At two thirty that afternoon I drove past Heckert Auto Repair on my way to the grocery store on Main Street.

Dale was standing in the gravel lot behind the service bays with a yellow tape measure stretched tight between two wooden posts.

Two of his senior mechanics were lifting a stainless steel drinking fountain off the back of a flatbed pickup.

I pulled off the asphalt onto the shoulder and rolled down the driver’s window.

A brand-new picnic table stood beside the scrap tire pile, its pine boards painted a bright navy blue.

Dale let go of the end of his tape measure, picked up a shop towel, and wiped his greasy thumbs.