The Junkyard Motor in Dad’s Barn

“Not this month, anyway.” He looked at the calendar on the barn wall, the one from the seed company with the date of the opener circled in pencil.

He had circled it in January. “Two weeks from Sunday.”

“Thirteen days, if you count today.”

“I don’t count today. Today’s half gone.” He looked at me over the top of his glasses. “How much money have you got, son?”

I told him the truth. I had about fourteen hundred dollars in the bank and my rent was due on the first.

“That’ll do,” he said. “The salvage yard up on the county line is still open. He had a row of pickups in there last fall. Some of them are bound to have a 350 still in them.”

“Dad, I can’t build a motor in two weeks.”

“You can’t,” he said. “We can. Go home and get some sleep. You’re on breakfast tomorrow?”

“Six to two.”

“Then you’ll be out here by three.” He picked his carburetor back up like the matter was settled. “Bring a sandwich. I’m not cooking for you.”

I found out later what I did not know that day. Trent’s wife, Vida, had moved out in February.

She had gone to stay with her sister in Charles City and taken the dog with her, and nobody in the family knew yet but Dad, because Trent had made him promise not to say.

Trent had bought that boat in October, when things were already going bad at home.

He spent the whole winter on it, sanding the hull and fixing the seats, working on it every night after Vida went to bed.

The boat was the one place left where he still felt like somebody.

I want to say that plain, because it is the truth and because it matters to the rest of this. But I also want to say it does not make a single thing right.

A man’s marriage coming apart is not a reason to take his little brother’s motor. It is only the reason he did.

Dad and I went up on Wednesday afternoon in his pickup with a cherry picker and an engine stand in the bed.

The old man who owns the yard walked us down the rows himself with a cane.

He found us a 350 in a worn-out Chevy half-ton with a crumpled front end. The truck had been rear-ended into a ditch, and the motor sat in it untouched.

“Ran when she came in,” the old man said. “Ran fine. Man that owned it said it never used a drop of oil. Four hundred dollars and you pull it yourself.”

Dad pulled the dipstick and smelled it, then wiped it on his rag and held it up to the light.

He pulled a plug wire and looked at the plug. He turned the crank by hand with a breaker bar, slow, listening with his head tipped.

“She’s tired,” he said. “But she’s not hurt.”

I paid him four hundred dollars in twenties out of my tip jar.

We had that motor out of the truck and on the stand in the bed of Dad’s pickup in under two hours, and Dad did not once need to stop and rest, though I watched him for it.

The first afternoon we drained it and tore it down to the bare block. Intake, heads, oil pan, timing cover, the whole bottom end.

Dad laid every part out on clean cardboard in the order it came off, with the rods and caps marked so they would go back in the same holes.