shut behind its fence with a chain on the gate. Vic Donnelly and R.J. Sorn
were not seen on the Tates' street again. Owen recorded that plainly and
underlined it once, because it was the first fact in two years that was an
absence, and absences counted double in a book that was mostly about a man
who was missing.
JANUARY: Chen came by once, not with papers, with a bag of oranges from
his sister's tree, and stayed for coffee. The grand jury had done its part. The
indictments had names on them that Owen already knew how to spell:
Garrett Prescott, on the big ones; Leland Prescott, on the paper ones, the
tampering and the obstruction and the washed title; Donnelly and Sorn, on
the intimidation. Emmett Sikes had been given immunity for the ledger,
which Chen explained to Paula at the sink in the low voice grown-ups used
when the words were legal, and which Owen understood anyway: the gate
book had told the truth, so the man who kept it would not be charged for the
years he had kept it in a crooked yard. A true record protected its keeper.
Owen wrote that down on the months page and sat looking at it a long time,
because it was the closest thing to a law of the world he had yet found that he
believed all the way down.
His daddy had said paper stays. He had not said what it did for you. It turned
out it stood next to you, if you had kept it honest.
FEBRUARY: The pleas came in a bunch, the way winter rain did, all in one
week. There was no trial. Chen had said there might not be, back in the fall,
and Owen had written TRIAL? in the notebook with the question mark large,
and now he drew one line through the word and wrote under it: NO TRIAL.
NOBODY HAS TO SAY IT OUT LOUD IN A ROOM.
Garrett Prescott pleaded guilty on a Tuesday, in the county courthouse, to
vehicular homicide and to failure to stop and render aid. Twelve years. Paula
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came home from the courthouse — she had gone; Owen had stayed at school
— and she told it at the sink while she washed a pan that was already clean.
"He read a statement," she said. "His lawyer wrote most of it, you could tell,
but the boy read all of it standing up, and at the end there was a part that
wasn't lawyer. The judge asked him if he understood the number, the twelve,
and if anybody'd promised him less for pleading, and Garrett said no. Said it
out loud in the room. 'I'm not asking for a deal on the number.'" She set the
pan down. "His daddy was in the back row. Leland didn't look up the whole
time."
Owen wrote: GARRETT — GUILTY — 12 YEARS. HE ASKED FOR NO
DEAL ON THE NUMBER.
Leland Prescott pleaded two days later, to evidence tampering and
obstruction, for the container and the washed title and the story told
afterward. Four years. Prescott Salvage was dissolved, which was a legal
word for a thing Owen could see from the road: the yard would be sold off in
pieces, the fence would come down. The fines were a number so large Paula
said it out loud twice, and Owen did not write it down, because it was not a
number about his daddy; it was a number about a business, and the notebook
had standards. Donnelly and Sorn pleaded to misdemeanor intimidation and
got probation and a fine and an order with the Tates' address in it, which said
in legal language what Paula had wanted to say with a broom in October:
stay away.
Owen turned eleven on February 12, in the middle of all of it, quietly. Paula
made the cake she always made, chocolate with the frosting that cracked.
Micah gave him a socket wrench of his daddy's, from the shop box, cleaned
and oiled, with a tag tied to it in Micah's square hand: FROM THE SET.
NOT A LOAN. Owen wrote the day in the notebook on its own line, the
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whole entry: ELEVEN. He stared at it after he wrote it. Ten had been the age
he was when the watching started. Eleven felt like the first page of a different
book that nobody had told him the title of yet.
MARCH: The light came back. The first week of it, Paula had a Saturday
off, a rare thing, and took Owen to Ruth's café on the square for lunch. The
café was full. Ruth was working the counter with her sleeves up.
Emmett Sikes was at a back table with Cora, over pie neither of them seemed
to be eating, a man and wife at the far end of a long season. Emmett had
testified by then — the ledger open in front of him, his finger on the line,
Chen walking him down it date by date the way you walk a fence line. It had
cost him the yard job and most of the men he'd eaten lunch with for nine
years. He looked thinner. He looked the way a man looks when he has set
down something heavy he carried so long his arms still remembered the
shape of it.
Emmett saw them come in. He looked at Paula, and Paula gave him the small
nod she gave people in hospital corridors, the one that said I know what it
cost. Then Emmett looked at Owen — across the whole café, over the coffee
steam and the Saturday noise — and nodded once, slow, deliberate, a man