After helping Joe get his chair onto a hired cart, I came back to find two strangers carrying my kitchen table toward the stairs. One held the sound end; the other had the leg Eddie's men had loosened. Dorn stood behind them with her purse clutched under one arm. She had hired movers while I was gone. I set my hand flat on the table and asked them to put it down before somebody fell through the open space below the landing.
The older mover obeyed at once. The younger kept hold until Dorn told him to wait. She said she was ending the trouble, not inviting another discussion. My rooms were being emptied, and any articles I wanted could go to storage at my expense. I asked whether she had brought an order or only a wagon. Her face hardened. She had brought men willing to work, she said, which was more than she could say for most of the men using her house.
I did not know enough law to promise myself a judge would favor me. I knew only that no completed removal had occurred and that she was asking my cooperation to accomplish one now. I said I was not surrendering my rooms that afternoon. The older mover took his cap off and rubbed his forehead. He had expected furniture, not a dispute. From downstairs came the sound of someone shifting the wagon's tailboard, ready for property that had not yet crossed the threshold.
Dorn pointed at the scars in her plaster. She counted the blocked stairs, the unfamiliar men, and the chair that had nearly overturned the day before. I could answer none of it without sounding like a fellow complaining that the damage he caused had been measured unfairly. I moved beside the table rather than between her and the stairs. She could speak to me without shouting across the movers. I told her I would help clear the passage, but not abandon everyone upstairs to a hurried sorting.
Ruth opened her door when she heard the word everyone. She said her things were not mine. Dorn answered that nobody had said otherwise, just as the younger mover reached toward the trunk inside Ruth's doorway. He had been told to clear the landing rooms and thought that settled the matter. Ruth stepped beside him and placed her palm on the lid. She gave her name, then asked which room he believed he had been hired to empty.
He withdrew his hand. Dorn looked from Ruth to me with an impatience that contained a new uncertainty. Until then, my arrangement had been useful to her: one familiar man to press, one rent payment to discuss, one troublesome household to clear. Ruth would not let herself remain inside that convenient outline. She asked for her own terms to be discussed with her, without a driver reporting the answer afterward. I kept quiet, though keeping quiet felt dangerously like leaving her unsupported.
The damaged table gave me something honest to do. I told Dorn it was mine and could go. Its removal would open the passage without deciding anybody's tenancy. I took the broken end and asked the older mover to help with the other. We eased it down the stairs, resting twice. On the sidewalk I saw how poorly I had repaired the leg, with a strip of wood that had begun to split. I had served meals on that repair and called the place secure.
When I returned, the younger mover had Ruth's trunk tilted onto one corner. He wanted to move it into the hall so he could reach a small stand behind it. I caught the lower handle and lowered it to the floor. Not out, I said. Ruth repeated that the trunk stayed in her room. I let her finish. Dorn finally told both movers to leave that doorway alone. They went downstairs to wait, taking their irritation with them instead of another person's belongings.
My table stood on the curb under a threatening sky. I had conceded a piece of my home and protected nothing permanent. Curtis could return. Eddie could send another man. Dorn could pursue whatever lawful course she chose after we stopped arguing. I asked her to hear the tenants together before deciding that empty rooms were her only remedy. She said she would not attend a gathering where I delivered speeches and frightened people sat behind me pretending to agree.
Ruth said she could speak for herself. From the lower landing, an older lodger called that he had questions about the front door. Dorn looked up at him, then toward the empty place where Joe's chair had stood. At last she told the movers to take only my table and leave the rest. She would hear the tenants together, she said, if I could manage one condition. I had to stop speaking for them.