Grady didn't sign it.
He didn't tear it up either. He put it in the glove box, started the truck, and drove out Route 9 to Walt Brenner's barn workshop, which was the last place on earth he wanted to go.
Walt was planing a board. He didn't stop when Grady walked in.
"Walt," Grady said. "Can a brick wall be moved?"
Walt set down the plane.
"Which wall?"
It could be done, Walt said. Not easy. Not cheap. You'd brace the wall with steel frames on both sides, cut it into panels with a big masonry saw, maybe eight feet wide each, and lift them out with a crane, one at a time. You'd need a crew who knew what they were doing. And you'd need it done by Thursday night.
"How much?" Grady asked.
Walt thought about it. "Crane, steel, saw, crew, trucking. Thirty-five, forty thousand. Maybe more."
Grady laughed. It wasn't a happy sound.
"That's funny," he said. "That's almost exactly my commission."
Walt looked at him for a while.
"Grady," he said. "Nobody would blame you for signing that order."
"I know." Grady looked at the floor. "That's sort of the problem."
He called Lauren Shaw back at 4:40.
"The building comes down Thursday," he told her. "Just like you want. Your crew can do it. But not before seven p.m. Until then, I've got my own crew in there."
"Doing what?"
"Taking out one wall. At my expense. It'll be gone before your bulldozers start their engines. You have my word."
There was a long pause on the line.
"Mr. Pruitt," she said slowly. "Do you have any idea what that's going to cost you?"
"To the penny," Grady said, and signed the order.
They started Wednesday at dawn.
Walt ran the job. Hank Doyle brought the welder and built the steel frames. A mason from Marietta came with a saw blade as big as a tractor tire. Mike Sorensen brought his crew. Sixteen old men who had signed that wall showed up in work clothes, uninvited, and stood around until Walt gave them something to do.
Clay Hollister drove the forklift. Earl directed traffic on the road, which there wasn't any of.
Grady stood off to the side in his quarter-zip, with his checkbook in his pocket, writing checks.
He paid for the crane. He paid for the steel. He paid for the mason and the trucking and the coffee and the sandwiches Dot sent out, though she tried to send them for free and he wouldn't let her. Nobody asked where the money was coming from. Earl knew. Walt knew.
The saw screamed all day Wednesday and half the night. By Thursday afternoon, the wall stood in six braced panels, each one wrapped in moving blankets, ready to lift.
At 6:41 p.m., the crane set the last panel on a flatbed truck.
At 6:52, Grady Pruitt shook hands with Lauren Shaw's demolition foreman and walked off the site.
At seven o'clock sharp, the bulldozers started their engines.
The deal closed Friday at 2:15.
The county let them put the wall on the lawn beside the Carnegie library, where Ruth Ann said it belonged. Walt built a little roof over it to keep the weather off. Ruth Ann made a book listing every name and every year, and put it on a stand in the library lobby.
They had a dedication on a cold Saturday in December. Half the town came. Pastor Sam said a prayer. Earl said a few words about the furnace line. Lloyd Hersh, who had signed the wall in 1965, cried and didn't care who saw.
Nobody mentioned Grady. He'd made sure of that.
"Don't make a thing of it," he had told Earl. "I've got an image."
He stood at the very back of the crowd, in his good coat, with his hands in his pockets.
When it was over and people started to drift toward the diner, Dot came up beside him with a paper cup of coffee.
"On the house," she said.
"I can pay, Dot."
"I know you can, hon." She pressed the cup into his hands and walked away before he could say anything else.
Grady waited until the lawn was empty.
Then he walked up to the third panel, the one by the door, and found the name about chest high.
*D. PRUITT. 1971.*
And below it, the tiny crooked G.
He touched it with one finger.
"Hi, Dad," he said.
