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He’d have liked to have been able to say something about that, and he didn’t, because it was about liking, and they’d shaken on it.

At the cattle guard she stopped.

“You’re quiet.”

“I’m listening.”

“You don’t listen. You talk.”

“I’m learning,” he said, and she looked at him a while.

“Not tonight,” she said.

“I didn’t ask.”

“You were going to. I could hear you winding up.” She looked out the window. “When I say. That’s in the terms.”

“That wasn’t in the terms.”

“It’s in them now,” she said, and they came up the drive.

He put the alternator in Sunday after church, in the yard, with the hood up and the old man on the porch with his coffee not helping, and at eleven she came out with a jug of water and stood at the fender.

“You want this or not?”

“I want it.”

She held it out. He took it and drank and handed it back, and his fingers went over hers on the handle, and she let them, in the yard, in daylight, with his father on the porch forty feet off, and took the jug back and stood there.

“Chase says it’s the alternator.”

“Chase is right.”

“Chase says you could’ve had it done in an hour and you’ve been out here two.”

“Chase talks a lot for a man who doesn’t talk.” He got his head back under the hood. “It’s a tight fit. Belt’s got to come off. Tell Chase to come do it himself if he’s got opinions.”

“I’ll tell him.” She didn’t go. “Is it the belt or are you out here so you don’t have to sit in the house.”

He looked at her around the hood. She had the jug against her hip and her chin up and she was asking a real question, in the yard, on a Sunday, with the terms two days old, and he answered it.

“It’s the belt. And I don’t sit in the house on a Sunday. Never have. The old man reads the paper and Dean does the books and Lara sleeps and there’s nobody to talk to, so I find something with a hood on it.”

“You could talk to me.”

“You told me not to. In Earl’s lot. Nothing about —”

“I said nothing about liking. I didn’t say nothing about talking.” She put the jug on the fender. “Talk, then. Tell me about the belt.”

So he told her about the belt. Ten minutes of it, with his hands in the engine, more than anybody needed to know about a serpentine belt, and she stood at the fender in the sun and listened to all of it and asked two questions that were the right questions, and on the porch his father turned a page of the paper and didn’t look up and didn’t need to.

When he got the truck started she said, “Nice,” and picked up the jug, and went in, and he stood there with the engine running and his hands black and thought, she came out here to hear me talk. She could’ve sent Levi with the water. She came out and stood in the sun for ten minutes to hear me talk about a belt, and she asked about the tensioner.

Earl chalked them Monday.

Chase saw it first, coming in for wire, and came home and didn’t say anything at supper, because Chase didn’t, and told Brody in the barn after with his back to him, greasing something that didn’t need it.

“He’s got you up.”