They Made Me Run On a Broken Leg. Don Had My Back novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: What Tommy Signed

Bernadette opened her purse.

She took out a folded sheet of yellow paper and held it up where the lanterns lit it.

"Six years old," she said. "A receiving manifest from the Brooklyn docks, with a short count on it. Signed T. Keane."

I knew that signature.

It leaned to the right, and the T had a crossbar like a tiny roof.

He had signed my report cards with it.

I felt sick.

"Bring it here," I said.

"Come and take it, sweetheart."

I stepped off the stage, and my legs held me up for every step.

I took the page out of her hand.

It was my father's name.

The count was forty-two pallets, and the number under it said thirty-six.

I stood there with the paper trembling in my fingers.

All around me the hall waited to see what a Keane would do.

A chair scraped at the back.

"Put it down, kid," said a gruff voice. "It's not yours to be ashamed of."

The gray-haired driver walked up the aisle between the tables.

He didn't hurry, and every head turned as he passed.

He stopped in front of Bernadette and looked at her for a long time.

"Tommy signed that page for me," he said.

The room went quiet in a different way.

"Six years ago I came up short on a load. I'd had a bad hip, I'd been on pills, and I miscounted six pallets of somebody's furniture. She said she'd fire me and take my pension." He nodded at Bernadette. "Tommy was checking freight in at the dock that night. He knew what that would do to my kids."

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