The Man Stalking Me Said Stop Working Alone, and the Kind Vet Was the One Who Let My Tire Down novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: The First Boat
The first boat of the season came into Duluth on a Tuesday in the last week of March.
I stood on the walkway at the Aerial Lift Bridge in a jacket that was too warm.
The ice was going out of the canal in gray plates that knocked against the wall.
The air smelled of water for the first time since November.
Matt stood beside me with his hands in his pockets and no hat.
Pavel stood on his other side with a thermos and his glasses pushed up on his forehead.
"Two minutes," said Pavel.
"The pilot called it from the pierhead."
"You're counting the cost again," Matt said to him.
"I'm counting the boat," said Pavel.
"We lost the salt lease and half the tug contracts.
"We kept the dock, the elevator and thirty-one men."
"Thirty-one," I said.
"The thirty-one who stayed when Matt stood on the dock and told them why," said Pavel.
"I thought we'd keep ten."
Matt said nothing.
He had not once complained to me about what it cost him.
I put my hand in his pocket and found his hand there.
The horn sounded out on the lake, a long deep note, and I felt it in my breastbone.
The span of the bridge began to climb on its great iron cables.
A lake freighter came out of the gray haze, long and low and rust-red, with her bow wave breaking white.
She slid up the canal beneath the raised span, only a few yards from us, and the whole bridge hummed.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Man Stalking Me Said Stop Working Alone, and the Kind Vet Was the One Who Let My Tire Down are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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