Eddie sat at the bottom of the lowered steps and stared upward, offering the occasional suggestion.On the third trip down, my arms laden with dusty cubes of cardboard, I looked at him and said, “I’d take your comments more seriously if you were actually offering to help, but since all you’re doing is criticizing, I don’t see why I should listen to you.”“How, exactly,” my aunt Frances asked, “do you think he could help? He doesn’t have any thumbs and only weighs thirteen pounds.”My aunt was six inches taller than me, twenty-nine years older, and had lived in Chilson longer than I’d been alive. Her late husband, Everett Pixley, had been a Chilson native, but he’d died so long ago that I wasn’t sure if my few memories of him were my own or were generated by photographs. Since then, Aunt Frances had made a living taking in summer boarders and teaching woodworking classes. In all the years she’d been a widow, she’d never once taken a serious interest in another man until December, when she started spending time with Otto Bingham, her new across-the-street neighbor, and I was crossing my fingers that the romance would blossom permanently.Aunt Frances and I looked at Eddie, who was now inspecting the wall and voicing the occasional “Mrr.”
