“Weird how?”
“Like he’d been crying. He wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. He just said, ‘Dad, I messed up Grandma’s truck,’ and hung up.”
I told Kurt everything. The Sunday. The section road. The eighty miles an hour. The spun bearing. The three hundred dollars on the kitchen table. The 352 block for his race car.
Kurt didn’t say anything for a long time.
“I’m going to kill him,” he said finally.
“No, you’re not.”
“He tried to steal Mom’s truck, Nora. For three hundred bucks.”
“He tried to buy a broken truck from his grandmother for less than it was worth,” I said. “It was a lousy thing to do. But it’s not stealing, Kurt. Mom said no. Or I said no for her. That’s the end of that part.”
“I’m going to pay for the engine. Whatever it costs.”
“No,” I said. “Trace is.”
Kurt was quiet.
“He’s twenty-two, Kurt. He works at the tire shop. He’s got a job. He blew the engine. He pays for the engine. Not you, not me, not Mom.”
“He doesn’t have fifteen hundred dollars.”
“Then he’ll pay it a little at a time. Like a grownup.”
There was another long silence on the line.
“You sound like Dad,” Kurt said finally.
“Somebody has to,” I said.
Before we hung up, Kurt said one more thing.
“Nora. Is Mom’s car insurance going to cover any of it?”
I’d already checked. I’d called Mom’s insurance agent, a nice woman named Patty Rezac at the State Farm office in Clay Center, on Tuesday.
“Comprehensive and collision don’t cover mechanical breakdowns,” Patty had said. “If he’d rolled it in a ditch, that’d be one thing. But an engine failure from wear or abuse isn’t covered by any auto policy I know of.”
Then she’d added, “Was Trace listed as a driver on your mother’s policy?”
“No.”
“Then you’re lucky he didn’t roll it,” Patty had said quietly. “If he’d hurt somebody racing on that gravel road, in a truck he wasn’t listed on, your mother could have been in real trouble. A lawsuit could have gone after her house.”
I’d sat in my truck in the co-op parking lot for a long time after that call.
I told Kurt what Patty said.
He swore under his breath.
“I’ll talk to him,” he said.
“Talk to him,” I said. “But don’t fix it for him.”Pages:9
The third Saturday, we built the engine back up on the stand, piston by piston.
This is the part I love. It’s like putting together a watch. Every part has its place, and every part has to be exactly right.
First, we installed the new cam bearings and slid the camshaft in. Then the new main bearings. Then Lowell and I lifted the freshly ground crankshaft and set it gently into the block, like laying a baby in a crib. Then the main bearing caps, each one torqued to exactly ninety-five foot-pounds, in a specific order.
Then the pistons. I fitted each piston with its new rings, using a ring compressor, and slid it down into its cylinder. Then I attached the connecting rod to the crankshaft journal with the new rod bearings, and torqued each rod cap to exactly forty-three foot-pounds.
That’s where Beryl came in.
His hands shake now. They shake when he holds a coffee cup, a fork, a pen.
But not when he’s holding a torque wrench.
I watched it happen. I held each rod cap in place, and Beryl fitted the torque wrench onto the nut. And his hands went still. Absolutely, perfectly still. He pulled the wrench in one slow, smooth motion until it clicked at forty-three foot-pounds.
Click.
Then he moved to the next one.
Click.
Eight rods. Sixteen nuts. Sixteen clicks. His hands never shook once.
When he finished the last one, he set the torque wrench down on the bench and stared at his hands. They were trembling again, just a little.
“Huh,” he said softly.
“Beryl,” Lowell said. “You still got it.”
Beryl took off his glasses and wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist.
“Fifty years,” he said. “Fifty years, I’ve been torquing rod caps. My hands just know.” He laughed shakily. “Doctor told me I’d never do fine work again. I’d like to see that doctor torque a rod cap.”
Lowell put his big hand on Beryl’s shoulder and left it there.
That afternoon, we installed the new oil pump, the timing chain, the oil pan, and the cylinder heads with new head gaskets, each head bolt torqued in sequence to seventy-five foot-pounds. Then the intake manifold, the valve covers, and the water pump.
By six o’clock, the old 352 sat on the engine stand in Mom’s machine shed, clean and complete, painted Ford blue with a fresh can of engine enamel I’d picked up at the auto parts store in Hastings.
Mom came out of the house and stood in the doorway of the machine shed, looking at it.
“It looks new,” she said.
“It is new,” Lowell said. “Inside, anyway.”
“Can it go back in the truck?”
“Next Saturday,” I said. “And then you can drive it to the elevator.”
Mom pressed her hand against her mouth.
“Next Saturday,” she repeated.
By the fourth Saturday, word had gotten around the elevator.
I don’t know who told first. Probably Kenny Dvorak. Kenny can’t keep anything to himself. But by Friday, every man in the elevator coffee crowd knew that Lowell Fisk, Beryl Unger, and Nora Brandt were putting the engine back in Harlan Brandt’s ’66 Ford on Saturday afternoon in Evelyn’s driveway.
When I pulled into Mom’s yard at seven-thirty Saturday morning, there were already two pickups parked along the road.
By noon, there were eleven.
By two o’clock, pickups lined both sides of the gravel road in front of the farmhouse, from the mailbox to the corner. Half the elevator coffee crowd stood in Mom’s yard with their hands in their pockets: Kenny Dvorak, Bud Simanek, Duane Kohler, both Pospisil brothers. Elmer Voss’s son, Gerald, who’d sold Dad the truck in 1994. Gordy Bauer, who’d driven all the way up from Hastings. Patty Rezac from the insurance office, who’d brought a plate of brownies. Josh Pavlik, the co-op manager, who’d brought a cooler of pop.
Nobody did much. They just stood around in the yard in their seed caps and jackets, talking quietly, watching.
It was a bright fall afternoon, sixty-five degrees, with a high blue sky and the cottonwoods along the creek just starting to turn gold.
We rolled the engine hoist back out of the machine shed and lifted the rebuilt 352 off the stand. Lowell guided it across the gravel. Beryl walked alongside, steadying it with one hand on the valve cover. I worked the hoist.
Then we lowered it slowly back down into the engine bay of the red and white Ford.
Everybody in the yard stopped talking.
“Easy,” Lowell said. “Easy. Left a little. There. Now down.”
The engine settled onto its mounts with a soft clunk. I bolted the motor mounts. Lowell reconnected the transmission. Beryl, sitting on the front bumper, reconnected the wiring harness, reading each of Lowell’s masking-tape labels through his thick glasses.
Then the radiator. The fan. The alternator. The starter. The exhaust manifolds. The carburetor. Fresh oil, five quarts of 10W-30. Fresh coolant. New spark plugs and plug wires.
Lowell and Beryl stood beside me at the fender in their seed caps and flannel shirts, handing me tools one at a time without my having to ask. A 9/16 wrench. A 1/2-inch socket. A screwdriver. They’d done it for me when I was twenty-three and terrified and nobody else in the co-op shop would let me touch a wrench.
I leaned into the engine bay in my blue coveralls and tightened the last bolt, the one holding the air cleaner on top of the carburetor.
I straightened up and wiped my hands on a shop rag.
“That’s it,” I said. “It’s done.”
That was when a pickup I knew turned into the driveway off the road.
It was Trace’s black Dodge.
He parked behind the long line of pickups on the road and got out slowly.
He wasn’t wearing his backward cap or his racing team T-shirt. He wore a plain gray hooded sweatshirt and jeans, and he looked like he hadn’t slept. He walked up the gravel drive and stopped at the edge of the yard, at the edge of the crowd.
He stood there with his hands in his sweatshirt pocket and didn’t say a word.
Nobody else did either.
Every man in that yard knew what Trace had done. It was a small town. Kenny Dvorak had told them all about the race on the Road M mile, and somebody had told them about the three hundred dollars. I watched them look at him, one after another: the old farmers, the retired mechanics, the insurance lady, the co-op manager. Nobody said anything. They just looked.
Trace stood there and took it.
Then my mother got up out of her lawn chair.
She brushed off the front of her green cardigan and patted her white hair. Then she looked at Lowell.
Lowell reached into the pocket of his flannel shirt and pulled out the keys to the truck: a single Ford ignition key on a brass ring, with a little leather fob that said HARLAN in faded gold letters. Mom had given them to Lowell that morning for safekeeping.
He held them out to her.
She took them.
She walked slowly across the gravel toward the red and white Ford. She opened the driver’s door with a creak, climbed in, and pulled the door shut behind her.
Trace took one step closer.
My mother put the key in the ignition. Then she looked at me through the windshield.
I nodded.
She turned the key.
The starter cranked once, twice, three times. The rebuilt engine was dry inside, and the fuel pump had to fill the carburetor bowl. I held my breath. Lowell held his breath. Beryl gripped the fender with his shaking hand.
On the fourth crank, the 352 caught.
It roared to life with a deep, smooth, throaty rumble that I felt in my chest and down into my boots. It idled high for a few seconds, then settled down to a steady, even purr.
No knock.
No clatter.
Just a strong, clean, perfect rumble, like a big cat purring.
Somebody in the crowd let out a whoop. Then everybody was clapping and cheering. Kenny Dvorak threw his cap in the air. Gordy Bauer was laughing and wiping his eyes. Patty Rezac was hugging Josh Pavlik.
Beryl stood beside me with his hands on the fender, tears running down behind his thick glasses.
Lowell took off his seed cap and held it over his heart.
And my mother sat behind the wheel of my father’s truck with both hands on the steering wheel and her eyes closed, listening to the engine purr.
Then she opened her eyes, reached up, and honked the horn twice.
Beep, beep.
The crowd went quiet again.
