The boy's mother stopped using index cards.
She opened an unused ledger from the farm office.
Customer.
Address.
Plate number.
Quantity.
Price.
Paid.
Shipped.
She created a separate column for postage.
The father watched her.
“This is getting ridiculous.”
The phone rang.
His mother looked at him.
“You answer.”
He did.
“Hello?”
The caller wanted 32-A.
The father looked toward his son.
The boy held up five fingers.
Father told caller.
The caller wanted all five.
The father covered the receiver.
“How much?”
The boy whispered:
“Ask him what he thinks they're worth.”
The father glared.
“You ask every buyer that?”
“Sometimes.”
The father returned.
“What are you offering?”
The caller said something.
The father's eyebrows rose.
He covered the phone again.
“Thirty-five each.”
The boy's eyes widened.
His mother whispered:
“Say yes before he changes his mind.”
The father did.
One hundred seventy-five dollars.
The phone rang twice during dinner.
Again at 8:30.
Again Sunday morning.
Again Sunday afternoon.
By Monday, the phrase “phone started ringing” stopped being funny.
The landline became nearly unusable.
His mother missed a call from her sister because two equipment dealers kept calling back.
The boy's father called the phone company.
“How much for a second line?”
His wife stared.
“You are getting him a business line?”
“I am getting us our house phone back.”
The second line was installed nine days later in the machine shed.
The boy paid the installation cost.
That mattered to his father.
The family mounted an answering machine beside the workbench.
On the first day, it filled its tape before the boy returned from school.
Seventeen messages.
He stood in the shed listening.
Iowa.
Missouri.
Wisconsin.
Illinois.
Kansas.
Ohio.
One caller from Pennsylvania.
The boy had never been east of Indiana.
Yet someone in Pennsylvania knew his family's phone number because of rusted plates he bought from a farm auction.
That evening, his father sat beside him as they returned calls.
At 10:20, after the last one, the father looked toward the order ledger.
“How much have you sold?”
The boy calculated.
“About seventeen hundred.”
His father stared.
“In ten days?”
“Yes.”
“How much inventory is gone?”
The boy checked.
“Seventy-two plates.”
The father looked toward the shelves.
More than eight hundred remained.
Neither spoke for a while.
Then his father said:
“Your grandfather would be unbearable right now.”
The boy laughed.
“He'd say he knew.”
“He would absolutely say he knew.”
“He didn't.”