The knot inside her chest loosened.
She looked toward the auction doors.
“The engine turns.”
“That doesn’t mean it runs.”
“I know.”
“Oil?”
“Black, but no water.”
“Metal?”
“None I could see.”
“Coolant?”
“Low. Not empty.”
“Compression?”
“I checked by hand.”
Daniel’s expression changed slightly.
“And?”
“Feels even.”
“Starter?”
“Turns the motor.”
“Fuel?”
“That’s the weird part.”
Daniel waited.
Ellie lowered her voice.
“Line has fuel.”
“Pump?”
“Looks recently serviced.”
“How recently?”
“New gasket.”
Daniel stopped leaning against the pickup.
“What else?”
“The fuel shutoff linkage is polished on one side.”
“Meaning?”
“Somebody’s been touching it.”
“Could be from normal use.”
“The tractor’s been sitting long enough to grow weeds under the axle.”
Daniel looked toward the barn again.
“Anything else?”
Ellie hesitated.
“The auction sticker.”
“What about it?”
“It’s new.”
“That’s normal.”
“Underneath it there’s another sticker.”
Daniel frowned.
“From where?”
“I couldn’t read it. Somebody scraped most of it off.”
He studied his daughter for several seconds.
Then he opened the pickup door.
“Well.”
“What?”
“We need a trailer.”
Ellie smiled.
“You think I’m right?”
“I think you spent one hundred eighty dollars to find out.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Daniel climbed into the truck.
“It’s the only one you’re getting until the tractor is home.”
They borrowed a flatbed from Daniel’s friend Mike Ellison, who owned a welding shop three miles east of town.
Mike laughed too when he heard.
Not cruelly.
Still enough that Ellie noticed.
“You bought that Deere?”
“Yes.”
Mike looked at Daniel.
“You allowed this?”
Daniel shrugged.
“Not my money.”
“Parent of the year.”
“That’s what I keep telling people.”
Mike looked at Ellie.
“Supposedly blown engine.”
“Supposedly.”
Mike smiled.
“You sound like your father.”
“That’s usually a warning.”
“It is.”
By four that afternoon, the tractor sat inside the Mercer machinery shed.
The Mercer farm was small compared with most operations in the county.
One hundred sixteen acres.
Corn on forty-eight.
Soybeans on thirty-two.
The remaining ground held pasture, a hay field, house, barns, and equipment.
Daniel supplemented farm income repairing machinery for neighbors from the shop behind the barn.
That shop had become Ellie’s classroom years before school ever introduced her to algebra.
She had learned fractions from socket sizes.
Pressure from hydraulics.
Combustion from engines.
Patience from rusted bolts.
The tractor sat beneath three fluorescent strips while afternoon light entered through the western doors.
Daniel rolled his tool chest closer.
Then stopped.
Ellie looked at him.
“What?”
“You bought it.”