"He calls it the flag," Win said. He was stippling resin into the third layer and did not look up. "As long as the flag's flying, people think the fort's still standing. People don't buy cars from a dealership they think is going under. They buy from the one with the red Corvette." He stippled. "So every Saturday I drive the flag around Elyria so nobody knows the fort's on fire. And everybody waves at me. And kids from Furnace Street look at me like I'm the luckiest guy in Ohio." He finally looked over at me. "And I go home and eat Hamburger Helper with my dad, because the housekeeper's gone too, and he reads the GMAC letters at the table and doesn't think I see."
I didn't know what to say. I mixed another cup of resin and counted the drops.
"Your house on Washington," Dennis said, from his bucket. "With the columns."
"Second mortgage," said Win. "Since Christmas."
The third night was sanding and filler and more sanding, until the patch was smooth with the door and you could run your hand over it with your eyes closed and not find it. Then primer. Then guide coat, a dusting of black over the primer that Dennis made us sand off again, to show the low spots, and then more glazing putty in the low spots, and then sanding again. Then, near midnight, Hutch put down his coffee cup and came out of his corner for the first time all week, and mixed the red himself.
He did it in a paper cup under the fluorescent light, adding drops of tint from little cans with a stir stick, painting a swatch on a scrap of cardboard, holding it against the Corvette's fender, frowning, adding another drop. It took him forty minutes. Win and Dennis and I sat on buckets and watched him, nobody talking. It was like watching somebody tune a piano.
"There," he said finally. "That's as close as God and Du Pont are going to let us get."
He let Win spray it. He stood behind him the whole time with his hand very lightly on Win's elbow, guiding the gun, the distance, the overlap, and he said, quietly, "Steady. Steady. You're not trying to hide it. You're trying to finish it. That's different."
We waited for it to flash off and then for the clear coat to cure under the heat lamps, and at some point after two in the morning, all three of us fell asleep on the floor of Hutch Vukovich's shop, on flattened cardboard