The Blade Itself Read Online Free PDF

maybe more. We can get it done.’
    ‘Maybe.’
    ‘I’m telling you, I think we can.’
    Danny paused. McCloskey was a good man, a thirty-year veteran. No point pissing in his yard. Besides, the kid’s jibe had touched a nerve, damn him. All those years of listening to Dad, dirty-nailed and half dead in the kitchen, giving his mother an earful about the goddamn management, how they came in and messed with a man’s livelihood, then drove off in a shiny new truck. That was the way most managers worked – contracting was fiercely competitive, and the unspoken rule was that the less the grunts on the ground knew about the abstractions of economics, the better.
    Screw that.
    Danny gestured to the card table. ‘Let me level with you.’
    McCloskey looked surprised, then nodded, set down his hat and took a seat. Danny laid it out, the hard facts of the business. How if they split their resources trying to finish this site, they risked not getting the other two enclosed.Once the walls were up, crews could work inside, hanging drywall, rigging electrical, and detailing.
    ‘Dan, no disrespect, but I got yard boys out there know this stuff.’
    ‘What they don’t know is how high the stakes are now.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Money’s tight. The economy, the whole Internet thing, it hit us, too. We had two projects default on final payments this year. Not bad people, just ran out of money.’ Danny sipped his coffee. ‘You remember the office building over on Racine, our big score? That was one of them.’
    ‘Jesus.’
    ‘Exactly. Listen, I’d love to see this place humming over the winter. But it’s a bad play. Something goes wrong, we can’t get the other two ready…’ He let it dangle, gave McCloskey time to make up his own mind.
    After a pause, the man spoke. ‘My crew?’
    ‘I’ve talked Richard into moving them to the other two. We’ve thrown some big bids for next year. We may have to go to shifts, but nobody loses their job this winter.’
    ‘Me?’
    ‘We have work for you. And you’ll get to finish here, Jim.’
    McCloskey nodded slowly, the splintered toothpick in his mouth bobbing. ‘All right. I’ll tell the boys.’
    He rose with quiet dignity, and for a moment Danny remembered his father mopping up the last egg scraps and straightening for work. He’d always taken a moment to glance around the kitchen, as though confirming everything was in the right place – wife washing dishes, son rubbing sleep from his eyes, sunbeams playing through the curtains. He’d nod, just barely, giving man-to-man respect to God for keeping an orderly world. Then he’d grab his hard hat and leave, his step marked by the shuffle from his bad knee.
    McCloskey opened the door, paused. ‘Dan. Thanks.’
    ‘No worries. One thing, though.’
    ‘Yeah?’
    ‘Call me Danny, would you?’
    The foreman smiled, nodded, and stepped out. The shutting door cut off the crackle of welding and the wind’s whistle.
    Danny took a sip of the godawful burned coffee and rocked the folding chair back on two legs. He felt good. He’d done what needed doing, protected the company and saved Richard’s ass – again – but he’d done it right. For a moment, he imagined how his father would have felt being included in a conversation like that, treated like a man in mind as well as body.
    He suspected the old man would have liked that quite a bit.
    The thought made him grin. Then, unbidden, a stretch of the Eisenhower arose in his mind. Soft flakes of snow. A squeal of tires. His smile wilted.
    A clatter from outside brought him back to the moment. Forget it. Square up the paperwork here, then head back to the office. Forward motion. Forget Dad, and forget Evan.
    So he was back in town. So what?
    Danny was done with him.

5. Little Boxes
    Danny hadn’t really been in the mood for a drink, and at first he’d told McCloskey he had to get home; then, seeing what it had cost the foreman to invite a manager out for a beer, he’d