I climbed into the John Deere’s seat. The metal was cold despite the August heat.
My hands found the key and turned it.
Deep breath.
I pressed the starter button.
The engine turned over once.
Twice.
Nothing.
Panic flooded through me.
I’d broken it.
Killed the only thing keeping my family alive.
Mrs. Finch leaned in and started checking connections. Her fingers moved quickly through the wiring until she found something.
“Here. Loose wire. Try again.”
I turned the key and pressed the button.
The engine turned three times.
Four.
Then it roared to life with a sound I’d never heard before.
Deeper.
Stronger.
Like something sleeping had finally woken up.
I sat there feeling the vibrations through the seat, listening to the engine sing in a voice that was familiar but transformed.
Mrs. Finch stepped back.
“Now we test it.”
I drove the tractor out of the barn into the Thursday morning sunlight. The engine pulled smoothly and responded to throttle input like it had been waiting all these years to run properly.
This was going to work.
It had to.
I spent the next hour running that tractor through every test I could imagine. I pulled it around the property boundaries, up the slight incline behind the barn, and through the soft dirt near the irrigation ditch.
The engine never faltered.
Never coughed.
Never sputtered.
Never showed any sign of weakness.
Mrs. Finch watched from the fence line, arms crossed, face unreadable.
Around noon, I heard another engine.
Different pitch.
Lighter.
My heart seized when I recognized the sound of Iris’s Ford Falcon coming up the driveway.
She wasn’t supposed to be back until tomorrow.
None of them were.
I killed the tractor engine and climbed down.
Iris parked near the house and got out slowly. Her nurse’s uniform was wrinkled from the long drive. She looked tired.
Then she looked at me.
Then at the barn.
Her eyes went wide.
She walked toward me with steps that got faster and angrier until she was almost running.
She pushed past me into the barn and stopped dead when she saw the tools still scattered across the workbench, the old carburetor sitting in pieces, and oil stains on the concrete floor.
“What did you do?”
Her voice came out small and tight, like she was afraid of the answer.
“I improved it. Made it stronger.”
Iris spun around, her face pale.
“You took apart the tractor.”
“Yes.”
“Our tractor.”
“Yes.”