Before Eddie got into my car, I asked whether Sutter knew what I was offering. My rooms, I said, not the whole house. I could give up the place I had paid for if that bought an end to men coming through it. Eddie pulled the passenger door shut against a spring wind and said I could explain it myself. He wore his good gray overcoat. I remember that because I mistook the coat for respect toward an occasion that deserved none.
The freight yard lay beyond warehouses whose windows had gone white with dust. I drove past the locked public office to an open gate farther along the fence. Eddie pointed, and I followed his hand. A second automobile stood beside a loading platform. Sutter waited near it with two men. There was no prisoner, no parcel, no money laid out for exchange. I was grateful for that much before I understood that an empty yard could still contain a trap.
I stopped with my front wheels in a shallow rut. Eddie stepped out before I had switched off the engine. I took the key and followed him, carrying nothing except the proposal I had repeated all afternoon. Sutter listened while I explained that Ruth rented separately and that the other lodgers had no part in our quarrel. I could clear my own belongings. They could have my absence, but not a passage through other people's rooms.
Sutter looked past me at Eddie. My oldest friend crossed the gravel and stood beside him. It was only six or seven steps, yet I watched every one. Then Eddie said the house would remain available to both outfits. There would be fewer misunderstandings with everybody agreed. He said it as though agreement were something already accomplished, waiting for me to catch up. Behind him a freight shed door banged in the wind, slow and hollow.
I asked whether Dorn had agreed. Eddie answered that Dorn wanted quiet and would get it if I stopped upsetting her tenants. Sutter said I could keep a bed, provided I remembered who had made room for me. For a moment I saw our boyhood street, Eddie lifting me onto a wall I could not climb alone. I had carried that boy into too many rooms. The man standing across the gravel was tired of waiting for me to recognize him.
I told them I was leaving. Eddie held out his hand for the key. He said they needed the car and I ought to stay until we had this straight. One of Sutter's men moved between me and the open gate. The other came around my rear fender. Nobody drew a weapon. They did not need one to make the arrangement plain. They meant to keep my wheels, my time, and whatever promise they could squeeze from a man with no easy way home.
I backed toward the driver's door and felt the handle strike my hip. For one stupid second I thought about the money I had put into that automobile: tires, a repaired spring, a winter of scraping ice from its glass. Then I saw Eddie glance toward the man at the gate. I threw the key onto the front seat through the open window. When Eddie turned his head to follow it, I went the other way, around the hood toward the loading platform.
A hand caught the back of my coat. I twisted out of one sleeve and struck the platform edge hard enough to numb my thigh. The coat tore free with me still half inside it. I scrambled onto the low boards, ran beneath the shed overhang, and heard shoes striking behind me. At the far end a heap of discarded packing timber blocked the straight way down. I jumped beside it and landed badly, one knee folding into gravel.
I got up because staying down would have made their decision for me. The gap between two sheds opened onto a weeded strip along the fence. I shoved through, scraping my palm on rough brick, and came out near a narrow service gate. It stood chained but not quite shut. I could not pass upright. I dropped, forced my shoulder through the space below its loose corner, and dragged my coat after me while somebody shouted from the shed.
On the public street a wagon driver pulled his horses short as I stumbled off the curb. I caught the wagon side, steadied myself, and let go before he could climb down. Behind the fence an engine started. I had escaped with my key to the house, a torn coat, and no car. The distance home stretched uphill through warehouses and crowded streets. Their automobile could cover it while I was still fighting for breath, and they knew exactly which door to use.