Chapter Fifteen K: The Shed Behind the Center
The community center caretaker met them the following afternoon with a ring of keys and an expression of mild suspicion.
His name was Arthur Pike, and he had managed the building for twenty-seven years.
He remembered Dennis because the man had once repaired a broken stair without charging the center.
“I don’t know whether the backdrop survived the roof leak,” Arthur said.
“Nobody has opened that shed since the storage rooms were reorganized.”
Evan asked him to unlock the door while Iris waited beside Marla.
Arthur pulled on the handle, but the swollen wood would not move.
He returned with a rubber mallet and tapped the frame until the latch released.
Inside, cardboard boxes sat beneath a dusty tarpaulin.
The painted trolley leaned against the far wall with one corner resting on a broken chair.
Its blue paint had faded, and a long white scratch crossed the front window.
Marla stepped inside without speaking.
She touched the painted wheel with two fingers.
“He drew that line three times,” she said.
“He couldn’t make the curve look right.”
Iris asked whether she could film the backdrop where it stood.
Marla nodded, but she asked Iris not to move anything until she had looked at it properly.
Arthur brought a work light from the center.
Its beam revealed a row of tiny pencil marks beside the trolley door.
Each mark represented the height of a child who had helped paint the backdrop.
Marla recognized the initials of Dennis’s niece and two neighborhood boys who had moved away years earlier.
“He wanted everyone to have a part in it,
” she said.
Evan examined the damaged corner.
“We can brace this without covering the old paint,” he said.
Arthur offered a spare piece of plywood from the maintenance room.
Together, they lifted the backdrop onto a pair of supports and attached the brace behind it.
Iris filmed their hands rather than their faces.
The work took an hour because the old wood splintered whenever they tried to tighten a screw.
At last, the trolley stood upright beneath the shed’s small window.
Marla stepped back and smiled at something only she remembered.
“He used to say the doors looked too narrow,” she said.
“I told him the passengers would have to turn sideways.”
Arthur laughed.
“I remember him asking me whether we had any yellow paint left.”
Iris recorded the conversation with Marla’s permission.
She did not ask anyone to repeat a line or stand in a different position.
When the light began to fade, Evan helped Arthur lock the shed.
Marla stayed behind for a moment, looking at the painted trolley through the doorway.
“I thought Nolan was the last person who remembered what Dennis tried to do,” she said.
“I was wrong.”
