He ran that shop for fifty-three years.

He put four people through trade school out of his own pocket.

He sold it at seventy-eight because his son could not run it and would not say so.

And at seventy-eight, with four hundred and twelve thousand dollars and a grandson who was seventeen and a granddaughter who was twenty-three and no great-grandchild born or on the way, he sat in an office and set the age at nineteen because nineteen was the age at which he had found out what he was.

Silas turned nineteen on the tenth of June 2025 and had been sweeping a workshop floor since he was six.