So he turned his talk to the job and Tom quitting, and Chick-who wasn’t home—working like a demon, but kind of distracted too. And that’s when Allie looked down at the ground and seemed to go off someplace else without walking anywhere. Finally Leo shut up and took out his new D harp. He played the first few notes of “The Love Abode,” but he didn’t feel the number inside him at all. Besides, the D was too high and whiny for the lyrics. He would have to write a song to match that key. He played “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” then put the harmonica in his back jeans pocket. When he said he should get going, Allie stood up right away, kissed him on the mouth with her lips pursed together, and went inside without a word.

“Let’s go, Leo.” Tom held his hands out for the next rafter. Leo gave it to him too quick.

“Easy.” Tom pulled the two-by-twelve to him until he held it at its middle, then he turned at the waist and pushed the top end out to Chick, who caught it though Leo couldn’t tell for sure because of the sun. He heard Chick drive a nail, then his voice, “I was on one of my first jobs, flat-roofing over in Lawrence. We were gooping up a fresh layer on top of this mill, five, six stories up.” Chick drove a second nail, and Leo heard him reach into his pouch for another. “This old guy slipped and went right over the edge.”

“Oh Lord.”

“You said it. He lived about three days. Next day of work, foreman lines us up and says, ‘Any a you fall off this friggin’ roof, you’re fired on the way down.‘” Chick grunted out a half-laugh and drove his third nail. ‘Start of my education right there.” He slid another sixteen inches along the ridge pole. Leo fed a rafter up to Tom. Just as Burrell took it, Leo heard the open-throttle scream of an engine down the road, the knock and tap of loose gravel up under the chassis. There was an easing up on the gas as a blue Chevy van drove slowly out of the trees into the sunlight. Leo recognized Dwight right away and before he could check himself, he waved. If Dwight saw, he didn’t acknowledge it. He had a white painter’s cap tilted back on his head. His face was sunburned. In the shadow of the passenger’s side was somebody wearing a white hanky around their nose and mouth. No, the mouth was showing. Only the nose was covered. Above that were small dark sunglasses. Dwight looked over the job then hit the gas again, squealing his tires over the gravel, spraying pebbles and dust out in a wide arc as he took the turn down toward the river. Leo picked up another rafter.