Reference
By Michael Gullo
My form works. That's not the claim. The claim is that it does more than a narrated chapter does, in less room, and leaves more of the story with the characters and the reader. That can be counted, so I counted it on one chapter.
Chapter 77 is 962 words of dialogue and nothing else. The crew shows up at the job with the boss gone. They sort out the day, talk about a guy who keeps missing work, and let a cat into a shed. That's the surface. Under it, almost every line reaches back into the book. Give the same chapter a regular narrator and it nearly doubles in length and reaches about a quarter as far.
Take Chapter 77 exactly as I wrote it. Keep every word of the dialogue. Then hand it to a regular narrator who knows everything the book has set down up to that point, and let him do what narrators do: set the scene, hang the speakers, tell you the tone, tell you what people are thinking, remind you of what came before. He can't add anything the book hasn't already established.
I had Claude write that narrated version as the control. Claude doesn't get my chapter. Claude gets the conventional job, done the conventional way.
Then count what each version spends and what each one does. Both versions are printed in full at the back, so anybody who doubts me can run the count again.
Every count goes the same direction.
So the narrator nearly doubles the length, reaches a quarter as far, takes half the words away from the people in the scene, and spends what he adds on reminding, on tone, and on verdicts. To reach what my dialogue reaches on its own he'd need almost four times the words. My chapter isn't a narrated chapter with the narrator taken out. It carries more in half the space.
Here's why. A line said in passing in this book gets left where it fell. A later chapter picks it up, doesn't comment on it, and puts it to work. Nothing gets in free. A thing shows up only when a character has a reason to say it, and once somebody has spent words on it, it stays in the world. "Door's open" doesn't need a history attached, because the history is already sitting in Chapters 15, 24, 37 and 72. "It won't work" doesn't need a tag. The warning came in Chapter 48, and the plan it answers was laid out in Chapter 73.
A narrator has to haul the history in with him every time, in his own words. Even at almost double the length, the narrated version never gets to any of this:
Every one of those would cost the narrator a sentence of reminding, and every one of those sentences would announce itself. My dialogue spends nothing on any of them and still holds all of them for the reader who remembers.
The narrator adds 862 words, and they come in three kinds. Every kind takes something from the reader.
First is reminding. The narrator tells you the stump is Kitty's anchor. He tells you Michael calls his dig-first, ask-later habit his forgiveness doctrine. He tells you the court's been garnishing Cody's wages. He tells you how the lock got left unfinished:
"Tanner had hung them back in December, the morning the surveyor came, when Michael called him off the lock to joke about pulling the clouds out of the sky. In January Michael had told him to leave the handle alone, so he could raise hell about it later. Just two days ago, on the phone with Stefanie, Michael had promised the deadbolt would go in that day. It hadn't."
All true. And it costs the reader the chance to remember it on his own. A reader who kept 62 chapters of detail gets nothing more out of that than a reader who kept none.
Second is tone. The narrator tells you how every line sounds:
"'It won't work,' Tanner said flatly."
"'No, he can't hear us standing on that bucket,' Tanner said, low."
"'No way he heard us in that machine,' Tanner said, though he sounded less sure than he meant to."
Every one of those tags shuts off every other way the line could be heard. If the line carries its meaning, the tag adds nothing. If it doesn't, the tag can't put the meaning there.
Third is the verdict. The narrated chapter ends by ruling on Tanner:
"He didn't think of Cody when he said it. He was thinking about the cat."
In mine, the reader is left standing next to Tanner's unfinished lock and Cody's unfinished week, and has to decide what to make of the two of them. The narrator decides for him.
In a tagless chapter a manner adverb has nowhere to stand. It can only hang off a tag, and there aren't any tags. My Chapter 77 has three -ly words, really, literally and early, and all three are speech. That's how these guys talk. The minute a narrator shows up, the adverbs show up with him: sullenly, patiently, slowly, grimly, flatly, plus the tags that do the same job without the suffix, "said, low," "insisted," "admitted."
Description comes in the same door, and most of it repeats what the dialogue already has. The narrator opens on weather: rain moved off before dawn, the holler wet and gray, every branch beaded, the pond flat and brown below the dam. He parks the truck and lets it idle. He describes the torn blister as a flap the size of a quarter, gritty with dirt, after Devin has already said it's almost into his palm with dirt under the skin flap. He narrates Cody spinning the skid steer in a circle barely wider than the machine, and then Tanner says the same thing out loud, better, in his own words. The narrated version describes the ballet and then lets a character describe it again. That's description doing no work at all.
A character in this form is made of what he says, and what he says can point two ways at once. In 17 places the narrator picks one way.
Tanner, as I wrote him, admires Cody ("he works that dirt like the machine's attached to him"), imagines a whole company built around him, and still says "It won't work." Respect, hope, judgment and loyalty, all in the same man at the same minute. The narrator settles him: "With the boss gone, the day was his." "He had been imagining it for weeks." "Tanner said grimly." "Tanner said flatly." And last: "He didn't think of Cody when he said it." The contradictions are gone, and most of Tanner went with them.
Devin, as I wrote him, says "He hates that machine" and "He's an artist. He hates it here, though." Those lines could be insight, envy or a needle. "It's just blisters, buddy" could be pride or stubborn. The narrator picks for him: "something close to dread," "a little sullenly," "insisted," "Devin knew when he was beaten," "Devin's stomach dropped."
Cody, as I wrote him, yells "Hey!" from the bucket, and nobody knows whether he heard the guys talking about him. They argue it twice and can't settle it, and neither can the reader. He's the man being judged, and he's the only one who saw the cat. The narrator answers the question before the men ask it: "But Cody wasn't looking at them. He was pointing past them, at the shed."
Michael isn't in the chapter at all. The unfinished deadbolt could be carelessness, a man too busy, or the plan to raise hell about it later. The narrator explains all three in a paragraph, and the reader doesn't have to weigh anything anymore.
The narrated chapter has the same people with the contradictions sanded off. Mine keeps every one of them, because there's nobody in there to sand them.
In my version every word on the page belongs to somebody standing in the scene. In the narrated version almost every other word belongs to a voice that isn't there. My characters are more present for the simplest reason there is. They're doing all the talking. The reader spends the whole chapter with the crew and none of it with a tour guide.
A narrator can say a thing once and remind you two or three times before reminding turns into nagging, and then an editor cuts the rest. In this form a return to a fact is a new line from a new speaker in a new scene, doing its own work there. The stump gets planted in Chapter 10, teased in Chapter 54 ("Same old Kitty, all new tree stump"), named in Chapter 55 ("It's her anchor"), and it's under the cat in the first lines of Chapter 77. Every time it's somebody different talking for a reason of his own, and none of it reads like a reminder. The door lock runs the same way, through Chapters 15, 24, 37 and 72.
Spread out like that, a thread can take a hit. A reader who misses one seed doesn't lose the thread, because the others still carry it. A narrated book that says a thing once loses the reader who skimmed that page.
Some of what my chapter does can't be added back by a narrator at any length, because the narrator would wreck it by announcing it. Three of them.
The first is testimony. When Tanner says Cody's trying to get paid in cash, he's guessing. The reader isn't. The reader has heard Cody reach for cash, in his own words, across the whole book, in rooms Tanner was never in:
That plan runs on a promise Michael made to Cody's face in Chapter 21: "So, you work, you get paid. Hell, the law states that even if you don't work, you get paid as long as you're employed, you get paid… there's no firing possible." By Chapter 70 Cody's rehearsing it to his father: "Man say man work, man get paid. Man wait for parts, man get paid." Fifty-two chapters after the promise, he plans to stay home all week and collect on it. He's not guessing at Michael. He's holding him to his word.
That record raises a question the book never answers. In Chapter 41 the computer that would let the crew invoice and get paid on the books turns up broken the morning after it was dropped off, and Cody asks for cash twice before anybody's even sorted out the problem. Cody says Lonnie dropped it. Michael suspects what Cody meant to say was that he wants cash pay. Seven chapters later somebody at Cody's own table uses the word sabotage. Was the computer broken on purpose? The book handles it the way it handles the trees Cody's machines keep hitting, and the "I slipped" that comes after every one. The damage is on the record. The intent isn't. Is the computer a tree?
A narrator couldn't leave that open. A narrator who knows has to say, or get caught hiding it. My form hands the reader six chapters of Cody's own words, one law, one promise turned around and one broken computer, and leaves the verdict right there. When Tanner guesses cash in Chapter 77, the reader isn't guessing. The reader is deciding.
Two more connections belong here, because they show the same machinery from both ends. One I found after I wrote it. The other a reader found, and I never meant it.
One is the keyboard. The facts went down one at a time across thirty chapters. In Chapter 41 the computer turns up broken, and Cody says Lonnie dropped it. In Chapter 65 he's "ranting and raving about someone broke a key off his computer." In Chapter 70 he asks who keeps pulling keys off it, and in Chapter 73 he names them: "First it's one and two, and then the Q come up missin', and last night it's the W gone." Lonnie blames Cody, because the holler always blames Cody. I didn't write the keys to a plan. Who was taking them, I found afterward, in the order they went missing: one, two, Q, W, the corner of the keyboard a small hand reaches first from the edge of a table. I didn't plant it. I realized it.
The other came from a reader. In Chapter 68 a man in church shoes strolls through the mud, and she asked whether those were the smooth prints Lonnie read in the woods in Chapter 5. I wrote those prints as Michael's. In Chapter 8 Cody clocks Michael's Danskos and calls his father wrong, and in Chapter 25 father and son settle on Michael at the spillway: "them smooth shoe prints got the little circles in 'em." But Chapter 5 is the woods and Chapter 25 is the spillway, and nobody ever proves they're the same tracks. Church shoes make track "the way only a office shoe make." Her answer doesn't break the record. It lives in the gap between two separate readings of tracks, and the record can't rule it out.
Both hold for the same reason. The facts were set down plain and left alone. A narrator would have closed both of them, one by explaining the keys and the other by naming whose shoes made the prints. A record keeps turning up true connections nobody planned, for the author and the reader both.
The second thing only my form can do is the clock. Kitty gets mentioned in the second line and then not again for about 60 lines: the silt fence, the eel, the blister, the Google search, the job interview speech, the cash plan. Then Cody calls down, and the characters ask the clock question out loud: "How long was he out of it?" and "Kitty, how long you been sitting on this stair." The reader can only answer by how much talk has gone by. The talk that seems like it doesn't matter is the clock.
The third is the forgetting. In the narrated version the narrator announces that nobody noticed the machine go quiet and nobody noticed the cat. In mine, the reader forgets the cat right along with the men, and Cody, the man they're talking about, corrects all of them. The form doesn't show people judging with half their attention. It makes the reader do it, and then lets the man being judged set it straight.
A first-time reader walking through my chapter gets a crew at work, a hurt hand, a frustrating coworker and a cat that wants in, and he can't come away with nothing. A returning reader starts to feel the weight: the open door has a history, the cat has a habit, the cash talk isn't idle. A reader who studies the book finds the whole web of 32 chapters, and then finds the scene still reads like a few guys talking about a coworker while a cat waits on the stairs. The narrated version gives all three of them the same thing: whatever the narrator decided to tell them.
The same 962 words of dialogue are in both versions. One adds 862 words of narration, reaches 8 earlier chapters by telling, adds six adverbs and 17 rulings, and leaves the characters half the language. The other adds nothing, reaches 32 chapters by being remembered, and gives the characters every word. The narrator didn't add one fact the chapter was missing. All he changed was who holds those facts while the scene is happening. In mine the reader holds them, and the book does more with less.
Chapter 77 – Friday March 1, 2024
“Door’s open.”
“Kitty’s on the cutoff tree.”
“Where’s he at?”
“I dunno.”
“Cat, whar’s that Yankee at?”
“She’s stumped.”
“So, um, I guess we just get to work.”
“Seat’s dry. Me ‘n Russ can get on this.”
“Devin, I know you’re tired of the silt fence, but we gotta get it in. Dig a hole without a permit is bad enough, but doing it without a silt fence is just begging embarrassment.”
“Let’s place the eel.”
“That bad, ha?”
“Buddy, I pounded a hundred stakes, and my blisters told me to stay home.”
“Heard. That eel ain’t no pleasure cruise neither, though. Those wood chips add up fast when you start to pull the sock around the poind.”
“Can’t we just hook the end of it to the skid and drag it?”
“Still, it’s a ten-inch tube full of wood chips, three-hundred feet long, and the skid won’t place it along the water’s edge.”
“I really can’t swing that sledge hammer again. Half these blisters popped. Look.”
“You should go to urgent care tonight an get an antibiotic ointment or something.”
“I got Neosporin.”
“You can’t swing a hammer, that’s for sure, but I don’t think you can pull this eel either.”
“Cody ain’t giving up that skid.”
“He would, but that hillside is no place for an untrained guy in a rolling blind spot. We’ll train you on it though. Promise. Today’s not the day.”
“I’ll just wear gloves.”
“Are you sure? You don’t have to work with your hands like that.”
“It’s just blisters, buddy.”
“Let me see it again. Yeah, see? That’s not something you can drag erosion roll with. Those eels are like weaved and scratchy with the wood chips sticking through, and that blister’s huge.”
“It’s not a blister anymore.”
“Even worse, though. Look at it. It’s almost into your palm, and it’s already got dirt under the skin flap.”
“It’s fine.”
“You’re not pulling the eel with that. Google it, treating a large broken blister on the palm.”
“I did last night when I popped it.”
“You popped it on purpose?”
“Sort of. I grabbed a door konb, and it broke, but it didn’t like empty all at once, so I popped it a little bigger.”
“What’d it say?”
“Do your blisters talk to you, Tanner?”
“What’d Google say?”
“Keep clean, don’t tear off, ointment, doctor if my hand falls off.”
“That settles it. I’ve never seen a blister so big in my life. That thing goes all the way into your palm, and you’re not pulling eel. So here’s what you’ll do. Put on gloves, grab those little clips we left on the shelf in the trailer, and start tidying the hanging wires on the back of the solar racks, and when you’re done with that let me know. I’ll get the rest of the silt fence in.”
“That won’t take long.”
“I know, but we left them out, and you can spend the day on all those almost finished things, clean and organize the tools if we run out of those. It’s either that, or you go to urgent care.”
“Clips on the top shelf?”
“That’s what I thought. Look at him up there. He’s tough on that machine, but he works that dirt like the machine’s attached to him.”
“He hates that machine.”
“Why you say that?”
“It’s just the look in his face when Rusty gets the excavator.”
“It’s like a ballet tough, look. Dude’s got like a circle no bigger to work in than the machine itself, and got no idea how he picks up that dirt, lifts it above the machine so he has room to spin around, all the while bringing the bucket down around the rock wall – on a hillside driving off to dump it. I’d dump half my load or flip the machine.”
“He’s an artist. He hates it here, though.”
“I know, but it don’t make sense. It’s literally perfect for him. He’s his own boss, but he doesn’t have to go bidding jobs every day to keep the work coming in.”
“Imagine that.”
“I have.”
“Not pretty.”
“It’s not all that bad, but this job made me think. So, you have a company, and people call, and you go look at the work, and you talk it over, it’s like a job interview every day of your life. Cody ain’t fit for that, and I think he knows it, but as a team, Me and Rusty can do bids and he can run crews and machines, and he’d have all the alone time in a machine he could stand, and he’ll get all that for nothing more than keeping the first job until the job is done.”
“That’s the hard part. He already started.”
“Quitting?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t think he is. I think he just wants to work part time for full time pay.”
“He’s not getting full time pay though. Monday and Tuesday he left early, and Wednesday, Thursday he didn’t come at all.”
“Plus, they garnish his check.”
“He’s trying to get cash pay.”
“It won’t work.”
“Hey!”
“Did he hear us?”
“Y’all best push that door open thar, ‘n let that cat inside.”
“No, he can’t hear us standing on that bucket.”
“Lookit that cat. She want in.”
“I see her, buddy.”
“No way he heard us in that machine.”
“How long was he out of it?”
“I didn’t notice him.”
“Kitty, how long you been sitting on this stair – I’m coming. I wonder if he knows he left the door open.”
“No, when I installed it, we got interrupted, and he told me to put a deadbolt on it, but we never got to that either. I bet it just slipped when he shut it.”
This version is the control. It was written by Claude, using every line of my dialogue word for word and adding only what a conventional narrator would add.
The rain had moved off sometime before dawn, and by the time Tanner's truck came up the last curve of the gravel road, the holler was wet and gray, every branch beaded, the pond flat and brown below the dam. He parked beside the equipment trailers and sat a moment with the engine running, looking up the hill at the shed. Devin climbed out of the passenger side, holding his right hand a little away from his body.
The shed's French doors stood a few inches open.
"Door's open," Tanner said.
Devin followed his eyes past the shed to the edge of the clearing, where a small gray shape sat upright on the flat top of a cut stump. "Kitty's on the cutoff tree."
It was the stump Michael had pointed out the day he first brought her up the hill, a month before. Her anchor, he had called it. Every time she came outside, she went there first.
"Where's he at?" Devin asked.
"I dunno." Michael's truck wasn't in its spot, and the shed was dark behind the gap in the doors.
Cody came up the path from the road with Rusty a few steps behind him, hands jammed in his pockets against the cold. He stopped below the stump and squinted up at the cat. "Cat, whar's that Yankee at?"
Kitty looked at him and said nothing.
"She's stumped," Devin said, and grinned at his own joke.
Tanner let out a long breath. With the boss gone, the day was his. "So, um, I guess we just get to work."
Cody had already crossed to the skid steer and run a palm across the seat. "Seat's dry. Me 'n Russ can get on this." He swung up into the cab without waiting for an answer, and a moment later Rusty was climbing into the excavator.
Tanner turned to Devin, who was eyeing the long gray rolls stacked by the trailer with something close to dread. "Devin, I know you're tired of the silt fence, but we gotta get it in. Dig a hole without a permit is bad enough, but doing it without a silt fence is just begging embarrassment."
Behind the joke was a worry Michael had carried since the first day of the job, when he fretted about how the crew would look if an inspector ever rolled through. They were digging the house seat without a permit. Michael called it his forgiveness doctrine. The silt fence was the part of it they could show.
"Let's place the eel," Devin said, without enthusiasm.
"That bad, ha?"
"Buddy, I pounded a hundred stakes, and my blisters told me to stay home."
"Heard. That eel ain't no pleasure cruise neither, though. Those wood chips add up fast when you start to pull the sock around the poind."
Devin glanced at the skid steer, already rumbling to life. "Can't we just hook the end of it to the skid and drag it?"
"Still, it's a ten-inch tube full of wood chips, three-hundred feet long, and the skid won't place it along the water's edge."
Devin held up his right hand, palm out, like evidence. "I really can't swing that sledge hammer again. Half these blisters popped. Look."
Tanner winced. "You should go to urgent care tonight an get an antibiotic ointment or something."
"I got Neosporin."
"You can't swing a hammer, that's for sure, but I don't think you can pull this eel either."
"Cody ain't giving up that skid," Devin said, a little sullenly, watching the machine back toward the cut.
"He would, but that hillside is no place for an untrained guy in a rolling blind spot. We'll train you on it though. Promise. Today's not the day."
"I'll just wear gloves."
"Are you sure? You don't have to work with your hands like that."
"It's just blisters, buddy."
"Let me see it again." Tanner took Devin's wrist and turned the hand toward the light. The skin had torn away in a flap the size of a quarter, and the raw place beneath it was gritty with dirt. "Yeah, see? That's not something you can drag erosion roll with. Those eels are like weaved and scratchy with the wood chips sticking through, and that blister's huge."
"It's not a blister anymore."
"Even worse, though. Look at it. It's almost into your palm, and it's already got dirt under the skin flap."
"It's fine," Devin insisted.
"You're not pulling the eel with that. Google it, treating a large broken blister on the palm."
"I did last night when I popped it."
Tanner stared at him. "You popped it on purpose?"
"Sort of. I grabbed a door konb, and it broke, but it didn't like empty all at once, so I popped it a little bigger."
"What'd it say?"
Devin raised an eyebrow. "Do your blisters talk to you, Tanner?"
"What'd Google say?" Tanner said patiently.
"Keep clean, don't tear off, ointment, doctor if my hand falls off."
"That settles it." Tanner let go of the wrist. "I've never seen a blister so big in my life. That thing goes all the way into your palm, and you're not pulling eel. So here's what you'll do. Put on gloves, grab those little clips we left on the shelf in the trailer, and start tidying the hanging wires on the back of the solar racks, and when you're done with that let me know. I'll get the rest of the silt fence in."
"That won't take long."
"I know, but we left them out, and you can spend the day on all those almost finished things, clean and organize the tools if we run out of those. It's either that, or you go to urgent care."
Devin knew when he was beaten. "Clips on the top shelf?"
"That's what I thought." But Tanner's attention had already drifted up the slope, where the skid steer was working the bench along the rock wall. He watched it a long moment. "Look at him up there. He's tough on that machine, but he works that dirt like the machine's attached to him."
Devin followed his gaze. "He hates that machine."
"Why you say that?"
"It's just the look in his face when Rusty gets the excavator."
Tanner shook his head slowly, still watching. Cody had the skid spinning in a circle barely wider than itself, lifting each bucket high over the cab to make room to turn, swinging it down around the stone, then driving off along the hillside to dump. "It's like a ballet tough, look. Dude's got like a circle no bigger to work in than the machine itself, and got no idea how he picks up that dirt, lifts it above the machine so he has room to spin around, all the while bringing the bucket down around the rock wall - on a hillside driving off to dump it. I'd dump half my load or flip the machine."
"He's an artist," Devin said. "He hates it here, though."
"I know, but it don't make sense. It's literally perfect for him. He's his own boss, but he doesn't have to go bidding jobs every day to keep the work coming in."
"Imagine that."
"I have." Tanner's voice went quieter. He had been imagining it for weeks: the company Michael had built around the three of them, still running long after the house was done.
"Not pretty."
"It's not all that bad, but this job made me think. So, you have a company, and people call, and you go look at the work, and you talk it over, it's like a job interview every day of your life. Cody ain't fit for that, and I think he knows it, but as a team, Me and Rusty can do bids and he can run crews and machines, and he'd have all the alone time in a machine he could stand, and he'll get all that for nothing more than keeping the first job until the job is done."
Devin was quiet a moment. "That's the hard part. He already started."
Tanner glanced at him. "Quitting?"
"Yeah."
"I don't think he is. I think he just wants to work part time for full time pay."
"He's not getting full time pay though. Monday and Tuesday he left early, and Wednesday, Thursday he didn't come at all."
"Plus, they garnish his check," Tanner said grimly. The court had been taking a cut of Cody's wages since long before this job.
"He's trying to get cash pay."
"It won't work," Tanner said flatly. Michael had made that plain more than once. Everything went through the books.
Neither of them had noticed the skid steer go quiet.
"Hey!"
Both men turned. Cody had climbed out of the cab and stood on the lip of the bucket, one hand on the boom arm, looking down the slope at them.
Devin's stomach dropped. "Did he hear us?" he whispered.
But Cody wasn't looking at them. He was pointing past them, at the shed. "Y'all best push that door open thar, 'n let that cat inside."
"No, he can't hear us standing on that bucket," Tanner said, low.
Kitty had abandoned the stump. The roar of the machines had driven her off her anchor, and of everything on the property, it was the shed she had run to. She sat now on the top stair, pressed to the narrow gap where the doors had slipped their latch, too small a gap for her, and waited for someone to make it wider.
"Lookit that cat," Cody called down. "She want in."
"I see her, buddy," Devin called back.
"No way he heard us in that machine," Tanner said, though he sounded less sure than he meant to.
"How long was he out of it?"
"I didn't notice him," Tanner admitted. Neither of them had noticed the cat, either, and she had been sitting there the whole time.
Devin started up the stairs, holding his bad hand clear of the rail. "Kitty, how long you been sitting on this stair – I'm coming. I wonder if he knows he left the door open."
The doors had a latch on one side and nothing on the other. Tanner had hung them back in December, the morning the surveyor came, when Michael called him off the lock to joke about pulling the clouds out of the sky. In January Michael had told him to leave the handle alone, so he could raise hell about it later. Just two days ago, on the phone with Stefanie, Michael had promised the deadbolt would go in that day. It hadn't.
"No," Tanner said, "when I installed it, we got interrupted, and he told me to put a deadbolt on it, but we never got to that either. I bet it just slipped when he shut it."
He didn't think of Cody when he said it. He was thinking about the cat.
Chapter 2: "Yankee," Lonnie's word for Michael
Chapter 5: Lonnie's door gap at home, the job Cody did not finish
Chapter 6: Cody's first question: "He ain't payin' cash?" Lonnie watches the county permit filings
Chapter 8: "If the inspector rolls through"
Chapter 13: Cody hauls the solar gear up the hill in the skid steer
Chapter 15: The locks arrive; "We need three"
Chapter 18: Rusty's first day: the crew works while Michael is away; Cody hears from the skid; Rusty's daughter waits in the truck
Chapter 24: Roy the surveyor; "Tanner, forget that door lock for now and pull down these clouds"
Chapter 25: Lonnie's plan to "git rid of this Yankee"
Chapter 28: Lonnie's years of cash work; Cody: "that ten-ninety-nine git me thinkin'"
Chapter 31: Cody in the excavator; Michael on the shed stairs in the dark
Chapter 32: Benches kept legal "before I ever have to beg the forgiveness"
Chapter 37: "A chance for me to raise hell"; the 1099 lessons
Chapter 40: "Cat's going away. Don't be mice."
Chapter 41: Cody pushes for cash when the payroll computer breaks; the hunt for a shotcrete man
Chapter 43: The shotcrete call
Chapter 44: The shotcrete deal
Chapter 45: The boulders below Miss Betty's; "Forgiveness doctrine"
Chapter 46: "The benching was the job"; "I'm not stopping to ask permission"; Stefanie: cash pay is not legal
Chapter 48: "That man won't fall for it"
Chapter 50: Cody on the ridge at night
Chapter 54: "Same old Kitty, all new tree stump"
Chapter 55: "It's her anchor"; the skid steer sinks and Cody walks into the mud
Chapter 56: Lonnie: cash cannot be garnished; Cody the trusted spotter, "Already here, bossman"
Chapter 59: Michael learns Cody's wages are garnished
Chapter 66: A contractor: digging without a permit
Chapter 67: "It goes bad fast and lasts a long time"
Chapter 70: The tax tip fails
Chapter 72: The rain; the permit brag; the erosion fence; Kitty stares up the ridge; the deadbolt promise; Cody lays out
Chapter 73: Cody's plan to get paid in cash
Chapter 75: "Before an inspector comes rolling in"; the shotcrete wall
Chapter 76: The meeting with the builder is set for the next day