“Landlord called,” she says. “She say we need the rent.”
You think of your car, a junker Prius making a troublesome noise. You’re up to twenty-eight hours a week, just enough so that Julian doesn’t have to make you full-time. You think of how you and Raquel can’t get married because with your shit car, the two of you will have too many assets for the Medicaid. You think of how Medicaid doesn’t cover eyeglasses more than once every three years, so Raquel has to squint when she drives and can never read road signs.
“Can’t make miracles,” you tell her. “Get my check when I get my check.”
Church the next day. Toby always fusses through it, but Raquel insists. Even when you and her were in the depths of your junkie lives, she always found a day of the week to go. It’s not exactly a Black church, and it’s not exactly a wetback church. There are at least enough white people there that you don’t feel too fish out of water. It’s just you’d rather be doing anything else. She doesn’t ask much of you, though, and this keeps the peace at home. The minister natters on about resilience and forgiveness.
“These storms are not God’s reckoning. Don’t go down that old road. Some folks like to blame every hard rain and earthquake and fire on God, but the Lord isn’t that kind of thinker. These are common tests like everything else. Tests of our humanity and our faith.”
The church has a charity drive going for the families of the people who’d been killed by the summer storms. Raquel slips a five-dollar bill into the greasy collection plate, and you feel that money leave you and your family like the skin you lose after scraping a leg.
On your way out, the minister, a hardy old spic who doesn’t sound like a spic, stops you. “We still got a date, don’t we, Keeper? You let me know.”
“Will do,” you mutter. He wants to save you. You figure he needs your family because now half of every church congregation in the county stays home on Sundays to watch The Pastor yip and cavort around in VR. The rev needs the families who can’t afford sets. Eventually, you’ll let him do it just to shut him up but putting him off is fine too.
On the drive home, you pass a crew sawing a felled tree into more manageable pieces, sawdust misting around an orange-jacketed worker. While you wait to get the SLOW instead of the STOP, your phone vibrates. To your surprise it’s Tawrny. He wants to know if you’ve got a second to talk that afternoon.
One-handed, you text him back and ask him about what.
Might have an opportunity for you, he writes.
You can’t tell Raquel that you’re going to see Tawrny because there’s only one kind of work the man has, so you make up an excuse about Casey potentially having a line on a handyman gig.
“You didn’t say nothing about that,” says Raquel, but not with suspicion. Hope.
“Didn’t want to make a deal of it, ’less it turned into something. Shouldn’t take long. I’ll be back by dinner.”
On the way out to Cassingham Hollow, you pass the house with vinyl siding the sunny color of Raquel’s lemon meringue, only to see that the roof collapsed in the storm. Now the family has all its belongings on the lawn. They squat in their possessions like exhausted hobos, confused. Like they can’t find a missing couch.
Pulling up to Tawrny’s Queen Anne, you expect to find him on the porch smoking, but instead, he opens the screen door and gestures you inside. He’s never let you through the door before. He’s grown his goatee into a full white beard, which makes him look like Truck Stop Santa. He shakes your hand.
“How you hanging in, Keeper?”
“Good, T. Good as can be expected.”
He leads you to an old oak table in the kitchen.
“You getting through these storms all right?” His voice is still gruff, flinty.
“We been lucky. We don’t got any trees too near the house, but I’m sure as hell losing sleep over ’em.”
“Yeah, we had a tree come down.” He motions with his cigarette hand, sort of waving the yellowed digits to the back of the house. “Just sorta glanced off the roof, but goddamn if it didn’t sound like the whole fucking thing was caving in. Bets ain’t doing too well, so she about lost her mind. Made me make up a bed for her in the basement.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“You know what this reminds me of? I’m watching this old show about the blitzkrieg in World War Two when Hitler was trying to bomb Britain into submission. And they got some of the survivors talking on it. What it was like to worry every night about a bomb coming down on your house. The way they talked reminded me of these storms.”
“Huh.” You nod. You don’t want to look too impatient for him to get to the point.
“Maybe that sounds like an exaggeration but this last one killed damn near three hundred people when you count all the tornadoes and flooding and wind.” He takes from his jeans an old pocket watch, the glass murky, the hands still, and begins twisting the top to set it. “So the grapevine comes down saying you got clean.”
You nod again. “Over two years now,” you exaggerate. Without mentioning that this clean still lets you get down on a Budweiser or the occasional can of hairspray.
“Hell, boy, that’s impressive. Seen many a man that looked tougher’n you fail abjectly at such a project.”
“I swear, I’m good, T. I’ll carry product. I’ll sell. It might be tough for me to straw buy ’cause of my record, but whatever you need.”
Tawrny twists and twists the crown of the pocket watch. He relaxes back into his chair to the tortured squeaking of the wood.
“Not that kind of job. One-off gig.”
Disappointed, you try to keep your eagerness, your sobriety, on display.
“You used to work at Tuscarawas power plant, correct?”
“That’s right.”
He sucks on his teeth. He releases the crown, and the watch ticks satisfactorily.
“I got a guy—he’s willing to pay a nice chunk of change for some information regarding the security concerns there. Told him I could get him that information.”
You’re confused. “Okay…”
“You understand the conversation we’re having, Keeper.” His eyebrows arch. “This don’t go beyond us. This is the kinda thing you keep under your hat.”
“Course. What do you need?”
“Say you wanted to break into that facility. How would you go about that? From what I understand there’s a fence surrounding the property. And then a thumbprint scanner to the front door.”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“You don’t have access anymore, do you?”
“Nah, they woulda dumped me from the system first thing.”
“And there’s only that one way to get to the plant?”
“Well, sure, to get inside the building, but to get in the perimeter, inside the fence, there’s actually an access road that comes in from the back. I s’pose if you wanted to just sneak onto the property, all that’s on that gate is a dinky padlock with a punch code.”
You have no idea why anyone would want to break into the Tuscarawas power plant, but you’re unbothered by the mystery.
“And what’s that code?”
You cross your arms. “C’mon, man, I ain’t just giving away all this. You told me you had a job for me. I got a kid now, brother. Tell me what you’re paying.”
“Think they’ve made any security upgrades since your termination?”
You fart with your lips and repeat what you’ve heard Casey say. “Ohio Valley Power ain’t sinking a dime more into that place. As soon as the fucking Democrats get their way, that place is getting shut down.”
Tawrny nods. He looks pleased. He has an ageless quality, a survivor’s ferocity. Whatever he needed this information for, it’s no oddball favor.