The ELI Event B007R5LTNS

floppy disk drive from a long-dead Kaypro, even a tiny five-inch television set, in which everything but the picture tube was burned to a crisp. The boy had used them all, he said, for some kind of gizmo he was secretly building, although he would never say exactly what that was. The old man had never seen this gadget, and suspected the boy was only building it in his imagination. Still, he was bright and learned quickly; maybe he really had something after all.
    In any case, the old man didn’t care; he was just glad to have someone to talk to. Oh, he talked to Lydia often enough, or at least to her picture on the dresser. Sometimes he thought he heard her reply, but he knew better.
    Although the parts the old man brought were usually worthless to him, the boy refused to accept them for nothing. He always paid the old man something, and always in nickels. The old man learned not to offer the parts free of charge, just to make up some price—thirty-five cents, fifty cents, any multiple of five—and to take the nickels the boy counted out to him from an old sock. A curious, confused boy, he thought; backward and withdrawn, but clearly intelligent, with a quiet, restrained sense of pride.
    The oddest thing about their relationship was that, in the year they had known each other, the boy never asked his name. That first day at the park, when the old man asked for his, he simply replied, “Robin Theodore Kirkland.” The old man waited for the usual “What’s yours?” but it never came.
    He never asked why, never pressed the issue. He supposed if the boy wanted to know his name, he would ask in his own time. Perhaps he was afraid of involvement, frightened to admit to himself or anyone else that he felt friendship or affection. It didn’t matter. They spent countless happy hours together. The old man knew how Robin Theodore Kirkland felt about him, and that was enough.
    Now his old eyes were close enough to look through the chain-link fence toward the battered elm. Sure enough, there was the boy, sitting at the base of the tree, knees up, head down. The twig in his hand, tracing short, jagged lines in the dirt between his feet, was the only indication he was awake.
    “Lazy bones, sleepin’ in the shade,” the old man sang as he approached the boy. “How you gonna get your day’s work made, sleepin’ in the evenin’ shade?”
    The boy’s head jerked up; the sight of the old man brought a broad grin to his pale features. Then, as suddenly as it appeared, the grin vanished. Quickly, the boy stood, casting a furtive glance over his shoulder. Of course, Mrs. Faraday wouldn’t approve of one of her boys, especially a problem boy like Robin Kirkland, meeting strangers at the fence. Robin had suggested this corner of the lot for their meetings; it was barely visible from the playground, and impossible to see from Mrs. Faraday’s office.
    The old man grinned at him, hoping it would bring back the fleeting smile. It didn’t. “Hi there, young Robin! How’s my pal today?”
    “Hi.” The boy worked at speaking, as though he were out of practice. “Okay, I guess.”
    The old man answered the question the boy didn’t ask, had never asked. “Me, too, I’m doin’ all right. Yeah, I’m fine. Say, I brought those things you wanted.”
    He produced the small bag of loose parts from his pocket and dropped it over the top of the fence to the boy. “I didn’t have a double-pole single-throw switch, but there’s a double-pole double-throw in there—it’ll do the same thing if you wire up just one side of it. There’s a couple of other switches too, just in case you need them. That okay?”
    “Yeah, thanks. Really,” the boy said as he poked his nose into the bag to examine his new treasures. “How much for these?” he managed.
    The old man screwed up his face, thought hard for a moment. “Oh, I expect forty cents ought to cover it.” Robin looked up at him with mild suspicion. “Um, they’re used,” he lied. “Got ’em out of an old top-loading VCR a fella brought in on trade. They’ll work fine, though.”
    The boy considered this for a moment. “Okay.” Satisfied, Robin pulled the familiar sock from his jeans pocket, untied it, removed eight nickels. He carefully retied the sock before passing the coins, one by one, through the fence to the old man.
    As always, Robin dropped them into the waiting hand from a couple of inches up. Another odd thing, the old man reflected: since they had known