"Twelve Saturdays," Grandpa said eventually. He'd gotten two mugs of coffee from the pot on the workbench, and he handed one to Caleb without asking whether Caleb drank coffee. Caleb didn't. He held it. "Twelve Saturdays, eight to two. Didn't miss a one. Had the flu in February, came anyway, I sent him home. He came back the next week and did double to make it up. I didn't ask him to."
"He did all this?"
"Every bin. I drilled the shelves. That's it. That's all I did." Grandpa took a sip of his coffee and looked at the wall the way some men look at a good truck. "I been meaning to sort that mess since your grandmother was alive. Kid comes out here in January with a piece of notebook paper and a business proposal. Twenty a Saturday, he says, and if he does twelve, I put in the rest." He snorted. "Negotiated me up from fifteen. Little shark."
"The rest of what?"
Grandpa looked at him sideways. "You know what."
Caleb did know. He'd known since the label that said COTTER PINS (WEIRD), maybe. Maybe since the flamingo. He held the coffee and felt the heat of it in his palms.
"Mom said she couldn't afford it," he said. "She wasn't lying."
"Your mother doesn't lie. She just doesn't tell. Gets that from me." Grandpa set his mug down on the workbench. He pulled out a stool and sat on it, slowly, the way he did everything now, like his knees were a negotiation. "Jordan had a hundred and eighty in Christmas money and some birthday cash from your dad. Twelve Saturdays is two-forty. I put in the rest, plus the tax. Your mom bought the game. That's the whole thing. That's all the money there was."
"What game?"
"Hell if I know. Some boat thing. Lighthouses. Two-person deal, he said. Has to be two. Can't play it alone." Grandpa looked at him. "And the extra controller. The red one. That was his. Came out of his twenty-a-week. He was real particular about the red."
Caleb put the coffee down on the workbench next to Grandpa's, because his hands had started doing something he didn't like.
"Cosmic Red," he said.
"That sounds right."