"Six hundred and forty-one dollars," she said.
Linh squeaked.
"That's the best day this stand has ever had," her mother said. "I'm almost sure of it. Mama never did six hundred. Not even in the seventies." She looked up at June, and her eyes were full. "Where did you learn to do that? How did you—"
June opened her mouth.
"No," her mother said quickly. She held up a hand. "No. Don't tell me. I don't want to know." She laughed, wet. "I never wanted to know. I think I just wanted to be the kind of person who could watch it."
There was a payphone outside the campground shower house, under a light swarming with moths. June called home collect at ten-forty. It rang nine times before her father picked up, and she could hear in the way he said "Yeah?" that he had been asleep in his chair with the TV on.
"Dad, it's me."
"Junie. Everything okay? What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong." She told him. She told him all of it, the thread and Wendell and the counterweight, because she had to tell somebody and he had always been the one who wanted to know how things worked. He'd taught her to solder when she was eight. When she got to the part about six hundred and forty-one dollars, he didn't say anything at all.
"Dad?"
"I'm here." His voice sounded strange. Thick. "That's real good, honey. That's real good."
"We could make it. If it keeps going like this. We could make the whole payment. Mom thinks so."
There was a long silence on the line, full of eighty miles of crackle.