“Yes, sir,” Craig said, standing up.
“I spoke to you about a remodel up on the mountain?”
“Right,” Craig said, and walked the man back to his car, where they talked for several minutes, looking at a short roll of papers the man handed Craig. Behind them on the street, four kids stepped by arm in arm, girls, their baggy white sweatshirts floating like their voices in the dark.
“You know, Jimmy put that day at the reservoir in one of his books,” Mason told Frank.
“He did?”
“Yeah, but he turned it all around. He put himself in the boat with Matt. The names were all different, but you can see what he did.”
“Right, Matt took off. Hell, I could write that day and put it in a book. Matt was fucked up.”
“Was Kathleen with him?” Mason asked.
“Kathleen never said word one about Matt Brand. But Matt was out alone, and he was as drunk as you get to be.”
Mason pointed down the block. “The reason Jimmy Brand is bunking in the garage is that Old Edgar thinks that thirty years ago he was in the boat. He thinks Jimmy could have done something. I’m sure of it.”
“Jesus. How is Jimmy? Now I hear he’s feeling better?”
“Kathleen—you know I spoke to Kathleen?”
“Right.”
“Kathleen says he’s a little better. She arranged some medicine. He can get out of bed every day now. You want to go down there this week?”
Craig shook hands with the man at the car, and the man drove away.
“I think I will,” Frank said.
“Is that another job?” Mason asked Craig.
Craig sat down on the steps and took a fresh beer from Frank. “Absolutely. My life is just beginning.”
“And this is simply the weirdest season in my fucking life,” Mason said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was happy. Sand the walls, sweat, drink beer.”
“Lawyers,” Frank said.
“That goddamned boat,” Mason said.
Another car pulled up, Frank’s Explorer, and the window slid down. “Come on over a minute,” Frank said to Sonny, who was driving. “Meet my old friend Mason.”
• • •
Many days that fall after school Wendy came early and helped Mrs. Brand prepare a tray for Jimmy. Whenever she arrived to talk, Wendy stood by the little door in the side of the garage and looked across at the kitchen window, and if she saw the older woman moving in there, she’d go and knock. Wendy was already a fair cook, but in those weeks Mrs. Brand led her through the construction of a huge apple pie with a cross-hatch crust. A pie they made one day while Jimmy napped. Mrs. Brand was glad for the company, and the young woman helped her go deeper into the cooking than she would have alone, sometimes making snacks for Jimmy, tea sandwiches and canapés of all kinds, a kind of flourish, and sometimes, if Jimmy was sleeping, they’d plow ahead and make dishes with the garden’s riches, great pans of layered zucchini lasagna, and stuffed peppers with wild rice and sausage, and late in the season two golden pumpkin pies. The first two or three sessions were a little stiff, with Mrs. Brand pointing and suggesting, and they moved carefully, to not bump into each other in the little space, but then they simply fell in, and Wendy knew where the bowls were and the shallow pans and such, and they talked or didn’t talk. Had Mrs. Brand known that Jimmy would be a writer?