Chapter 9: The Swing

On Saturday morning Winslow was standing at the park gate on Congress Street twenty minutes before the visit started.

He had brought a toolbox.

"The swing's broken," he said.

"There's no swing."

"There's a swing. The chain's come off the hook on the baby one. I walked past it last week."

"You walked past a park."

"I walked past it every day," he said. "In case you came."

I had no answer to that, so I pushed the stroller through the gate with my chin up.

Bea sat down on a bench thirty feet away with a thermos and a paperback.

She was the supervisor the judge wanted.

She turned a page without reading it.

The baby swing was at the far end by the fence.

One of the two chains hung loose from the frame, and the little rubber seat lay on the wood chips.

Winslow knelt in front of it and opened the toolbox.

He took a pair of leather work gloves out of his coat pocket and pulled them on over his bandages.

It took him a long time.

He did it without a word.

"Does that hurt?" I asked.

"No."

"You said no too fast."

"I can't carry a toolbox in gauze," he said, and he tightened a bolt with a socket wrench he held in a fist.

I stood with June in my arms and watched him work.

He had taken off his coat at last, because the day was warm, and folded it on the grass.

Underneath he wore a grey long-sleeved shirt with the cuffs buttoned down to his wrists.

I watched his forearms flex through the cloth as he leaned on the wrench.

I watched the line of his shoulders, which I knew, and the way he held his weight on one knee.

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