Then he added proudly,
“And sometimes he doesn’t make people pay much if they don’t have money. He just says okay and fixes it.”
The woman laughed.
She looked at me.
“Is that true?”
I looked at Noah.
Tiny pale scar on his lip.
Chompy sticking out of his overalls pocket.
“Pretty much. Pull into bay two.”
It was only a cracked radiator hose.
Twenty minutes.
About forty dollars in parts.
I charged her ten.
Before leaving, she looked up at the garage sign.
“Who painted that?”
“Me and my brother,” Noah said proudly. “I did the C. I went outside the lines.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“I know.”
After she drove away, Noah looked up at me.
“Why did you only charge her ten dollars?”
“Because she needed the money more than I did.”
“Like Mom and Brent?”
I knelt beside him.
“No.”
“They had money. They just didn’t think my work was worth paying for.”
I pointed toward the road where the woman had driven away.
“She didn’t have much money. But she knew the work had value.”
Noah thought about that.
Then he nodded.
“Okay.”
I smiled.
“Okay?”
He picked up his wrench.
“Rick says okay is like a plan.”
I laughed and lifted him onto my shoulders.
“Yeah, buddy.”
“Okay is like a plan.”
We stood beneath that old plywood sign watching traffic pass along Linden Avenue.
Years ago, Laura told me I was going nowhere in life.
She was wrong.
Every morning at 6:30, I know exactly where I’m going.
Every Wednesday at 5:30, I know exactly where I need to be.
And every night, I go home to a little house on Elm Street where a one-armed green dinosaur keeps watch from the windowsill.
That isn’t nowhere.
That’s home.
