The Furnace on Gil’s Sidewalk

Mom had been up since five. She had coffee on and a coffee cake in the oven, and she had her good apron on over her housedress, the one with the little blue flowers. She was not wearing her coat. Abner had told her he would have heat back by ten, and she had decided to believe him.

The men went down the basement stairs, and I stayed in the kitchen with Mom for a while. We could hear them working through the floor. The rattle of ductwork. A wrench on a gas union. Royce saying something and Abner laughing once, short.

“Your dad used to go down there every October,” Mom said. “Every year. He’d vacuum it out and change the filter and write the date on it. He didn’t know a thing about furnaces, but he said a thing you take care of takes care of you.”

“I know, Mom. I remember.”

“He used to hum when he worked down there,” she said. “Hymns. ‘How Great Thou Art,’ mostly. The vent goes right up past the kitchen and I could hear him through the register. I used to stand by this stove and listen to him.”

She was looking at the floor register by the stove, the old cast iron one with the scrollwork.

At about half past eight the men carried Gil’s new furnace up the basement stairs between them, Abner at the bottom, Royce at the top. It is not as heavy as people think, a little over a hundred pounds, but it is awkward. They set it in the front room on a moving blanket.

Then Abner and Royce brought Mom’s old furnace in off the porch and carried it down. That took longer, because the stairs are narrow and old and turn at the bottom.

“Where’s the box?” Abner asked me, coming back up for his tools. “The box the new one came in. Did Gil’s boys haul it off?”

“Ask Mom.”

She did not have to be asked. She was already going out to the garage, and she came back pulling a big cardboard carton behind her by one flap. She had flattened it neatly and tied it with baler twine and stood it against the wall behind the lawnmower.

“You don’t throw away a good box,” she said, when Royce laughed.

Royce helped tape it back into shape on the front room floor, and then he went home to get ready for his grandson’s basketball game in Stratford, and he would not take a cup of coffee for the road, only a piece of the coffee cake wrapped in a napkin.

Abner went back down by himself. He was down there almost another hour. I could hear him moving around. The new inducer going on. The flex connector. The vent pipe going back together, joint by joint. Then a long quiet, which I knew was him checking every connection twice with his leak spray.

At twenty to ten he came to the bottom of the stairs and called up. “Velma. Turn your thermostat up for me.”

Mom went to the thermostat in the hall. It is the old round kind, the dial with the little silver needle. Her hand was not quite steady. She turned it up to seventy.

Down in the basement there was a click, and then a soft whir, the new old motor spinning up, smooth and even. A pause. Then a low whump, the burners catching, and then the deep, steady breath of the blower.