It's Never too Late

“Can you do hair?”

She’d done Gran’s toward the end when her grandmother couldn’t get enough air in her lungs to make it across the room, even with her oxygen tank, let alone make it to the hairdresser’s.

“Yes.”

“Can you get it done before my grandson stops in after class? He thinks he’s going to do it for me before he goes to work, and as good as that boy is at some things, I don’t ever want him touching my curls again. I look like a damned boy when he gets done with me.”

“I’m sure someone at the shop in town would come out and do it for you,” Addy offered, because she was Adrianna Keller and had work to do. And because she wouldn’t always be next door to Nonnie Heber.

“I don’t want Mark to have to spend the money on it. If you can’t do it, I’ll be fine looking like a boy....”

She heard the ploy even as she gave in to it. “Do you want it cut and curled or just washed and cut?”

“I want whatever much you can do.”

“You got hair scissors and rollers?”

“Brung ’em with me.”

A full do would take her about an hour. Looking at the clock, Addy said, “I’ll be there in five.”

* * *

THREE DIFFERENT GIRLS made it privately obvious that they were vying to be Mark’s lab partner in his entry-level fire and combustion class. Three of the four girls in his class. He asked Jon Swartz, a guy he’d seen walking with a kid into shop downtown, to partner up with him.

He was the oldest guy in class. Jon was easily the second oldest. He didn’t need coed complications.

He wasn’t there to interact with students. He was there to learn about things he used to think he already knew.

“You want to light it or should I?” Jon asked, referring to the small mound they’d built in the stainless-steel utility sink—their rendition of combustible composition, solid fuel. They’d used a piece of construction paper, rolled and standing upright. They’d doused the paper in chlorine, which was an oxidizing agent. The dousing was their chain reaction. All that was missing was the heat.

“You light to flash point,” Mark said with a grin. “I’ll do fire point.”

Jon smirked. “Sure, man, you take the easy one!”

He had. And next time, Jon probably wasn’t going to give him the choice.

Half an hour later, they were walking out of class, both of them heading to the parking lot. “Good call, standing the paper vertically,” Jon said as they separated from the rest of the students in their lab.

The quicker burn, as opposed to the horizontal, slower burning position all of the other students had used, had won them bonus points on top of their A.

“Can’t say that I came up with that on my own,” Mark told his lab partner. “Cylinders at the gasification plant where I work are manipulated on a vertical axis when a quicker burn is needed.” He was only one week into his classes and just beginning to comprehend all that he had yet to learn, but at least some of what he’d learned back home was relevant.

“Where is there a gasification plant around here?” Jon kept pace with him.

“Sorry, where I used to work, back home. I work out at the cactus jelly plant now.”

“No kidding. I tried to get a job there. I really need the benefits. They work around your school hours?”

“Yeah. They’ve been great, so far.”

“You on the line?”

“Supervising.” It sounded egotistical so he added, “I’ve been doing full-time plant work since I was sixteen. My experience is what got me the position.”

“You’re supervising?” The dark-haired guy sent him a sideways glance. “You think you could get me in there?”

He had no idea but said what came naturally, “I’ll see what I can do, buddy. You working now?”