Part 4
For eleven days, the copied key stayed on the tractor.
Eleanor kept the pigs in the north pasture and sacrifice lot. She called Dana, described exactly what she had done, and walked the damaged cell with her the following morning.
They covered the roots, redirected the shallow runoff channels, and seeded the bare ground. Dana could not promise that the split tree would recover from the additional stress. Eleanor checked the repaired cell morning and evening, though there was nothing more to do except keep hooves off it and see whether the soil held.
She sorted every farm bill at the kitchen table. Into Kate’s spreadsheet went the auction purchase, medication, fencing, feed, soil amendments, bank interest, and the cost of repairing the wet cell.
The totals were worse than she had allowed herself to estimate.
Cal’s purchase offer for the south slope lay in the farm file. It was fair. His daughter wanted land for a market garden, and Cal had included a year for Eleanor to remove anything she wished to keep.
Eleanor set the offer beside the title to the Ford tractor.
On the twelfth morning, she took the copied key from the hood and placed it on top of a banker’s box filled with records. She carried the box to Kate’s office.
Kate met her in the parking lot during lunch. Eleanor set it on the back seat of her car.
“Every invoice is there,” she said. “The wet-cell repair too.”
Kate glanced at the key. “What do you want me to do?”
“Check my arithmetic.”
“And after that?”
“Tell me where it’s wrong.”
Eleanor left before she could turn the act into an argument.
That evening, Kate emailed three corrected totals and a list of questions. She did not come to the farm.
In October, the pasture cooperative’s buyer inspected the pigs. Thirty-six met its requirements and went to three small farms that raised hogs outdoors. Their sale covered most of the accumulated feed and veterinary costs, with enough left to reduce the operating note.
Eleanor kept six, including Notch, under a budget Kate could see.
Loading day was quiet. Eleanor stood at the trailer gate and counted each pig aboard. Notch watched from the holding pen, one muddy ear folded over the wire.
Thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six.
For months, forty-two had been the first number of every morning. The next day, Eleanor wrote six.
She did not add anything beneath it.
The bank’s new figures arrived in November. Even after the pig sale and winter hay income, the remaining balance was beyond what the orchard could earn in time. Eleanor could sell the south slope, or she could sell the tractor and nearly clear the gap.
The Ford went into a regional equipment sale in January.
She sent Kate the listing but did not ask her to come. On the morning the buyer arrived, Eleanor found her daughter beneath the equipment roof with a bucket of warm water and a bundle of shop towels.
“You’ll freeze the locks,” Eleanor said.
“Not if you stop talking and bring me the dry rags.”
They cleaned thirty years of dust from the instrument panel. Kate rubbed carefully around the thin pencil marks Tom had made beside the fuel gauge. Eleanor polished the gearshift knob, worn smooth on the side where his palm had rested.
“Cal’s offer is still open,” Kate said.
“I know.”
“Once this goes, it’s gone.”
“So was the hay rake.”
“That didn’t have Dad’s marks on it.”
Eleanor ran the cloth once beneath the faded lines. “No. It didn’t.”
Kate took the cloth from her and cleaned the dust trapped around the gauge.
The buyer was a young hay farmer from two counties west. He brought his teenage son, who climbed into the seat only after asking permission. The boy worked the clutch slowly and did not grind a gear.
Eleanor handed the father Tom’s service notebook.
“Hydraulic line was replaced three years ago,” she said. “Rear tire has a slow leak when it gets cold. Half a pound every few weeks.”
“We’ll look after it.”
Eleanor nodded. She did not ask him to promise more than a machine required.
The tractor went down the lane on a flatbed. Kate stood beside her, holding the copied key in her closed fist. Neither waved.
“I checked the bank’s January interest,” Kate said after the truck disappeared. “You were short by a hundred fourteen.”
“I have it.”
“I know. It was in the coffee tin marked emergency.”
“That qualifies.”
Kate opened her hand and threaded the copied key back onto her ring.
Two days later, they paid the operating note. The farm still had ordinary bills, old fences, and no dependable orchard income, but the March deadline was gone. Eleanor declined Cal’s offer for the south slope without blaming him for making it.
In late February, Kate returned with pruning saws.
Dana had marked what could be removed without taking too much canopy in one year. Fourteen dead trees came out. On the living ones, they cut broken limbs, crossing branches, and enough upper growth to bring light into the interior.
At the split tree, Eleanor held the ladder while Kate studied two competing limbs.
“Which one?” Kate asked.
Eleanor began to answer, stopped, and looked from the branch to Dana’s marks.
“You’re on the ladder.”
Kate removed the smaller limb. The cut was clean.
They worked through the afternoon, leaving more wood than Eleanor wanted and less than Kate feared. At dusk, the orchard looked uneven and exposed. Orange-marked stumps stood among twenty-seven living trees.
Six weeks later, Kate was checking a trunk guard when she called from the third row. Eleanor found her beside the split tree, one hand cupped beneath a low branch. At the joint where gray wood narrowed to a spur, a bud had opened just far enough to show a seam of pink…
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