George drove more slowly than usual. Each tap of the accelerator made his right leg ache. He had to keep both hands on the wheel because sometimes his right hand began to tremble. At a red light he found himself remembering Vincent’s face just before the fall, the disbelief replacing anger. He tried not to think about how close a different outcome might have been.
By the time the apartment building appeared, Sadie was deeply asleep. George stayed in the truck for several minutes, listening to the ticking engine and counting what he owed.
Rent. Electricity. Groceries. Fuel. A new pair of shoes for Sadie before school started.
None of the categories included the word pain.
He carried her upstairs anyway, one careful step at a time, using the cane and the banister and every bit of strength he had not yet spent.
PART TWO: THE RECEIPT
Chapter Eight: The Morning After
Sunday arrived without mercy.
George woke before the alarm, as he usually did, but the ordinary work of turning onto his side became a problem he could not solve by habit. His right knee had swollen so badly that the outline of the joint was obscured. Heat seemed to radiate from beneath the skin. When he tried to bend it, pain shot upward through his thigh and into the small of his back.
For several minutes he lay still, measuring the room by its sounds. A truck backing up somewhere outside. The pipes knocking in the wall. Sadie breathing softly in the next bedroom. A neighbor’s television murmuring an old game show through plaster so thin it transmitted arguments, music, and entire private lives.
He did not need to check the clock to know it was six. His body had been waking at six for more than twenty years.
He reached for the cane by the bed. The hickory was smooth beneath his fingers. He used it to lever himself upright, then waited while the room stopped tilting. When he put weight on the bad leg, a white flare of pain made him grip the edge of the mattress.
“That’s new,” he said to the empty room.
The words sounded ridiculous and lonely.
He could not let Sadie see how badly he moved. More accurately, he did not want to. The difference between those two ideas had become an important, uncomfortable theme in his life. He found his jeans, pulled them on slowly, and went to the kitchen.
There was coffee left in the tin. He measured out enough for one weak pot and drank the first cup while standing beside the sink. His other hand rested on the counter to keep his balance. In the yellow morning light, his knuckles looked less dramatic than they had at the fair. A few splits and bruises. The knee was invisible beneath denim, and therefore easier to pretend away.
The envelope containing the prize money lay inside the kitchen drawer, beneath a packet of old appliance warranties. George had counted it three times after bringing Sadie home. He counted it again now. Ten hundreds. He took one bill and put it in his wallet for groceries and fuel. He placed nine in the envelope. His rent balance was eight hundred fifty. Paying Richard nine hundred would leave a fifty-dollar credit against the following month. It was not much of a cushion, but it was something.
He turned the envelope over. On the back he wrote the date and amount, then his name, because in the Marines the simplest safeguard against losing something important had been to label it before somebody else decided it belonged somewhere else.
At seven-thirteen, he heard footsteps and a small metallic clatter from the kitchen.
George eased out of his chair and followed the noise. Sadie was standing on a wooden dining chair, reaching for the toaster with a butter knife. A blackened piece of bread protruded from the slot. The appliance was unplugged, which made the scene less alarming than it could have been, but not enough to keep George’s heart from jumping.
“Whoa. Hey.”
Sadie froze. “I unplugged it.”
“Good thinking. Put the knife down.”
“I wanted to make breakfast.”
She placed the knife on the counter and climbed down. Her pajamas did not match, and her hair rose above her head in a wild spray. The toast smelled like a campfire after the marshmallows had burned.
“I thought you would be tired,” she said. “So I made toast. But it got too brown.”
George looked at the blackened bread, the unplugged toaster, the concentrated worry on her face. Here was another thing he had failed to hide: an eight-year-old believed she needed to manage his exhaustion.
“Come here,” he said.
She stepped toward him. He bent enough to hug her and let the pain pass without allowing it into his voice.
“That was kind,” he said. “Next time, wake me up and we’ll make it together.”
