Pulled three carrots.
One was forked.
One twisted.
One had grown around a stone and looked almost impossible to peel mechanically.
Della wiped dirt from the third on her pants.
Bit the end.
Sweet.
Crisp.
Carrot.
She returned to the truck in less than five minutes.
That night she opened the ledger again.
She estimated harvest cost.
Bags.
Storage.
Transportation.
Repairing some kind of washer.
Labor.
She calculated what Frances would pay.
Then she lowered that price by twenty percent to see whether the idea still worked.
It did.
She lowered it again.
Still worked.
By the time the auction arrived, Della knew exactly how much she was willing to spend.
Sixty dollars was below that number.
That was why she did not hesitate.
Other people saw a rejected crop.
Della saw feed inventory.
The Monday after the auction, Gene arrived with a borrowed flatbed truck and stared at the root washer sitting behind Della's barn.
"You actually brought that thing home."
Della nodded.
"Did you look at the crack?"
"Yes."
"It's broken."
"I know."
"Good."
Gene scratched his head.
"I wanted to make sure we were operating from the same facts."
Della smiled.
The washer went into Raymond's old shop.
The building stood behind the farmhouse.
Forty feet by twenty-four.
Concrete floor.
Tin roof.
Wood stove in the northwest corner.
Heavy oak workbench on the south wall.
Raymond built the bench in 1948 from two-inch oak planks.
It had burn marks.
Oil stains.
Drill holes.
And a shallow groove where decades of vise work had worn the edge.
The tools had accumulated before Della was born.
Cutting torch bought from a pipeline crew in 1951.
Lincoln arc welder Raymond traded a calf for in 1955.
Drill press.
Bench grinder.
Vise.
Taps and dies in a wooden box whose broken hinge Della repaired with a leather strip when she was fourteen.
Della lit the stove.
Then she sat on an overturned bucket and studied the root washer.
She did not touch it for nearly an hour.
The drum crack was exactly where the auctioneer said.
Four inches.
Following a weld seam.
The metal had begun separating at one end.
Under load, vibration would make it worse.
The brushes were gone.
Not merely worn.
Gone.
Only steel cores remained.
But the frame was straight.
Bearings showed wear but turned.
The hand crank gear teeth were intact.
The shaft was not bent.
That mattered.
A machine with a bad consumable component was not the same as a machine with a bad structure.
Raymond had taught her that too.
Della removed the drum.
Cleaned the crack.
Ground the old weld.
She heated the shop enough to reduce condensation on the cold steel.
Then she welded.
Slowly.
Short passes.