I hold the flashlight just so while Dale crawls under the car. “You should get a headlamp,” I say down into the engine, which sets off a round of jokes about mining and joining the union and going on strike so you can get paid to do nothing. Under the car, Dale’s laughter comes up through the engine as I watch him loosen the nut I’m pointing the flashlight at. Nora and Zack stare up at me with their mouths open, like they had no idea I had such impressive skills. Eventually, Dale gets the nut loose, and I help pull him out from under the car by his boots. Then we head into the house.

None of Grimshaw’s older brothers live at home, except for Gumby, who can’t take care of himself and so will never leave, and Ruby, the closest to Grimshaw in age, who sleeps on the pool table in the basement. Ruby’s boots are sticking out from underneath his pickup truck, a two-tone yellow and white antique, his pride and joy. I kick the sole of the left one as I go by. He grunts in his sleep. We find Grimshaw inside the house, already in her bathing suit. Her niece Whitney and her nephew Dallas are standing each with an arm inside a box of cereal, staring slack-jawed at a game show. I toss her the latest issue of her dance magazine. When she sees me, Mrs. Grimshaw greets me with her usual hospitality. She snaps off the TV, hauls herself to her feet, and shuffles massively away. She doesn’t have her teeth in.

“Take those kids outside,” she orders over her shoulder.

Grimshaw packs cookies and chips and soda, representing three of the four basic Grimshaw food groups—the other one being cigarettes—and we head outside into the June sunshine. The kids follow us in a line, like ducklings. At the edge of the woods behind her house is a field filled with old farm junk, plows and rakes and manure spreaders, as well as a wasp-infested wood-paneled Country Squire station wagon sitting on its axles. Grimshaw used to use the front hood as her stage, putting on dance performances for an audience of nobody. Between the field and the woods runs a stream where Grimshaw and I dammed a swimming hole a few summers back. Grimshaw sits down to read her magazine, and the rest of us slide down the shale and then pick our way upstream to a flat spot where the water pools. I start pulling rocks out of the swimming hole that have fallen in over the winter and spring. We build the dam back up so the water gets deep enough for the kids to dunk under. I catch a crawfish and show it to them. Then we make boats out of pieces of bark, decorate them with bottle caps and other trash, and race them down the stream.