“I keep expecting to look around and see you passed out in the middle of the roadbed and you keep not doing it. But you gonna.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. If you stay behind the truck with a shovel, you gonna.”

“No.”

“Hottest part of the summer still coming on, bubba. Tink calls it cookiesheet weather.”

“I’ll be fine.”

He pulled something out of his pocket. It was my great-granddad’s watch. He tossed it in my lap. “Take this fucking thing,” he said, disgusted. “I don’t want it.”

“You made a deal with me.”

“I’m calling it off.”

“If you fire me, I’ll take you to arbitration,” I said. “You signed my form. You…”

“I ain’t firing you,” he said, and looked away. “I’m going to have Tink teach you how to run a front-end loader.”

I looked at him for a long time, not knowing what to say. My third-grade classroom, so cool and pleasant, had never seemed so far away... and still I didn’t have the slightest idea of how a man like Blocker thought, or what he meant when he said the things he said. I knew that he admired me and held me in contempt at the same time, but I had no idea why he felt either way. And you don’t need to care, darling, Elizabeth spoke up suddenly inside my mind. Dolan is your business. Remember Dolan.

“Why do you want to do that?” I asked at last.

He looked back at me then, and I saw he was both furious and amused. But the fury was the emotion on top, I think. “What is it with you, bubba? What do you think I am?”

“I don’t…”

“You think I want to kill you for your fucking watch? That what you think?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, you are. Sorriest little motherfucker I ever saw.”

I put my great-granddad’s watch away.

“You ain’t never gonna be strong, bubba. Some people and plants take hold in the sun. Some wither up and die. You dyin. You know you are, and still you won’t move into the shade. Why? Why you pulling this crap on your system?”