Leo looked at the casts on Chick’s arm and leg. He thought of Allie; he wanted to see Allie.

“I’m not feeling sorry for myself, Leo, but my strategy has been very stupid. When I was a kid, maybe a couple years older than you, all I knew is I wasn’t going to be my father, I wasn’t going to be machinery in some fucking mill. No offense. It just wasn’t me; man, I was Golden Gloves Champ. Anyway, the beauty is-and I don’t know if it’s the painkillers they’re pumping into me or what, but-something came to me today I forgot I knew. My first carpentry boss was this big Frenchman in Lowell, a fight fan. He saw me in a couple of fights, took me under his wing on the job. I was loving it, too. Working under an open sky. Building something I could drive by a year later and point to, all of it. It fit the plan.”

Chick took the cap off his Coke and drank it all down until the ice hit his teeth and he winced. “One morning, the Frenchman and I were unloading tools from his truck onto the sidewalk in front of a three-story. The sun was out. I was feeling on top of things. I set the sawhorses down and hopped up in the truck for more tools and I notice the Frenchman is studying one of the sawhorses. I didn’t think much of it, except that maybe I had screwed up somehow. Then he reached over me, gets himself the long sledge, and I watch him break the horse into five flying pieces. He looks up at me and guess what he says?”

“What?”

“‘If you don’t trust a horse, break it’” Chick smiled. He lay his head back on the pillow and let out a breath. “Do you comprehend it?”

Leo said sure, it made sense.

“It only did to me this week. You see, if a man is going to organize, he’d better goddamn instill some trust in his followers. Floyd was my student, I thought I was his teacher, but I gave up on him, insulted him, even hurt him. Jesus, you can’t screw up more than that.”

Leo didn’t say anything and he wondered why Chick was telling him this. Chick pointed to pots and vases of flowers on a wall shelf near the window. “From the kids I huddle with at the college. Couple of them have offered to blow up Floyd and his buddies for the cause. None of this brings me joy. It is not lost on me that my truest believers are kids. Why? If the fruit Marx talked about is really ripe, then there should be no need to yank it from a limb, right? I’m tired of yanking, Leo. A man trusts a sawhorse when it works for him. And when he’s got a wobbler on his hands, he doesn’t want some Jack showing him plans of a better horse to use, he wants the damn horse. You understand?”