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Show Night Keys/17 cars would come in with gravel dust roiling behind them. The early ones would sit on the front curb by the guardhouse wearing T-shirts and hardhats, banging their lunchpails against the window, grabassing and joking until he let them in for coffee at the vending machines. The day sergeant would come in sleepy-eyed. And then he would be driving the gravel road himself up through the rolling fields and out onto the highway with the morning sun so bright at his back that he would have to cock the rearview mirror. The guardhouse light was still on. He picked up the Detex and started down. The dogs were follwoing him in the corners of his eyes but he did not turn to look at them. At the personnel gate he leaned with his forehead pressed against the chain link for a moment. Then he made a half-hearted attempt to push his hair back and retuck his shirt. He made no attempt to muffle the clang when he unlocked the personnel gate. If Dollar were there he would hear him. He did not go in but returned up the inner walk to the garage. Among the cables and mounds of tires he found a couple of battered pickup hubacps and returned to the guardhouse with them. He opened the door. Let the cold air flow out and around him. Inside he picked up some of the scattered reports. Uprighted the waste barrel. He found a girlie magazine in the top drawer of the desk and sat in the swivel chair and closed his eyes for a minute, then began picking bits of hamburger and sandwiches and chicken bones with bits of flesh and skin still on them from the strewn garbage and the waste barrel and piled them on the magazine. At the tap outside he washed out the insides of the hubcaps and filled one with water and shook the pile from the girlie magazine into the other, and took them around through the fence to the plant side and set them out for the dogs. |