That evening, at supper, Mrs. Pruitt stood at the head of the table and told the children, in her plainest voice, that the county was reviewing the home's funding, that reviews happened sometimes, that there was nothing to worry about, and that everyone should eat their vegetables. She said it the way a person says something they believe and do not believe at the same time. The children ate their vegetables. June kicked Eli under the table, once, meaningfully.
Later, in the dark, June whispered, "She said 'nothing to worry about' the same way she said it when the boiler broke last winter and we had no hot water for a week."
I know, Eli whispered back.
So it's something, June said.
I know, Eli said.
They stood in the dark hallway, two small figures in socks, and the home settled around them, the boiler groaning below, the drip falling into the lake in the boys' room, and the county letter sitting in a drawer like a stone in a pocket. Eli felt the old, familiar urge to disappear, to fold himself into the quiet and let the trouble pass over him the way weather passes over a field. But June was looking at him, and June did not disappear, and for once, Eli did not either.
The next morning, Garrett arrived at the shed with a plan and Mr. Alderman arrived with a list, and between the two of them, the home began, very slowly, to be fixed.
They started with the boiler. Garrett lay on his back on the basement floor, his shoulders barely fitting between the pipes, while Mr. Alderman read from a manual older than both of them and Eli handed over tools one at a time, in the order Garrett asked for them. It was slow work, and dirty, and the basement smelled of damp concrete and hot metal. But by noon, the groaning had quieted to a hum, and Mr. Alderman wiped his hands and said, "She'll hold, for now."
Then the roof. Garrett climbed up with a bucket of sealant and a trowel, and Eli, who was not allowed on the roof, stood in the yard below and handed up supplies on a rope, the way a sailor might supply a ship. June supervised from the ground, shouting instructions she had invented, most of which Garrett cheerfully ignored. By evening, the stain above Ben's bed had stopped growing, and the lake was retired with full honors.
Then the mower, which had been sulking in the shed since August. Garrett and Alderman took it apart on a tarp in the yard, and Eli learned the names of things: carburetor, spark plug, air filter. He learned that a machine that will not start is not broken, necessarily; it is usually just dirty, or tired, or missing one small thing. He liked that idea. He turned it over in his mind while he worked.
Mrs. Pruitt watched all of this from the kitchen window, her arms folded, her expression unreadable. She had not asked Garrett to fix anything. She had not forbidden it either. She simply watched, the way a person watches a river change course, and said nothing.
The mower took the longest. Garrett spread its parts on a tarp in the yard like a surgeon laying out instruments, and Mr. Alderman explained each piece as they cleaned it: the air filter, gray with dust; the spark plug, blackened at the tip; the fuel line, cracked where it bent. Eli was given the job of cleaning the spark plug with a wire brush, and he worked at it with great concentration, his tongue caught between his teeth, until the metal showed clean and bright.
Now listen, Garrett said, when the mower was put back together. He pulled the starter cord, and the engine coughed, sputtered, and then caught, roaring to life in a cloud of blue smoke. "Hear that?" he said over the noise. "That's an engine telling you it's happy. Before, it was choking. Now it can breathe."
Eli listened, and he understood, suddenly, that machines talked, if you knew how to listen. The boiler had been groaning because it was tired and clogged. The mower had been choking because it was dirty. Things did not break to be cruel. They broke because they needed attention, and attention, Eli was beginning to learn, was a kind of care.
Mrs. Pruitt brought out a pitcher of lemonade in the afternoon, which was her way of saying thank you without saying it, and she stood in the yard with her arms folded, watching Garrett teach Ben how to hold a wrench properly, watching Maya hand Alderman a rag without being asked, watching Eli wipe grease from his hands with a concentration that suggested the grease was important.
You've got a good crew here, Mrs. Pruitt, Garrett said, wiping his own hands.
I've got a good home, Mrs. Pruitt said, and then, more quietly, as if she were saying it to herself, "I intend to keep it."
Eli did not hear that last part. He was too busy with the hinge. It was late in the afternoon when Eli found himself alone in the empty hall with a screwdriver and a loose hinge on the hall door, a hinge that had been wobbling for weeks and that everyone had walked past without seeing. He had watched Garrett tighten a dozen bolts that week. He knew how it was done. He fitted the screwdriver into the screw, turned it until it bit, and tightened the hinge until the door swung true and silent.
He stood back, pleased in a quiet way, and did not notice June watching from the end of the hall.
You fixed it, she said.
It was loose, Eli said.
You fixed it by yourself, June said, and she said it with a kind of pride that made Eli's ears go warm. "You didn't wait for somebody else. You just did it."