Chapter 8 - The Bread on the Counter
It was November when the gray Dodge pickup truck turned off the state route and rattled down Main Street in Cedar Hollow.
The hardware store across the street had new curtains in the window—red check instead of gray. The woman in the amber sweater was sweeping the slush off her porch with a stiff corn broom, stopping for a second to watch the truck pass.
The truck didn't stop at the hardware store. It pulled around the side of the brick building on the corner of 4th and Cherry, right up to the pale blue service door.
Rocco killed the engine. The heater fan gave one last tired wheeze and died.
He sat there for a moment, looking at his hands on the steering wheel. There was no coal dust under his fingernails today. He wore a clean wool coat—not the one with the Haymarket label, but a heavy duck-cloth jacket he’d bought at an outfit in Wheeling.
He opened the door and stepped down onto the pavement. His left hip gave a dull, familiar throb, but he didn't reach for a cane. He didn't need one.
He walked to the back door and knocked twice.
The door opened before his knuckles left the wood.
Clara stood there. She wasn't wearing her apron today; she had on a blue denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, and her hair was tied back with a simple leather thong. She looked at him for three seconds—just three seconds—without speaking.
Then a slow, easy smile broke across her face, right beside the flour smudge that she hadn't quite washed off her cheek.
"You're late," she said. "The soda bread’s been out of the oven since ten."
"I had to settle some accounts in Boston," Rocco said.
"Did you balance the books?"
Rocco reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the old buffalo head nickel—the one she had handed him on the sidewalk four weeks ago. He laid it flat in her palm, folding her fingers over it until her skin touched his.
"Every last page," Rocco said. "Is that heel still on the barrel?"
Clara stepped back, holding the door wide open so the warm smell of yeast and melted butter rolled out into the wet autumn air.
May you like
"Only if you brought your own butter," she said, turning toward the kitchen. "Come on. The ash bucket’s full again, and Mr. Henderson’s been complaining about the view from the front window."
Rocco smiled—a real smile, the kind that hadn't lived behind his ribs since he was a boy before the ships and the ledgers and the name took over—and stepped across the threshold.
