Page 13 of Iron and Ivory

So then… after cleanin' up… we wait.

We wait all fuckin' night.

The clubhouse goes quiet in a way it almost never does—not a good quiet, either. This is a different kind. The kind of quiet that has weight to it. The quiet of men who know what they did and are waitin' to find out what it costs.

No one says a word.

I'm standin' near the window at first, watchin' the road through a gap in the boards where the light don't reach me. Watchin' the dust. Watchin' nothin'. The wind moves through the scrub and I track it the same way I'd track a man, my eyes movin' slow and deliberate across every inch of that flat, dead stretch of road.

Nothin' comes.

I keep watchin' anyway.

No one falls asleep.

I can feel 'em behind me. Diesel against the east wall, arms folded, head up.

Chains in the corner with that glass eye catchin' the low light.

Every man in this room holdin' himself still with both hands, breathin' through his nose, keepin' whatever's crawlin' around inside him locked the hell down.

That's what you do when you're in it.

You don't pace.

You don't fidget.

You just hold.

No one eats, no one pisses, no one yawns, no one complains.

The night leans on us. We lean back.

At nine am on day three I start rethinkin' my plan and I send people into the kitchen to make food.

That's what gets the grumble.

Not the waitin'. Not the two days of holdin' still. Not the silence, not the watchin', not the slow crawl of hours that don't move the way hours are supposed to move.

No. It's the food.

It's the absence of women in a kitchen and every man in this room is feelin' it.

A few minutes later I hear the first one callin' home. Ya OK? Anyone come by? How's the kids… Voice pitched low, tilted toward the wall, like that makes it private. Like I can't hear every word bouncin' off this concrete.

I don't even stop it.

Because I wanna know too.

After that first guy hangs up, the others start callin'. One by one. Quiet and quick, like confession. Same answer comin' back every way around—no one called, no one came, everything's fine.

Each answer lands a little heavier than the last, not because the news is bad but because it ain't.

Because fine is a strange thing to be after all this holdin'.

Diesel calls last. We're sittin' close enough that I can hear Mama Jo when she picks up—that voice she's got, flat and warm at the same time, like scorched earth that still grows somethin'.

She wasn't here when it went down. He told her to stay home. All the women worth a damn were told to stay home, and every single one of them had the sense to listen and the spine to wait without askin' too many questions.