Chapter Twenty-Six

THE SOUND OF TIRES on gravel wakes me. It wakes E.J., too.

We’ve fallen asleep on the couch. Some time during the night he got up and got a blanket for us. We’re wrapped up tight in it. The garage is cold but we have a delicious amount of body heat trapped inside our cocoon.

We both sit up in unison. I can barely see him in the dark, but somehow I can make out the concerned expression on his face.

“That’s Lib’s truck,” he says.

“You know the sound of his truck?”

He gets up and pulls on his jeans.

“What time is it?” I ask him.

“Almost three.”

He stops on his way out to give me a quick kiss. I take this as a good sign.

“I’ll be right back,” he says.

I wait until he’s gone out the back door, then I wrap myself in the blanket and go open a window so I can eavesdrop.

Lib’s standing next to his truck.

The grass behind him is covered with a silver frosty dew that glimmers softly in the blurred moonlight like metal shavings spilled across the yard.

E.J. picks his way across the gravel drive in his bare feet. He forgot to take a shirt. I pull the blanket tighter. Just looking at him makes me colder.

“What’s going on?” E.J. asks.

Lib looks from E.J. shivering in nothing but his jeans to my car sitting in his driveway in the middle of the night but makes no comment.

“I’m sorry about this,” he says. “I know you gotta go to work in a couple hours.”

Lib’s better dressed for the weather. He has on a camouflage hunting jacket and a pair of heavy boots.

“I thought I could wait until tomorrow to tell all of you. That was my plan. I thought we could all get together at Jimmy’s place and have a meeting. But it’s driving me crazy. I can’t sleep. I can’t talk to Teresa about it because she’s a woman and she can’t understand what I’ve got to say.”

He reaches inside his coat pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. He hands one to E.J. and lights it for him before lighting his own.

“The lawyer called. We heard back from Cam Jack today. If we go through with the lawsuit, he’s going to declare bankruptcy and close the mines.”

They stand in silence. I watch the orange tips of their cigarettes rise and fall away from their mouths.

“I went and talked to him. The lawyer. He kept going on and on about Cam Jack’s mines and what he’s going to do with his mines and how he’s choosing to operate his mines. And I started to get really pissed. I swear I was seeing red. His mines. The man’s never set foot in a single one of them. I’m the one who’s spent my life inside Jojo. I’m the one who knows her. He may own her, but she’s not his.”

E.J. smokes and nods.

“And he’d close her. I’m sure he would. He’d close her just like that. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about the men who are gonna lose their jobs and he also doesn’t care about her. She doesn’t want to sit around useless. Her and Beverly. It’s gonna happen one of these days but it’s not fair to do it to them already. They’ve both been through a lot.”

Another bout of silence passes between them. E.J. must be cold but he won’t show it in front of Lib. Lib must know E.J.’s cold but he won’t embarrass him by asking if he is.

Lib shifts his weight from one foot to the other and looks up at the sky. No stars tonight. No moon. Only a layer of clouds that makes the night seem wrapped in gray gauze.

“The whole time we were trapped down there,” he says, “I never had a bad thought about her. I never blamed her. I never hated the mine.”

E.J. continues nodding.

“What do you think we should do?” Lib asks.

“Doesn’t sound like you want to close your mine,” E.J. replies.

“Our mine.”

“You have to remember I’m slightly biased here because I’d like to keep my job.”

“The lawyer’s estimating we could each get a couple hundred grand from the sale of the equipment. That’s about six years of your salary right now.”

E.J. finishes his cigarette and tosses it onto the stones.

“I’ve been doing this job since I graduated high school. I’ve bitched and moaned about Cam Jack just like everyone else does. How he makes a fortune while we take home a lousy fifteen dollars an hour. How we haven’t had a raise in almost ten years now. How our health benefits have been cut and our 401(k)s slashed to hell.

“And it’s all true and I suppose it’s not fair and maybe there are people out there who got the time to dwell on it. But what it all comes down to for me is this: I love my job, and I figure it’s better to get screwed doing a job I love than to get amply rewarded doing something I hate.”

“So what’s your vote?” Lib asks him.

“Fuck him. I got better ways to spend my time than sitting in lawyers’ offices and courtrooms.”

“Amen to that.”

They shake hands. E.J. claps Lib on the back.

“Get some sleep, boss.”

“I’ll do that. And what about you? What are you getting tonight?”

He doesn’t answer right away. I can’t see his face so I don’t know if he’s smiling.

“An education,” he says.

He remains standing calmly in the middle of the driveway with his hands in his pockets until Lib’s taillights wink out of sight around a bend in the road, then he races back inside the garage, cursing the stones tearing at his bare feet.

“Jesus, it’s cold,” he says, trying to take his jeans off while he hops up and down to get warm.

“You spying on us?” he asks me.

“Yep.”

“What do you think?”

I walk over to him and wrap his naked body up in the blanket with me.

“I think Jojo’s a lucky girl.”