Done in Fifteen Years novel · Chapter 10 of 32

Chapter 10: Downriver

"We close," Deke said Thursday morning. "Lock the doors and put you in the attic."

"I'm not closing for a Kilgore," Vernie said. "I closed for eleven years for grief. I'm not closing for a man in a hat."

"There'll be two hundred people in this lot by noon. Let him try something in front of two hundred people."

I looked at Deke.

"She's right," I said.

"She's never been right in her life."

"She's right today."

So I lit the pit at four in the morning, like every morning.

Twelve briskets.

Twenty hours to midnight.

By eleven-thirty the line was out the door, down the steps and across the gravel.

The tubers were back, and they'd brought friends.

A pickup full of roofers from Uvalde.

Macey ran the register in Vernie's 1994 ball cap and didn't look up once.

At five till noon a black Suburban came down the gravel road.

Behind it was a news van from San Antonio with a satellite dish on the roof.

Darrell got out of the Suburban in his good straw hat and a clean white pearl-snap.

The heavy man in the pressed white shirt got out of the passenger side.

A woman with a microphone got out of the van, and a cameraman behind her.

Darrell looked at the line of people on the porch.

He took off his hat and held it over his heart.

"Folks, I'm sorry to bother your lunch," he said, loud and warm. "I'm just here to bring my little girl home."

I watched from the kitchen through the order window.

Deke was out on the porch, leaning on a post, between Darrell and the door.

The heavy man in the white shirt didn't come to the porch.

He walked off around the side of the building, toward the back.

Macey closed the cash drawer.

She took off the ball cap and set it on the counter.

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