Jim falls into the motor compartment. His weight sinks the front end of the car abruptly and Dennis, flat on his back underneath it, is almost crushed by the underbody.

“Hey! For God’s sake!”

It’s a good thing the car has decent shocks—put in by Dennis himself last year—otherwise he would have been pancaked. Very carefully he tries to roll from beneath the car, but the edge of the body hits his ribs and … well, he can’t scrape under it. “Get your feet back on the ground and take your weight off the car!”

“I, um, I can’t. Seem to have my hand—stuck under this thing here.”

“What thing here.”

“I guess it’s the distributor. I’ve got the point, but—”

“If you drop the point, can you get your hand free?”

“Um … no. Won’t go either way.”

Dennis sighs, shifts sideways until he tilts off the floor-sled, it bangs up against the car bottom and he slides down onto the garage floor, smacking the back of his head. A slow, awkward shimmy past the track pickups, which are pressed against the ground, and he’s out from under the car.

He stands, rubs the back of his head, looks at the waving legs emerging from under the hood of the car. It looks like the kid just up and dived headfirst into the thing. In fact that’s probably pretty close to what he did. Dennis takes a flashlight and directs its beam into the motor compartment; Jim’s head is twisted down and sideways against his chest.

“Hi,” Jim says.

Dennis points the flashlight at the end of Jim’s arm, where it disappears under the distributor. “You say you’ve let go of the point?”

“Yeah.”

Sounds like he’s had a clamp put on his throat. Dennis leans in, reaches down to the distributor, pulls the clips away and lifts the distributor cap. “Try now.”

Jim gives a sudden jerk up, his hand comes free and his head snaps back up into the hood of the car, knocking it off its cheap metal stand so that the hood comes down with a clang, just missing Dennis’s fingers and Jim’s neck. “Ow! Oops.”

Dennis looks over the frames of his garage glasses at Jim. He reopens the hood. He replaces the distributor cap. “Where did you say that point was?”

“I’ve got it,” Jim says, rubbing his head with one hand. With the other he holds the point out proudly.

Dennis finishes the job himself. As he screws the box back on he gives all the screws a really hard final twist; if Jim ever tries to get them loose (fat chance) he’ll know who screwed them in last.

“So how’s your work going?” Jim asks brightly, to fill the silence.

“Okay.”