Joe Rusk could make Eddie's occupation look like ordinary lodging merely by keeping his chair in the front room. He paid for small things, swept mud off his boots, and had never frightened Ruth on the stairs. I needed him to take that respectable weight away. At the repair yard where he earned money between driving jobs, I found him beneath the raised hood of a disabled delivery truck. He saw my torn sleeve and told me he was busy.
The truck had to be moved into the covered bay before the afternoon rain came. Its owner stood nearby complaining about lost deliveries while Joe tried to steer and push at once. I put my hands against the body and leaned. My knee objected sharply. Joe told me the wheel would not turn itself, then climbed into the cab. We shifted the truck a few feet, stopped, and tried again while the owner explained how much better his former mechanic had worked.
By the time the front wheels reached the bay, sweat had soaked my shirt under the coat. Joe set the brake and climbed down. He looked at the fresh tear near my shoulder and asked what Eddie had done. I had intended to begin with the house, not the freight yard. His question made the order plain. I told him about the proposed settlement and the moment Eddie crossed to stand beside Sutter. Joe listened while wiping black grease from his wrists.
He asked where my car was. I said Eddie had it. He folded the rag carefully and laid it on the running board. For a while the only voice belonged to the truck owner, now arguing with the yard foreman. I started to remind Joe how long Eddie and I had known each other. Joe stopped me. That history, he said, was between Eddie and me. It did not oblige him to pretend a thing was decent because it had begun before he knew us.
I told him he was right. The admission felt less noble than it sounds. I had come hoping to spend the last good money left in my friendship with Eddie, and Joe would not accept it. So I described the trunk on the stairs, Curtis in the hall, and the bedding I had carried away. I did not say Ruth wanted Joe's help. She had authorized no such appeal. I asked him only to collect what was his and stop making the occupation look agreed upon.
Joe asked whether leaving would put him on Sutter's list. I could not tell him no. He asked whether I could protect the house. I said I had just run home from men who took my automobile. He gave a short breath that might have been a laugh if either of us had felt better. Then he went back to the truck and lowered its hood. He would finish the repair, he said. Afterward he would fetch his chair and his clothes.
I stayed to help move a bench clear of the bay and carry a damaged wheel to the scrap pile. Joe made no more promises. Working beside him without knowing whether he would come was harder than hearing him refuse outright. When the rain began, he took his pay in cash, washed at a stained basin, and put on his cap. We walked to the house under separate strips of awning, neither of us pretending that a shared umbrella would have made us allies.
Curtis stood inside the front door with another man whose name I did not know. He asked Joe whether Eddie had sent him. Joe said he had come for his things. Upstairs, he packed shirts into a small valise while I waited in the passage. I did not touch the clothes or offer to decide what he should leave. When he came down, Curtis had moved into the front room doorway. Joe set his valise on the floor and asked him to stand aside.
The chair was oak, with a split cane seat Joe had repaired using a piece of leather. He had brought it from his mother's house, though Eddie sometimes spoke of it as if the crew had bought the whole room. Curtis put one hand on its back. I stepped forward, ready to repeat every mistake I had made with my own furniture. Joe looked at me once, and I stopped. This departure had to be his, not another arrangement made in his name.
Joe took the chair by its two arms and lifted it level. Curtis had to release the back or be pulled off balance. He released it. Nobody cheered. Dorn watched from the rear hall, and Ruth stood above us with a folded towel in her hands. The empty patch beside the stove was small, but it could no longer be mistaken for Joe's consent. He picked up his valise, balanced the chair against his shoulder, and carried it past Eddie's men without asking permission.