Chapter 8 - The Iron Garden
One year later, the spring sun over South Mill Creek was warm enough to dry the grease stains on the concrete driveway outside the Iron Scythes garage.
The heavy steel doors of the main bay were thrown wide open to the afternoon air.
Inside, the Shovelhead motorcycle Mike had been working on a year ago was finally finished—its chrome pipes gleaming like mirrors in the sunlight, its custom tank painted a deep, dark candy-apple red with thin gold leaf pinstriping along the seams.
Sitting on a low wooden bench near the open door was Mia.
She was eight years old now. She was wearing a small denim vest over a bright yellow t-shirt, her blond hair pulled back into two neat braids tied with red ribbons. Her skin was pink and healthy, the dark hollows beneath her eyes completely gone, replaced by the round, soft cheeks of a child who slept eight hours every night without waking up.
Sitting beside her on the bench, resting his heavy chin flat across her knee, was Goliath.
The pitbull’s red coat was shiny, slicked down with clean water after a bath. His scarred ear twitched occasionally as a honeybee buzzed through the open door toward the clover growing near the gravel fence.
Trotting around their feet, chasing a frayed tennis ball across the linoleum, was Buster.
The black terrier mix had grown into a wire-haired, energetic little scamp with a severe, comical underbite. His left hind leg had healed remarkably well—Doc and the specialist in Greenfield had put two tiny titanium pins in the bone—and though he ran with a slight, rhythmic hitch in his stride, it didn't slow him down for a second.
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.
Buster dropped the slobbery tennis ball directly onto Goliath’s heavy front paw, let out a sharp, tiny YAP!, and bounded backward three feet, his tail wagging so fast his whole rear end swung side to side.
Goliath opened one eye. He looked down at the tiny ball, then looked up at Mia.
Mia laughed—a bright, ringing sound that carried out across the gravel parking lot toward the pine trees on the ridge.
"Go get it, Buster!" Mia cheered, picking up the ball and tossing it twenty feet out onto the dry gravel.
Buster took off like a bullet, his little black paws kicking up small puffs of gray dust as he chased the yellow felt into the sun.
Mike stepped out from beneath the raised hydraulic lift in the back bay, wiping his grease-stained palms on a red rag.
He walked over to the bench, his heavy boots making a soft thud-thud sound against the wood. He set a cold glass of apple juice down on the bench beside Mia, then reached out his massive, scarred hand and gently patted the top of her head.
"You finish your homework for Miss Sarah, little bit?" Mike asked, his deep rumbling voice soft as old velvet.
"Yes, Uncle Mike," Mia said proudly, pulling a green plastic folder out of her backpack. "I got an A on my reading story. I wrote it about a dragon who guards a castle."
"That so?" Mike chuckled, sitting down heavily on the edge of a wooden tool chest. "What'd the dragon look like?"
Mia reached down and ran her fingers through the thick, soft fur around Goliath’s leather collar.
"He was big," Mia said softly, her golden-brown eyes looking down at the scarred pitbull. "And he had a notched ear. And he never had to roar because everybody knew he was the bravest thing in the forest."
Goliath lifted his broad snout. He let out a long, warm breath that blew a small puff of red ribbon off Mia’s shoulder, then slowly closed his eyes as her small fingers scratched the sweet spot right behind his scarred right ear.
A hundred yards down the lane, the gravel crunched under the tires of a green station wagon.
Sarah Vance pulled into the driveway, stepping out with a armload of groceries and a fresh stack of drawing paper for the workshop table.
The legal battle was over.
Richard Sterling was currently serving thirty-five years without parole at the federal penitentiary in Marion for wire fraud, tax evasion, and felony child endangerment. His assets had been liquidated by a court-appointed receiver, and the fourteen-million-dollar trust left by Eleanor Sterling had been permanently locked into an irrevocable foundation managed jointly by Sarah Vance and a state-appointed child advocate.
The house on the hill in The Crest had been sold to a local timber company.
And Mia lived in the small, white-shingled cottage three doors down from the clubhouse—a house owned by the Iron Scythes trust, with a big fenced yard, a garden full of sunflowers, and a dog house built out of cedar planks that was large enough for a ninety-pound pitbull and a ten-pound terrier to sleep side by side in the shade.
Mike looked out over the sunlit driveway.
He looked at Sarah carrying the groceries toward the porch. He looked at Doc walking over from his truck with a fresh box of dog treats. He looked at Dutch and Bear adjusting the carburetor on a vintage Indian bike under the awning.
Then he looked down at the scarred dog lying across the little girl’s feet.
"Good boy, Goliath," Mike whispered.
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Goliath didn't move. He didn't have to.
He just lay there in the warm sun, his broad chest rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm, guarding his world without saying a single word.
