Eli stood.
“I’m at least telling Ms. Bell you overdid it.”
Walter grumbled, “You do that and I’ll fail you personally.”
“You’re not a licensed teacher.”
“I’m old enough to be an entire accreditation board.”
Eli left before Walter could stop him.
By sundown Ms. Bell had called.
By dark Claire knew.
By the next morning Daniel did too.
Walter did not ask who told whom.
That is one of the great humiliations of age.
News about your body starts traveling faster than you do.
Claire wanted to come immediately.
Daniel wanted him to promise, right then, over the phone, that he would sign the Red Briar papers before the deadline at the end of the month.
Walter promised neither.
What he did do was sit still for two days.
He hated that even more.
The students came Saturday anyway.
Ms. Bell would have canceled, but Walter refused.
“If they stop every time I get banged up, I might as well go lie down in a drawer.”
So they came.
Only this time Walter taught from the porch.
Cane across his lap.
Blanket over his knees.
The students worked while he directed.
It should have felt like defeat.
Instead it showed him something worse.
How well they had been listening.
June set corner posts true without his hands.
Miguel patched roof flashing with care Ruth would have called downright fussy.
Laney organized salvaged hardware into labeled bins because she said wasting time looking for bolts was an insult to daylight.
And Eli—Eli moved through the work like he belonged to it.
Not showing off.
Not playing foreman.
Just seeing what needed doing.
Walter watched him reset a stubborn hinge with three precise taps and felt the sting of something that was not jealousy and not quite pride.
It was succession.
The strange ache of realizing the world might continue properly without asking you first.
That afternoon, once the others left, Ms. Bell stayed behind.
She stood in the yard looking out toward the lower field.
“Can I ask you something difficult?”
Walter said, “Those are the only things people ask after sixty.”
She smiled sadly.
“The school has a line on three orphan lambs from a small place out toward Black Creek.”
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