Part 5
Vera called the parts supplier as soon as it opened. The man asked for the model number, waited while she read it from the plate, and came back with the answer she had expected. The drive assembly was discontinued; he had no stock and no substitute he could recommend.
She opened the other two older mixers. The same assemblies were damaged or incomplete. Somebody had kept these machines for parts long after they stopped being useful as equipment, and she had priced them as if they belonged to the clean row in front.
At eight, she sent Alan a message explaining the different models and the parts problem. He called back while she was photographing the damaged gear. “Tell me by Friday if those three can’t make the shipment. I need to change my buyer’s order.”
“I’m still looking.”
“That’s fine. Friday.”
Jess arrived with a box of cleaning supplies and the church hinge Vera had left on the farmhouse table. She put the hinge beside the truck keys. “You need to leave by ten-thirty.”
Vera was on hold with another supplier. She nodded and pointed Jess toward the nine repairable mixers, where the work was straightforward and useful. By ten, they had two ready for a final check, and a salvage dealer seventy miles away thought he might have the older gear.
He couldn’t confirm the part number. He could show it to her if she came that morning. Vera looked at the hinge beside the keys, then at the deposit receipt for Edith’s field, pinned above the bench.
“I’ve got to look at this part,” she told Jess. “Keep going here. I’ll call Marlene.”
Jess lowered the rag in her hand. “You said before noon.”
“I know what I said.”
The words came out with a sharpness Vera hadn’t intended. Jess turned back to the bench without answering. Vera took the hinge with her anyway, as if carrying it might leave the promise intact.
She called the church office from the yard and got the answering machine. She left a message saying she was running late and would be in touch. She did not say she was driving in the opposite direction or that Marlene should arrange the other equipment.
At the salvage yard, the gear was the wrong one. Vera knew it before the dealer set it on the counter, but she measured it and checked the worn markings while he waited. On the way back, she stopped at a turnout and called the church again.
Marlene answered this time. There was the clatter of dishes behind her voice. “I’ve got a rental van out getting a borrowed cabinet. We couldn’t wait anymore.”
“I have the hinge. I can come first thing tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow doesn’t help this meal.”
Vera sat with the engine off. A farm truck went past, rocking the service body in its wake. She could hear Marlene speaking to somebody in the kitchen, giving directions that should not have been necessary.
“I’m sorry,” Vera said when she came back.
“I believe you. But I asked you to tell me while I still had time.”
Vera drove home with the replacement hinge in a paper bag beside her. Jess had left when she said she would, after checking the animals and recording the hours. There were four finished mixers beneath clean covers and a note asking Vera to verify each before marking it complete.
She checked them all. The work was careful, including the places she would have been tempted to rush. When she went to the pen afterward, she found fresh bedding under Otis and the feed containers left exactly where Jess could reach them without crossing behind Clover.
Vera stood outside the rail while the calf slept. Clover lifted her head, chewed, and came toward the familiar bucket. Vera couldn’t make herself think that the cow had missed her more than she’d missed the feed arriving.
The next morning, she fitted the church hinge. Marlene opened the cabinet door, inspected the repair, and thanked her. She declined Vera’s offer to check the kitchen’s other equipment while she was there.
“I’ve made an arrangement with somebody,” she said. “For the rest of the season.”
Vera put away the tools. Before leaving, she asked what the van had cost. Marlene found the receipt in a folder with the meal accounts and handed her a copy without softening the amount.
Ninety-six dollars, plus the extra time of two volunteers. Vera could repay the dollars. She wrote the amount on the job sheet and told Marlene she would bring it by Saturday.
On Friday morning, the final supplier called back. He couldn’t find a sound replacement assembly. Custom work might eventually make the older mixers usable, but not by Alan’s shipment date, and not within the quote Vera had given him.
She called Alan and told him the three couldn’t be ready. He was annoyed, but he didn’t raise his voice. They would inspect the other nine on the twenty-third and agree on the labor due for those, with the three unfinished units returned as they were.
Afterward, Vera sat at the bench and counted the work still to do. The nine units could earn twenty-two hundred fifty dollars if they passed. That would help next week, but Jess’s pay was due today, and the field deposit was already gone.
Jess came in carrying the hours sheet. She’d worked twenty-six hours that week, including the animal checks and the deliveries Vera had added. Five hundred seventy-two dollars was written at the bottom, with the multiplication shown beside it.
Vera looked at the figure, then at the open parts drawer. She knew the answer to the question Jess hadn’t asked yet. Instead of giving it, she began explaining Alan’s shipment and the three machines on the rear pallet.
Jess let her finish. Then she put the sheet on the clean end of the bench, away from the grease, and tapped the date beside the total. “When did you know he wasn’t paying you today?”
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