Bell had put his shoe against my trunk before I reached it. The little bundle of knives and patterns was already under my arm, but the trunk held my good shears, my winter coat, and the heavy sharpening stone my father had taught me to use. I could leave without them. That was the choice Morris wanted me to see. Behind him, the shared room smelled of damp wool and the lunch somebody had forgotten on the stove.
“Those are mine,” I said. He looked at the bundle under my arm. “Nobody stopped you taking those.” Two men sat beside the card table. Yesterday either would have lifted the trunk with me. Now one rubbed an old stain with his thumb while the other studied the window. My knee hurt from the doorway, and I had climbed the stairs sideways to spare it. Bell had watched every awkward step without offering me a chair.
I put the knives on a shelf and went to the trunk. Morris kept his sole against the lid. There was no lock on it. We had called that trust: coats, tools, spare shirts left together, each man certain the others would defend his property. I wondered how many things I had mistaken for generosity because nobody had yet asked me to leave. I took hold of the handle and pulled. The trunk scraped an inch before his weight stopped it.
“You can come back tomorrow,” he said. “Stand where you're needed. We forget this morning.” I could picture it easily. My shoulder against the shop jamb, a hot breakfast waiting upstairs, Feld pretending not to notice who decided which workers passed. Ruth would still be elsewhere. Esther would still remember the landing. But my knee would heal, and ordinary comforts might eventually persuade me that nothing else required attention. I had lived on smaller excuses than that.
“Move your foot.” Bell leaned close enough for me to smell his coffee. “You have money here.” He meant the portion of our shared earnings he held, money I had been counting against Feld's advance whenever I wanted to believe the debt manageable. I had never counted it in my own hands. Some weeks Morris said expenses had reduced it; other weeks he said leaving it with him was wiser than carrying cash through the streets.
“Give it to me, then.” His mouth tightened. The man at the window stood, changed his mind, and sat again. Bell said, “A fellow who walks away doesn't collect everything he thinks he's owed.” I could have argued the figures. I knew enough of them to keep us shouting until evening. He wanted an argument he could settle by letting me stay. I looked instead at the heel pinning the lid and heard myself breathe through my nose.
“Keep what you hold for me. I'm taking my tools.” He did not move at once. I understood that he wanted more than money. “And I don't come back to the crew,” I said. The room became very quiet, though a truck was laboring in the street below. Morris lifted his shoe. I bent too quickly, and pain ran from my knee into my thigh. Neither seated man rose. My freedom weighed more than I had expected.
The trunk struck the doorframe on the way out. I had to set it down, turn it upright, and squeeze past before dragging it after me. Behind me Bell asked who would speak for me when trouble came. I wanted to say I could speak for myself. That would have been a foolish boast from a man unable to carry his own trunk. I picked up the knife bundle instead. “Don't send anybody,” I said, and started down.
On the first landing the lid caught a projecting nail. I hauled until the lining tore. One of the men appeared above me and watched, his hands loose at his sides. I remembered buying medicine for his boy one winter; I also remembered whose money had paid for it. “Take the bottom,” I asked. He glanced back into the room. Then the door closed. I lowered the trunk another stair, listening to the shears shift inside like loose teeth.
At the bottom I rested my forehead against the cool wall. A boy from Feld's stood beside the street door, twisting his cap. He had been waiting through the whole descent. “Mr. Feld says not to come up for work,” he told me. “Not now.” I asked whether Feld had said tomorrow. The boy shook his head and fled before I could ask anything else. I dragged the trunk onto the pavement. I had bought departure, not a place to go.