Today, he was seated on a stool at a tall craft table in the only area of the garage not devoted to his train collection. He was wearing the same thick-rimmed glasses he wore in surgery, reminding Gabe of all the highly skilled things he’d watched Dr. Washington do over the months he’d known him. As it turned out, today Albert was working on something that had nothing to do with his model-train collection.

“I wondered how that was done.” Gabe watched as Albert threaded rigging lines through the sails of a still-collapsed miniature model sailing ship that, based on the image on the nearby box, was supposed to be displayed in a narrow-mouthed glass bottle. “I assumed they were assembled inside with long tweezers or something.”

“Now that you know the secret, don’t spread it around. As it is, this is an art that’s nearly been lost to history.” Showing off his work, Albert pulled the rigging lines hinged to the mast and running under the hull, cautiously raising the sails into position so that the ship was its full height. “Once it’s inside, you tie and cut away the extra rigging lines, and no one is any the wiser as to how it was assembled.”

Gabe shook his head. “Impressive.”

“I have another one on order that’s a good deal more complicated. A Spanish galleon from the sixteenth century.”

“Oh yeah? And I wondered how you were spending your days.”

“When you’ve spent forty years honing and challenging your fine motor skills, you’ve got to find something to occupy your time.”

“That makes sense. Don’t let this get out, but as a kid, I went through a phase where I loved to paint model soldiers.”

“From the Revolutionary War?”

“No, marines from Nam. An uncle of mine gave me a kit for Christmas one year.”

As Albert finished hooking in the rigging lines, Gabe headed over to the train’s control station. “Mind if I run it?”

“Help yourself.”

Gabe started both tracks. A Sante Fe train ran on the line from the village to the Old West, and a Union Pacific one ran along the mountains and surrounding woods and into the village depot. As they circled the separate tracks, Gabe strolled along, appreciating the level of detail he’d not noticed on his first visit here, including an outhouse in the woods behind a cabin that had a roll of toilet paper hung inside its open door and a book on the bench seat titled The Yellow River by I. P. Freely. On the outskirts of the village, a fox was hidden in a bush, eyeing chickens who were safe inside the chicken yard behind a farmhouse, and an arrow was subtly placed in a dry creek bed outside the mining town.

“What you did here is amazing. How long did this take you?”