"Birdie."
"I'm only standing right here. I'm not in the road. I'm on the gravel."
"Stay on the gravel, then."
"I am staying on the gravel." She came and stood about three feet from the woman with her hands jammed in the pockets of her purple parka and her chin up, looking at the red hair with an expression Dale knew well. It was the same expression she'd worn the first time she saw the Mackinac Bridge.
"Hi," said the woman.
"Hi. Your hair is really red."
"Birdie," said Dale, into the wheel well.
"It's all right," said the woman. "It is really red. I've had it my whole life and I still notice. What's your name?"
"Bridget Karen Haapala. But Birdie. Everybody says Birdie except Mrs. Anttila when I'm in trouble. That's my dad. His name is Dale. He can fix anything."
"Can he."
"Anything. He fixed the furnace at the Methodist church when it blew up and he fixed Mr. Lindberg's Buick probably a hundred times and he fixed the Zamboni at the ice rink in Marquette one time when they called him special. And he fixed my bike after I went off the dock with it."
"Off the dock?"
"On purpose," said Birdie, "kind of." She was warming up now. Dale could hear it. She had been a quiet kid for about a year after her mother, and then one day she'd started talking again and never really stopped, and he'd never once wished she would. "He taught me stuff, too. I can change a tire. Well, I can do the lug nuts in a star, you have to do them in a star so the wheel sits flat, and I can check the oil, and I know what a bad wheel bearing sounds like. Dad says I've got the best ears in Alger County. Arvo says so too. Arvo works for us. He's seventy-three."