He saw us. He saw the cast. He turned off the shop radio, which had been playing a Tigers game, and wiped his hands on a rag, and came out to the edge of the bay and stood there with the rag hanging from his fist.
"Bogdan," he said to Mr. Okonski.
"Hutch."
"I heard."
"Figured you might have."
Hutch looked at Dennis. Dennis looked back at him. It took everything Dennis had, I could see it, not to look down at the ground.
"Let's see it," said Hutch.
Dennis held out the cast. Hutch did not touch it. He looked at the angle of the taped fingers and the swelling that pushed up out of the top of the plaster, and he nodded slowly, like a doctor who does not need to see the X-ray.
"Fifth metacarpal," he said.
"Yes, sir."
"Boxer's break. Every idiot in every bar in the county has had one." He was quiet for a second. "I had one. Nineteen fifty-one. Korea. Hit a sergeant." He looked up. "You know what it cost me?"
"No, sir."
"About a year of my grip. Took me till 'fifty-three to hold a hammer right." He folded the rag over once. "And I wasn't a kid starting in a trade. I was a kid with nothing to lose."
"I know," Dennis said.
"I don't think you do." Hutch's voice was not angry. That was the worst of it. If he had been angry, Dennis could have stood there and taken it. Instead he sounded tired, and disappointed, the way you sound when somebody you have bet on stumbles at the first turn. "Son, I've got an insurance man who comes around every January and asks me who's working on the floor. I've got customers who leave me their cars with their kids' car seats in the back. I told you two things. Keep your nose clean, keep your hands in one piece. I didn't tell you that because I'm an old man who likes to give speeches. I told you that because those are the two things a body man can't do his job without."
"Yes, sir."
"So here's where we are. September's off. You can't learn this trade one-handed and I can't put you on the floor with that thing on your arm." He held up a hand before Dennis could speak. "I'm not saying never. I'm saying you come back when the doctor says the bone's knit and the grip's back, and you show me, and then we talk about it. And I'll be honest with you, Dennis, because you deserve honest. I don't know what I'll say. I don't know if the