He didn’t say.
He was going to call after her, tell her to take a message or at least find out who was on the phone, but she had already ambled away from the office door, toward the enclosures nearer the parking lot. Cinder and Baker. Elsie and Tommy. Mountain lion and badger. Owl and eagle. Well, crap, he said.
Get my folder, Grace said as he stepped forward out of the barn.
He crossed down the path and to the office, the room not much warmer than it had been outside despite running the heater all morning. Grace was right that he needed to get the kerosene heater working and brought in from the equipment shed. If he failed to fix it he would need to buy a replacement. Another expense. Coffeepot nearly empty. He picked up the phone. This is Bill, he said.
You son of a bitch, Rick said. And there came the sinking again. The fucking thing is empty.
He stood with the phone in his hand, staring to where the heater glowed orange in front of its silver dish, staring at the cold empty air between himself and the burning wire filaments. Empty? he said.
You fucking knew it was. You fucker.
I didn’t open it. I told you I didn’t open it.
You fucking liar. You sent me to fucking prison and you killed my mom and now you fucking steal from me too?
Listen, he said.
No, you listen, you son of a bitch. Twelve years. I’m going to fuck you up for this.
I’m not a fucking locksmith. I swear to god I never opened that safe. It’s just been sitting on the floor in the closet all this time. I swear to god.
But the line had already clicked to silence. The conversation so fast that it hardly seemed real. A blur of words and then the click and he stood staring at the heater with the phone clutched in one hand and a file folder he did not remember picking up in the other. Jesus Christ. Jesus fucking Christ. What have you done? What the hell have you done now?
He stood there until the phone began its rhythmic alarm and then he laid it back in its cradle and moved outside again. The day bright and clear. Frost in the shadows. The faint drip of moisture inside the angle of winter sun. He turned up the path to where Grace stood talking to Majer. You’re my boyfriend, she said. You’re my new boyfriend.
He stood next to her without speaking.
Anything important? she said.
Nope, he said. Not important. Not important at all.
7
MILTON WELLS’S DOOR WAS OPEN BUT NAT STOPPED SHORT OF walking through it, instead lingering just out of sight. His eyes were in line with the brass plaque that spelled out Wells’s name in block letters, under which ran his title: Owner, Milt’s Reliable Ford-Lincoln-
Mercury. Behind Nat, an occasional salesman passed down the carpeted hall, silent but for the swish of a pant leg.
Then Wells’s voice came: Someone out there waiting for me? and Nat blinked and cleared his throat. Um … I wasn’t sure if you were busy, he said, turning into the doorway.
Come on in. The door’s open for a reason.
Nat had stood in the office only once before, on the day he was hired, but it looked just the same: black filing cabinets, stacks of papers, a calendar featuring an image of a car blurring around a turn—this month a new-model Country Squire station wagon with faux-wood paneling—and an oak desk behind which sat Milton Wells himself, a man of perhaps sixty, although his swoop of white hair made him appear much older than he actually was, bespectacled and wearing a Western-style button shirt with looping roses at the shoulders. Around his neck hung a bolo tie.
Nat, Wells said as he entered the room, peering at him over the top of his reading glasses. What can I do you for?
Hello, Mr. Wells, he said. The fact that the man had remembered his name was so surprising that for a moment he could not remember why he had come. He cleared his throat again and then said, I … uh … had a quick question.
Call me Milt. Everybody does.
All right, Nat said. And then added: Milt.
Come in, come in.
He stepped fully through the door and stood awkwardly before the desk until his boss asked him to sit and he perched at the edge of the chair opposite and began, at last, to mumble his question, the sentence punctuated by ums and ahs and long vowel sounds. He had not yet gotten to the verb when a salesman’s voice came from behind him: Hey, Milt, looks like we got that EXP sold, he said.
No kidding? Hot damn, Milt said. Who did it?
Vince.
Man alive. That guy could sell you the shirt off your back.
Nat was looking at his boss and then he was looking away from him and into the room. A safe stood on the carpet in the corner, its black surface about two feet square and fronted with a silver dial and handle, books and binders and paperwork packing the shelves all around it. Then he looked away. The poster on the wall was of a Mustang with a dark-haired woman in a thin evening gown draped across its hood.
He’s a beast, the salesman said. Tom’s putting the paperwork together right now.
I hope you watched how he did it, Milt said.
Float like a butterfly.
Sting like a bee, Milt concluded. Good man.
The salesman apologized briefly to Nat for interrupting and Nat mumbled something in response and then the salesman was gone.
That’s how it’s done, Nat, Milt said, smiling. I challenged them to come up with a way to sell it and someone rose to the challenge. That car might have sat there all year, but someone took it up and got it done. You see what that does?
Yes, sir, Nat said.
It’s like a calling.
What is?
Anything, Milt said. Anything you take seriously. Do you understand what I’m saying?
I think so, Nat said.
You’re the brake guy in the shop, right?
Lube guy.
Yeah, OK, so the point is: even a lube-oil-filter can change a man’s life.
All right, Nat said, although he did not understand this statement at all.