In June 1931 I went to the freight office and asked to take Danny's old run. It was a poor piece of work and every driver there knew whose car had carried me to his widow's door after he died. When the dispatcher called my name, three men stepped down from the loading floor to block my way. Bruno was one. They wanted me to agree on what the younger drivers would be allowed to say about that last afternoon in Frank's yard. I put the freight ticket back on the counter. "Ask them," I said.
I went out and brought the two young men in myself. The one with the white eyebrow had taken a job unloading china. He spoke so low I had to stand aside so the dispatcher could hear him without my head in the way. He said who had come out with the gun and who had put Walt down. He remembered me throwing his keys into the road; it had cost him a long cold evening to find the little one. I told him I owed him for that. He said I did, and kept on speaking. His voice got stronger. Bruno took his hand off the freight ticket and went away. Danny's run went to the other driver. I had to ask the foreman what there was to do on the loading floor, and he pointed to a split crate.
I went back to the freight shed for an evening turn, though my shoulders ached from the morning. A crate had split near the platform edge, and loose tins rolled under the wheels of a hand truck. I caught the handles while another loader cleared them. The foreman cursed the delay and put me on sweeping afterward. It was ordinary work, badly paid and sometimes dangerous. Nobody called it a favor. When the whistle ended the shift, I could leave without asking whose errands might follow me home.
Later that month Leo asked me to help carry his trunk to the station. His relatives had found him work in a legitimate produce business outside the city. He had the address folded inside his ticket, and he checked both twice before we started. I took one handle down the stairs while he held the other. He had regained weight, but we rested on the landing. The landlady came out to complain about the wall, then saw us struggling and held the downstairs door instead.
At the station Leo bought his own coffee. I reached for my pocket, and he moved the cup away with a small smile. We sat only until his train was called. There was no final account between us that could be paid in words. I had helped bring him home; I had also kept urging patience while men dismantled his truck and made promises they would not honor. When he offered his hand, I took it. Then I lifted the trunk to the carriage step and let the porter take its weight.
I saw Paul once more before he left Cicero that summer. He came to the freight yard carrying a cheap suitcase, wanting to know if I had any driving work for him. "The widow got my letter back," he said. "She didn't open it." I told him she hadn't opened mine either. For a moment we stood there with no widow between us, no employer to choose a voice, nobody we could sacrifice to get the old arrangement back. When his streetcar came he had to lift the case onto the step himself. I kept my hands in my pockets until he was aboard.
Rose stayed where she had established her laundry work. When I visited, she gave me bundles to carry rather than questions about men I no longer drove. In October I was helping her move a table away from a damp wall when a customer brought news of Capone's income-tax conviction. Later the papers reported the eleven-year federal sentence. I read the public accounts at my lodging. I knew nothing of the evidence beyond what was printed. Leo's captivity, my lost car, and Rose's account book explained none of that case.
Before the month ended, an old acquaintance offered me driving work for men who remembered my service. He caught me carrying a box to a rented room nearer the freight yard. The pay he named would have eased the rent and bought better shoes. I set the box on the stairs and asked what hours were mine to keep. He laughed, not unkindly. I told him no. Then I lifted the box again. He did not follow, and I carried it upstairs without anyone taking the other end.
The room held a narrow bed, a washstand, and a window overlooking a brick wall. I unpacked before sleeping. At dawn I washed, put bread in my coat pocket, and locked the door. The yard whistle sounded while I was still two streets away, so I lengthened my stride. I reported for the morning shift on foot, possessing neither a powerful passenger nor an unpaid promise.