Are you okay?” Dillon said.

“I’m fine,” the boy said.

“You don’t look fine,” Dillon said. “And you were talking to yourself when you were asleep.”

“I’m cold is all,” he said. “I just can’t quit shaking.”

The boy lay curled under the single sheet, teeth chattering. Dillon had come down from the top bunk and pulled up a chair. He’d remembered seeing Dillon after he went to the infirmary and walked back to the pod. No one spoke to him but Dillon. He heard some of them whispering about what had happened to Tony Ponessa. A lot of them talking revenge.

“You whipped that guy’s butt,” Dillon said.

“He started it,” the boy said.

“And you finished it, too,” Dillon said. “Nobody thought that was going to happen.”

The boy felt his teeth chattering as he curled tighter into a ball. Dillon disappeared onto the top bunk and brought down a blanket and a pillow. The boy hadn’t earned either yet.

“Take it.”

“I’m okay.”

“I don’t need it,” Dillon said. “I’m not the one sick.”

“I’m not sick.”

“Is that what they told you?” Dillon said. They were the only two in the bunk room, all the other boys down on the first floor of the open pod watching TV. He could hear the tinny sounds of the television and the murmur of kids talking. “They’re bullshit.”

“I’m okay.”

“That son of a bitch made you swim out in the harbor, for fuck’s sake,” Dillon said. “What did you think was going to happen? Your damn skin had turned blue when they finally pulled you out. You nearly choked out on that cold water.”

“Yeah?” the boy said, laughing. “But I got the stick.” The laugh turned into a cough.

Dillon stood and reached out, feeling the boy’s head. When the boy looked up at Dillon’s face he wasn’t pleased with what he saw. Dillon was now yelling for the guards, telling them they needed to get in here, now.

“What are you doing?” he said. “Jesus, you’re going to get me killed.”

“They don’t want to treat you because they’d have to admit what they’ve done. Guard!”

“I’m okay,” the boy said, shaking.

“Get the fuck in here,” Dillon said, yelling. “Guard!”

“I’m fine,” the boy said, wrapping himself in the warm blanket as tight as he could. If only he could get warm.

30

I met Jake Cotner the next afternoon inside the Blackburn cotton mill museum. I paid my six-buck admission and walked inside the weave room, the old looms shaking, long ropy belts turning spindles hung from the ceiling. I couldn’t tell if they were actually making stretches of fabric or if the mechanizations were for show. Either way, the machines made a lot of noise and radiated an impressive pulse of energy. The mill room stretched out as far and wide as a gridiron. A couple of old-timers in overalls roamed the floors, checking the belts and century-old machines. I looked for Lyddie, but it must’ve been her day off.

Cotner wore the same letterman’s jacket as before with his jeans and work boots. The jeans had been cuffed a couple inches. I didn’t know kids did that anymore, but the look suited him, as did the buzz cut. He was standing at the protective rail, watching the machines hammering in the big open space. I walked up next to him. In all the noise, I’d surprised him, and he flinched a bit when I touched his back.

“Jesus Christ,” he said.

“Nope,” I said. “Just Spenser.”

“Mr. Spenser.”

“Just Spenser.”

“Can we make this fast,” he said. “I can’t get in any trouble. I didn’t mind meeting with you the other day, but now, you know, with all that crap with Beth. You know. Well, I just don’t want to get arrested or something.”

“Have you spoken to Beth?” I said.

He shook his head.

“Cops talk to you?”

He shook his head.

One of the old guys was on a ladder, threading the belt back through a spindle. He looked like he’d done this maybe a thousand times before and could rework the loom in his sleep. He had on thick glasses and a red bandana tied around his neck. He used the bandana to wipe the back of his neck like prospectors in old Westerns.

“How about Ryan?” I said. “Did he find her?”

“Yeah,” he said. “He said Beth was leaving town. Her mom made her. She has family down in Plymouth. I think she’s going to switch schools and everything. What the hell happened?”

“What do you think?”

“I think the cops made a deal with Beth to make her drug charges go away.”

I nodded. The old man stepped off the ladder and flipped a switch, and the weaver started working again. At closer inspection, I could see that the loom was real, actually fashioning a broad piece of white cloth. Outside the towering industrial windows were three other identical brick mills. The whole town of Blackburn was built on the idea of industry, nestled by the river, with man-made canals dug throughout the town, intersecting and powering the mill. I took off my hat and dried off the melted snow.

“You’re a smart kid,” I said.

“Doesn’t get me much at my job.”

“You could go back to school.”

“When?” he said. “My old man kicked me out.”

“There are ways.”

“I’m nineteen years old,” he said. “I got six thousand dollars of credit card debt and I’m a month late on my rent for me and my girlfriend. I ain’t going back to school.”

“When I dropped out of college, I joined the Army.”

“My dad would love it if I joined the Army,” he said. “But I don’t really like people shooting at me.”

“That is a downside,” I said.

“Did you like the Army?”

“Not really,” I said. “But some of it I enjoyed very much.”

“You think the cops are going to arrest me?” he said. “They came after Beth and then you.”

“You think she told them about you and Ryan?”

“That’s why Ryan wanted to talk to her,” he said. “He was worried about the same thing. But she swore to God she didn’t say anything about her introducing us to you. As far as they know, she just talked about problems with some kid named Yates.”

“Dillon Yates.”

“That’s him,” he said. “You know him?”

“He’s the reason I’m here,” I said. “Scali sentenced him like he sentenced you and Ryan. And it looks like a whole lot of other kids in Blackburn.”

“He’s a total dick.”

“That’s a given,” I said. “But he’s become a wealthy one at that.”

We walked down the empty row blocked off with rails to a hallway and then turned up a flight of steps. You had to go up the steps to get off the floor and then through the museum to get out of the building. I was pretty sure you had to exit out of the gift shop after being dazzled with the romance of the Industrial Revolution. I wondered if they had a pinup calendar of the mill girls of the 1890s.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Beth shouldn’t have done that.”

“I don’t think she had a choice.”

“Sure she did.”

“She’s seventeen,” I said. “And adults were pulling her in to say that either she tells the story they want her to tell or else she’s going to prison.”

“I hate this place,” he said. “It’s become the crappiest city in the state.”

“I think it was destined to be that way.”

“Yeah?”

We stood alone in the middle of wide displays of black-and-white photos of workers standing by their looms. Women who’d come from Canada to work night and day in the mills, eat at the mills, live at the mills. “Probably always been pretty crappy,” I said.