Chapter 7

The next morning, Sergeant First Class Dale Braddock stood at the gate at 4:45 a.m., two coffees in his hands, the mist rolling knee-high off the short grass, the sky still dark on the eastern edge.

Otis Redfern came down the lane at 5:00 sharp, pushing his rusted cart, and he took the coffee without surprise, the way a man takes something he expects to be offered.

"You came," Otis said.

"You asked me to." Braddock walked alongside the cart, keeping pace with the old man's unhurried steps. "Where do we start?"

They started at the lane markers. Otis pointed out the one that was leaning, planted in softer ground, the one that would shift a degree west by midsummer. He showed Braddock how to check the stake depth with a boot heel, how to read the wear on the yellow paint to tell which side the sun hit first. He talked about the impact area beyond the markers, the way the ground sloped there, the craters that old rounds had left that the landscaping crews filled with dirt that never quite matched.

They walked the whole lane, end to end, and then they walked it back.