Chapter 7: Sawdust

The green door on Eighteenth Street was open, and the whole building smelled of cut wood.

Wyatt's workshop was one long room with a high ceiling and big windows gone gray with dust.

There were clamps hanging on the walls, planks leaning in a rack, and a radio playing low on a shelf.

In the middle of the floor stood half of a walnut table, the top still rough, the legs not yet attached.

"It's for a family in Oak Park," Wyatt said. "They want it by Thanksgiving, and so far they have a very expensive tabletop."

"It's beautiful."

"It's a plank on two sawhorses."

"It's a very beautiful plank."

He laughed, a short surprised sound, and wiped his hands on a rag.

I looked around because I did not know what to do with my own hands.

On the shelf beside the radio there was a cheap black phone plugged into a charger, the old kind with buttons.

His real phone was in his back pocket.

I did not ask about it.

"Sit," he said. "Please. I made tea."

He had made it in a camp kettle and he poured it into a chipped mug with a drawing of a duck on it.

I sat on a stool next to the walnut and held the mug in both hands.

"I need to play you something," he said. "It's going to be hard to hear. I want you to know you can say stop."

"Is it him?"

"It's him."

"Then play it."

He set a phone on the workbench in front of me.

It was Monique's, in a purple case with a cracked corner, and the screen showed a chat with Cory.

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