“She’ll be thrilled, I’m sure,” Alan said. “Go catch your bus.”
He watched Joe until the boy reached the end of the driveway and turned left. Alan took one more look at the cow room and then ducked under the stairs to pull open the doors to the horse stalls. Horses had lived a dark and cramped life in this barn. Their room was small and in the back corner. They had their own door to the outside, but the Colonel or someone else had nailed the door shut long enough ago that the nails were spikes of rust.
Alan ran his hand along a smooth curve of wood. It had been gnawed by countless horse teeth.
In terms of clutter, this room was in decent shape. It held a few standing wardrobes—big wooden boxes that opened to reveal moldy dresses and uniforms. Under a wooden rack and a sheet, Alan found an ancient motorcycle, almost as old as he was. He pressed on the seat and the springs bounced merrily, undamped by the shocks. He put the sheet back and tugged the light chain to turn off the bulb.
Alan stopped on his way to the door and turned around again. He turned on the light. One of the vertical boxes was too small to be a wardrobe, and it didn’t have hinges along the edge. It was just a chest-high rectangle, standing in the corner like a child’s coffin. Alan pulled it away from the wall. It was heavy. On the side, someone had stenciled the Colonel’s name and his old Tennessee address.
With growing excitement, Alan jogged for the shop to get the dolly. He returned to the horse room and worked the lip under the box. The weight was manageable, but the floor of the barn had countless lips and troughs. Alan had to wrestle the box all the way to the door. Sweat trickled down his forehead as he rolled the box out into the sun of the driveway. He parked the dolly near the shed door and went inside for his toolbox.
Alan returned and set to work. He removed the final screws and pulled off the side and top of the box, already anticipating what he’d find. It was both better and worse than what he’d hoped.
It was better—enclosed in the box was a pristine, fifty-year-old outboard boat motor that looked like someone had cared for it like it was a child. It was worse—across the engine’s cover he found a single word scrawled in grease pencil by an old man’s hand. It read, “Piston.”
Alan stepped back and regarded the crate that the engine was stored in. It was obviously designed for shipping the engine, but it also doubled as a stand if you folded the top over and used the screws as a hinge. Alan set it up and then removed the cover from the engine. He found the correct socket and began to back out the nuts holding on the cylinder. One nut didn’t want to turn. He shook his can of solvent and sprayed the nut and surrounding area. While he waited, he surveyed the rest of the engine.
At the bottom of the engine’s case, Alan found a compartment with a lid. It contained a binder with the engine’s manuals inside.
“Thank you, Colonel,” Alan said. He flipped through the manual, looking at the careful instructions and diagrams. He found a section entitled, “Piston Replacement.” The page had a greasy thumbprint on the corner. Alan smiled.
He held the binder in one hand and circled the engine. He pulled the spark plug wires and set the book down so he could follow the instructions to the letter. All he had to do was remove the last cylinder nut.
Alan slipped a short length of pipe over the end of his socket wrench handle and braced his foot on the side of the engine’s box.
Movement caught his eye.
He raised a hand to the passing jogger. The jogger waved back.
“Okay,” Alan said. “Help me out, Colonel.”
He applied pressure to his cheater-bar and the nut started to turn. With slippery ease, the socket turned on the nut, stripping it and sending Alan to the pavement. He landed on his ass and turned his face to the sky. Alan let loose a stream of obscenities at the passing clouds. He began to chuckle and then laugh. He was still holding the pipe. He threw it to the asphalt. Alan laughed until a tear escaped the corner of his eye. He wiped it away with his shirtsleeve.
“You okay?” a voice asked.
Alan scrambled to his feet. It was the jogger.
“Yeah. Yes, I’m fine. I just stripped a nut,” Alan said.
“I’m Bob,” the jogger said. “We met the other day, but I forgot to introduce myself.”
Alan blinked away the remnants of his tears and got a look at the jogger.
“You’re the carpenter,” Alan said. He noticed the jogger was holding out his hand. Alan reached for it, forgetting the grease from the motor. “Sorry,” Alan said as the jogger glanced at his own hand.
Alan reached down and handed Bob a rag.
“I’m Alan.”
“I remember.”
Alan nodded. “Yeah, I was trying to get this last nut off but I just stripped it.”
“You have a torch?”
“Pardon?”
“A little propane torch?”
“Yeah, around here somewhere, sure.”
“I have a trick,” Bob said.
They sat in folding chairs in front of an old sheet carefully stretched out on the driveway. On the sheet they’d laid out all the parts of the engine that they’d removed—cylinder, carburetor, pistons, camshaft, and dozens of nuts, bolts, and washers. In the center of it all sat the broken piston. The flat surface of the piston was marred by a jagged hole.
Alan leaned forward.
“How do you think it happened?” Bob asked.
“I don’t know,” Alan said. “Maybe the metal just got brittle? Maybe it was a bad piston to begin with?”
“Where are you going to get the new one?”
“I have no idea,” Alan said. “I just started this project on a whim. I’m not allowed to do much around here.”
Bob chuckled.
“Hey—I’m sorry to interrupt your jog,” Alan said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Bob said. “I mostly just jog to get away from the house for a bit. This was a more interesting diversion than running the same roads again.”
Alan leaned back in his chair and looked up at the sky. The sun was nearly overhead now—they’d been working on the engine for hours.
“You know what would go good right now?” Alan asked. He answered his own question. “A beer.”
“You have any?” Bob asked.
“Does the pope shit in the woods?”
Alan was walking back inside while Bob was still laughing. He came back with two bottles. He handed one to Bob and they clinked the necks before they each took a sip.
“I should put all this shit away. It’s supposed to rain this afternoon. Wouldn’t do to get all this rusty old boat garbage wet,” Alan said.
“It’s in pretty good shape for its age. All you need is a new piston, right?” Bob asked.
“Yeah, probably. I’d feel better if I knew where the missing piece of that piston went to, and why it went missing,” Alan said.
Bob shrugged.
“I can probably find a new one online,” Alan said.
“You know where the Knowles road is?”
“Yeah, maybe. Off the Manchester Road?”
“You can go that way. It’s not the fastest, but sure. There’s a guy over there named Clough. He has a little engine place. I bet he has a piston for you. Get a set of rings for it while you’re there.”
“I don’t have one of those tools they talk about in the book to put the new clips in though,” Alan said.
“I bet you can just use a screwdriver.”
“C-L-U-F-F? Is that how he spells it?”
“C-L-O-U-G-H,” Bob said. He tipped back his beer and drained it. “What are you doing this afternoon?”
“I don’t know. I’ve got to put this shit away and then I was thinking I’d mow the grass, but it’s going to rain. I don’t know.”