And our mother, Penny Dunbar, with six months left to live.
On Wednesday morning, Clay ran to town in the dark, got there in the light, and bought a paper from the Silver Corner Shop.
Halfway back he stopped; he studied the form guide.
He looked for a certain name.
In the day, as they talked and worked, wrote and planned, the Murderer was curious about the newspaper, but he didn’t yet dare to ask. He busied himself with other things. There were sheets of sketches and measurements. There were wood costs for the falsework and scaffolding. There were stone plans for the arching—for which Clay said he had some money, but was quickly told he should keep it.
“Trust me,” said the Murderer, “there are holes out here all over the place. I know where to find the stone.”
“Like that village,” said Clay, almost absently. “Settignano.”
Michael Dunbar stopped. “What did you just say?”
“Settignano.”
And there, caught in the moment, from absence to realization—of what he’d said, and more importantly, what he’d referred to—Clay had managed to both bring the Murderer closer, and also push him away. He’d erased, in an instant, the previous night’s generosity—of “I like it here, I like being here”—but let it show he knew so much more.
There, he thought, think that one over.
But he left it alone at that.
* * *
—
At just past twelve-thirty, the sun was blazing in the riverbed, and Clay said, “Hey, do you mind if I borrow your car keys?”
The Murderer was streaming sweat.
What for?
But he said, “Sure, you know where they are?”
It was the same just before two, and then once more, at four.
Clay jogged across to the eucalypts and sat inside at the steering wheel, listening to the radio. The horses that day were Spectacular, then Heat, and Chocolate Cake. The best she placed was fifth.
After the last race, when he got back to the river, he said, “Thanks—I won’t ever do that again, that was bad discipline,” and Michael Dunbar was amused.
“You better do some overtime.”
“Okay.”
“I’m kidding.” But then he found the nerve. “I don’t know what you’re doing over there”—the aqua eyes brightened, momentarily, in the depth inside his cheekbones—“but it’s gotta be pretty important. When boys start walking away from things, it usually means a girl.”
Clay was appropriately stunned.
“Oh—and Settignano,” the Murderer went on (given he had him on the ropes), “is where Michelangelo learned about marble, and carved slabs out for his sculptures.”
Which meant:
I don’t know when.
I don’t know how.
But you found it, you found The Quarryman.