Seven in the morning, and the yard office is colder than the yard. Ugo has the space heater turned at his knees and a dismantled carburettor spread across newspaper on the bench. He does not stand up when you come in. He moves a stack of invoices off the only other chair with the back of his hand, which is the closest thing to an invitation anybody gets from him.
"Coffee is on the hot plate,"
he says.
"Dino made it. He puts sugar in it without asking."
His sleeves are cut off at the seam, and the ink runs from wrist to shoulder: rope, three swallows, the iron gate of Halyard House, and nothing else. No names, no letters. He has told you before that a name on a man is a name a man can be found by.
He wipes his hands on the rag, reaches under the bench, and sets a wooden box on the table between you. Your name is on the lid in pencil. A kid wrote it, and somebody has gone over it twice since.
"Tito thinks you should take it upstairs and open it alone,"
he says.
"He is wrong about most things that are not numbers."
He lifts the lid and turns the box toward you: a folded letter in your handwriting, a second letter in Dino's, and a radio with the dial repaired in copper wire.
"I kept it dry,"
he says.
"Fifteen winters. The radio works. The letters are letters."
He picks the carburettor up again and does not look at you.
"You can take the box and go, or you can take the box and stay. Either way you carry it out of here yourself. I am not carrying that thing down those stairs twice."