“Yes, sir.”
“How old now?”
“Sixteen.”
Vernon whistled.
“When I was sixteen, I chased girls.”
Caleb continued inspecting bearings.
Vernon waited.
Then added:
“Not farm equipment.”
Caleb looked out from beneath the machine.
“Did it work?”
Vernon stared.
Then burst out laughing.
“All right.”
“You can have the baler.”
Caleb slid out.
“How much?”
“Free.”
Caleb blinked.
Vernon pointed.
“If you remove it before my wife sees me charging a teenager money for that thing.”
“Deal.”
By sunset, baler number two sat chained behind the first.
That made the trailer look less like farm equipment and more like a traveling junkyard.
Caleb knew.
He could see people slowing down as he passed.
At the gas station, two men came outside specifically to inspect what he had hauled.
One called:
“You starting a museum?”
Caleb kept driving.
The third baler cost twenty dollars.
The fourth cost nothing.
But the fourth changed everything.
It belonged to an elderly farmer named Leonard Shaw.
Leonard had stopped baling his own hay after a stroke.
His sons had purchased a newer machine years earlier and left the old New Holland behind a lean-to.
Caleb found it buried in waist-high grass.
The sheet metal looked terrible.
The right tire was gone.
The flywheel had surface rust.
Twine tangled around one shaft.
Leonard watched from a lawn chair.
“That machine fought me for twenty years.”
Caleb opened a panel.
“Why did you stop using it?”
“Missed knots.”
“When?”
“Last season before I quit.”
“Every bale?”
“No.”
“One in ten?”
“More like one in twenty.”
Caleb stopped.
That was not dead.
Not even close.
“Did anyone look at the knotter?”
“Dealer did.”
Caleb turned.
“What did they say?”
Leonard scratched his chin.
“They put something new on there.”
“What?”
“Don’t remember.”
“You have the paperwork?”
Leonard laughed.
“Boy, if I could find paperwork from twelve years ago, my wife would resurrect herself just to ask where I hid it.”
Caleb looked deeper into the machine.
Old hay packed the knotter area.
He reached inside.
Pulled.
A compacted wad came loose.
Behind it, metal appeared.
Much cleaner than the surrounding parts.
Caleb wiped grime away.
A dealer tag.
He leaned closer.
REBUILT ASSEMBLY.
His pulse quickened.
Leonard noticed.
“What?”
Caleb did not answer immediately.
He cleaned more.
The knotter frame had surface dirt but almost no meaningful wear.
One gear showed practically perfect teeth.
The billhook looked serviceable.
Disc alignment was close.
Even the knife arm appeared solid.
Caleb moved to the other side.
More inspection.
His mind began assembling something that did not physically exist yet.
Baler one had the best main gearbox.
Baler two had the strongest pickup.
Baler three had a surprisingly sound bale chamber and plunger rails.
Baler four had the knotter.
He stood.
Leonard smiled faintly.
“You see something.”
Caleb nodded.
“Maybe.”