The Second Pair of Hands

Hallam built water wheels, and his wheels were the best on the river. He worked alone. He cut every spoke and fitted every bucket himself. When a neighbor offered a hand, he said the work was nearly done, though it never was.

His wheels turned true for a season. Then they began to fail in the same place. A bucket would work loose at the third bolt, always the third. Hallam mended it, and the next wheel failed there too. He could not see why. He had been looking at his own work for forty years, and he saw only what he had meant to make.

A widow's son came to the yard one spring, a boy of twelve, sent to learn something. Hallam gave him a mallet and a bucket to set, and went to the shed for pitch.

When he came back, the boy had set the bucket backward. The lip faced the wrong way, and it was plain at a glance.

Hallam felt the old anger rise. Then he looked at the boy's face. The boy was waiting. He was not afraid. He was waiting to be shown.

So Hallam did not pull the bucket out. He knelt and asked why the boy had set it that way. The boy said the grain of the board ran toward the rim, and a lip should follow the grain.

Hallam looked at the board. The grain did run that way. For forty years he had set every lip the same, against the grain, because his master had done it so and he had never asked.

He turned the bucket around that evening and mounted the wheel. It turned heavier at first, then lighter. By autumn it was the only wheel on the river that did not shed its third bolt.

Hallam kept the boy through the winter. The boy ruined a good ash plank, split a spoke, and lost the pitch pot in the stream.

Hallam let each mistake stand a moment before he spoke. Some of them taught him something.