Page 24 of Havoc

He says it and he keeps going, straight through into the seventh one without a pause, without a breath, without one single thing happening on his face — and then he's done, and he sets the fork down and picks up his plate and says something about the propane running low.

There's a heron out there that hasn't moved in three hours.

My hands are on the counter. My coffee is at my right elbow. My pulse has gone up into the hundreds again and it is doing it entirely on its own and none of it, not one part of it, is reaching my face.

For twenty-two years the only place my father existed was inside my head.

And this man has been saying his name out loud, once a year, in a room with a fire going, to nine other men who all say it back.

He doesn't know who he's talking about.

Nobody in that building knows who they're talking about.

"Propane's in the tank on the side," Havoc says. "If the burner starts poppin', that's what it is."

"Okay," I say.

And my voice comes out completely level, because of course it does.

CHAPTER NINE

HAVOC

Nobody looks at me any different, which is the part I ain't ready for.

I come through that door at four in the afternoon carryin' a lie the size of a truck and Tyrant says you're late without lookin' up, and Deacon says my name from the kitchen doorway, and Cricket damn near breaks his own neck gettin' out of a chair he ain't supposed to be sittin' in, and the whole place goes on exactly the way it's gone on for fifteen years.

That's the thing about a lie. You expect the room to know.

The room don't know a damn thing.

"Sit down," Tyrant says. "Both of you. Blitz, sit down."

"I'm standin'."

"You're hoverin'."

"That's what standin' is."

Tyrant's got the book open and a second book next to it, which is new, and he's got a pen behind each ear, which is somethin' I have never once seen a grown man do.

"Rule fourteen," he says. "Prospect's rag. Amended."

"Aw, hell." Blitz drops onto a stool. "You didn't."

"Rule fourteen. Prospect shall carry one rag. One." He taps it. "Rag count in excess of one shall be fined at the standard rate per additional rag."

Cricket's face comes apart.

"That's four rags," he says.

"That's thirty dollars."

"I won, though. You said the book didn't say a number and I read it and it didn't say a number⁠—"

"And now it says a number."

"You can't change it after!"