I carried the box to the kitchen table and set it down on the clean oilcloth.
The key was on my ring, small and brass, tucked between the key to the shop door and the key to my truck.
I turned it until the lock gave a dry click.
Inside lay my savings book, its blue paper cover worn at the corners from the few times I had taken it to the branch downtown.
I opened the book to the last entry, dated three weeks ago.
The balance was forty-one thousand dollars, written in the neat, slanted handwriting of the head teller who had worked the counter since I was a boy.
Every dollar represented ten years of six-day weeks, of custom cabinets built for people in the valley, of sanding until my shoulders burned at midnight.
I closed the book and held it in my hand, feeling the thinness of the paper.
There was no sound in the kitchen except the hum of the old refrigerator in the corner.
I put the book into my shirt pocket and buttoned the flap.
I did not lock the gray box before I put it back behind the flour sacks.
By eight in the morning, the parking lot at the Oakhaven bank was empty except for two delivery trucks unloading at the grocery store next door.
I walked through the double glass doors, the cold brass handle solid under my hand.
Sarah was behind the first counter, her hair pulled back in a neat clip, sorting green deposit slips into neat stacks.
“Morning, Carter,” she said, not looking up until she had finished counting the stack in her hand. “You need some quarters for the shop washroom?”
“No,” I said.
I took the savings book from my shirt pocket and laid it on the counter between us.
Sarah looked at the book, then at my face. Her smile faded a little, her eyes dropping to the blue cover.
“I need to make a withdrawal,” I said.
She pulled a slip from the holder and picked up her blue pen. “How much are we looking at today?”
“All of it,” I said.
She stopped with the pen hovering an inch above the white paper.
