Gary ‘Gearhead’'s Arc

Chapter 6 of 15

Gary stood inside the trailer the next morning, sorting through salvaged tools on the metal workbench. The woman and her people had moved through the gate at dawn, setting up near the cistern like he'd told them. He could hear voices outside—low and careful, the kind people used when they didn't want to overstep. He pulled open a drawer beneath the bench and stopped. A rusted bumper sat wedged inside, its yellow paint flaking off in patches that showed blue underneath. Gary lifted it out and turned it over in his hands. The bolt holes were still clean where he'd mounted it himself, back when the hot rod had been his best work—a sleek buggy with dual thrusters he'd built from nothing but scrap and late nights. He'd shown it to a salvager who said he needed reliable transport, who'd shaken Gary's hand and promised fair payment once he made his first run. The man had driven off and never came back. Gary had searched for two weeks before he found the buggy stripped and abandoned near the southern pass, everything valuable torn out and sold. The bumper was all he'd recovered. He set it on the bench and stared at it. The woman outside was waiting for tools. Her people were waiting for walls. He'd just handed them access to his water and his property because he needed help finishing what he'd started. But the bumper sat there like a warning—every person he'd ever trusted with something he built had either taken it or broken it. Gary picked up the bumper and carried it outside. The woman looked up from the fire ring as he approached, her borrowed gloves already streaked with fresh grease. He held out the bumper and watched her take it, testing the weight. "Use this for the north wall support," he said. "Bolt it horizontal between the posts. It'll hold." She nodded and turned it over, examining the mount points. Gary stepped back and looked at the camp—the tents, the people moving carefully around his property, the half-finished walls that would either protect them all or collapse under the weight of too much trust given too fast. He'd made his choice when he hired her. Now he had to see if this time would be different, or if he'd just handed someone else a piece of what he'd built. Either way, the bumper wasn't sitting in a drawer anymore. It was going into the wall. By noon, the woman had the bumper welded in place. Gary walked the perimeter and checked her work—clean seams, tight bolts, the rusted metal now holding up two tons of steel plating. She'd reinforced the weak point he'd been worried about all week. He found her by the cistern, filling canteens for her people. "You did good work," he said. She looked at him and shrugged. "It's a good bumper." Gary nodded and walked back to the trailer. The hot rod was gone. The salvager who'd stolen it was probably dead by now. But the bumper was part of something again, and this time Gary could see it every day from his front step. He couldn't control whether these people would stay or leave, whether they'd protect what he was building or strip it like the buggy. But he could keep building anyway. The marketplace needed walls before it needed anything else. And walls needed people willing to weld them.