Chapter 11: The Second Bay
The garage looked different with a boy sitting in the corner of the parts room.
Usually, the place smelled strictly of gear oil, burnt clutch plates, and stale coffee sitting in a pot that hadn't been washed since the last time the state troopers brought in a wrecked cruiser. By noon, though, there was a faint smell of oatmeal coming off the little electric hot plate I kept by the drill press, and the radio was tuned to a baseball broadcast instead of the low-frequency police scanner.
Arthur Miller's Dodge came rumbling down the gravel drive around two o'clock, the exhaust pipe rattling like a can full of bolts. He killed the engine, climbed out with his clipboard under his arm, and stood in the wide-open double bay for a minute, squinting against the gray glare of the afternoon.
Leo was squatting by the parts washer, using an old toothbrush to scrub a rocker arm I'd pulled out of a rusted-out Chevy six. He didn't look up when the tires crunched on the gravel, just kept dipping the brush into the solvent and working the carbon out of the groove with the kind of fierce, small-town concentration you only see in people who have spent their whole lives fixing things other folks threw away.
Arthur walked over, his boots leaving dark prints on the concrete, and looked down at the boy. Then he looked over at me where I was leaning against the fender of a '94 Honda with a socket wrench in my hand.
"He's looking better than he did at the diner," Arthur said, shifting his chew to the other side of his mouth. "Sarah keep him indoors?"
"Mostly," I said. "Sterling says his lungs are sound as long as he stays away from the damp at the motel. He's staying on Maple Street now."
Arthur nodded slowly, tapping his clipboard against his thigh. He was an old man who had worn the county badge for thirty years before they made him magistrate and gave him a desk in the brick courthouse by the river. He knew every lien, every unpaid water bill, and every bastard child within forty miles of the ridge.
"The county commissioners were talking about your petition this morning, Jackson," he said, his voice dropping an octave so it didn't carry over to the parts room. "They're wondering if you're settling down for good, or if this is just another three-month stretch before the itch gets into your heels again."
"I've still got the lease on the garage for five years," I said. "And the house on Maple has a roof that doesn't leak. That's more than I had when I came over the pass in '04."
"That ain't what I asked you," Arthur said, his gray eyes steady behind wire-rimmed glasses that had a strip of black electrical tape holding the left temple together. "A boy like that needs more than a grease pit and a five-year lease. He needs someone who's going to be here when the snow gets up to the window sills and the power lines go down."
From the corner, Leo stopped scrubbing. He didn't turn around, but his hand stayed frozen on the rocker arm, the grey solvent dripping off the bristles back into the metal tub with a slow plip-plip.
"I'm not going anywhere, Arthur," I said, and for the first time since I walked out of that hospital in Spokane twenty years ago, I realized I meant it. The thought didn't make me feel trapped, the way it used to when the road called and the exhaust fumes started smelling like freedom. It just felt heavy, like a heavy wool coat pulled up around your ears against a north wind—warm, and hard to shake, and entirely yours.
Arthur looked at me for a long, silent moment, the kind of look old men give each other when they've both seen enough bad winters to know which way the timber is leaning. He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a folded blue slip of paper with the county seal stamped in purple ink on the corner, and laid it down on the fender next to my wrench.
"That's the temporary guardianship form," he said. "Sarah signed the back page this morning before I came down. You need to take it down to the county clerk's office on Monday morning and get it filed before the judge goes down to Boise for the turkey shoot."
I picked up the blue paper. The ink was still slightly damp where Arthur's thumb had smeared it near the bottom margin. My name was written there in Sarah's sharp, sloping hand—*Jackson Vance, father*—clear as black grease on white porcelain.
"Thanks, Arthur," I said.
"Don't thank me yet," the old man said, turning back toward his Dodge with a slow, heavy gait. "Wait until you see what the county wants for the filing fee. They don't give away legitimacy for free in Oakhaven."
He climbed back into the cab, ground the starter twice before the old V8 caught with a wet roar, and backed out into the gravel, sending a cloud of gray dust rolling across the highway.
When the noise had faded down toward the diner, Leo stood up from the parts washer, wiped his hands on a greasy rag, and walked over to the fender. He looked down at the blue paper in my hand, his big hazel eyes unblinking.
"Does that mean I have to go to school here?" he asked.
"Monday morning," I said, folding the paper and sliding it into the breast pocket of my vest, right next to the old photograph he'd laid on the counter three days ago. "Central Elementary. Mrs. Gable teaches third grade. She's got a ruler that'll take the hide off your knuckles if you don't keep your desk clean."
May you like
Leo thought about that for a second, his small forehead wrinkling up into three distinct lines that looked so much like mine I didn't even have to look in the mirror to see it. Then he gave a little nod, picked up his toothbrush, and went back to the parts washer without another word.
I watched him for a minute, listening to the regular scritch-scritch of the bristles against the steel. Outside, the sun was dropping behind the ridge, turning the top of the pine trees the color of old copper, and the first cold wind of the evening was starting to rattle the tin roof above our heads. I reached out, picked up the socket wrench, and went back to work on the manifold.
