Page 83 of Havoc

Marisol's family gets there at five.

A husband, and two daughters in their thirties, and one of the daughters has brought her own kids because it's five in the morning and there was nobody to leave them with. Boy about nine, girl about six. The girl's got a pillow with a pillowcase on it that has horses.

They come through the door and every man in that room turns.

And Storm crosses the floor to meet them.

I have watched that man for twelve days, and I have never seen him move the way he moves now. He gets the husband by the hand and the shoulder both and he says something too low for me to hear, and the husband's face comes apart, and Storm stands there and holds him up in the middle of a hospital waiting room with a room full of people watching.

Then he goes down on his heels in front of the little girl with the horse pillow.

I don't hear what he says.

She nods at him. Then she says something back, and he listens to all of it, and then he stands up and puts his hand on top of her head one time and walks away down the hall.

Havoc has been in the stairwell doorway for two hours.

Not in the room. Not out of it. In the doorway, with his back against the frame, where he can see everybody and where nobody has to walk past him to get anywhere.

Nobody has spoken to him since we got here.

That's not true. Deacon put a hand on his shoulder. Cricket showed him the arm. But those are the two who'd do it for a dog on the roadside, and in four hours not one other man in that club has said a word to him, and he's stood there and taken it and not once tried to make anybody.

Storm comes back down the hall at ten past five and stops in front of him.

I'm eight feet away.

I want to say I didn't listen. I listened to every word.

"Two," Storm says.

Havoc doesn't say anything.

"Twenty-two years, I've buried two. Ricky in oh-eight and Pate in twenty-sixteen." Storm's voice is not raised. It is so far from raised that I have to hold my breath to get all of it. "I sent both of 'em. I stood in that chapel and I made a call and I sent both those men where they went, and I have carried every hour of it, and I would carry it again, because that is what the chair is for.

"That boy upstairs, I didn't send."

The elevator dings somewhere and nobody gets off.

"Nine days you had," Storm says. "Nine days you sat in a room with ten men and let every one of us walk around blind. And then you went to Gonzales by yourself with our money and you handed a man a reason to think this club can be dealt with one fella at a time."

"Yes, sir."

"Don't."

"Storm—"

"Don't yes, sir me in a hospital." And there it is — one crack, half a second of it, and it's gone and his voice goes back flat and that's a hundred times worse than if he'd swung on him. "I abstained.

"I sat at the head of that table on Monday mornin' with a boy's whole life in front of me and I could not open my mouth, and I have run that club for twenty-two years and that is the first time I ever took my hands off the wheel.

"So I ain't got the standing to take your patch. Not this week." He turns to go. "You want to know how bad it is, that's how bad it is. There ain't a man in this buildin' clean enough to throw you out."

And he walks away.

Havoc stands in that doorway with his hands at his sides and does not move for eleven minutes.

I count them.