the car.
“Watch out,” said Connelly. “It won’t bite, but don’t hurt yourself.”
“For Chrissakes, Frankie, get down from there and let the man work,” said Clark from behind.
“It’s all right,” Connelly said. “I don’t mind.”
The boy nodded at him gratefully and Connelly went back to work as though nothing had happened.
Connelly reached in and touched two slender wires. He looked at them, then carefully brought them together. There was a spark. He nodded and placed them back together and then made the motion with his finger again.
Clark’s brother hit the ignition. Again there were the clicks and grunts as the engine sought the connection, but then it caught, rolled over, and with an unhappy grumble began to run again.
There was an eruption of cheers from behind him so loud Connelly swung around in surprise.
“Hot damn, you did it!” shouted Clark. He ignored the slap his wife gave his shoulder. “How’d you do it?”
“It’s the condenser,” said Connelly quietly, and waved Clark up. He pointed at the wires he had connected. “The points had come loose. It happens all the time with these older models. Usually I’d say you just need to have the condenser replaced, but you should be good until you can get to the next auto shop. If it happens again, check there first.”
“We’re lucky it was nothing serious,” said the little boy solemnly.
Connelly looked at him, amused. “Yeah. Yes, we are.”
“Well, you just saved the day for us,” said Clark.
“It was nothing. Just a few stray wires.”
“Oh, be quiet,” said Missy. “Come on down here. Lunchtime’s coming on and you and your friends look hungry as wolves. When’s the last time you ate?”
Connelly hesitated and glanced sideways at Pike and the others, who were getting to their feet. “A while,” he admitted. “A long while.”
“Well, we’ve got salted pork and nice rolls we can cook up for all of you.”
“There’s a lot of us,” said Connelly.
“That don’t mean nothing,” she said, grabbing his arm and steering him toward their makeshift shelter. “There’s a lot of us, too. There’s a lot of everybody. If you hadn’t come along at the right time we’d have been stuck here for… Oh, well, I shudder to think. I shudder, I really do.”
“God looks after His own,” said Pike as he approached.
She smiled at him. “If that’s not the truth, I’ve never heard it. Are you a man of the cloth?”
“Once,” said Pike. “Now I’m just a man.”
“Well, anyone who’s done the Lord’s work is a welcome guest at our table.” She frowned. “Even if we don’t have a table.”
“Ma’am, we haven’t even seen a bed in weeks,” said Roosevelt. “We’d be awful picky to turn you down just because there’s no dinner table on one of your trucks.”
“These times,” said one of the other women, fussing over them. “Oh, these times. I seen little boys with arms like sticks. We’re lucky to be doing as good as we are.”
They sat them down among the entire family and began their preparations for cooking. Connelly and the others could tell the family didn’t have much and so did their best to refuse what they could, but they were ravenous and soon accepted.
“Where you boys heading?” asked one of Clark’s brothers.
“West,” said Hammond. “South and west. To wherever we can find work.”
They accepted that. It was a common story among everyone.
Connelly turned to survey Clark’s cars again. “I could look those over for you,” he said. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I bet there’s a few, well…”
“Problems,” Clark finished. “Because the man who sold them to us was a snake.”
“I guess you could say that.”
“I would appreciate that. I really would. And we’d be happy to help you folks out.”
Connelly smiled a little. “Getting tossed from a train isn’t exactly fun.”
“We’ll do whatever you need in return,” said Pike. “Any help you need, you let us know.”
“Well, sir. I suppose all we want is just the chance to keep moving,” said Clark. “That’s enough for me.”
The Hopkinses’ convoy was in worse shape than they had imagined. Connelly spent the next day checking whatever came to his mind. He managed to scrounge up a crescent wrench and went to it before the sun came up. Cleaning fuel lines. Teasing radiator lines back into place. On one wheel the bearings were run down to the point of dissolving, mere days away from smoking and catching fire. Connelly used a jack and managed to remove the wheel and scrape away what was left of the bearing. He took a piece of rind from the pork barrel and cleaned it of salt. Then he wrapped it around the spindle and replaced the wheel. He told Clark this would not last for more than a hundred miles or so. Clark and the other men listened. They listened to every quiet word Connelly said like it was the word of Christ himself. And Clark’s son Frankie refused to leave, having assumed the role of Connelly’s tagalong. He stood beside Connelly whenever he could, like a lieutenant standing beside his general, looking out on a battlefield.
It was not long before Lottie joined the women in looking after the children. They cleaned and cooked and spoke, made sure the loads in all the cars were even, and spent time mending clothing and tending to wounds. For every second they were awake there seemed to be four more things to fix.
Pike and Hammond did not fit in well. Sometimes they came forward to help Connelly and the others but mostly they stayed at the outskirts, conversing in tones too low to hear. Roonie stayed with them, as he proved too nervous and uncoordinated and his help was more of a hindrance. Connelly, for once, was the center of all the attention. Monk and Roosevelt joined the Hopkinses and Connelly quietly gave them all direction, taking apart this and putting together that. Rubbing bar soap over holes in the fuel tanks caused by gravel from the road. One car burned oil and if Connelly had not gotten to it the engine would have been lost. Whoever had pawned the heaving wrecks off on the Hopkinses had done so knowing he was sending a family out on the road to flounder.
And Connelly enjoyed himself. He liked working with his hands again and he liked helping. He enjoyed seeing something wrong and putting it right. As afternoon came on his muscles ached but it was a pleasing ache. His body was letting him know that he had done something worth doing.
He sat and leaned up against a car and surveyed his work. He sipped water in the noonday heat and felt more satisfied than he had in weeks, even months. Frankie came and sat next to him, looking sideways to take in Connelly’s posture, then mimic it. Connelly offered him his canteen and the boy took it and sipped from it with a serious air.
“We’re going to New Mexico,” the boy said.
“You’re in New Mexico now,” Connelly told him.
He considered that. “New Mexico is where cotton is, though. And work. Money to make.”
“It’s out there somewhere,” said Connelly. “But not here.”
The boy struggled with something. “New Mexico is where we can build another house,” he said, and he looked at Connelly earnestly. “New Mexico is where I told Jeff I’d be.”
“Jeff?”
“Jeff’s my dog,” he said proudly.
“You named your dog Jeff?”
“ ’Course I did. Jeff’s a good name. There was a man named Jeff who lived a county over who could toss a ten-pound stone farther than anyone.”
“Was there?”
“Yes. So I named my dog Jeff because, well, that seemed like a pretty good thing to be named after. When we moved I told him we’d be in New Mexico. Pa says I should have said goodbye, but I know Jeff. Jeff’ll know what to do. He’s probably just a few turns of the road away.” He contemplated something very seriously. “Jeff is my friend,” he said. “I told him we’d have a house, a house just like the one we used to have. I’ll see him again.”
“I’m sure you will.”
The boy looked into the sun and shaded his eyes. “I hope he’s happy.”
“I hope so, too,” said Connelly.
Then the boy looked at Connelly, suddenly embarrassed, and he jumped to his feet and ran away. Connelly
