Not in the middle of this. When this is over, she paused. When it's over, will you wait until then? He looked at her for a moment that lasted considerably longer than its actual duration. I've been waiting for 2 years, he said.
I reckon I can wait a little longer. It was not a declaration. It was not a promise spoken directly. It was Thomas Walker, plain and honest, saying the only thing he knew how to say, which was the exact truth. Clare held his gaze.
Then she put on her coat. I'll be back from town before supper, she said. She walked out and Thomas Walker stood in his kitchen and watched her go and then stood very still for another moment before he put on his own coat and went to see the minister because the woman he was not yet saying things to had just walked out to fight for his family, and the least he could do was be fighting beside her. Morrison listened. He listened the way old men with general stores listened behind the counter, hands flat on the wood, not interrupting.
Clare put the facts in front of him plainly. The anonymous letter through Kettleworth's office. The welfare complaint filed the week after Daryl's letter. The pattern. Morrison's face over the course of 5 minutes moved from neutral to troubled to something considerably harder.
Whitmore has been banking half this county for 20 years. He said, "I know." Clare said, "People owe him money. Good people. I know."
Clare said, "I'm not asking you to make enemies, Mr. Morrison. I'm asking you to know the truth about what's happening to a family that has been through enough." Morrison looked at her. "Thomas Walker is a good man," he said. "Yes, sir," Clare said.
"He is." A long silence. "The Hadley family," Morrison said slowly. And the Pratt brothers and the widow Jansen. They all hold notes at Whitmore's bank.
He was thinking aloud, not to her specifically arranging something in his mind. Any of them find themselves in the same position Thomas is in, and now they know what to look for. He said this as a simple fact, as though the thought had arrived on its own. "Yes," Clare said. Morrison picked up a tin from the counter that did not need to be moved and moved it.
You tell Thomas Walker, he said that some of us have been watching Whitmore for a while. He looked at Clare over his spectacles. He's not as protected in this town as he thinks he is. Clare looked at the old man behind this counter. "Thank you," she said.
"Don't thank me," Morrison said. "Buy some flour." She was halfway back up Milbrook Road when the second wagon came. She heard it before she saw it moving too fast for the road the way urgent things move. She stepped to the shoulder and it rattled past her and she saw with a clarity that turned her cold the Witmore Banking Company insignia on the side panel.