"Dad, is that new?" he asked. Dale looked over, squinted, and said the lower hose fitting had been damp a few weeks earlier. He reached for a wrench, tightened the connection, and wiped the area with a rag. "Old tractors mark their territory," he said, trying to make the problem sound smaller than it was. Jonah smiled because his father expected him to, but he did not stop looking at the wet casting.
Two days later, after the tractor had cooled, Jonah returned with a flashlight and a clean cloth. The hose connection was dry, its clamp tight, and the moisture stain had reappeared a little farther along the block. He cleaned it carefully, waited for the light to catch the surface from one side, and felt his stomach tighten when a narrow irregular line came into view. It was not a scratch left by a tool, and the discoloration around it matched several fractures he had studied all winter.
He called Silas from the shop. His grandfather arrived slowly, one hand resting against the doorframe as he stepped out into the yard. Jonah showed him the line without offering a conclusion, remembering how often Silas had made him explain the evidence before naming the problem. The old mechanic stared for a long time, then asked whether Dale had been losing coolant. When Jonah said he thought so, Silas let out a breath and told him to fetch his father.
Dale stood beside the International with a look Jonah recognized from the autumn hydraulic failure. He examined the casting, rubbed one thumb across the faint crack, and stepped back without saying anything for almost a minute. Finally he asked whether the line could be old, perhaps a casting mark that had always been there. Silas told him a casting mark would not explain coolant appearing along its edge.
"We can watch it," Dale said. "Not ignore it, just watch it while I finish the other work." Silas answered that watching was reasonable only if they also understood how fast the condition was changing and what a larger leak might do to the engine. Jonah tried to explain how the crack could extend beneath the visible surface, but Dale held up his hand before the boy could finish. "I know what a cracked block means," he said, more sharply than he intended.