The Junkyard Motor in Dad’s Barn

The hood of my race car was standing open when I walked into my brother’s garage that Tuesday afternoon.

The engine bay was empty, nothing in it but bare motor mounts and a few loose wires hanging down.

I stood there with my lunch sack still in my hand.

I had come straight from the breakfast shift at the cafe on Federal Avenue, smelling like hash browns and fryer grease, planning to set the valve lash before the season opener.

Four winters I had put into that car. A red and white hobby stock with a 17 on the doors, built one paycheck at a time out of a line cook’s wages and whatever extra shifts the cafe would give me.

The motor had been the last piece and the biggest. Eight thousand five hundred dollars, built by an engine shop down in Waterloo, paid off in installments over a year and a half.

And now it was gone. The transmission sat on a creeper by the wall, the headers were stacked on the workbench, and the motor mounts still had fresh shiny bolt marks where somebody had backed the nuts off.

Trent came out the side door from his kitchen with a cup of coffee in his hand.

He was still in his work khakis and a pressed polo shirt, and he did not look the least bit surprised to see me standing there.

“Before you start,” he said, “I left the transmission. You’re welcome for that.”

“Where is it, Trent?”

He tipped his head toward the driveway. His boat sat on its trailer out there under a tarp, an old fish-and-ski with a sterndrive that he had bought used last fall and had been calling his bass boat all winter.

“The motor in that boat was junk,” he said. “Block cracked over the winter because the guy before me never drained it. You had a perfectly good 350 sitting in my garage doing nothing.”

“It wasn’t doing nothing. The opener is two weeks from Sunday.”

“You’ve had that car in my garage four winters, Colby. Four winters of my electricity, my heat, my space. I never charged you a dime. I figure you owe me rent. Call it even.”

I set my lunch sack on the fender. I remember that, because my hands needed something to do. I am not a yeller.

I spend my days in a hot kitchen with six tickets hanging and a cook beside me who throws pans, and I learned a long time ago that yelling never gets an egg flipped faster.

“You never asked for rent,” I said. “Not once in four years.”

“Well, I’m asking now.” He took a drink of his coffee. “It’s done. It’s bolted in. I already ran it on the hose in the driveway Sunday and it sounds like a jet.”

“It’s a race motor, Trent. It’s not built for a boat.”

“A 350 is a 350. The old one was a Chevy too. Bolted right up.” He looked at his watch.

“I’ve got an appointment at four. Pull your car out whenever you want. I’d like my garage back by the end of the month.”

He went back inside. The storm door hissed shut on its little closer, and I stood there looking at the hole where four winters had been.

I thought about Easter. It was that Sunday, five days off.

Dad would set the table in the farmhouse the way Mom used to set it, with the good plates and the ham, and he would wait at the head of it for both his boys to come in.