The Junkyard Motor in Dad’s Barn

The second evening we measured. Dad had a bore gauge he bought in 1983 that he keeps in a wooden case lined with felt.

The cylinders were in good shape, worn a few thousandths, nothing that rings and a fresh hone would not take care of.

“Somebody changed his oil,” Dad said, and he said it like he was giving the dead truck’s owner a medal.

The crank was good. We had it polished at the machine shop in town for sixty dollars.

The heads went in the same trip for a valve job, and the man there promised them back by the following Wednesday. That was another two hundred and forty.

The third and fourth evenings we cleaned. There is no glory in it.

We scraped gaskets and ran brushes through every oil passage and washed the block out with hot soapy water in the gravel by the barn door, then blew it dry and sprayed it down with oil so it would not rust.

My hands were cut up and gray at the end of every night. Dad’s were worse, because he would not wear gloves. He says he cannot feel the work through gloves.

His knuckles were swollen from the arthritis by the end of that first week, and he never once said a word about it.

“You don’t have to stay late,” I told him one night. It was past nine, and we had the block upside down on the stand, setting the main bearings.

“I’m not staying late,” he said. “I’m staying till we’re done. That’s a different thing.”

Easter came on the Sunday in the middle of it.

I went to church with Dad in the morning, the little white country church a mile down the road where he and Mom were married.

They sang the old hymn about the stone being rolled away, and Dad sang it in his deep, flat voice the way he always does, never once in tune.

Trent came to dinner. I was not sure he would. He came in at one o’clock with a pie from the grocery store, alone, and said Vida was not feeling well.

Dad looked at him a long second and said, “That’s fine, son. Sit down,” and that was all.

We sat at the table, the three of us, with the good plates and the ham and the scalloped potatoes Dad had made from Mom’s recipe card.

Dad said grace. He thanked the Lord for the food and for the day and for both of his boys, and he said both of our names.

Nobody said a word about the motor. Trent talked about the weather and the price of gas and a hailstorm claim he had worked in Clear Lake.

I asked him to pass the rolls. He passed them. It was the quietest Easter dinner we ever had, and it was still better than none.

When he left, he stopped by the barn on his way out to the truck. I was in there putting the crank in.

He stood in the doorway and looked at the block on the stand for a long time.

“That’s a junkyard motor,” he said.

“Yep.”

“You’ll be lucky if it makes it through hot laps.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Guess we’ll find out.”

He looked at Dad, who was at the bench wiping down the piston rings one at a time with a clean rag, and Dad did not look up.

Trent stood there another minute. Then he left, and I heard his truck go down the gravel.