Chapter 8: The County Records
The waiting room at the Oakhaven County Courthouse smelled of damp wool, radiator heat, and decades of floor wax that had long since stopped shining. Through the wire-reinforced glass of the partition, the clerk—a woman named Miller whose family had lived in the valley since the timber boom—was methodically stamping receipts with a rhythmic, heavy thud that sounded like small hammers falling on dry wood.
I sat on a wooden bench that had been bolted to the linoleum floor sometime during the Eisenhower administration, holding my helmet in my lap. My knuckles were gray-green from grease I hadn't quite managed to scour out of my cuticles with the pumice stone in the garage sink. Across the room, an old wall clock with a yellowed plastic face ticked off the seconds with a lazy, hollow scrape.
"Vance?"
The wicket slid open with a sharp screech of dry aluminum. Miller didn't look up from her ledger, her bifocals sliding half an inch down her nose as she licked the tip of a yellow legal pencil.
"Back in Judge Abernathy's office. He's got ten minutes before he has to drive out to the county road department yard to look at the gravel bids. Don't track any oil onto his braided rug."
Judge Abernathy's office was paneled in dark, varnished knotty pine that drank the weak afternoon light coming through the high, arched windows. The air smelled of pipe tobacco that hadn't been smoked in years and old leather bindings. Abernathy himself looked like an owl carved from a piece of driftwood—white-haired, sharp-eyed, wearing a Pendleton vest over a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He didn't look up when I pushed the heavy oak door open; he was turning over a yellowed birth certificate with the delicate, slow care of a man handling an unexploded shell.
"Jackson," the old man said, his voice like two gravel trucks passing each other on a washboard road. "Sit down. Not on the leather wingback, use the straight-back chair by the radiator. It’s got a solid pine seat."
I took the chair, setting my helmet on the floor between my boots. The metal D-rings gave a tiny, metallic chink against the linoleum.
"Arthur Miller tells me you're trying to put your name on a piece of paper that's been blank for eight years," Abernathy said, finally lifting his chin. His eyes were pale blue, watery at the corners, but they didn't miss the frayed cuffs of my denim vest or the way my shoulders instinctively set themselves against a wall. "Sarah Henderson's boy. Leo."
"Yes, sir," I said. My tongue felt dry, like I'd been swallowing dust off the highway all afternoon.
"You left town in ninety-four on a knucklehead that leaked more oil than gas," Abernathy remarked, sliding the birth certificate toward the edge of his blotter. He didn't sound angry; he sounded like a man reading the grain report from three seasons ago. "Had three different bench warrants out of Klamath Falls for carrying a hunting knife inside a tavern and tearing up a municipal flower bed during the peach festival. They expired when the statute ran out and the sheriff retired, but the paper trail doesn't blow away just because the ink fades."
"I know," I said.
"Do you?" The judge leaned back, the old springs groaning under his weight. He laced his fingers across his stomach. "Sarah's got no money. The roof on that place on Maple Street leaks through the shingle valley every time the wind comes out of the southwest, and Clara's been paying for their propane out of her own pocket because you're too damn proud to ask for credit at the Cenex station. Now you walk in here wanting to make it legal. You want the responsibility of a boy who's spent half his life sleeping in the back of a station wagon?"
I looked down at my hands. The scar across my left thumb—from when I dropped a cylinder head onto the concrete back in Idaho—looked white and jagged against the grease.
"I didn't know he was there," I said, and the words felt small in the quiet room. "She didn't tell me. She left while I was down in Redding. I thought... I thought I was clearing out a space for both of us, and when I came back, the cabin was empty. The stove was cold."
Abernathy was quiet for a long time. Outside, a logging truck shifted gears down on the state highway, the Jake brake roaring like a low-flying plane before dying away into the rattle of diesel cylinders.
"Well," the judge said, pulling a heavy black fountain pen from his vest pocket. "She's not in any shape to raise him through the winter, and Martha's lungs are giving out. If you're going to be his legal guardian, Jackson, you're going to do it under my thumb. You stay out of the bars, you keep that shop of yours clean of anything that doesn't have a parts number on it, and you fix that roof before the first hard freeze in November. Arthur's got the forms. Sign 'em in front of him on your way out."
May you like
He didn't offer to shake my hand. He just picked up a stack of tax assessments and turned his shoulder toward the window.
"Get out of here, Jackson. The boy's waiting on his supper."
