The phone rang more often as the weather dragged on. One caller wanted to know if she could make a broken planter shaft hold another season. Another asked whether she had heard that the chain store would stop delivering fertilizer to accounts under a certain size. She hadn't heard it, but she could hear the concern beneath the question. Small farmers kept a close watch on every rule that might cost them one more trip, one more fee, or one more piece of equipment.
Late one afternoon, Frank Pruitt himself returned. He looked older inside than he had on the day he delivered the key, and he favored his left side when he walked. He set a folded newspaper on the counter and told Rachel he'd heard she was a good mechanic. She thanked him, unsure whether the remark was an opening to a repair request or a warning.
"Earl told me you found the board," Frank said.
"He also told me you brought six back. I'm glad you did."
Frank nodded toward the rear room. "That spreader ought to be useful yet. Just because I'm too stiff to pull it across my fields doesn't mean the others should have to buy a new one."
"It needs work."
"So do I," Frank said. "Doesn't mean I'm ready for the scrap pile."
Rachel laughed before she could help it. Frank studied the invoices on the counter, then asked what she charged to inspect a machine. When she told him, he carefully took a small envelope from his jacket pocket. Inside were three five-dollar bills and a folded note that read FOR SIX, FROM FRANK.
"I don't own this machine," Rachel protested.
"Neither do I all by myself. That's the point." Frank slid the envelope toward her. "You tell Earl I finally paid what I owe. He'll get a kick out of that."
She didn't want to accept money without understanding who had authority over the spreader. She said so, and Frank nodded as if that were a sensible objection rather than an insult. "Hold it until you figure the books out, then," he said. "Walter would have done the same."
After he left, Rachel put the envelope in a drawer of her own desk and wrote its contents on a sheet of paper. Fifteen dollars was not enough to rebuild an implement. It was enough to prove that Frank still believed the implement belonged to a group of people who might need it after he could no longer use it himself. Rachel found that harder to dismiss than Earl's stories.
At the end of April, the weather forecast changed. A cold front moved east, leaving bright skies behind it, and the radio announcer promised three dry days before another system reached the county. Farmers who had spent weeks staring out of windows began calculating how soon their ground might carry a tractor. The roads dried first, then the ridges, then the higher terraces; the creek bottoms stayed dark and soft even under a full day of sun.
Earl came into the shop on Saturday morning carrying a rain cap and a face that made it obvious he hadn't slept well. He stopped at the pegboard. "Six available?" he asked.
Rachel looked toward the rear shed. "The spreader hasn't been inspected."
"It'll dry out on my place by Monday. I could use it Tuesday if you think you can get it ready."
She crossed her arms. "How long since anybody really went through it?"
"Walter checked it before Frank took it out last autumn."
"That's not an answer I'd want to sign my name to."