Bell looked immediately suspicious.
“How much?”
“One eighty.”
“What?”
“Seed plates.”
Bell stared.
“How many?”
“About nine hundred.”
There was a long silence.
Bell removed his glasses.
Cleaned them with the edge of his shirt.
Put them back on.
“Show me.”
Malik led him behind the dealership.
Bell stood in front of the crates.
He lifted one plate.
Turned it over.
Then another.
Then a third.
Malik waited for him to say he had made a mistake.
Bell did not.
He looked into another crate.
“How'd you buy these?”
“Whole lot.”
“For a hundred eighty?”
“Yes.”
Bell looked toward Malik.
“What do you think you've got?”
“I don't know yet.”
Bell nodded.
It was a small movement.
Almost approval.
“Good answer.”
Malik relaxed slightly.
Bell put the plate back.
“You got a truck?”
“No.”
“Of course you don't.”
Bell looked toward his own pickup.
“Come on.”
“What?”
“We've got to move nine hundred pieces of your bad judgment before somebody changes his mind.”
It took two trips.
Bell backed his old Chevrolet and flatbed trailer beside the fence.
Malik carried plates crate by crate until his arms ached.
The assistant helped with a forklift on the heaviest boxes.
Cast iron looked manageable until several hundred pieces were stacked together.
By the time they returned to Bell’s shop with the second load, afternoon light had begun fading.
Rust dust covered Malik's sleeves.
Grease stained his palms.
Bell parked the trailer beside the rear workshop door.
They stood looking at the crates.
“You bought all that for scrap money,” Bell said.
“Yes.”
“What do you figure's under the dirt?”
“I don't know.”
Bell nodded.
“That why you bought it?”
“Mostly.”
Bell picked up one plate.
Malik watched him rub the casting mark with his thumb.
Bell had noticed the numbers too.
Of course he had.
“Numbers don't get cast into iron for decoration,” Malik said.
Bell glanced at him.
“No.”
“So they identify something.”
“Yes.”
“What?”
Bell set the plate back.
“That is now your problem.”
Malik smiled slightly.
“You know, don't you?”
“Some.”
“How much?”
Bell walked toward the shop.
“Enough to know you're going to spend a lot of evenings with a wire brush.”
Malik’s mother learned about the purchase before he got home.
Nothing moved through that community slowly if Otis Bell was involved.
When Malik entered the kitchen, dinner was already on the table.
His mother looked at him.
“How much?”
Malik took off his coat.
“Hello to you too.”
“How much did you spend?”
His grandmother sat across the table cutting a piece of chicken.
She did not look up.
Malik sat.
“One hundred eighty.”
His mother's fork stopped.
“One hundred eighty dollars?”
“Yes.”
“On what?”
“Planter seed plates.”
“How many seed plates does somebody need?”
“I have around nine hundred.”
She stared at him.
“Nine hundred?”
His grandmother finally looked up.
“What do they do?”
Malik explained the basic idea as well as he understood it.
Older plate-type planters used interchangeable discs to meter seeds.
Different crops and seed sizes required different plates.
His mother listened.
Then asked the question Malik had been avoiding.
“What are you going to do with nine hundred of them?”
“I don't know yet.”
She leaned back.
“Malik.”
“I think they're worth more than scrap.”
“You think?”
“Yes.”
“That was most of what you made all summer.”
“I know.”
“School clothes?”
“I already have clothes.”
“Truck fund?”
He did not answer.
Malik had been saving toward his first vehicle.
Not a good vehicle.
Just something that started.
His mother looked frustrated.
Then his grandmother spoke.
“Well.”
Everyone turned.
She took another bite.
“If he spent one hundred eighty dollars, he'd best learn what he bought.”
His mother looked at her.
“That's all you're going to say?”
“What would yelling do?”
“He spent his savings on rust.”
“Maybe.”
His grandmother looked at Malik.
“Maybe he bought something else.”
Malik waited.
She pointed her fork at him.
“That's your job to find out.”
Nobody praised him.
Nobody punished him.
The plates simply became a debt Malik owed to his own judgment.
The next Monday, he began.
Bell's repair shop closed to customers at six.
Malik usually swept floors, put tools away, and went home around six-thirty.
Now he stayed.
Bell gave him an old workbench in the back room.
Malik selected ten plates from the first crate.
He filled a coffee can with kerosene.
Used shop rags.
A wire brush.
Scrapers.
The folding magnifying loupe Bell had given him months earlier.
The loupe had belonged to Bell for years.
Malik had first noticed it while helping disassemble an old carburetor.
He watched Bell examine a tiny stamped marking.
“What is that?”
“Magnifier.”
“I know what it does.”
Bell handed it over.
Malik looked through the lens.
The number suddenly became enormous.
Bell watched him.
“You always turn parts over.”
“I want to see the numbers.”
“Good habit.”
A week later, Bell gave him the loupe permanently.
No ceremony.
“Keep it.”
“Why?”
“I've got another.”
That was probably a lie.
Malik kept it anyway.
Now the loupe became one of his main tools.
Plate one.
International Harvester marking.
Casting number.
Twenty-four cells.
Diameter measured.
Condition: surface rust, no cracks.
Plate two.
Different manufacturer.
Thirty cells.
One chipped edge.
Plate three.
No obvious logo.
Casting number mostly hidden.
Malik cleaned until it appeared.
Every evening, another handful.
Iron dust accumulated beside the bench.
His fingernails remained black regardless of how much soap he used.
His mother began putting a towel on the chair where he sat at dinner.
“You're bringing Bell's shop into my kitchen.”
“Sorry.”
“You said that yesterday.”
“I meant it yesterday too.”
The first week, Malik assumed identifying plates would be simple.
Read number.
Find number in book.