I had one shoe off when Charlie appeared in my doorway.

He owned the bar downstairs and rented out the rooms above it. We'd already said goodnight. Now he was standing on the landing with a folded newspaper under his arm, looking at the shoe in my hand.

"Your mechanic's on the telephone," Charlie told me. "Says you'll want to hear this."

"Frank?"

"That's the one. Don't leave him there all night. I'm trying to close."

I put my shoe back on.

Three days home in Las Vegas, and I still hadn't unpacked properly. My father's things were in a box beneath the bed. The clean shirts occupied the only drawer that would open. I'd spent part of the evening trying to mend a loose button with thread too thick for the needle.

Don LonelyWolf had sponsored me into Patriots Forever here in Paradise. I had a place with the crew and people to get acquainted with. There was enough to learn without making myself scarce every time an old memory turned up.

I left my coat on the chair and followed Charlie downstairs.

The bar was empty except for Alice, who worked the tables and was counting her tips beside the register. She lifted her feet so Charlie could pass a broom beneath her stool. I went to the telephone at the end of the counter.

"Frank? It's Jacob."

Frank Coyle was my father's old mechanic. He'd kept the Soderlund trucks running when there were still trucks to keep, and he'd held on to a box of Dad's belongings until I came back.

"Charlie found you, then," Frank said over the line. "Look in the paper he brought up."

Charlie handed me the newspaper.

"He left this earlier," Charlie said. "Told me to make sure you saw it."

Frank had circled an auction notice in pencil. A yard near Fremont was selling vehicles and equipment the following morning.

"Last truck on the list," Frank told me. "I went past there today. Blue cab. Left running board's bent."

I put the paper flat beneath the telephone.

"Ours?"

"Used to be. Your father sold it to a fellow doing furniture deliveries. It's changed hands since."

I read the notice again. It gave the starting time and an address, along with a cheerful promise that everything would be sold.

"Does it run?" I asked Frank.

"Don't know."

"You looked at it."

"Through a fence, Jacob. I haven't started climbing things at my age."

I smiled despite myself.

"Will you come with me?"

"I've got a car coming in at eight. I'll meet you there if I can."

Frank paused, and I could hear something scrape across his workbench.

"Decide what you can spend before you go," he added. "They'll take whatever you offer."

After we hung up, I stood there with the receiver in my hand until Charlie reached past me and tapped the telephone cradle.

"Finished?" he asked.

I replaced the receiver.

"Sorry."

Charlie pointed at the auction notice.

"Buying yourself a truck?"

"Going to look."

"Right," he said, and went back to sweeping.

Alice slid her tips into her purse and glanced at the paper.

"They charge you for looking?"

"Tomorrow they might," I told her.

Upstairs, I counted my money twice. I set aside the rent and enough to live on, then put the rest in a seperate pocket. Ninety dollars. That was my limit, even if the truck started on the first turn and somebody threw in a full tank.

I slept badly.

The next morning I shaved around a nick on my chin, put on the shirt with the loose button, and got to the auction yard early. My jacket was too warm once the sun reached the street. I carried it over my arm and kept checking the pocket with the money.

The yard smelled of dust, old gasoline, and somebody's breakfast frying in the building next door. Men stood around the vehicles with their hands in their pockets. One had brought his wife. She stayed near the gate while he inspected an engine, and from her expression they'd discussed this purchase before leaving the house.

I found the truck at the back.

The blue had faded badly. A different firm's lettering covered the doors. One headlamp was missing, and there was a strip of leather tied around the handle on the driver's side.

I recognised the running board before anything else. My father had caught it against a post backing into our yard. He blamed the post until my mother asked whether it had moved.

I crouched beside the front wheel.

There were fresh marks underneath where somebody had been looking. Oil had collected along the bottom of the engine. The rear tires looked better than the front ones. I stood, opened the driver's door and leaned inside.

The seat had been recovered. Whoever did it had left a wrinkle near the edge.

I could remember sitting there with my feet well clear of the pedals.

Dad had sometimes taken me on deliveries during the school holidays. We carried chairs, cookstoves, crates with their contents written neatly on the outside. He made me read addresses aloud and count what came off the truck. If I got distracted, we counted again.

There were other trips when I was left at home.

My grandfather had built Soderlund & Sons around that sort of work. Trucks and an office gave people a reason to come and go. A man could ask about moving a wardrobe, then spend an hour behind the office door with my father. I used to sit on the counter swinging my legs while Uncle Arthur told me to stop listening.

Arthur liked to have me around when there were people to impress. He'd ask me to fetch his hat or hold a door, then give me a coin once everyone could see him doing it.

One afternoon he made me sit in a car outside the office while he went in to speak to Dad. I was supposed to keep my hands off everything. Through the open window I heard Arthur saying they'd already given their word.

My father answered him more quietly. I couldn't make out the words.

Then Arthur came out and slammed the car door hard enough to shake my teeth together.

"Your father gets difficult over the smallest things," he told me.

I believed him. I was young enough to think the man handing out coins understood everything.

A hand touched the open truck door and brought me back to the auction yard.

"Planning to crawl all the way in?"

Frank had arrived wearing his work shirt, with a rag sticking out of his pocket. He looked at the cab, then at me.

"You made it," I said.

"For a few minutes. Move over."

I stepped aside so he could inspect the truck. Frank checked beneath the hood, opened the other door, then spent a while looking underneath. I followed him around until he told me I was blocking his light.

"Well?" I asked when he stood up.

"Needs work."

Frank wiped his hands. He looked older in daylight than he had in the workshop the previous afternoon. I'd been away long enough that I kept finding changes in people after I'd already recognised them.

"What did your father get for it?" Frank asked me.

"He never told me."

"Thought he might've."

Dad had sold the trucks before I left Vegas. The business had been getting smaller for years, although he kept the office after the vehicles were gone. He still went there every morning. My mother would put his lunch in a paper bag, and he'd take it whether there was anybody waiting for him or not.

I hadn't understood how much that cost him until I was well out of town.

"Could it be put back to work?" I asked Frank.

"With time and money. You'll want somewhere to keep it, too."

I looked around the yard as though a suitable garage might be standing there waiting.

Frank folded his rag and pushed it into his pocket.

"How much have you brought?"

"Ninety."

"Keep some of it for getting home."

The auctioneer called everybody towards the first vehicle. Frank had to return to his shop, so he left me beside the truck.

"Come by afterwards," he said. "Whatever happens."

I stayed.

The early lots went slowly. A man argued about a tire included in one sale. By the time they reached our old truck, I'd been standing in the sun long enough for the back of my collar to itch.

I offered forty dollars.

A heavyset fellow in a pale jacket raised it to fifty without looking at me. I went to sixty. He offered seventy.

The auctioneer looked in my direction.

"Eighty," I said.

The fellow in the pale jacket took his cigarette out of his mouth.

"A hundred."

That left me standing there with my hand halfway up.

The auctioneer waited. A couple of men turned to see what I'd do.

I shook my head.

A second bidder offered a hundred and ten. The fellow in the pale jacket answered with a hundred and twenty-five, and the auctioneer gave him the truck. I put my hands in my pockets so I would stop touching the money.

For a minute I was angry with him.

He hadn't done anything to me. He'd come to buy a truck and bought one.

I went over to retrieve my jacket from the fence. He followed me with a receipt in his hand.

"You know that vehicle?" he asked.

"It belonged to my father."

The fellow looked back at the truck.

"You can check the bill if you like. It's mine now."

"I heard."

He studied me for a moment, then put out his hand.

"Walter Reese. I've got a little yard south of here. I buy what I can repair and sell the rest for parts."

I shook his hand.

"Jacob Soderlund."

The name meant nothing to Walter. He was already looking at the truck again.

"You drive?"

"When there's something fit to drive."

"I've got another purchase to arrange. Bring this one over to my place and I'll pay you five dollars."

He told me where the yard was. I knew the road.

"I'd want Coyle to look it over first," I said. "He has a shop nearby."

Walter scratched at the edge of his reciept with his thumbnail.

"I bought it as it stands."

"Then it'll still be yours if it stops on the way."

"For five dollars, you could manage a little trouble."

I handed back the paper he'd begun offering me.

"Have someone collect it, Mr. Reese."

I picked up my jacket and started towards the gate.

"Wait," Walter called after me.

I turned.

He folded the receipt and put it in his breast pocket.

"What's it cost me to have your mechanic look?"

"Ask him. I'll walk over with you."

Walter stood there considering it. Then he joined me, and we went to Frank's shop.

Frank was working beneath a car when we arrived. His voice came from somewhere behind the front wheel.

"Get it?"

"Mr. Reese did," I told him. "He wants to talk about having you check it before it goes anywhere."

Frank came out, wiped his hands and let Walter explain what he'd bought. The two men discussed the truck while I stood beside the bench. There were questions neither of them could settle without bringing it over.

Walter agreed to pay for collecting it and having it inspected. Frank agreed to take the job. I stayed while they wrote down what was included.

"Can you help me bring it in?" Frank asked me after Walter had left.

"Sure."

"And work here for the rest of the afternoon? I've got more coming in than I can finish."

"What are you paying?"

Frank looked up from his paper.

"You always this quick with family friends?"

"You told me to count my money before I went."

He laughed, and we agreed on a day's pay.

I took off my jacket.

We spent the next few hours getting the truck into his yard and going through it. Frank did the inspecting. I fetched tools, held what needed holding, and took down a list for Walter. I caught my loose cuff on a rough edge and lost the button I'd tried to mend.

Frank watched the button bounce across the concrete.

"Could of brought a better shirt," he said.

The work made me hungry enough to finish the sandwich Alice had wrapped for me that morning. I ate it sitting on an upturned crate while Frank drank coffee at the bench.

"Does your family expect you somewhere?" Frank asked me.

"I'll be back in Paradise before evening."

He nodded towards my jacket.

"Charlie said you're with Patriots Forever."

"Don LonelyWolf sponsored me," I said. "I'm grateful for it."

"Didn't ask whether you were grateful."

"What are you asking?"

Frank set down his mug.

"Whether you're settling in, or collecting reasons to leave again."

I looked at the truck. There were tools resting on its running board, and it had taken on the ordinary look of a vehicle being repaired.

"Settling in," I told him. "I want to do right by the people who've made room for me."

Frank nodded, but I could see he had another question.

"I know I should've come back sooner," I said.

He looked at me directly then.

"That's between you and your father."

"He's gone."

"I know."

For a while we ate without talking.

I'd missed Dad's funeral. By the time I returned, he'd been buried for months and people had already got used to saying he was gone. I was still catching myself wondering whether to stop at the house before supper.

My mother had written often while I was away. Dad usually added a few lines beneath hers. He asked after my work, reminded me to answer her questions, mentioned something being sold or repaired. I read those letters quickly when they came. Later, I read them looking for things I'd overlooked.

There wasn't much about Uncle Arthur in any of them.

His disappearance had begun for me with an evening out that never happened. We'd dressed for dinner and waited. Arthur didn't arrive. My father sat by the telephone. My mother took off her earrings and put the sweets she'd bought me back in the cupboard.

Afterwards, everybody seemed to know which questions would upset somebody.

I still didn't know where Arthur had gone, or what my father had been told. Standing beside the old truck that afternoon hadn't supplied any answers.

"Did Dad ever speak to you about Arthur?" I asked Frank.

Frank took some time before answering.

"He spoke about him. I can't tell you what happened."

"I wasn't asking you to make something up."

"Good. That's most of what people have."

He pushed his empty mug away and stood.

"Come on. We've got to finish what we can before Reese comes back."

I followed him into the yard.

Walter arrived late in the afternoon. Frank showed him the list and went through the work he'd recommend. I waited beside the bench with grease on my sleeve, listening while the two men settled what would happen next.

Walter turned to me before he left.

"You looking for more work, Soderlund?"

"Depends on the work."

"Deliveries, mostly. Moving things. I could use someone who turns up."

"Leave word with Charlie in Paradise," I told him. "I have responsibilities there. I'll let you know when I'm available."

Walter asked which bar, and I gave him the address. He wrote it on the back of his receipt.

Frank paid me after we'd put the tools away. I counted the notes beside his bench. He pretended to be offended until I counted them again.

"Your father would've charged me for teaching you that," he said.

I put the money in my pocket.

"I'll see you, Frank."

He waved me off with the rag in his hand.

I got back to Paradise before the evening crowd. Alice was setting out clean glasses when I came through the door. She looked at the grease on my shirt.

"Buy the truck?"

"No," I told her. "Worked on it."

Charlie came out of the back room carrying a case of bottles.

"Worth looking, then?"

I held the door while he carried the case through.

"Seems so."

Upstairs, I washed my hands twice and put on a clean shirt. I found the sewing needle where I'd left it, wrapped it in a scrap of paper, and put it away. The jacket would have to do until I could have somebody mend it properly.

My father's box was still beneath the bed. I pushed it further in with my foot so I could reach my shoes.

Then I went downstairs and paid Charlie the next week's rent.

He entered it in his book, writing Jacob Soderlund in full. I checked the amount, waited for him to finish, and took the slip he handed me.

Outside, the evening had cooled enough to stand in shirtsleeves. I settled onto a chair beside the bar's entrance with a cup of coffee. There was room for another chair without blocking the door.

I'd gone out that morning intending to bring something of my father's home. Instead, there was money left in my pocket, a little work waiting if I could take it, and someone besides Frank who knew where to find me.

I belonged in Paradise with Patriots Forever. Don LonelyWolf had given me my chance here. I meant to be around when there was work for me, and to be worth asking.

Charlie stuck his head out of the doorway.

"If that Reese fellow calls, you want me to fetch you?"

"Please."

"Anyone else?"

I moved the spare chair a little further from the door.

"Let them know I'm here Charlie, They can come and have a word."