My car stood behind the closed freight office with Eddie sitting on its running board. I had walked there intending to bring it home, sell it if necessary, and pay enough money to Dorn that she could hear me without first seeing a debt. Eddie lifted his head when gravel shifted beneath my shoes. The windshield wore yesterday's rain in gray circles. Seeing that familiar glass made my hands close around an absent steering wheel. Then Eddie held up the keys and asked whether Thursday was still on.
“It is.” He swung one key slowly between finger and thumb. “Call it off. Drive away.” I looked toward the office. A man I knew only by sight stood inside the doorway, smoking. There was no point pretending this was a conversation between two boys from the same street. I asked whether Eddie was keeping my car or making me an offer. He said I could call it whatever helped me sleep. I had once admired how little he needed to explain.
I went around the hood. Eddie rose, cutting off the driver's door. For a moment we stood close enough that I could see the pale dent his hat had left above his eyebrows. I told him I wanted my coat and tools. He asked whether those were all I had come for. The car was mine, but I could not take it from two men by insisting on that fact. I stepped toward the rear door instead. After a long moment, he let me open it.
My coat lay on the floor where somebody had wiped muddy shoes against it. I shook it outside the car and folded it over my arm. The small tool roll was beneath the front seat, its leather strap split. I checked it because I needed the tools, not because I meant to search anything else. Eddie watched me count the wrenches with my thumb. “You could earn tonight,” he said. I rolled the leather shut. “Not with the house as part of the wages.”
He caught my sleeve before I turned away. “You think they'll thank you?” I looked at his hand until he removed it. The truth was uglier than an argument. I did want gratitude. I wanted Ruth to see me as something better than the man who had brought danger upstairs, and I wanted Dorn to forget the missed payments. None of that could make Eddie return the car. I told him the meeting would happen without thanks. Then I walked out carrying what he had allowed me to keep.
At the delivery yard, a foreman stopped me before I reached the wagons. He looked at the tool roll and asked whether I was selling anything. I said I wanted work. Behind him, two men were shifting flour sacks under a corrugated roof while a third waited beside a hand truck with one wrist wrapped. I offered to take the injured man's place. The foreman wanted a reference. I could give him names that would make him shut the gate. Instead I admitted I had none he ought to trust.
He pointed to a fallen sack. “Put that on the scale.” I bent too quickly, pulled against the weight, and felt a warning across my back. The man with the wrapped wrist showed me where to stand. I accepted the correction without mentioning how many cars I had driven through bad weather or how much money had once passed through my hands. None of it lifted flour. We worked the sack onto the platform together. The foreman offered a short shift, cash when the outgoing load was ready.
By afternoon my palms had gone tender inside my gloves. I wheeled parcels across boards that buckled beneath the truck and learned to stop before the doorway instead of trusting somebody to clear it. Once I nearly sent a crate into the injured man's knees. He swore, caught the handle, and made me back up and try again. There was no friendship in it. There was work that would hurt another man if I did it badly, and a plain correction when I did.
The foreman counted my pay into my hand beside a ledger spotted with grease. I asked about tomorrow. He said to be at the gate early; he promised nothing beyond that. Outside, I separated the coins against my coat, making a pile for Dorn and another for a bed elsewhere. Neither pile was enough. I put them together again. My last load had bought food and part of an obligation, but not another address. I walked home with the tools pulling at my shoulder and no car waiting at either end.