Chapter 11 - Half the Club Wanted to Protect a Dead Man
Wade called a full membership meeting.
Not in the clubhouse.
A union hall across town.
Dad’s photograph sat on a folding table.
Nobody put candles around it this time.
Wade told them everything we could legally disclose.
The 2014 payment.
The closure.
The preliminary sample.
Dad reopening the bunker.
His instruction to release the records.
One older member stood.
“Eli gave thirty years to this club.”
Wade answered:
“Yes.”
“You’re going to let newspapers call him corrupt?”
“I’m going to let records say what they say.”
Another member:
“He tried to fix it.”
Wade nodded.
“Yes.”
“Then why destroy his name?”
I spoke before Wade could.
“Because fixing something does not require pretending you never broke it.”
The room turned toward me.
I hated public speaking.
Dad loved it.
That irony almost made me laugh.
I continued.
“I loved my father.”
My voice cracked.
“I still do.”
Then:
“He paid part of my education with money he should not have taken.”
Nobody moved.
“If I hide that because I benefited from it, then I am doing the same thing he spent his last year trying to stop doing.”
One man asked:
“What do you want us to do?”
“I don’t get to decide for the club.”
“What are you doing?”
That question was harder.
“I’m cooperating.”
Not avenging.
Not protecting.
Cooperating.
Afterward Wade found me outside.
“You know people are going to say you betrayed him.”
“I know.”
“Others will say you’re making him a hero because he confessed.”
“I know.”
“What do you think?”
I looked toward Dad’s motorcycle, still parked in the club storage trailer because nobody had decided what to do with it.
“I think people want dead men to become one thing.”
Wade waited.
“He wasn’t.”
May you like
Neither of us said more.
For once, silence did not feel like concealment.
