Helene Mayes sits back down and Mayor Larson steps back up to the microphone.
“Before we all head home,” she says, “I’d like to hear from Silas Tucker, and I’m guessing you all would, too.”
That announcement produces the biggest cheer of the night, to the point where, as we pass each other, Claire Larson says, “Please never run for office, Silas.”
I shake her hand, then Helene’s, then Burt’s.
Then I raise up the microphone even more than Helene Mayes had.
“I really think everything that needs to be said herehasbeen said, and probably better than I can,” I say. “By the people on this stage and the people I’m looking out at now.”
I pause and find myself turning to look at Taylor, who smiles at me and nods.
“All’s I know is that what I heard here tonight is pretty great,” I say. “Because what I really heard, loud and clear, is that weareall in this together. And that’s the way it’s always had to work on any successful team on which I’ve ever played.”
The room is very quiet.
Finally, I say this: “Everybody here knows how much I’ve lost since I was growing up in this town, despite all the winning I’ve done on a football field, or any other sport, really. And I’m just going to tell you that I am sick and tired of losing. WhatIcan promise you is that I will do everything in my power to make sure we don’t lose this town!”
The cheer for that is big enough and loud enough that I find myself wondering if they can hear it at Briar Crockett’s place.
But I am about to discover that his sons have heard it.
Them and some of their friends.
SIXTY
THE CROWD DISPERSES quickly.
Before Helene Mayes heads back to her new office, the one that had been Nash Hader’s until she’d kicked his ass out of it, she says to me on her way out, “My only regret is that I didn’t step on him the way your daddy did that time.”
“You know about that?”
“I know everything,” she says.
Abby, who has to be at work early the next morning, is giving EJ a ride home. Before she leaves, she makes sure Taylor sees her give me a quick kiss on the cheek.
When Burt and Taylor and I finally walk out of the hall, we see the pickup trucks lined up on Front Street. Four in all. Some of the guys are leaning against the sides of them, arms crossed, trying to look tougher than I know they are, at least when they aren’t wearing masks and coming at me from the blind side.
Roof and Lynyrd Crockett are up on the sidewalk.
No clubs or weapons tonight, at least none that I can see. But the night is young, and I have a cop standing right next to me.
“Go back inside, please,” Burt says to Taylor.
“Like hell,” she says.
“Will you at least let Silas and me handle this?” Burt says. “And I did say please.”
“I’ll hang back for now,” she says. “But remember that Iamarmed.”
“How could I forget?” Burt asks.
I should know her well enough by now to know that she isn’t kidding.
Burt and I approach the Crocketts and their gang. Before Burt can even try to stop me, I am right up on Roof Crockett, in his own uniform tonight, or one of them: white T-shirt and vest, jeans hanging off him, and shitkicker boots.
What EJ had said about him on the porch that night is so loud inside my head in this moment, I’m surprised I’m the only one who can hear it.
