Chapter 24: The Shirt, Again

The next Founders' Day fell on a Saturday in June, and forty-four members came to the yard.

There had been eighty the year before.

The Tulsa contracts were gone, and so were the men who had needed them.

Red Dirt Towing ran only the Oklahoma City route now, but it ran clean.

Every one of the forty-four was on a payroll that cleared on a Friday.

Gus had taken a plea in March.

He would be in a state prison until I was fifty.

I had not gone to the sentencing, and I had not been sorry about it.

The Ravens had bid on the open Tulsa contracts like any other outfit.

They lost to a family company from Broken Arrow.

Rook sent a case of beer to the clubhouse with a note: Congratulations, I hate it.

Mags stood at the grill in her faded apron, flipping burgers, with her glasses on top of her silver hair.

She waved the spatula at me when I walked in.

"You're late, treasurer."

"I'm exactly on time."

"Then you're early. That's worse."

Boone had been waiting by the gate.

He still wore a blank cut, with no rocker on it.

The table had offered him back his old seat in April, and he had turned it down in front of everyone.

"I'll earn it like a prospect," he told them. "I'll ask again when a year's up."

They had voted, eleven to nothing, to let him.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Let Her Wear His Shirt, So I Froze the Club's Money from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.