid, with the sun in my face, and every head turned.

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