Rain had changed the entire aspect of the town. The buildings were misty and faint, rendering the place like a painting. Water swirled down the street, which lacked gutters. He now realized that a lot of the ruts in the road were because of this kind of weather. They would need to fix the drainage, perhaps add storm drains. More for the to-do list.
He heard the low thumping rhythm of the generator as he approached Lexie and Declan’s end of the street. They were keeping it there because Lexie and Declan had been using power tools, and it was easier than running extension cords all over town. Right now, they were using it for lights; bright electric light spilled from the windows of Lexie’s machine shop and Declan’s schoolhouse.
The door of the schoolhouse was open, and Lexie was helping Declan work on it. She had a hammer in one hand and looked like she was trying to straighten out a twisted hinge.
“You look like a drowned rat, ‘cuz,” Declan said. But he seemed more teasing than cutting about it. He was in a much better mood than yesterday.
“Need any help?” Baz asked.
“Nah, we got it. You can come inside and dry off if you want. There’s a fire going.”
Baz shook his head. “If I get dry, I’m not going to want to go out again. The place is looking good, though. What the heck are you planning to do with it?”
Declan smiled one of his rare sideways smiles. “No clue. I just like it, but I have about as much of an idea for this place as you do for the general store. Unless youwantto be an old-time storekeeper.”
“Hey, maybe I do. A town like ours needs a general store.”
Declan shrugged and reached to support the door while Lexie wrestled with the back of her claw hammer, trying to bend the warped hinge back into place.
“I’m gonna have to take this off and pound it back into shape,” she decided, laying the hammer on a windowsill. “There’s no way I can get this hung straight like it is.”
“I see you’re embracing the blacksmith lifestyle,” Baz remarked with a grin.
Lexie switched to a screwdriver to take the hinge off. “How are things down at your end of town?”
“Leaky. Flooding a little in the street. I’m glad we did the shopping run earlier today.”
He was getting steadily wetter by the moment, so he gave them a wave and went onward. Water was really flowing in the street now, he noticed. Although the townsite seemed level, it was actually tilted slightly, so all the water flowed down towardthe highway. That helped keep the town dry, but it probably meant that in a very long, heavy rain, there was a risk of the road washing out and stranding them. Another thing to plan for, he supposed, but he decided not to worry about it for now. The town itself was clearly high enough to be out of danger, since it had been standing for a hundred years.
As soon as he turned onto Arden’s side street, he found himself temporarily disoriented. Everything really did look different in the rain. There was a faint smell of wood smoke in the air, and using that, as well as his memories of the layout of the street, he found his way to Arden’s cabin and knocked on the door.
“Just a minute!” Arden’s voice called.
There was some coughing, and then she opened the door. Smoke hung in faint wisps inside the cabin and drifted out past her.
“Oh, good,” she said, stifling another cough. She grabbed Baz’s hand, and before he could fully register the touch of her small, warm fingers, she pulled him inside. “Do you know how to make a fire in one of these things?”
She gestured at the small iron stove in the corner. The door in the front of the stove stood slightly ajar and smoke was seeping out.
“I thought this would be easy,” Arden said. “I’ve made campfires, and I’ve used fireplaces, you know, the decorative kind. But it won’t burn, and I can’t figure out why not. It just smolders and smokes.”
“Is it getting enough draw?” Baz asked. He saw that she didn’t understand. “The fire needs air flow. There’s a vent on the front of the stove that needs to be open, and there might be a damper in the chimney—a handle that can open or close to control the amount of air.”
He left the front door open to let the smoke out and went to have a look.
There was an iron stovepipe going from the top of the stove to the low ceiling, and sticking out from the middle of the stovepipe was a T-shaped handle. Baz touched it to make sure it wasn’t hot, grasped it, and tried to make it turn.
“Yeah, this is your problem. This is the damper, and it feels like it’s stuck shut. Probably rusted.”
Arden waved a hand in front of her face, trying uselessly to sweep the smoke away. She sneezed. “Can you get it to work, do you think? You guys have tools, right?”
“Let me give it a try first.” He banged on the chimney with his fist, jiggled the handle, and abruptly he felt something crack free and it turned.
The change was immediate. The smoke began to clear as it was sucked up the chimney rather than roiling out into the room.
“There you go. Looks like you’ve got a pretty decent fire laid otherwise.” Baz crouched in front of the stove. “Here, give me a few of those little pieces you’ve got there.” Arden knelt beside him and handed him some selections from the small pile of kindling and birch bark beside the stove. “You’ve got a nice setup here. You do know campfires.”
“I won’t take the credit. This was all mostly here already. Whoever used to live here left some wood, or maybe it’s been used by campers.”
