“Martha told me someone was waiting for a ride.”
“Martha forgets who is related to who,” Clara said.
“She thought we were cousins from out of state.”
“I am not calling them tonight,” I said.
“They are eating fish sticks on porcelain plates,” Clara said.
“They do that every Thursday.”
“How do you know what they eat on Thursdays?”
“The grocery delivery truck parks by my fence,” Clara said.
“I can read the labels through the side door.”
“You live behind the grocery store?”
“Next to the loading dock,” she said.
“The noise stops at midnight.”
“You could have called from a pay phone.”
“The pay phone by the laundry was broken since the winter storm,” Clara said.
“You could have walked to the diner.”
“The booths are too narrow,” she said.
“Everyone looks at your shoes.”
“Arthur drinks coffee in the corner booth at two.”
“Arthur drinks tea with lemon,” she said.
“He stopped drinking coffee after his heart test.”
“You know more about the street than I do.”
“I walk after dark,” Clara said.
“Nobody looks at a woman with a canvas bag.”
“Where is your car?”
“Behind the tire shop,” she said.
“The battery is dead.”
“I have jumper cables in the trunk,” I said.
“The trunk is rusted shut,” Clara said.
“You need a crowbar.”
“Arthur has a crowbar by his workbench.”
“Arthur does not lend his tools to strangers,” she said.
“I am not a stranger.”
“You have your mother’s forehead,” Clara said.
“That is worse than being a stranger.”
“I am going to ask Arthur about the highway report.”
“Arthur keeps his papers in a biscuit tin under the oil drum,” Clara said.
“The tin is locked.”
“With what kind of key?”
“A small brass one on a piece of twine,” she said.
“Where does he keep the twine?”
“Around his neck,” Clara said.
“Under his gray shirt.”
“That is going to be difficult.”
“Arthur sleeps between two and three,” she said.
“The garage door is left on the latch.”
“You checked the door?”
“I dropped my wrench under the side window,” Clara said.
“The glass was cracked already.”
“You broke it?”
“The wind pushed it,” Clara said.
“The latch was rusted through.”
“Arthur would fix a rusted latch.”
“Arthur uses wire to hold the screen shut,” she said.
“The wire is soft.”
“How do you know so much about Arthur’s windows?”
“The cats sleep on his sill,” Clara said.
“They like the heat from the compressor.”
“You feed stray cats?”
“Only the black one with the torn ear,” she said.
“We had a cat like that when we were ten.”
“That cat died under the porch,” Clara said.
“Mom said it went to the woods.”
“Mom lied about the cat too.”
“Mom lied about the fence,” Clara said.
“She said the neighbor built it.”
“Dad built it while we were at school.”
“With cedar posts from the old barn,” Clara said.
“The ones with the burnt paint on the bottom.”
“You remember the burnt paint?”
“The fire was the year before we got the dog,” Clara said.
“We were eight.”
“Seven,” I said.
“Eight,” she said.
“I have the school calendar in the box.”
“The calendar was wrong,” Clara said.
“The principal printed it after the strike.”
“Everything from that year is in the attic.”
“The attic has a padlock now,” Clara said.
“Dad put it on when the roof leaked.”
“When did he put the padlock on?”
“The day after I left,” she said.
“He did not want anyone looking at the floorboards.”
“What is under the floorboards?”
“The ledger,” Clara said.
“What ledger?”
“The one with the names of the people who bought the timber,” she said.
“What timber?”
“The trees behind the old church,” Clara said.
“The ones that belonged to the town trust.”
“Our family did not own those trees.”
“Dad signed the papers in ninety-nine,” she said.
“The mayor didn’t check the seals.”
“Arthur was on the town council then.”
“Arthur got the garage out of the deal,” Clara said.
“The concrete floor was poured in June.”
“That was the same month the bridge closed.”
“The bridge didn’t break,” she said.
“It was cut with an acetylene torch.”
“Who would cut a bridge?”
“The same man who signed the dental bill,” Clara said.
“Dad?”
“Dad and the county surveyor,” she said.
“The surveyor died in the hospital.”
“His heart stopped during the snowstorm,” I said.
“The power was off for three days,” Clara said.
“The oxygen tank was empty.”
“How do you know the tank was empty?”
“The orderly told the woman in the next bed,” she said.
“Which woman?”
“Mrs. Gable,” Clara said.
“She lived across the lane before they paved it.”
“Mrs. Gable died before the accident.”
“She died three weeks after,” Clara said.
“She kept her curtains drawn.”
“Nobody visited her.”
“I brought her soup in a jar,” Clara said.
“She told you about the surveyor?”
“She told me about the papers under his mattress,” she said.
“Did you take them?”
“They were burned in the stove,” Clara said.
“Whose stove?”
“The one in the back room of the laundry,” she said.
“The laundry burned down in two thousand.”
“The insurance paid for the new roof,” I said.
“The insurance paid for the garage floor too,” Clara said.
“You have all the dates mixed up.”
“Look at the back of the garage,” she said.
“The concrete has a different color near the door.”
“That is just oil stains.”
“That is new cement over a hole,” Clara said.
“What kind of hole?”
“The metal box from the town office,” she said.
“The one with the tax stamps.”
“Arthur would not let anyone dig up his floor.”
“Arthur was sleeping when they poured it,” she said.
“He stayed at the hotel in the next county.”
“The hotel burned down too.”
“That was later,” Clara said.
“After the roof caved in.”
“You keep track of every fire in the county.”
