“Big Bill Broonzy.” Leo glanced at her, then looked off towards the window. “He’s a bluesman, one of the kings.”

“My dad says the Negroes are the only ones ready to hear about the Revolution. That’s the main reason he wants us to go to Mississippi, you know.”

“What does your mom think?”

“She thinks he’s God. She must, because she never sees him. He works all day and goes to meetings almost every night at that campus in Amherst, but whatever he says goes. Sometimes I hear them making love and it sounds like she’s crying, but I know she’s not. It sounds like it, though.” Allie rested her chin on his shoulder and whispered, “Was that your first time?”

Leo nodded. “Sort of. You?”

“What do you think?”

“I think it wasn’t.”

“Is that okay?”

Leo nodded again, though he wasn’t thinking or feeling anything and so it probably was okay. Everything was probably okay.

Though now, lying in bed awake close to midnight, things didn’t seem so smooth and wonderful. And he wasn’t sure why, except he was more worried than before about Chick being a communist. The moon was bright outside. A river breeze moved through the woods and made the shadows in Leo’s room tremble.

7

But the notes don’t get bent too much in the daytime and from seven to four all week Leo knew he was working for Chick the builder because that’s all Chick talked to him about. Every time he sent Leo to a toolbox or the truck for something, he’d explain what it was Leo was holding in his hands. Those first few days, working shirtless in the sun with big quiet Tom and lightning-eyes Floyd, helping those two and Chick do whatever they asked him-mark this board here, pull this tape there, cut this two-by-four along this line here-Leo learned the names of things he’s never even heard of before: stud, plumb bob, ripsaw, level, framing hammer, galvy, square, chalk line, toe plate, top plate, shim, fir, sheathing, return, joint, hammer moon, nail punch, seven-sixteenths, an eighth, three-sixteenths, five-eights, move that stud over a black cunt hair which is wider than a brown CH which is wider than a blonde one which is wider than the thinnest of them all, a red CH.

Beginning of the week they had laid a solid plywood floor on new joists over the cleaned out basement. By late Wednesday afternoon the first floor’s walls were framed out plumb, square, and level. After cleanup, when all the tools and lumber were locked in the barn and Floyd hitched a ride home with Tom in his station wagon, Chick handed Leo a starched nail apron, a worn leather hammer hook for his belt, a new tape measure, and a long-handled hammer with one of its iron claws chipped off. “You’ll be needing these,” was all he said.