Chapter 7: The Yard

"You are not going in there," Damiano said.

"I'm telling you where I'm going. That's the term."

"I know what the term is."

"Then you know I'm going."

We were in the parking lot of Hourigan Freight at noon the next day, and the yard behind the chain-link fence was full of trucks.

Forty drivers ate lunch on the loading dock every day at twelve.

My father had eaten lunch on a dock just like it for thirty years.

Damiano looked at the cane in my hand and at the boot.

"I'll be at the gate," he said. "If anyone touches you I'm through it."

"If anyone touches me, I'll hit him with the cane."

"You'll hit him with the cane and then I'll come through the gate."

I walked in.

The drivers saw me before the office did.

A big gray-haired man put down his sandwich.

Two others stood up.

I knew every one of them.

I had cut their checks for three years, and I had known their wives' names and the kids' names, and which of them was out on a bad back.

I stopped in the middle of the dock, on the hot concrete, and said, "Hi, everyone."

Nobody said anything.

"You probably saw the news."

"We saw it, Moira," the gray-haired man said, quietly.

"I want to say one thing and then I'll go."

The glass door of the front office opened.

Bernadette came out in her cream linen suit with a cup of tea, and Eamon came out behind her.

She saw me and her face went soft with sorrow.

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