The Big Cat Nap

exhaust escaped. That particular tractor would have run into the twenty-first century, except that Harry’s dad started it up one spring day without noticing a bird’s nest filled with eggs scrunched in the exhaust pipe, the lid slightly ajar. By the time he figured it out, not only was there a mess, he’d driven into a ditch, making yet another mess. He finally traded the tractor in for a newer model less inviting to birds.
    “Never heard my father cuss so much.” Harry laughed. “Actually, Mom fired off a few choice words herself when he drove into that ditch. At first we didn’t know what had happened. All we heard was our collie barking, barking, and more barking. By the time we got outside, Dad had crawled out from under the overturned tractor. Lucky he wasn’t hurt. It was pretty funny—those things are, after enough time passes. I suppose, in a way, it will be funny someday that we found that young man Bobby Foltz in the cemetery. Convenient. All they’d have to do would be to dig a grave right there.”
    “Know him?”
    Harry shook her head. “Not really. I saw him race at the drag strip. Passed him at ReNu.”
    Dabney removed the hoses. “Did you like him?”
    “He seemed nice enough. Now that’s three men dead who worked at ReNu.”
    “Read in the papers where the guy who owns the shop has offered a ten-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to a conviction.” Dabney wiped his hands on a red cloth, unpacked new hoses, set them on his big tray.
    “A lot of money.” Harry whistled.
    “Also said this fellow is establishing scholarships in honor of the dead men, for kids who want to be mechanics.”
    “What a good thing to do.” Harry listened to the bluebirds who’d made a nest outside the shed in the back.
    “Wish somebody would create scholarships for tractor repair,” Dabney said.
    “John Deere should be naming scholarships after you. You can repair anything.” She thought a moment. “But I suppose you’re taking business away from the dealers. They charge an arm and a leg for repairs.”
    “I don’t have their overhead,” the shrewd Dabney announced. “Don’t want it, either.”
    “Thank you for driving out on a Sunday. You’re saving my bacon, ’cause I’ve got to cut my hay.”
    “You’re lucky it hasn’t gone to seed—nor have you.” He winked.
    “Elevation. I’m sometimes two weeks behind farms at lower elevations, and I’m almost three weeks behind the farms near Richmond. Most times that’s a help. In the dead of winter, maybe not.”
    “You mentioned over the phone that Fair was going to take out a loan.”
    “I talked him out of it. He was worried we’d lose our hay crop. It’s such a good one this year, but I said, hang on, honey. He leaves the farming to me. We each have our spheres, as he calls them. But I raised the money by selling my sunflower crop—futures, sort of—to Yancy Hampton.”
    “I don’t believe that organic-farming crap.” Dabney carefully inspected the new hoses on his tray, then removed the new pump, meticulously checking it.
    “I do and I don’t. Farming without some form of pesticide is hideously expensive. Birds, bugs, little viruses, can ruin a high percentage of your crop. Plus, Dabney, the produce doesn’t look as pretty as the agribusiness produce.”
    “That’s true. Real apples are a lot smaller, might have a little blemish on them. Might have a worm, too.” He lifted his shoulders slightly. “How does anyone expect the world’s bursting population to be fed without genetic engineering?”
    “Don’t know.” Harry kept to the old ways, so she truly didn’t.
    “I bet I’ve been to half the farms in Virginia in my long life, repairing John Deere tractors. The changes I’ve seen.” He shook his head. “The worst was in the eighties, when the government pretty much turned on the small farmer. God bless anyone who managed to hang on. Your family did.”
    “Sometimes I think it killed Mom and Dad. They worked so hard to save this place. It took its toll. I have a husband whose income doesn’t derive from farming, so I can keep the old home place going. Still, sometimes I get overwhelmed. Maybe that’s why I get caught up with mysteries, wanting answers. Takes my mind off these huge economic forces. Nature, the government, a crop across the ocean, can affect my crop prices. I mean, there’s just little me.”
    “Yep.” He breathed in the fresh morning air, for a cold front had swept through