Coyote blue

Grubb."
    "I'm sorry," Minty said. He climbed to his feet and walked to the door, then turned. "I'm really sorry." He pushed his sunglasses up on his face and ducked through the hole in the steel. Sam followed him out.
    "Mr. F.," Sam called.
    Minty looked up as he reached the car. "Yes?"
    "Thanks for not going to the cops. I understand your position."
    Minty nodded and got in the Lincoln.
    Calliope came up beside Sam and stood with him watching Minty drive away. She said, "Grubb is all I have."
    Sam reached out and took her hand, not knowing what to say, having failed at the only thing he was really good at, talking people into doing things they didn't want to do.
    The young monk came out of the door behind them. "The Master is fixing your car," he said. He was stirring some green tea into an earthenware bowl with a bamboo whisk. "More tea?"
    ~* * *~
    They stood together in the sun, watching the old man work. He fingered each bolt carefully before fitting a wrench to it, then removed the bolt so quickly that his hands blurred with the movement.
    Sam said, "How long…"
    "Don't talk to him when he works," Steve cautioned. "He will finish when he finishes. But don't talk to him. When you work, work. When you talk, talk."
    "Do you get many customers? I mean, you are pretty far out here."
    "Three," Steve said. He was wearing a straw hat to protect his shaved head.
    "Three today?"
    "No, just three."
    "Then what do you do in the meantime?"
    "We wait."
    "That's all?"
    Steve said, "Is that all the patriarch Daruma did at the wall for nine years?" There was no anger in his voice. "We wait."
    "But how do you pay your rent, buy food?"
    "There is no rent. The owner of King's Lake, Augustus Brine, brings us food. He is a fisherman."
    "King's Lake is up the road, right? What is it, a resort?"
    "A house of pleasure."
    "A whorehouse that supports Buddhist monks?"
    "How sweet," Calliope said.
    "He's got it," Coyote said, pointing to the Master, who was holding up a rod of polished metal.
    "A bent push rod," Steve said. The master carried the push rod into the shop. They all followed and watched as the old man tightened the rod into a vise. He picked up a hammer and stood over the vise, his free hand feeling the rod. Without warning the old man screamed and delivered a clanging blow to the push rod, then bowed and set the hammer on the bench.
    "Fixed," Steve said, bowing.
    "Is that how he lost his fingers?"
    "To achieve enlightenment, one must give up the things of this world."
    "Like piano lessons," Coyote said.

Chapter 28 – Hope Is Bulletproof,
    Truth Just Hard to Hit
    As Minty Fresh drove back to Las Vegas he thought about what Sam had said: "You have a mother, don't you?" And the question set Minty Fresh to thinking about a phone call from his mother that had changed his life.
    "You're the only one left can do something, baby. The others are too far or too far gone. Please come home, baby, I need you." (Even when he had to duck to pass through her front door she still called him "baby.") That tone: he'd heard it in her voice before, when she was tugging at her husband to get him to stop strapping her youngest. But he hadn't gone back for her, had he? It was a call deep with duty and silent pride that brought him home. He went back for Nathan.
    Nathan Fresh had never been home when any of his nine children were born. He was a sailor, and as far as he knew, when you came home from sea a new child would be waiting for you. The others grew an inch or two at a time, and the shoes that one was wearing when you left would be on the next one down when you got home. He loved his children, foreign creatures that they were, and trusted his wife to raise them – as long as they could line up, snap to, and pass inspection when he came home. And although he was gone most of the time, making the high seas safe for democracy, he was a presence in the house: photographs in crisp dress whites and blues stared down from the walls; commendations and medals; a letter once a week, read out loud at the supper table; and a thousand warnings of what Papa would do to a doomed misbehaver when he got home. To the Fresh children, Papa was only a little bit more real than Santa Claus, and only a bit more conspicuous.
    On the ship, Chief Petty Officer Nathan Fresh was known only as the Chief: feared and respected, tough and fair, starched, razor creased, and polished, always in trim and intolerant of anyone who wasn't. The Chief: did you notice that he