Blue.
Black.
Green.
Red.
The oldest sat in a cabinet beneath the bench.
May pulled out three.
She opened 1976.
Handwritten entries.
Carburetor.
Bearings.
Fuel.
Invoices.
Then:
March 11 — dealer settlement asset purchase. 4 tractors / implements / parts inventory. $3,850. Paid Farmers State.
Attached behind the page with brittle tape was a receipt.
Four serial numbers.
The last:
XFD-17-004.
May sat down on the floor.
Her grandfather had bought it.
Not stolen.
Not abandoned.
Purchased.
Legally.
The receipt listed ownership transferred from Prairie Plains Deere Cooperative bankruptcy settlement to Cutler Repair.
Henry whispered:
“Well, there’s your tractor.”
But it still was not that easy.
Cutler Repair had been a business partnership between Samuel’s father and uncle.
The company dissolved later.
Who inherited assets?
Samuel’s grandfather? Wait. Need keep lineage. May's grandfather and grand-uncle.
Records had to be traced.
May spent a week with an attorney named June Harris.
Unlike Miles Archer, June wore boots, hated unnecessary meetings, and charged farmers a reduced rate if they brought organized documents.
May brought six folders.
June looked impressed.
“Your father taught you paperwork too?”
“He hated paperwork.”
“So did mine.”
They reconstructed the chain.
Cutler Repair dissolved in 1987.
Samuel bought out his uncle’s remaining equipment.
A dissolution schedule listed:
All remaining tractors, tools, machinery, parts and equipment to Samuel Cutler.
No serials.
But enough when combined with the 1976 purchase receipt.
Then Samuel’s estate transferred personal property to May.
The tractor was hers.
Calvin’s abandonment argument depended on proving Samuel intentionally relinquished it.
There were no certified abandonment notices.
No storage invoices.
No demand letters.
Instead, May found one more document.
A handwritten agreement attached to the property sale.
Purchaser acknowledges seller may access south machine shed for removal of personal property without storage fee until mutually completed.
No fixed date.
Signed:
Samuel Cutler.
Calvin Rusk.
June smiled.
“That’s better.”
“How better?”
“Because his company later represented the machine as abandoned.”
May looked toward the document.
“So?”
“So now I want to know when he decided your father stopped being allowed access.”
May remembered something.
“Dad went there.”
“When?”
“After Mom died.”
“How do you know?”
“He came home angry.”
“What did he say?”
May closed her eyes.
Memory.
Samuel throwing his gloves onto the kitchen counter.
Rusk changed the damn locks.
She had been fifteen.
She barely listened.
Her mother had been dead four months.
Everything adults complained about sounded irrelevant.
“What else?”
June asked.