Part 7
Six thousand dollars meant the truck without the tools. Vera went through the drawers on Sunday morning, checking what would fit into portable cases and what was bolted to the service body. The shelves David had made could stay; the tools she needed for work could come out.
She found the spare key beneath a tray of socket extensions. Its plastic head was cracked where David had once shut a drawer on it, and she’d wrapped the split with tape that had collected a dark rim of dirt. She set it beside the current title and registration, which now carried only her name.
There was no practical reason to keep the damaged spare. She couldn’t bring herself to throw it away, so she put it with the good key instead. Whoever bought the truck would need both.
By noon she had worked out what the sale could pay for. The remaining wages first, then the materials and feed needed before the cattle could move. The accepted mixers would provide a separate payment, but part of that money had to support the business through its next calls. Her eventual share of the farm could go toward a room instead of another impossible promise.
She called Alan and asked whether his offer still stood. He said he would want a mechanic to inspect the truck and the title checked before paying. They arranged Thursday afternoon, when he could also inspect and collect the nine finished mixers a day ahead of his shipment.
“You don’t have to decide on the truck because you got a job wrong,” he said.
“I’m deciding because I still need to work after this one.”
He accepted that without asking her to explain it. Vera told him she would have the tools out if the inspection and sale went ahead. After they hung up, she sat in the driver’s seat for a while without starting the engine.
David had driven most of their service routes before he got sick. Vera had worked from the passenger seat, calling suppliers and trying to read street numbers he passed too quickly. Once she’d dropped a whole box of little screws into the heater vent and blamed his braking until they were both laughing too hard to stay angry.
She had also hated how he left fuel receipts loose on the dashboard. She’d found three more that morning, faded until the prices were unreadable. The ordinary irritation made her miss him more sharply than the jacket had.
Vera took the atlas inside. She put it on the kitchen table, where she could still use it, and moved the old receipts into the paper recycling. Then she sent Jess the payment date she had promised to provide by Monday, explaining that it depended on Thursday’s truck sale and naming what she would do if that inspection failed: settle the wages from the mixer payment before spending on the field.
Jess replied the following morning. Thursday understood. Let me know when it’s sent.
Vera asked whether they could talk for twenty minutes, at a time Jess chose. Jess offered that evening, after Naomi’s supper. Vera arrived with the corrected work and payment records and left the cattle photographs on her phone.
Jess’s van stood in the driveway with the back doors open. Inside were delivery straps, a folding handcart, and a wooden bin divided into spaces for different loads. Naomi was on the steps, trying the bicycle bell, which now rang with a slightly uneven but satisfying sound.
“Grandpa had a spring,” she told Vera. “Mom made it fit.”
Vera bent to listen when she rang it again. Naomi took the bell inside to get her bicycle, and Jess closed one of the van doors against the cold.
“I came to tell you the whole plan,” Vera said. “You don’t have to be in it.”
She showed Jess the truck offer, the costs still due for the field, and the corrected terms for Alan’s batch. She pointed to the hours Jess had worked and the balance she still owed, giving that page its own place on the tailgate. She didn’t ask Jess to admire the arithmetic.
“I spent money on keeping the field before I’d covered your pay,” she said. “And I let you think the batch would bring money sooner than it would.”
Jess ran a thumb along a splinter on the wooden bin. “I don’t need you to tell me you care about them. I was there.”
“I know.”
“What happens when the next job comes in bigger than this one?”
Vera had prepared a quick answer about smaller jobs and written schedules. Looking at the two pages on the tailgate, she understood why it wouldn’t be enough simply to put the same promises into neater handwriting. Jess had to be able to see the work coming and refuse it before Vera sold her time.
“You’d see the order before I accepted it,” she said. “And your stopping time stays blocked. If it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t go on our calendar.”
“Our calendar?”
Vera drew a breath. “If you want to try again. Two route mornings a week to start. Your deliveries stay yours. I’d pay for the van’s work miles and your time the way we agree, and we’d review it after two weeks.”
Jess looked at the passenger seat through the open side door. It held a booster cushion for a younger cousin and a bag of Naomi’s library books. She moved the books out of the seat and set them on the step without answering yet.
“The overdue money first,” she said at last. “And I want to see the rates before we book anything.”
Vera nodded. She had been hoping for an easier expression on Jess’s face, some sign that this conversation had made them safe with each other again. Jess picked up her copy of the hours sheet and left the rest on the tailgate.
The next day, Beth came to help Vera pack the tools. Vera had asked for help with the heavy cases and said what time she needed it, then made lunch before her sister arrived. Beth ate standing at the counter, looking out at the truck.
“I thought you’d be angry if I even mentioned selling it again,” she said.
“I was.”
“I noticed.”
They worked without music. Beth labeled the cases while Vera checked the contents, leaving the large shelving in the truck as agreed. The emptied drawers looked smaller than she remembered, with worn paint where hundreds of parts had rattled through them.
Before they finished, Vera called Edith about renting a small part of the old potting room for a bench and tool storage. Edith named a monthly price and a few conditions. She wanted the outside door used, the floor kept clear, and no equipment brought through her kitchen.
That evening, Jess sent a message about the proposed trial. If we use my van, I keep the keys. You tell me the stop; you don’t change the route without asking.
Vera put her truck’s two keys together on the table before she answered. Agreed.
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