Bob Jr. said he was busy yesterday and that another day in jail wasn’t going to hurt Ryan any. He left the envelope on the counter and went out adjusting his curled-brim straw cowboy hat, loosening it on his head and setting it straight as he walked down the courthouse steps and across the street to the dark green pickup truck. He’d have about fifteen minutes to wait, so he U-turned and drove up Holden’s main street to Rexall’s and bought a pack of cigarettes and the big Sunday edition of the Detroit Free Press. By the time Bob Jr. got back to the courthouse, U-turning north again and pulling up in the no parking zone, he figured they’d be just about now giving Ryan his shoelaces and telling him to take off.

“Sign it at the bottom,” J. R. Coleman said. He waited until Ryan had signed the form before he took Ryan’s wallet, belt, and pay envelope out of a wire basket and laid them on the counter.

When Ryan opened the wallet and began counting the three one-dollar bills inside, J. R. Coleman gave him a no-expression look and kept staring while Ryan worked his belt through the loops of his khaki pants and buckled it and shoved the wallet into his back pocket. Ryan picked up the pay envelope then and looked at it.

“That’s from the company. They dropped it off,” J. R. Coleman told him.

“It isn’t sealed.”

“It wasn’t sealed when they brought it.”

Ryan read the pay period and the amount typed on the envelope. He pulled out the bills and counted fifty-seven dollars.

“That’ll get you home,” J. R. Coleman said. “Two blocks up’s the Greyhound station.”

Ryan folded the envelope and put it in his shirt pocket. He hesitated then and began feeling his pants pockets, his gaze moving over the counter surface. As he looked up at J. R. Coleman he said, “I had a comb.”

“There isn’t any comb here.”