wheel carried a smooth spot where Dale's hands had rested for years. It could still pull a disc through workable ground and plant a straight row if the operator understood its peculiarities. The problem was that every passing season seemed to reveal another component close to the end of its useful life.
The previous autumn, a cracked hydraulic housing had kept the tractor parked beside the machinery shed for nearly two weeks. Dale had called dealers in three counties, searched shelves in shops where he had bought parts as a young man, and finally paid more than he wanted for a replacement found almost a hundred miles away. Rain arrived while the tractor sat idle, and a field that should have been finished before the weather changed became a muddy problem he was still talking about at Christmas. The delay cost money, but what Dale remembered most was the helplessness of knowing exactly what needed to be done and having no working machine to do it.
"One more season," Dale had said more than once. He said it while changing oil, while checking the tires, and while examining the newest leak along the engine's cast side. Sometimes he meant that the tractor would survive one more season; other times he meant that he could tolerate only one more season of worrying about it. Jonah listened because the distinction mattered, and because he could hear in those words the beginnings of a decision to borrow money they did not have.
Behind the farmhouse stood Silas Kessler's old repair shop, a long, low building with corrugated siding and windows whose glass had become cloudy from decades of dust. Inside were benches scarred by hammers, cabinets filled with carefully labeled drawers, and shelves stacked with the tools Silas had collected during fifty years of repairing engines, pumps, transmissions, and farm machinery. The shop smelled of cold iron, old grease, cutting oil, and the faint sweetness of wood shavings from the stove beside the west wall. When Jonah opened the door after school, the place felt warmer than the house even before the stove caught up with the winter air.
Silas was seventy-two that winter. His hair had gone almost entirely white, but his blue eyes still followed the movement of a tool with the alertness of a man who could spot a mistake before it became expensive. His hands were