“I am going to answer you honestly, sir, since you asked me honestly,” Thaddeus said, and I will give him this much, his voice did not shake. “I did not know my son had that machine. I drafted the police report for your company on Tuesday, and I never read the equipment description. My associate wrote it. I signed it.” He turned to look at Marcus. “I would have recognized the number three, I think, if I had ever once looked at the work of my brother in law.” The vice president of the buyer set down his beer. He did not smile. He did not frown either. He only waited.
Marcus came forward before anyone could ask him. He is thirty two, and he stood on the deck of his father like a boy at the principal desk. “Uncle Odell, I took it,” he said. “I took the Sennebogen and the roll off truck and the shear. Daddy did not know. He told me every day for nine years that I was too good to work for you. I wanted to prove him right.” He took a breath. “I wanted a company with a name that did not sound like junk.” I looked at the good young man I had trained to run a magnet, and I felt more sorrow than anger. “Junk is what pays your rent, son,” I said.
Bernadette crossed the deck and took my wrist, the one with the steel plate. “Thaddeus,” she said, quietly, “in 1994 you failed the bar exam twice. My husband paid for your course in Atlanta, and he paid your car note for six months, and he never told me, and he never told Mama.” The deck fell silent. “I found the canceled checks in his desk last winter,” she said. “Four thousand, three hundred dollars in all. You have called him junk man at every table since.” Thaddeus closed his eyes. “Odell,” he said, “I owe you more than money. I owe you my name.” The crowd below had stopped cheering for the game.
A single sheet of paper laid on a deck rail gave one nephew the weekend to bring his uncle back to the yard in Bessemer.
I set my terms there on the deck, while the fourth quarter ran on the big screen with nobody watching. The Sennebogen, the roll off truck and the small shear would be back at my yard on Pleasant Grove Road by noon on Monday. Marbury Metals would be closed, and the orange paint sanded from the cab. Marcus would sit with the buyer and tell the whole truth. If he did, I would ask the company to withdraw the police report and keep him on as an operator at the same pay, because a man who can run that magnet is worth keeping. And Thaddeus would pay back the four thousand, three hundred dollars with thirty years of interest.
On Monday morning, I stood at the gate of my yard with a thermos. The shear came first, on a flatbed. The roll off truck followed. At ten, the green and yellow Sennebogen rolled in on its lowboy, with Marcus riding in the cab of the truck pulling it, his eyes swollen. Junebug, my yard foreman, climbed up and checked the magnet. When he came down, he was grinning like a boy. “Mr. Odell, number three,” he said. “Everything works. Even the magnet.” I put my hand on the cold counterweight and felt the old machine hum, and I said a short prayer of thanks.
The vice president of the buyer came to see me on Tuesday, in his Alabama polo, hat in hand. His name is Gordon Pate, and he turned out to be a fellow Bessemer boy. “Mr. Gaskin, I have withdrawn that police report,” he said. “I want to tell you something. I have bought forty yards in six states, and you are the only owner who made sure every employee kept a job.” He shook my hand with both of his. “I want you to know that at our company, you will always be welcome. Not as the junk man. As the founder.” I had to look away at the pecan tree.
The money consequences came fast and fair. Thaddeus sent me a cashier check for fourteen thousand dollars, which was the old loan with interest compounded, and a letter two pages long. I deposited the check and framed the letter. He also resigned from the church committee that he chaired, and he stood up in the congregation on Sunday and asked for prayer, which nobody in that family had ever seen. Marcus took a pay cut and a probation year, and he spent every Saturday in my yard sorting aluminum, with a smile I had not seen since he was twenty.
In the name of my father, Moses Gaskin, who passed twenty two years ago and who worked the open hearth at U.S. Steel until the day they closed it, I started the Steel Plate Fund. It pays for tuition, tools and safety gear for apprentice welders and crane operators in Jefferson County who could not otherwise begin. In the first year, we sent forty one young people to training. A boy of nineteen, with a burn scar on his forearm and a brand new hard hat, shook my hand at the graduation and said, “Mr. Gaskin, nobody ever picked me for anything.” I told him I had.
The next November, I went back to the Marbury house for the Iron Bowl. I wore my crimson jacket and my class ring. Thaddeus met me at the gate, and he held out a black trash bag and a twenty dollar bill. I stared at him. He took a long breath. “Odell, I am going to pick up the cans this year,” he said. “You are going to sit in the best chair, right in front of the screen.” I laughed so hard that the cough from forty years of torch smoke came up. He walked into the yard with the bag, and I sat down.
Late in the second half, Alabama scored, and the whole yard roared. Thaddeus was bent over a flower bed with a trash bag in his hand, and he looked up and gave me a thumbs up with a beer can between his fingers. Bernadette sat beside me and tapped my hand twice, the old signal that means I am with you. On the screen, a Crimson Tide player lifted his helmet to the crowd. I took my twenty dollar bill from my pocket, the same one he had given me the year before, and I tucked it back into his pocket on his way past.