Page 15 of Claimed By my Father's Enemies
I catch it before it finishes clanking. Gravel grinds under my boots, small and sharp.
The van's sliding door rolls open behind me, and five people spill out in dark clothes, moving silently.
Mira reaches the truck first. Her braid is tucked into the collar of her jacket, the way she always wears it on jobs like this.
"Beds?"
"Stacked left. Soil bags right, keep them on the pallet. Nobody lifts alone."
She nods and goes. The air smells of damp asphalt and something sour under it, trash that's been sitting too long against the chain-link fence, the particular wet-paper rot that means cardboard has been soaking in a puddle for weeks. A porch light flickers three houses down, yellow and unsteady. Somewhere behind us, a dog tests a bark but doesn't commit to it.
I count tools as they come off the truck. Shovels, pry bars, two wheelbarrows, the staple gun. Headlamps stay off for now, until we're deep enough into the lot that the light won't carry to the street.
"Trash first," I say.
Dev hesitates near the far corner. The lot looked smaller on the satellite image. A tidy polygon, a shape you could measure on a screen. Standing inside it is different. The weeds run deeper than the photos showed.
My gut does a quick recalculation and I think we are going to be able to make it. We have enough hands.
I walk past him, hand him a contractor bag, keep moving. "You take the fence line. Start at the gap, work toward the tree."
The lot is a wedge between two houses that have both seen better days. Weeds up to my thigh in places, dry at the tips and soft at the base where the damp still holds. A stained mattress folded against the fence. Broken glass catches what light there is from the streetlamp two lots over, small constellations scattered through the weeds.
I clock the exits. The gap in the fence we came through. The alley behind. The front, straight onto the street, where anyone's headlights would pin us first.
I pull on my gloves. The leather is cold for the first few seconds, and I start on the mattress.
The crew has a rhythm I don't have to teach. Bag, drag, stack. Level the ground in the zones we mapped. The modular beds come flat-packed, and Ana snaps the corners together while Dev hauls soil bags across the cleared dirt. One bag splits along the seam, and dark earth spills. The smell that comes up is clean. Mineral. Almost sweet under the iron note of wet soil. Nothing like the rest of the lot.
A scooter whines around the corner. Small engine, high pitch, slowing down.
Everyone stops without being told. Ana's hand freezes on a corner bolt. Dev looks at me, the whites of his eyes catching the streetlight. Everybody holds their breath.
I don't turn toward the street. I keep my shoulders the way they were, bent over the bed frame, and I speak low. "Keep working. Slow hands."
Mira picks her wrench back up at half speed. Dev lowers the bag he was lifting and starts fussing with the tie.
The scooter cuts its engine at the curb.
A kid is parking it. Helmet too big for him, scooter cheap enough that the paint is peeling. He walks through the fence gap and comes to stand near me.
"You Sienna?"
"I am. And you are."
"Emilio. Charlie said to meet you here at ten."
"Then why are you half an hour late?"
He shrugs in a way that's meant to look bored and defiant.
I take him in for two seconds. Thin for his age. Scuffed sneakers. Watchful eyes that slide to my hands first, then my face, then past me to the crew.
"Helmet off, gloves on. Dev's on the fence line." I point. "Go bag with him until I pull you."
He ditches the helmet against the cinderblock and jogs over. I watch him pick up the bag that Dev hands to him, not in the reluctant way I expected. He starts picking up trash without fuss. Good.
Mira straightens from the second bed and rolls her shoulder.
