“Most of it.”
The faded paint on the wedge suddenly mattered.
She looked toward him.
“You think this came from our farm.”
“Maybe.”
“From that conveyor?”
“Maybe.”
“Who has been cutting it up?”
She already knew.
The nephew.
He had been hauling scrap from the north barn for months.
Old gates.
Broken augers.
Bent steel.
Pieces no one wanted.
The farmer looked toward her.
“Don’t say anything.”
“Dad.”
“Not yet.”
“If he did this—”
“If.”
She breathed hard.
The farmer took the wedge back.
“If we accuse him now and we’re wrong, we destroy something we can’t rebuild.”
“And if we’re right?”
“Then we need more than anger.”
She looked toward the tractor.
“What are you going to do?”
The farmer smiled for the first time that day.
“Let him think it’s still broken.”
4
They pushed the tractor into the machine shed with another vehicle.
That part annoyed the old farmer.
A perfectly healthy tractor pretending to be dead offended him on principle.
But appearances mattered.
They closed the main door.
The farmer disconnected the battery so no one could start it accidentally.
Then he and his daughter drove to the north barn.
The old feed conveyor lay behind weeds.
Most of the frame had been dismantled.
Green-painted flat bar remained along the base.
The farmer knelt.
His daughter found it first.
“Here.”
One section had been cut recently.
Bright metal beneath rust.
The remaining bar was the same thickness as the wedge.
Same width.
The daughter placed her fingers along the cut.
“You could make that wedge from this.”
“Yes.”
“That proves—”
“Material.”
She stopped.
Right.
Not person.
The farmer photographed the cut.
They walked into the barn.
An angle grinder sat on a bench.
The daughter looked at it.
“His?”
“Farm’s.”
“Who used it last?”
The farmer smiled tiredly.
“Everybody.”
She cursed under her breath.
The farmer unplugged the grinder.
Examined the wheel.
Fresh use.
Meaningless on a working farm.
Still.
He photographed it.
The daughter watched.
“You’ve become suspicious.”
“No.”
“What do you call this?”
“Being careful after somebody locked my tractor.”
She crossed her arms.
“What if it isn’t him?”
“Then I’ll be glad.”
“What if it is?”
The old farmer looked toward the field beyond the barn.
“Then I’ll still wish it wasn’t.”
That evening, the nephew arrived.
He did not usually visit after dark.
The farmer noticed that too.
The nephew stepped from his truck holding a folder.
“What did the shop say?”
The old farmer sat at the kitchen table.
His daughter remained in the next room where she could hear.
“Bad.”
The nephew sat.
“How bad?”
“Could need splitting.”
“I told you.”
The old farmer looked at him.
“Told me what?”
“That tractor was done.”
“You said if it died, we’d have a problem.”