Chapter 1: A Diamond in Mississippi Mud
The Tombigbee lay dark beyond the trees, carrying the moon in broken pieces. A freight train sounded somewhere outside Aberdeen. On Nell Raines’s porch, three pots caught water from a roof that leaked even after the rain had stopped.
A.J. was under a lawn mower, trying to find twenty dollars.
Not literally. Mrs. Hensley had promised him twenty if he could get the mower running before her son came home to cut the yard. At twenty-six, A.J. had learned to think of repairs in groceries, gasoline, and days before the electric bill came due. This one was most of a tank of gas, provided his truck’s gauge was telling the truth. It rarely was.
He cleaned the carburetor, tightened the fuel line, and pulled the cord. The engine coughed once, insulted his efforts with a puff of smoke, and caught.
“There you go,” he said. “We both live another day.”
“You coming to supper?” his grandmother called.
“Soon as I finish.”
“You finished when it started. Now you’re visiting.”
Inside, Nell had set out cornbread, beans, and two glasses of tea. A.J. washed his hands twice. The grease stayed in the cracks of his knuckles. He sat beneath a brown stain spreading across the ceiling and tried not to look at the envelope beside her plate.
“Roof estimate?”
She slid it toward him. Four thousand eight hundred dollars. The porch could wait, the roofer had written, but the damaged section over the kitchen could not.
A.J. folded the estimate carefully. “I’ll find the money.”
“We’ll find a way.”
He recognized the correction. Since his grandfather died, A.J. had started treating every difficulty in the house as a personal examination he was failing. Nell would not let him forget there were two adults at the table.
His grandfather had taught him carpentry in a shed behind the house. There was still a half-finished rocking chair hanging from the rafters. A.J. could repair a cracked joint, match an old molding, and tell by touch when a board had another fifty years in it. None of those talents had yet persuaded a bank that he was worth lending money to.
“How about that carriage house?” Nell asked.
A.J. looked down at his plate. A Monroe company owned a neglected property near town. He had submitted a proposal to restore the old carriage house as a workshop, in exchange for doing some of the repairs himself. The application asked for a business history, proof of financing, and references from previous commercial landlords.
He had none of those. He had photographs of furniture he had saved from burn piles and a notebook full of measurements.
“They haven’t called.”
“Have you called them?”
“The secretary knows my voice.”
Nell buttered her cornbread. “Then she knows you want it.”
He smiled, but the smile hurt. Some days wanting something felt less like ambition than standing outside a window while other people ate.
After supper he carried Mrs. Hensley’s mower to her porch. She came out with a folded twenty and apologized for taking so long to find it. Behind her, a little boy slept on the couch beneath a quilt.
“My daughter’s working late again,” she explained. “I kept him today.”
A.J. noticed a pharmacy bag by the door, then the tired way she counted the money. He said the problem had only been a loose connection and charged her ten.
“You sure?”
“I’d feel bad charging twenty for tightening something.”
He did not mention the hour spent cleaning the carburetor. On the way home he bought a patching kit for the roof instead of gasoline.
Across town, Caroline Monroe was being told why a property could not be saved.
The meeting had run past dinner. Her father sat at one end of a polished table while a contractor explained that demolishing an old community hall would be cheaper than restoring it. Caroline had spent weeks collecting photographs, interviewing former users, and finding people willing to help. The hall’s small stage and meeting rooms could serve trades classes, local musicians, and neighborhood groups.
“You cannot fund a business plan with affection,” Harrison Monroe said.
“I’ve brought cost estimates.”
“Estimates from volunteers.”
“People who know how to do the work.”
He tapped the folder. “People who have not guaranteed they’ll finish.”
Caroline was twenty-five, had studied building preservation, and could explain the difference between a structural crack and settling plaster. At home, however, she was still the girl whose father checked whether her bicycle helmet was fastened.
“Then let me find a contractor who will guarantee it.”
Harrison sighed. “We’ll discuss it later.”
Later had become a room in which he stored every decision she wanted to make for herself.
When the meeting ended, she stayed at the table. Among the property folders was a rejected workshop proposal. She opened it because someone had attached a photograph of a rocking chair repaired so neatly the damaged joint was nearly invisible.
A. J. Raines, the application said.
His budget was painfully small. His drawings were careful. Beside one photograph he had written: Original wood retained wherever sound.
Caroline put the application into her own folder. She meant to ask about him on Monday.
Outside Nell’s house, A.J. climbed down from the porch roof with tar on his elbow. The patch would buy them a little time. He rinsed his hands under the garden faucet, then stood in the yard listening to the mower he had fixed running two houses away.
For tonight, one thing worked because he had touched it.
He held on to that thought as he went inside.
