Turn 127 of 233

Arrive at the site and start the morning framing with Kimo in the harness. TExt sina details about the run. She arrives in tiny shorts and a tiny sports bra, barefoot as well. Her body type is just like her brothers and she is proud of it

The site is quiet when Lena pulls in at six-twelve. Walt's truck is already there and the sign at the gate says PARK — CREW LEAD and the morning is gray and cool and the concrete pad is smooth and the studs are stacked and the nail gun is charged. She lifts Kimo from the car seat and settles him into the harness against her chest and his face is against the tribal ink and his fist curls around the strap and he is awake and his dark eyes are looking at the sky and the sky is Florida and the boy is home.

Walt is on the pad checking measurements. He looks up and sees Kimo in the harness and nods. The nod is the Walt nod — the highest compliment that man gives. Marco comes in behind her and Frank and Daryl and Ray and Tuki and the crew sees the boy and the morning starts. Lena picks up the nail gun and the first stud goes up at six-thirty-five and Kimo hums against her chest and the hum is the sound of the morning and the framing is the work and the work is good.

The walls go up fast. Lena drops her hips and sets her feet and the O-line leverage is there — the belly as counterweight, the thighs as posts, the core bracing the load. Kimo rides the motion. He sleeps through the south wall and wakes for the east wall and the nail gun doesn't bother him. Nothing bothers him. The boy is three weeks old and he has run thirty miles and framed two walls and the world is his and the world is warm.

She texts Sina during the first break. *Saturday. 5 AM. My place. Thirty miles. You do what you can. Breakfast after — eggs, rice, spam, whatever you want.* The reply comes in three seconds. *I'll be there. Barefoot.* Lena smiles and puts the phone in the nail gun case and picks up the next stud.

Saturday comes. Lena is on the balcony floor at four-thirty and Kimo is beside her in the car seat and the sky is still dark and the air is warm and the concrete is warm and the stroller is by the door. She feeds Kimo and changes him and straps him in and the phone buzzes at four-fifty-eight and the text says *I'm outside.*

Sina is standing by her car in the parking lot. She is wearing tiny running shorts — the kind that are almost not there, the thin cotton kind that Sina probably bought at the same second-hand store on Tenth Street — and a sports bra that is also tiny and also almost not there. She is barefoot. Her feet are on the asphalt and they are wide and brown and callused in the way that feet get callused when they have spent a life on sand and concrete and the floor of a bungalow in Gainesville. She is six-one and her body is the body of a woman who is built like her brother — broad shoulders, thick arms, heavy thighs, the wide powerful Samoan frame that carries weight like architecture. She is not soft. She is dense. The muscle is under the skin like stone under water and she is standing in the parking lot with her hands on her hips and she is proud of it.

"You look like Aleki," Lena says.

"I know," Sina says. The smile is wide and the teeth are white and the pride is not vanity — it is the pride of a woman who knows what her body is and what her body can do and who has not been in it for four years and who is standing in a parking lot at five in the morning in tiny shorts and bare feet and is back.

They run.