Chapter 12: Sixty-Four Years

I didn't cry in his house.

I put the key in my pocket and the ledger under my arm and I drove to the depot with the heater off.

Dewey was in the break room at the long table with his thermos and the crossword, at nine in the evening, in his stocking feet.

He looked up, and whatever he saw made him put the pen down.

"He left," he said.

"He left."

"Sit down, kid."

"I'm not on days anymore," I said. "Put me back on nights tonight, or I quit."

"I never signed the transfer." He rubbed his mustache. "I figured somebody would get sensible."

He gave me the keys to Truck 14 without another word.

I plowed all night with my jaw set.

I did Superior Street, and the harbor, and the long hill up to the old West End.

At four in the morning I turned up the street that runs along the Hall.

My headlights found a man in a bathrobe shoveling a walk.

He was tall and very stooped.

He worked the shovel in short, patient strokes, with a knit cap pulled over his ears, and his breath rose in a cloud.

I stopped the truck and rolled down my window.

"Mr. Haugen?"

Ole Haugen straightened up slowly with one hand at his back.

"Dear," he said. "It's four in the morning. Do you want some coffee?"

"I'm working."

"So am I." He smiled, and the creases went all the way back to his ears.

"Ingeborg's at the Hall until five tonight, with the, ah, the releasings. I keep the walk clear so she doesn't catch her heel."

I looked at him.

He looked at the pink mark at my throat, where my collar had slipped.

His face changed.

"Oh," he said. "Oh, dear. That's the third, isn't it?"

"It's the third."

"And he's gone."

"He left tonight." My voice cracked. "He signed the release before I woke up. I think he thinks he's protecting me."

"I expect he does." The old man leaned his shovel against the fence.

"That boy would walk into a river if somebody told him it was the polite thing."

I got down out of the cab.

My knees nearly went.

Ole took my elbow in his enormous hand and steadied me, and he held on a moment longer than he needed to.

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