June wrote down the figures. The old farmer in the seed jacket leaned closer, stopping when he saw the barrier. He introduced himself as Arthur Bell, said he had harvested corn since before Martha was born, and admitted he had believed the dealer's conclusion about the machine. When Martha asked what the conclusion had been based on, Arthur rubbed his chin. "They said it needed a motor," he replied. "Didn't say what they checked. I didn't think to ask."
Martha nodded. She did not blame him. People trusted specialists because their own days were full of work outside the specialist's trade. A farmer who owned a machine did not have to know everything inside it. But the person making a costly diagnosis ought to be able to show the path from evidence to conclusion. She had made a rule for her shop: when a customer asked why a part needed replacing, the explanation would be understandable even if the underlying mechanics were complicated. She had lost impatient clients over that rule and kept better ones.
Near the engine frame, a thick ground strap ran behind a bracket crowded with dust and old residue. June aimed the flashlight while Martha found a safe angle to examine the fitting. A pale halo of corrosion showed where the cable met the frame. From above, the strap appeared intact. At the crimp, under a blackened sleeve, several strands of copper had separated. Martha could not yet say whether that single failure accounted for every symptom, but the damaged conductor was real, and its position matched the voltage drop. That mattered more than Calvin's opinion of how long the machine had sat idle.
"There's our first fault," Martha said.
June leaned closer. "Could a cable really make three shops give up?"
"A cable can make somebody stop looking. Whether that's what happened here, I don't know."
They isolated the electrical system before removing anything. The old fastener resisted, then gave with a gritty scrape. Beneath it, corrosion had built between the contact and the frame. The rear of the crimp was worse than the front. Martha laid the removed strap on a rag where anyone could see the broken metal. June compared it with a heavy cable from their service stock, checked that the replacement was appropriate for the application, and passed it over. Martha watched June's hands, offering a correction only when the apprentice reached toward a part that still needed cleaning. June adjusted without defensiveness. Together they restored the connection and checked their work.
Calvin had been drifting between the John Deere and the auction platform, pretending the outcome did not interest him. When he saw the old cable on the rag, he came closer. "That's your miracle?" he asked. "A wire?"
"It's a damaged connection," Martha said. "We haven't called it anything else."
"Waterloo's shop had it for two days."
"Then they should be able to show you their tests."
"You're wasting your morning."
"It's my morning now," she replied.