They drove along the river road in the truck, Chick behind the wheel. Leo mentioned how much he was learning and how he sure appreciated having the job. When Chick didn’t say anything back, didn’t even nod or smile, just drove, Leo started to talk about how fast Floyd always works and how Tom really knows what he’s doing and how you, Chick, you always know what has to happen next. Chick glanced at Leo then and Leo shut up, though Chick’s expression didn’t really tell him to. It was more a look of, “Oh, you’re talking, how nice.” And so Leo kept quiet. He had started to sound like Floyd, he knew, talking and moving around all the time whether there was a reason to or not. But there is a good reason here, he thought. I’m doing it with your daughter Mr. Donovan, and I don’t want to come across as nervous or anything but I can’t stand sitting in this truck cab alone with you, mister.

At the covered bridge, Chick dropped him off. “See you in the A.M., amigo.” Leo stood in the road and watched him make a three-point turn in the gravel, then head back towards Spoon Hill, the flatbed’s tires spinning out pebbles into the brush.

On his way through the bridge, Leo stuffed the tape and hammer into the nail apron and draped that over his shoulder. As he stepped out into the light, the sun still hot on his forehead and nose, he thought that he’d like Allie to see him like this right now, see the guy in the T-shirt and jeans with the sunburned face, tanned arms, and blistered dirty hands, his heavy sun-dried work boots. Yesterday Beatrice had put her on a new shift-noon to eight, Monday through Friday-the lunch and supper crowd, which last night Allie said she liked because she got to sleep late, only she didn’t care for the times when the place was full of other summer vacation kids from the high school, girls and boys she had to serve shakes and Cokes and Unidentified Frying Objects to while they played nothing but those obnoxious Beatles songs on the juke box. When Leo asked what was wrong with that, she said, “Number one, kids don’t tip. And number two, Leo, they’re so intellectually inferior it’s tragic. Really. Tragic.”

They were sitting in the front seat of Jim’s Valiant at the time. When Leo borrowed it, his father had handed him the keys and said to bring her over sometime, we should meet. Leo put on fresh underwear and brushed his teeth twice before he picked her up at Beatrice’s then drove across the river past Spoon Hill to where the road forked up to the job site. He parked there and put his arm out the window. He could still smell the shavings from the two-by-fours they’d cut that afternoon. The sun was down in the Berkshires. The field grass out behind the barn was high and thick, and the spruce stand beyond it looked blue.