Chapter Six
--1--Saturday was just like other days, only longer because there was no school. Sometimes, when the weather allowed, they played silently in the backyard with the house between them and the empty lane, or they went to the trailer abandoned in the woods behind the house. They had no games to play there. It was an alternative to the basement only in that it exposed them to different spores of mold, active spiders, and a different breed of dust.
But on rainy Saturdays, they preferred the basement. Thane stood at the workbench and did whatever writing his classes required. Sometimes he fiddled with the tools. The hammers and mallets were boringly obvious, but the calipers, torsion-wrenches, and wide variety of screwdrivers, awls, and punches were fascinating. He stacked wrenches
