You live there? Garrett asked.
Yes.
How old are you, kid?
Eleven.
Garrett nodded slowly. He looked at the chain. He looked at the boy. He seemed to be conducting some internal calculation that took several seconds to complete.
You sure about the tools? he finally said.
Mr. Alderman has everything, Eli said. "He fixed Mrs. Pruitt's lawn mower last spring, and the boiler, and the—"
Okay, Garrett said. A small sound that might have been the beginning of a smile moved across his face and then stopped. "Lead the way."
Eli turned and walked back across the parking lot. Garrett followed, pushing the heavy motorcycle one-handed through the gravel, moving it with a kind of practiced ease that suggested the machine weighed less to him than it did to physics. June stood at the edge of the lot with her broken umbrella, watching the approach of this enormous man with the tattoos and the wet leather vest, her eyes wide.
It's fine, Eli said quietly as he passed her.
He's really big, June whispered.
He needs help, Eli said. And that, for Eli Carter, was the entire calculation.
They went through the side gate, Eli holding it open, Garrett guiding the motorcycle through with a care that seemed at odds with his size, as if he understood that he was entering a place where care mattered more than strength. The yard beyond the gate was muddy and scattered with the home's familiar things: a bicycle with a bent wheel, a plastic bucket, the old oak rising at the far end, its branches thrashing in the storm. The windows of the home glowed, and in one of them Eli could see the shape of someone moving in the kitchen, setting out plates for supper.
June trailed behind them, her broken umbrella abandoned somewhere on the gravel, her red hair streaming water. She kept pace with the motorcycle's rear wheel, staring at the tattoos on Garrett's forearm as if they were a language she intended to learn. Garrett, to his credit, did not seem to mind being stared at.
Are you in a gang? June asked, before they had gone ten steps. Garrett glanced down at her, rain running off his beard, and gave the question the same serious attention he had given the chain. "No," he said. "Just a man with a motorcycle." "Where are you going?" June asked. "Through," Garrett said. "I was passing through when the chain gave out." "How old is your motorcycle?" "Older than you," Garrett said, "and younger than me, and both of those are saying something." June laughed, a bright, sudden sound that cut through the rain, and Eli felt something loosen in his own chest, because most grown-ups, when June asked her questions, either ignored her or told her to hush, and this man had done neither. "Do your tattoos hurt?" June asked. "Getting them did," Garrett said. "Having them doesn't." "Can I get one?" "When you're grown," Garrett said, "and only if you still want one then." June considered this, found it fair, and fell into step beside the rear wheel, satisfied for the moment. They passed the old oak, its branches thrashing, and the bicycle with the bent wheel lying on its side in the mud, and the plastic bucket that Ben had left out in the storm, and Eli saw them all the way a stranger might see them, suddenly, as if his own yard had become a place worth looking at. He walked ahead, holding the gate, and listened to the sound of Garrett's boots on the gravel behind him, steady and unhurried, and to June's chatter, and to the rain, and he thought that the yard, which he had crossed a thousand times without anyone noticing, felt different with a stranger walking through it — not worse, exactly, but larger, as if the world had widened a little to make room. He kept his eyes on the bike and his hands steady, and when they reached the maintenance shed at the back of the yard, he stopped and waited, rain running off his beard, for Eli to tell him what came next.
Eli pointed at the shed. "Mr. Alderman's in there, usually. Or in the kitchen. He'll know."
Garrett nodded. He leaned the motorcycle carefully against the shed wall, under the narrow overhang, where the rain could not reach it directly, and straightened up, wiping his hands on his soaked jeans. He looked at the home, at the yard, at the two children standing in the rain watching him, and something in his face softened in a way that had nothing to do with the weather.
Thank you, he said to Eli, and he said it like he meant it, the way adults rarely said it to children, as if the thanks were a real thing being handed over and not a word used to end a conversation.
Eli nodded, his green eyes on Garrett's boots, which were enormous and muddy and planted solidly in the yard, as if the man had decided, for the moment at least, that this was ground worth standing on.
Sandra Pruitt found out about the motorcycle approximately four minutes after Eli brought it through the side gate, which was about three minutes and fifty seconds after she'd been hoping to sit down with a cup of tea and not solve any new problems for the remainder of the afternoon.
The side door banged open, and Sandra Pruitt came out into the rain with her apron still on and her sleeves pushed up, moving with the brisk, no-nonsense purpose of a woman who had spent thirty years managing a building full of children and had learned that most problems got worse if you walked toward them slowly. Her eyes went first to the motorcycle, then to Garrett, then to Eli and June, standing wet and silent in the yard, and her face arranged itself into an expression Eli knew well: the one that meant she was counting to three inside her head before she said anything at all.