“Hello,” Larry said. “I was just going to see Mr. Brand. Jimmy. He asked me to come over to check on his—” Before he could finish the sentence with the word guitar, which came out as an offbeat afterthought, Edgar had stepped back inside and the door shut. Larry pushed into the garage and peeked in. “Yo, Jimmy?” In the gloom, Larry could see the form of Jimmy’s body under the covers. He laid the paper packet of guitar strings on the dresser and slipped out.
He started his truck, pulled an easy U-turn on the street, and slowly drove three doors to Mason Kirby’s house, where three men worked along the crest of the new roof. The yard was littered with bits of torn shingle and other carpentry debris. Mason and Craig worked along the side of the house on a low scaffold, securing the new aluminum rain gutters. His dad had lost weight in the month’s work, and he looked at home tacking the stripping in the eaves. Mason had moved back into the old house and had kidded with Larry about crashing anytime at his bachelor pad. “Of course,” Mason had added, “you’ve got the same problem I have. No date.” Larry liked Mason, having him in town. The time he’d stayed with them had been fun, his father looser and more with it than Larry could remember. It was obvious that his dad enjoyed working on the old Kirby place. They’d talked into the night, going through the old yearbooks with his mother, talking about Mason’s divorce, which had taken two years or something.
“Larry!” his dad called. “You want to get some lunch?”
“Naw, you guys go on. I’ve got four more stops, including all this Romex for those guys building the duplex in Rosepark.”
“You run those blocks, every stop?” Mason asked the young man.
“I do.” Larry grinned. “It’s mine for the taking, Mason. My legs want every block. It’s a way to put the charm on this sleepy town.”
“Nice game, I hear,” Mason said.
“Strike early, stay ahead,” Larry said. “And be real fast and real lucky. We’ve got Jackson Hole this week—the city kids will be a test.” Larry pointed at Mason. “How is that hand?”
“Cured. Stronger than ever. I just wear the bandage for show. I see you down at the Brands. What’s up with Jimmy?” Mason put down a section of gutter and hopped to the ground, coming over to Larry’s window. “How’s he doing?”
“Sleeping. Yesterday he said he’d like to see you.”
“Come back later if you can,” Mason said. “We’ll take him down some dinner.”
The roofers gathered up their tools and fastened their two extension ladders to the top of their truck rack in full dark. Two of them walked the yard picking up the old shingles and throwing them into a large cardboard box they dragged around the whole house. Mason wrote them a check on the hood of the vehicle and shook all three men’s hands. When they’d driven off, Craig came from around back, where he’d been putting his own tools on the porch. “Okay,” he said. “Let it rain. Tomorrow we can go inside and start spackling and test some of the wiring and replace the cracked switchboxes.”
“You like this, don’t you?” Mason asked his friend.
“It’s good work, don’t you think?”
“I believe it is,” Mason said. “It beats kissing ass around a conference table.”
They had walked across, and Craig got in his truck. “It beats pricing tubes of caulk. You want to come in tomorrow, pick out the paint.”
“No, just bring it out. We’ll go with that sky white. It’s workable and leaves the new owners plenty of options.”
“Good with me.” Craig began to back his truck out the drive.