Episode 72 · For the Family

— A very kind gentleman, the storekeeper said. He said the boy wasn’t up to coming and he was handling the paperwork. He had the certificate, everything that was needed. I thought he was family.

The investigator leaned over the register and read the line twice, the way he read everything, lips pressed together.

— Who is he?

— A friend, Soles said. He stayed at the hospital when I couldn’t stay awake. He drove me home.

He stopped there. It was true, and it was not enough to explain a signature in a port register.

— Personal effects, the investigator read. What does that mean?

The storekeeper shrugged.

— Whatever was in the locker. Papers, photos, what people keep. I don’t inventory every pen.

— Were there papers?

— I don’t remember. He looked at Soles with honest embarrassment. I don’t go through people’s things. Especially when the man’s dead.

The investigator took out his notebook and wrote. Soles watched him form the letters of the name one by one, pressing hard, and felt a small, unexpected resistance, as when someone lays a hand on something of yours. Varren had sat beside a hospital bed when no one else was in the room. That name did not belong in an investigator’s notebook.

— Someone had to come, Soles said.

— I’m not saying otherwise. I’m saying that now I know where the things went.

He wrote one more line and closed the notebook.

— Where are they?

Soles did not know. He realized it only when the question was asked.

He locked the empty locker, though there was nothing left in it to guard. The storekeeper reached for the key, then changed his mind.

— Keep it. Nobody’s going to open that one again.

Maxim was on the bench in the yard when Soles got home, his boots unlaced, a mug going cold beside him. He listened to the whole story without interrupting. At the name he set the mug down.

— The box under the stairs, he said.

— What box?

— Varren brought it while you were in the hospital. Your dad’s things from the port. I put it under the stairs because I didn’t want you tripping over it the day you came home. I told you.

— When?

Maxim opened his mouth and closed it again.

— The first week. You were looking at the gate the whole time.

The box was beneath two winter blankets and a broken fan. Brown tape ran crookedly across the lid. On one side, in straight, even capitals: KALE — PORT.

Soles carried it into the hall and sat on the floor beside it, his back to the wall, because on a chair his ribs hurt worse. Mina came to sniff the cardboard. Lucky lay down a step away, head on his paws, and followed his hands.

The overalls. Two T-shirts. The gray sweater with the elbow Mary had patched. The boots, placed soles up so they would not dirty the rest. The helmet. The thermos, washed. The gloves, paired. Soles took them out one at a time and laid them on the tiles in the order they came.

There were no papers.

He searched twice. He felt the pockets of the overalls and the sweater and turned the boots over. He found a coin and the cap of a pen.

On the inside of the locker door, held with tape, Kale used to keep a small notebook with plastic covers. Shifts, loads, hours, written with a pencil he sharpened with his pocketknife. He took it out of his breast pocket ten times a day. Mary used to complain that she found it in the wash.

The notebook was not in the box.

It could be anywhere. Kale might have had it on him that evening. It might have been lost months ago and replaced. Soles knew that. He also knew what the investigator had read to him from Kerr’s statement: a crew chief who kept a notebook of the loads, who had noticed the difference. At the time Soles had wanted to see the notebook, not hear what Kerr said was in it.

He picked up his phone. The bruise on the screen had spread across the top corner. Varren’s name was first among his most frequent calls, ahead of Krista, ahead of Maxim. He had not noticed that until now.

Varren answered on the second ring.

— Soles. Did you sleep?

— A little.

— A little’s better than nothing. How’s Tesa’s hand?

— Six weeks. Maxim says she insulted the cast.

— Then she’s fine.

Soles looked at the box.

— I went to the port today. To my father’s locker.

There was a pause. No longer than it needed to be.

— Ah, Varren said. I’m sorry. I should have told you myself. You weren’t in a state for it, and Maxim had enough to carry. I took the box to the house. Did he give it to you?

— It was under the stairs.

— That sounds like Maxim.

His voice was warm and unhurried.

— The clothes, the boots, the helmet. I washed the thermos. It smelled of old coffee.

— There was a notebook too. Small, with plastic covers.

— A notebook, Varren repeated, as if turning the word over. No. I didn’t see one. If I’d found anything in his handwriting, I’d have kept it apart for you, not thrown it in with the clothes.

He was quiet for a moment.

— What are you looking for?

Soles looked at the paired gloves, finger beside finger.

— I don’t know yet. Maybe nothing.

— Do you want me to come over? I’ll bring something to eat.

— No. Thanks.

— All right. If you change your mind, I’m here.

Soles sat with the phone in his lap. He was grateful and ashamed of having asked, and both were true. Varren had come when Soles could not. He had signed, carried, washed a thermos.

He put everything back in the order he had taken it out, the gloves last. Only when he closed the lid did it occur to him that his father had never in his life laid two gloves side by side. He threw them into the locker with the fingers turned inside out and hunted for them the next morning.

It meant nothing. Anyone who packs a dead man’s things packs them more neatly than he ever kept them.

Soles left the box by the door, where the investigator would see it, and did not put it back under the stairs.