The temptation was not a fever. It was a cold, smooth weight, as clean and heavy as a river stone.
For three seconds, standing beneath the open starlight with his back pressed against the iron support post, Len felt the sheer, crushing appeal of the offer settle into his bones. His body was an inventory of ruined tissues. His right ankle was throbbing with an ugly, hot pulsation that made his vision swim. The splints on his left forearm pinched into raw blisters every time he shifted his weight. His throat pipe felt as if it had been scrubbed with coarse emery cloth from the sulfur chimney pipes.
To simply reach out, take the soapstone, and drag a white line across the office slate would cost nothing. No more running. No more balancing on greasy two-inch pipe flanges forty feet above boiling sump tanks. No more lying awake in drafty postal sheds, listening to the midnight bells and wondering if the next chime would mark his name on an execution docket.
The slate promised the one thing nine years of courier work had never provided. An authorized, uncontested end to duty.
It was the matching logic that had destroyed his father.
