“Well, here’s where I stop,” the boy finally told him. “The town’s down there about a mile. Thanks for fixin’ my bike.”
Ellowan dismounted cautiously, and lifted out his bag. “Thank’ee for helping me so far, lad. And I’m thinking the brake will be giving you little trouble hereafter.” He watched the boy ride off on a side road, and started toward the town, the serious business of breakfast uppermost in his minds
Breakfast was still in his mind when midday had passed, but there was no sign that it was nearer his stomach. He came out of an alley and stopped for a few draws on his pipe and a chance to rest his shoulders. He’d have to stop smoking soon; on an empty stomach, too much tobacco is nauseating. Over the smell of the smoke, another odor struck Ms nose, and he turned around slowly.
It was the clean odor of hot metal in a charcoal fire, and came from a sprawling old building a few yards away. The sign above was faded, but he made out the words: michael donahue—horseshoeing and auto repairs. The sight of a blacksmith shop aroused memories of pleasanter days, and Ellowan drew nearer.
The man inside was in his fifties, but his body spoke of strength and clean living, and the face under the mop of red hair was open and friendly. At the moment, he was sitting on a stool, finishing a sandwich. The odor of the food reached out and stirred the elf’s stomach again, and he scuffed his sandals against the ground uneasily. The man looked up.
“Saints presarve us!” Donahue’s generous mouth opened to its widest. “Sure, and it’s one o’ the Little Folk, the loike as my feyther tolt me. Now fwhat—Och,now, but it’s hungry ye’d be from the look that ye have, and me eatin’ before ye! Here now, me hearty, it’s yer-self as shud have this bread.”
“Thank’ee.” Ellowan shook his head with an effort, but it came harder this tune. “I’m an honest worker, sir, and it’s one of the rules that I can’t be taking what I cannot earn. But there’s never a piece of copper to be found in all the city for me to mend.” He laid his hands on a blackened bench to ease the ache in his legs.
“Now that’s a shame.” The brogue dropped from Donahue’s speech, now that the surprise of seeing the elf was leaving him. “It’s a good worker you are, too, if what my father told me was true. He came over from the old country when I was a bit of a baby, and his
father told him before that. Wonderful workers, he said you were.”
“I am that.” It was a simple statement as Ellowan made it; boasting requires a certain energy, even had he felt like it. “Anything of brass or copper I can fix, and it’ll be like new when I finish.”
“Can you that?” Donahue looked at him with interest. “Eh, maybe you can. I’ve a notion to try you out. You wait here.” He disappeared through the door that divided his smithy from the auto servicing department and came back with a large piece of blackened metal hi his hand. The elf smelled it questioningly and found it was brass.
Donahue tapped it lightly. “That’s a radiator, m’boy. Water runs through these tubes here and these little fins cool it off. Old Pete Yaegger brought it in and wanted it fixed, but it’s too far ruined for my hands. And he can’t afford a new one. You fix that now, and I’ll be giving you a nice bit of money for the work.”
“Fix it I can.” Ellowan’s hands were trembling as he inspected the corroded metal core, and began drawing out his tools. “I’ll be finished within the hour.”
Donahue looked doubtfully at the elf, but nodded slowly. “Now maybe you will. But first, you’ll eat, and we’ll not be arguing about that. A hungry man never did good work, and I’m of the opinion the same applies to yourself. There’s still a sandwich and a bit of pie left, if you don’t mind washing it down with water.”
The elf needed no water to wash down the food. When Donahue looked at him next, the crumbs had been licked from the paper, and Ellowan’s deft hands were working his clever little tools through the fins of the radiator, and his face was crinkling up into its usual merry smile. The metal seemed to run and flow through his hands with a will of its own, and he was whistling lightly as he worked.
Ellowan waited intently as Donahue inspected the finished work. Where the blackened metal had been bent and twisted, and filled with holes, it was now shining and new. The smith could find no sign to indicate
that it was not all one single piece, now, for the seams were joined invisibly.
“Now that’s craftsmanship,” Donahue admitted. “I’m thinking we’ll do a deal of business from now on, the two of us, and there’s money in it, too. Ellowan, m’boy, with work like that we can buy up old radiators, remake them, and at a nice little profit for ourselves we can sell them again. You’ll be searching no further for labor.”
The elf’s eyes twinkled at the prospect of long lines of radiators needing to be fixed, and a steady supply of work without the need of searching for it. For the first tune, he realized that industrialization might have its advantages for the worker.
Donahue dug into a box and came out with a little metal figure of a greyhound, molded on a threaded cap. “Now, while I get something else for you, you might be fixing this,” he said. ” Tis a godsend that you’ve come to me…. Eh, now that I think of it, what brings you here, when I thought it’d be in the old country you worked?”
“That was my home,” the elf agreed, twisting the radiator cap in his hands and straightening out the broken threads. “But the people became too poor hi the country, and the cities were filled with coal smoke. And then there was word of a new land across the sea, so we left, such of us as remained, and it was here we stayed until the smoke came again, and sent us sleeping into the hills. Eh, it’s glad I am now to be awake again.”
Donahue nodded. “And it’s not sorry I am. I’m a good blacksmith, but there’s never enough of that for a man to live now, and mostly I work on the autos. And there, m’boy, you’ll be a wonderful help to be sure. The parts I like least are the ignition system and generator, and there’s copper in them where your skill will be greater than mine. And the radiators, of course.”
Ellowan’s hands fumbled on the metal, and he set it down suddenly. “Those radiators, now—they come from a car?”
“That they do.” Donahue’s back was turned as he drew a horseshoe out of the forge and began hammering it on the anvil. He could not see the twinkle fade from
the elf’s eyes and the slowness with which the small fingers picked up the radiator cap.
Ellowan was thinking of his people, asleep in the hills, doomed to lie there until the air should be cleared of the poisonous fumes. And here he was, working on parts of the machines that helped to make those fumes. Yet, since there was little enough else to do, he had no choice but to keep on; cars or no cars, food was still the . prime necessity.
Donahue bent the end of a shoe over to a calk and hammered it into shape, even with the other one. “You’ll be wanting a place to sleep?” he asked casually. “Well, now, I’ve a room at the house that used to be my boy’s, and it’ll just suit you. The boy’s at college and won’t be needing it.”
“Thank’ee kindly.” Ellowan finished the cap and put it aside distastefully.
“The boy’ll be a great engineer some day,” the smith went on with a glow of pride. “And not have to follow his father in the trade. And it’s a good thing, I’m thinking. Because some day, when they’ve used up all their coal and oil, there’ll be no money in the business at all, even with the help of these newfangled things. My father was a smith, and I’m by way of being smith and mechanic—but not the boy.”
“They’ll use up all the coal and oil—entirely?”