“How much?”
“One eighty.”
“What?”
“Seed plates.”
Bell stared.
“How many?”
“About nine hundred.”
There was a long silence.
Bell removed his glasses.
Cleaned them with the edge of his shirt.
Put them back on.
“Show me.”
Malik led him behind the dealership.
Bell stood in front of the crates.
He lifted one plate.
Turned it over.
Then another.
Then a third.
Malik waited for him to say he had made a mistake.
Bell did not.
He looked into another crate.
“How'd you buy these?”
“Whole lot.”
“For a hundred eighty?”
“Yes.”
Bell looked toward Malik.
“What do you think you've got?”
“I don't know yet.”
Bell nodded.
It was a small movement.
Almost approval.
“Good answer.”
Malik relaxed slightly.
Bell put the plate back.
“You got a truck?”
“No.”
“Of course you don't.”
Bell looked toward his own pickup.
“Come on.”
“What?”
“We've got to move nine hundred pieces of your bad judgment before somebody changes his mind.”
It took two trips.
Bell backed his old Chevrolet and flatbed trailer beside the fence.
Malik carried plates crate by crate until his arms ached.
The assistant helped with a forklift on the heaviest boxes.
Cast iron looked manageable until several hundred pieces were stacked together.
By the time they returned to Bell’s shop with the second load, afternoon light had begun fading.
Rust dust covered Malik's sleeves.
Grease stained his palms.
Bell parked the trailer beside the rear workshop door.
They stood looking at the crates.
“You bought all that for scrap money,” Bell said.
“Yes.”
“What do you figure's under the dirt?”
“I don't know.”
Bell nodded.
“That why you bought it?”
“Mostly.”
Bell picked up one plate.
Malik watched him rub the casting mark with his thumb.
Bell had noticed the numbers too.
Of course he had.
“Numbers don't get cast into iron for decoration,” Malik said.
Bell glanced at him.
“No.”
“So they identify something.”
“Yes.”
“What?”
Bell set the plate back.
“That is now your problem.”
Malik smiled slightly.
“You know, don't you?”
“Some.”
“How much?”
Bell walked toward the shop.
“Enough to know you're going to spend a lot of evenings with a wire brush.”
Malik’s mother learned about the purchase before he got home.
Nothing moved through that community slowly if Otis Bell was involved.
When Malik entered the kitchen, dinner was already on the table.
His mother looked at him.
“How much?”
Malik took off his coat.
“Hello to you too.”
“How much did you spend?”
His grandmother sat across the table cutting a piece of chicken.
She did not look up.
Malik sat.
“One hundred eighty.”
His mother's fork stopped.
“One hundred eighty dollars?”
“Yes.”
“On what?”
“Planter seed plates.”
“How many seed plates does somebody need?”
“I have around nine hundred.”
She stared at him.
“Nine hundred?”
His grandmother finally looked up.
“What do they do?”