Danner looked toward the pipe.
Then back at me.
“Why is that thing still running?”
I swallowed.
“Because it doesn't need the power grid.”
He stared.
“What?”
I looked toward the wooden shed beyond the trout pond.
“The spring feeds the system by gravity. Grandpa also used some of the flow to maintain a small hydro generator.”
Danner frowned.
“A generator?”
I nodded.
He looked toward the distant hills.
Then toward the dead radio.
“What does it power?”
For a moment, I hesitated.
I remembered Grandpa sitting beside me at the kitchen table, explaining why the equipment needed to remain maintained even when nobody seemed interested in it.
Then I answered.
“The fish monitoring equipment. Some lights. Batteries.”
Danner looked irritated.
“That's all?”
I stared at him.
Then looked toward the antenna rising above the trees on the ridge.
“No.”
He followed my gaze.
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Then I said something that wiped the last trace of laughter from his face.
“There's an emergency radio relay on our property. Grandpa kept it running after the county stopped paying attention to it.”
Danner stared.
“You're joking.”
I shook my head.
“I'm not.”
From somewhere beyond the barn came a faint electronic tone.
Then another.
The old emergency receiver in the equipment shed had come alive.
I could hear the crackle through the open ventilation window.
And then a man's frightened voice drifted across the farm.
“Any station monitoring Laurel Ridge backup? We have a school bus stranded near Miller's Crossing. County dispatch isn't responding.”
Danner's face went pale.
Russell lowered his useless radio.
Brent stopped recording.
For several seconds, none of them said anything.
Then Danner looked toward me.
“Boy.”
His voice had changed.
“Can you make that radio work?”
I stared at the man who'd just called my grandfather's life's work worthless.
Then looked toward the shed.
For the first time since they arrived, my hands stopped shaking.
“It already works.”
I took a breath.
“But you need to move away from the pipe.”
Seven months earlier, the same valley had been covered in autumn leaves.
The maple trees along the fence glowed red and orange. The trout ponds shimmered beneath the afternoon sun, and my grandfather stood beside the old pipe with a wrench in one hand and a thermos of coffee in the other.
He was seventy-four.
Tall.
Thin.
With a white beard, bright blue eyes, and hands covered in scars from decades of working around machinery.
His name was Thomas Hale.