The auctioneer was still laughing when the thirteen-year-old farm boy counted the last of his summer money into a leather-gloved hand.
Three hundred and eighty-seven dollars.
That was what eleven weeks of cleaning cattle stalls before sunrise, stacking hay in ninety-degree heat, repairing fence for neighbors, gathering stones from soybean fields, and washing grease from equipment had become.
Three hundred and eighty-seven dollars in folded bills.
And now almost all of it belonged to an auction company.
In return, the boy owned three battered wooden crates containing nearly nine hundred rusty circles of metal that almost everyone else in the auction yard considered scrap.
The auctioneer lifted one of the discs by its edge.
Rust flaked onto the gravel.
“Well, boys,” he announced loudly, “we finally found somebody willing to pay good money for nine hundred pounds of holes.”
The farmers standing around the crates laughed.
The thirteen-year-old felt his face burn.
He kept his eyes down.
A heavyset farmer wearing faded bib overalls slapped another man on the shoulder.
“Kid could've bought himself a used dirt bike.”
“Or a decent shotgun.”
“Or put it in the bank.”
Another man shook his head.
“His daddy know what he just did?”
More laughter.
The farm boy tightened his grip on the small stack of bills he still had left.
Twenty-three dollars and some change.
That was all.
The auctioneer tossed the rusted disc toward the crate.
The boy instinctively reached out and caught it before it struck the pile.
Something about the disc felt different.
He had noticed it before the bidding.
That was the reason he had raised his number in the first place.
It was heavier than the others.
Thicker around the center.
And although most of its surface was coated with reddish-brown corrosion, the holes had been drilled with extraordinary precision.
Not random holes.
Not crude homemade work.
Each opening was perfectly spaced around the circumference.
The edges had been machined.
Someone had once cared very much about getting those dimensions right.
The boy rubbed his dirty glove across the back.
The auctioneer grinned.
“Planning on planting rust?”
The farmers laughed again.
The boy did not answer.
He wiped harder.
A raised number slowly appeared beneath the corrosion.
24-B.
Below it was another mark.
A small symbol.
Not quite a letter.
Not quite a logo.
The boy had seen it before.
He turned the disc toward the light.
His grandfather's workshop came back to him.