The men continued watching.
When the largest sheller was finally settled in the truck bed, Rafe shook his head.
"I'll give you a week."
Hazel tightened a strap.
"For what?"
"Before you realize you've bought three useless piles of rust."
Clay laughed.
Ned nodded.
Hazel looked toward them.
For a moment, she considered arguing.
Then she smiled faintly.
"Maybe."
Rafe looked surprised.
She continued.
"But for three dollars, I think I can afford to find out."
Wy laughed.
The older farmers didn't.
For some reason, her calm answer irritated them more than an angry argument would have.
Rafe folded his arms.
"Well, don't come asking us for help."
Hazel climbed into the passenger seat.
She looked toward him through the open window.
"Wasn't planning to."
Wy started the engine.
They drove slowly down the gravel road with three rusted pea shellers secured in the back.
Behind them, the farmers returned to the sale.
Within an hour, Rafe was telling anyone who would listen about the pretty young fool who'd paid good money for scrap metal.
By lunchtime, the story had reached the feed store.
By evening, it had reached the gas station.
And before Hazel finished unloading the machines at her grandmother's farm, half the people who knew the Pennington family had already heard that she was trying to build a business out of junk.
But Hazel wasn't thinking about business yet.
She was thinking about the way the small wooden sheller had moved when she tested its handle.
And about something her grandmother had told her the previous summer.
Pearl Combs was sixty-two years old, with silver-streaked brown hair, strong hands, and a face that had weathered decades of summer heat and winter wind. She had spent most of her life growing, harvesting, preserving, and preparing food for people who rarely had enough money to waste any of it.
She lived in the old white farmhouse at the end of the hollow, where the hills rose behind the garden and a narrow creek ran alongside the pasture.
Pearl had been freezing vegetables since long before Hazel was born.
She grew beans.
Corn.
Squash.
Tomatoes.
And several varieties of field peas.
But her favorite were purple-hull peas.
She planted them every spring, watched the pods turn deep purple as they matured, and harvested them in stages before the late-summer heat made the work miserable.