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tip, I saw my father set down his shovel, and when I looked up Liam Metarey was standing next to the trench. “That’s you men’s secret,” he said, jumping down between us. “Isn’t it? It must be ten degrees cooler at the bottom here.”
    “God’s air-conditioning,” answered my father without a moment’s hesitation—the kind of reply I was trying to learn to make. Then he began whistling “Roddy McCorley” again.
    Mr. Metarey pushed his tie over his shoulder and knelt to examine what we’d done. “And I like the way you’ve secured those roots,” he said. He lifted one of my slings. “Be happy to be treated that well myself by a Park Avenue surgeon.”
    My father smiled. “Ingenuity of the American working man,” he said.
    “Take it easy there, son,” Mr. Metarey said as he climbed back out of the hole. I’d been wiping the sweat from my face with the dry end of my shirttail. He turned to my father. “Doesn’t he know he’s being paid by the hour?”
    My father chuckled, more of a low shaking in his chest than a noise. “He’s a good worker, all right.” He was the steward of the plumbers’ union local, and everybody liked him. “Beats me where he got it, though,” he added.
    “Perfectly clear to me where he got it,” Liam Metarey answered as he walked back into the house.
    Sometime past noon, as we were finishing our sandwiches, Christian appeared. She stepped over her sister and walked across to the trench, where she set a pitcher of lemonade on the planking. My father declined a glass—he drank tea even on the hottest days—but after a moment I accepted. I drank one glass and without asking she poured me another.
    Clara put down her book now and was watching us from the porch. “Thirsty?” she called.
    “He’s just polite,” Christian answered.
    “Good. I like polite.”
    I drank my second glass, and Christian filled another. In school, we’d hardly spoken, but we had an English class together. “Drink as much as you want,” she said softly. “Don’t worry about my sister.”
    I watched her walk back across the yard. On the porch she had to step over Clara again.
    “Careful, Corey,” said my father.
    At this depth, clay was veined into the topsoil, and I had to use a pick to pry it out. Around it the roots ran in many-stranded webs that had to be shaken free before they could be pulled. But even at that age, I liked work. I craved the discipline that settled over me and allowed me to escape my thoughts. By the time the sun dropped behind the high gable of the house, we’d freed a whole main trunk and all its branching; and soon after that, I pried a lump of clay from the far furrow of the ditch and came to the cracked sewer flange itself. As the trench moved into shade I dug away at the covering, chipping apart the clay hub with a chisel until I finally pulled out a long, fibrous lump in the exact shape of the joint.
    That’s when I heard Clara’s voice again behind me. “You don’t want this?” she said.
    I turned. She had come down from the porch with the book in her hand. “You don’t seem to be drinking it,” she said.
    “I’m trying not to drink it all at once,” I answered, and I laughed. But she kept her eyes on me.
    I picked up my shovel. “What are you reading?” I asked.
    “You wouldn’t know it.” She made a face. “It smells like fish down here.”
    “Sardine sandwiches,” I said. I smiled again, but she only looked down at me. I knocked the trowel on my boot. “Well,” I said. “Back to work.”
    She held the glass of lemonade up to the sun. Droplets gleamed halfway up its side. “If you don’t want it,” she said, “then I think
I’ll
drink it. Would that be all right? It’s so hot out here.” She took a long swallow, then set the glass back down. I blinked in the light, then nodded up at her, smiling again—that’s the way I was. Finally, I looked away again and leaned back into the hole.
    A few minutes later, I heard the