“The only thing keeping this farm alive.”
“I can explain.”
“Explain what? That you experimented on the one piece of equipment we absolutely cannot afford to lose?”
Mrs. Finch stepped into the barn.
“Iris, listen to her.”
But Iris wasn’t listening to anyone.
She looked between me and Mrs. Finch, understanding dawning across her face.
“And you helped her. You knew what she was doing, and you helped.”
“The girl needed supervision,” Mrs. Finch said. “I wasn’t going to let her kill herself alone.”
Iris put both hands over her face.
When she dropped them, her eyes were wet.
“Do you have any idea what Grandpa will do when he finds out? What this will do to him?”
The words hit harder than I expected.
I hadn’t really thought about Grandpa’s reaction beyond hoping he’d be impressed. I hadn’t considered that seeing his precious tractor modified might hurt him in ways I couldn’t predict.
“It works, Iris. It works better than before. Just let me show you.”
Iris wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
“One day. You get one day to prove it. If there’s any problem, anything at all, you tell Grandpa the second he gets home. Promise me.”
“I promise.”
She looked at me for a long moment, then nodded and walked back toward the house.
Her shoulders shook like she might be crying.
Mrs. Finch touched my arm.
“Show me what it can do. For real this time.”
The south field behind the house stretched forty acres, mostly flat except for a gentle rise at the far end. We kept it fallow that year, letting the soil rest, but it still made good testing ground.
I hitched up our heaviest plow, the five-blade monster that always made the old tractor struggle. It used to take Grandpa most of a day to work through half the field with that implement.
I started the engine.
Engaged the transmission.
Felt the tractor dig in and pull.
The plow cut through earth like it was soft butter.
The engine maintained steady RPMs.
No bogging down.
No straining.
I could actually shift into a higher gear than we’d ever used with that load.
Mrs. Finch stood at the field edge watching.
After twenty minutes, she waved me over.
“Take a break. You’re grinning like an idiot.”
I shut down and climbed off.
My hands were shaking from adrenaline, not fatigue.
“It’s working. It’s actually working.”
“So far,” she said. “But working for twenty minutes and working for twenty years are different things.”
Iris came out of the house carrying two glasses of lemonade. She handed one to me and one to Mrs. Finch.
She’d stopped crying, but her eyes were still red.
“How much have you done?”
“About two acres.”
Iris looked at the field, at the clean furrows, at the tractor sitting there like it was resting instead of exhausted.
“That would have taken Grandpa all morning.”
“I know.”
She took a long drink of lemonade.
“Be careful. Please.”
I went back to work.
I plowed for another hour, the sun climbing higher, heat building until sweat soaked through my shirt.
But the tractor kept pulling.
Kept working.