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money?” I ask.
    “They do, sometimes. But trading is simpler. More basic. I used to trade piano playing for haircuts, food, whatever.”
    “Mama did that sometimes, like she cooked a chicken for the lady who tuned our piano.”
    “Tuning is something I never could do,” Mr. Willie says.
    Mama said Can you hum a C, Jerome , and I closed my eyes and the C came out low and clear. That boy has perfect pitch , she told Daddy, isn’t that a gift? Daddy said What’s that good for? So he can tune pianos the rest of his life?
    “My mother said I have perfect pitch,” I say.
    “Now that’s a stroke of luck,” Mr. Willie says. “Sharon had it too, even with her hearing as bad as it was.”
    I keep on digging, turning over the soil, breaking up the clods. “Where is Sharon now?”
    “Last I heard, she was staying down on Reading Road,” Mr. Willie says. “In one of those group homes.”
    I pick up a fat worm and watch it wriggle in mypalm. “After Sharon left, did Miss Myrtle still teach you piano?”
    Mr. Willie nods. “Every day. She got me ready for my audition.”
    “Audition?”
    “You had to audition to get into the music conservatory.”
    “And you got in?”
    Mr. Willie nods. “I was so nervous I could hardly stop shaking and I thought nobody can play the piano shaking like a leaf, but once I got past the first measure, I forgot all about the audition because the music was in me and it was coming out.”
    “What were you playing?”
    “Bach Invention Number Eleven in G Minor.”
    “Me and Mama were working on those inventions.”
    “They look simple but they’re hard to play. Each hand is separate, doing its own thing, but then they come back together.”
    “It’s like being with someone even when you’re not,” I say.
    Mama played the left hand and I played the right, not too loud. Sometimes we got our hands all tangled up. Our fingers are like spaghetti , she said, laughing. When she got sick I played both hands, making the melody come out louder so she could hear the tune. She closed her eyes and listened, and I heard her breathe and thought What if she just stops?
    “We’ll play those inventions someday,” Mr. Willie says.

14
    We have lunch inside the carriage house. Mr. Willie brings out a loaf of bread, peanut butter, and jelly. He makes three sandwiches, one for him, one for me, and one to share. I’m looking around Mr. Willie’s place. The floor is broken-up concrete. There’s a mattress in one corner, a few hooks with shirts, and a wooden shelf with Mr. Beethoven on top.
    “Hey, Jerome.” Monte’s voice is close, coming from outside. “Hey, Jerome, where are you?”
    I go out, holding my sandwich. “What do you want?”
    “Look.” Monte points to a big white Cadillac parked right in front of the mansion. Three white men in suits get out of the car. They walk up the front steps, but they don’t go in. Then they come around back and look at the carriage house and at me and Monte. They poke around for a few minutes in the honeysuckle bushes. Finally they get back into their Cadillac and drive back down the way they came.
    Mr. Willie comes out with a thermos. “Someone was looking at the mansion,” I say.
    “Looking isn’t buying,” he says.
    “They might buy it,” I say.
    “Might or might not. No matter. We got our work to do,” he says, reaching for the bucket.
    “Can I help?” Monte asks.
    I wish he wouldn’t follow me around, but Mr. Willie says, “I can use all the help I can get.” Then he tells Monte what size stone he needs, small, medium, or large, and Monte gets it for him.
    “Mama and Ms. Smith and Ms. Jackson were talking, and they said whoever buys this place is most definitely taking it down,” Monte says.
    “You mean the carriage house?”
    “I mean everything,” Monte says.
    We don’t need to hear what’s going to happen when Monte has no idea what he’s talking about. I didn’t need to hear either, how Mama’s hair was going to fall