Chapter 9: The Diner Lights Up

They came at four in the afternoon.

Three pickup trucks rolled into the lot with their beds full of empty crates.

I was at the bench with Jesse beside me, trying to sew a saddlebag with my left hand in a bandage.

He was holding the strap steady without being asked.

I heard the doors slam.

I looked up through the window and counted six men in club vests, with the two prospects hanging back.

"Dutch's early," Jesse said.

He put the strap down and walked to the door.

I went with him.

The man in front was a heavy club member who never tipped at the diner.

He held a copy of my lease.

"Lease says Dutch can inspect and remove fixtures on seven days' notice," he said. "It's been seven."

"It's been one," I said.

"Don't make it hard."

"You're not touching my racks."

"Ma'am."

"Those are my hides. Those are my tools. My grandfather's leather knife is on that bench."

He looked past me at Jesse, and Jesse looked back at him, and nobody moved for a long moment.

The prospect with the freckles stepped around the older man, and started to lift the nearest rack.

"Put it down," I said.

He didn't.

I took the rack by the other end.

We stood there pulling against each other over six hundred dollars of oak-tanned hides.

Then somebody started banging on metal.

It rang.

It rang again, loud and flat, from the diner's back door.

Birdie was standing on the step in her apron, banging a ladle against the iron dinner triangle that hung beside the kitchen.

She had not touched it in the twenty years I had known her.

"HEY," Birdie hollered. "EVERYBODY OUT."

For a second I thought she'd gone crazy.

Then the diner's side door opened.

A trucker came out wiping his mouth with a napkin.

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