The Big Cat Nap

during the night. “Mystery is one thing. Murder is another. You read too many books when you were a kid.”
    “Nancy Drew.” She smiled. “Mother would get after me to read serious fiction. Bored me stiff, which set her right off. Can’t help it.” She held up her hands in supplication.
    “Here. This isn’t a mystery, but let me show you something.” He held out the hydraulic pump. “This is a genuine John Deere pump for your 2750. It hasn’t been cheaply produced in India or somewhere else in Asia.” He lifted an eyebrow. “For one thing, your tractor is twenty-four years old, which means it’s too old to get fake aftermarket parts for it. Don’t part with this tractor. Those countries have a real incentive to produce cheap aftermarket parts.”
    “Are the fake parts defective?”
    “Not necessarily, but they aren’t as good. The steel’s never as good, and moving parts are often not packed in thick-enough grease, or there’s a rub years later because the calibration isn’t perfect. Often, when you pick up a motor part not made by the original manufacturer, it’s a hair lighter. Another clue is the fitting holes. If you removed an engine element or, say, this hydraulic pump and saw that the bolt holes were maybe a little elliptical, that would mean aftermarket. They had to fuss with the original hole to make it fit.”
    “I did try to look at the hydraulic pump. Chipped my tooth,” Harry joked.
    Dabney laughed, then returned to the subject. “Buy the specs. If a model goes out of production, the manufacturer often doesn’t want the bother of producing the old parts. So they sell the specs for old models. It’s easier to use the tooling equipment to produce newer parts, I guess. Now, John Deere doesn’t do that, but—and it’s a big ‘but’—some of these overseas people are smart enough to hack into computers and just plain steal the specs. Anything on a computer is not safe. Hell, even the FBI’s been hacked into.”
    “I never thought about that—industrial theft, I mean.”
    “Billions. No stopping it, either. If I order a part from John Deere, I talk to the same guy I’ve been working with out there in Illinois for decades. I’ve got the real thing. Same with Ford. I call Ford, not a dealer here.”
    “You’re not branching out and fixing old trucks, are you?”
    “No, but I’m sure fixing my own. Well, I’ve just nattered on here, haven’t I? But it frosts me, frosts me good, because American businesses are being screwed. If they don’t want to make the old parts anymore, that’s their damned dumb choice, but foreign companies stealing our new stuff?” He bit his lower lip for a minute, then stood back on the small ladder to recheck the site for the new pump. “If you take care—and I know you do—you’ll get twenty, maybe thirty years out of this pump. Those hoses, you might have to change those earlier. Your old ones lasted eighteen years. A small piece of one hose is missing. Wonder what happened to that? No matter. I’m putting in all new hoses. No point in a new pump and worn-out hoses.”
    Harry watched as Mrs. Murphy and Pewter left the barn, heading in the direction of the shed.
    Tucker slept on the concrete floor of the shed. That concrete floor had cost Harry’s dad plenty, but it, too, held up. She questioned Dabney some more.
    “Yep. Indians are building decent tractors, a lot more horsepower for the money. A heck of a lot better machine than those Russian tractors that hit the market ten years ago, but John Deere is the Rolls-Royce of tractors. Spend the money. Buy the best.”
    “I’m with you there. You were telling me about models where the manufacturer no longer makes the parts. I see these magazines for old Ford parts, old Chevys. Looks like a big business. How is that different?”
    “In some cases those are parts that a businessman bought from a local dealer. The car dealer no longer had the space to store mirrors, alternators, you name it, for cars from the forties, fifties, et cetera. In other cases, someone with skill can reproduce those parts.”
    “Why is that different?”
    “Well, for one thing, the original manufacturer has a warranty on the parts. If you buy a 1950 Chevy block, a John Deere block, a Harvester, it still is under warranty. But let’s say I have an aftermarket tractor part made in China. The manufacturer gives you a warranty, right?” He looked at her. “The part is defective. Are you going to go to China