The thing in the palm of Liam was a plumb bob, a small, heavy cone of brass on the end of a length of waxed string, scuffed and darkened by sixty years of hands. Stamped on the shoulder were three initials, A. W. W. Paul looked at it and let out a long breath through his nose. “That was the tool of my father,” he said. “Arthur Whitcomb. He built that fence in 1961 with this in his hand, and he used it on every post to be sure they were true. He carried it in his back pocket until the day he died. My mother kept it in her jewelry box for twenty years, with her pearls, because she said it was the most precious thing she owned.”
He held out one callused finger to touch the string. “Last spring, she took it out and put it in my hand. She said, Paul, I have watched that boy paint my fence for nine years. He is the only one in Bangor who has ever asked what a plumb bob is for. I told him once, from the porch. He listened to every word.” Paul gave a short laugh. “I did not know that. She never mentioned it. She said, This was never meant to hang in a jewelry box. It is meant to hang from a post. Give it to the boy. Tell him he is welcome to be level.”
Liam stared at the brass cone. “I remember that day,” he said hoarsely. “She called out from the porch. I was nine. I said, What is that? and she said it tells you what is true.” He sat very still. “I thought she was just talking.” Paul shook his head. “She was never just talking. She was a librarian for forty years, and every sentence was a book.” He reached into his jacket and took out a thin envelope. “She left something else, too. She left it with her lawyer. I expect you will want to sit down for this one.” Liam, already on the curb, said that he was sitting.
A brass plumb bob that hung in a jewelry box for twenty years finally went to someone who asked what it was for.
Paul unfolded the page and read it aloud. “I, Margaret Whitcomb, leave to Liam Doyle the workshop and all tools of my husband Arthur, in the garage behind the house, to be used by him freely and for the rest of his life. I leave him a sum for his schooling in any trade he chooses, and I recommend carpentry. I leave my son the house, on one condition. That he come home, at least four times a year, to repaint the fence with Liam. If he refuses, the house goes to the library. I have always wanted to see him with a brush in his hand.” Paul folded the page, shaking his head, and his mouth twisted. “She had me figured out.”
I had been standing at the edge of the lawn with my arms wrapped around my waist, and I did not feel the cold. “Paul,” I said, “is that fair to you? To be told how to live in the will of your own mother?” He looked at me for a long time. Then, to my surprise, he smiled. “Mrs. Doyle, I have spent thirty years in Boston building a career I do not especially like, and I have not painted so much as a doorknob since I left home. I am tired. I did not know how tired. I think she saw it.” He took a breath. “And I think she was giving me a reason to come back. I would be a fool to throw it away.”
The workshop turned out to be the richest place I have ever stood. It was a long, narrow garage smelling of cedar and linseed oil, with every tool hanging on a pegboard in the outline of its own shape, drawn in marker by a careful hand. Planes. Chisels. Levels. A big brass bevel as long as my arm. On the workbench lay a sheet of paper with a drawing on it, a picket fence design in pencil, with measurements marked in the margin. At the bottom, Arthur had written, For my wife, our fence, 1961. Liam ran his thumb along the lines as if they might feel warm.
That summer, Paul took a leave from his job in Boston, and he and Liam repainted the fence together, board by board. It took them eleven days. Paul turned out to be a terrible painter, impatient and sloppy, who dripped all over his shoes, and Liam turned out to be a patient and stern teacher. On the fourth day, they argued about the proper way to scrape. On the fifth, they stopped talking, and painted in silence for hours. On the eighth, Paul began to tell stories about his father. By the eleventh, they were laughing so hard that a neighbor stopped her car to see what was wrong.
Liam enrolled in the carpentry program at the community college that fall, working in the workshop of Arthur on weekends. He is learning the old way, with hand planes and mortise joints, and he talks about it the way other boys talk about football. He built a bench in his first semester, a plain, honest piece of white oak, and he set it in the yard beside the fence, facing the street. A small brass plaque on the back says, MARGARET AND ARTHUR WHITCOMB. Sit a while. People do.
Paul moved back to Bangor in the spring. He sold his condominium in Boston and took a job teaching shop at the high school, which he describes as the best decision he ever made and the worst paying one. He lives in the house and keeps it exactly the same, even the books on the shelves. And on the first Saturday of every month, he and Liam go out to the fence with two brushes and a can of white paint. Not because it needs it, usually. Because it is a good excuse to stand in the sun and talk. Liam says that is what the plumb bob is for.
The plumb bob hangs now on a nail above the bench in the workshop, with its waxed string coiled beneath. Every so often, I find Liam standing under it, looking up, with an expression I cannot quite read. Last week I asked him what he was thinking. He said, “That it tells you what is true, Mom.” I said, “And what is true?” He looked out the window at the white pickets, bright in the evening light, each one straight as a promise. “That somebody noticed,” he said quietly. “Somebody was watching, the whole time. And it mattered.”
