Scotty Green's Arc

Chapter 2 of 5

Scotty set his tool crate down on the porch and froze. A line of people stood waiting. Word had spread fast. Scotty fixed broken things for free, so lost souls brought him their broken things. A man held a cracked radio. A woman cradled a steampunk panda with a snapped brass leg, its glass goggles fogged. A boy clutched a music box that wouldn't open. They all looked at Scotty like he was their last chance. "I don't have a shop yet," Scotty said. His voice cracked. "I don't even have a table." Nobody left. They just waited, broken things in their arms. Amanda pushed through the crowd, boots thudding. She still carried the dead mechanical dog wrapped in cloth. She saw the line and understood at once. "You can't fix all these on a porch," she said. "You need walls. Today." Scotty rubbed his face. The market square was ruined, underwater. Every dry building in town already had an owner. He had tools and no place to use them. Then Amanda turned her head. Past the edge of the yard stood the old water tower, tall on its iron legs, dry and empty for years. "Up there," she said. "Nobody's used it. It's high. It won't flood." Scotty climbed the ladder first. He opened the round hatch and stepped inside. The interior was spare and clean, curved metal walls, a solid floor. Dust, but dry dust. He ran his hand along the wall. It held. "This could work," he called down. "It'll hold a bench. It'll hold all of them." They worked fast. Amanda hauled the crate up on a rope. Scotty laid a plank across two drums for a bench. By noon he had a workspace, bare but his. One by one, people climbed the ladder and set their broken things down. Scotty started with the panda. He turned it in his hands, found the snapped brass leg, and clamped it. He heated a thin rod and welded the joint. He wiped the fogged goggles clear. When he wound the key in its back, the panda blinked and took a slow step across the bench. The woman laughed and hugged it. She climbed down beaming. But the line hadn't shrunk. Below, more people kept arriving. Scotty looked at the crowd through the hatch and felt his chest tighten. He had a space now. He did not have help, and he did not have parts. The radio needed a coil he didn't own. The music box needed a spring. His own mechanical dog still lay dead in the cloth, waiting for him. Amanda set the dog on the bench beside the music box. "You fix the fixer first," she said. "Then he helps you fix the rest." Scotty unwrapped the little dog. Mud caked its gears. He had a workshop. Now he needed the one helper who could find every missing part in Forgotten Hollow.