The Haigerloch Project

The tractor was kept in the barn. Adam, the Polish farm worker, threw open the big double doors to let in as much light as possible. The machine had obviously not been used for a while. It was rusty and ill-kempt, and clumps of wind-borne straw had collected in hollow places on it, some obviously having served as nests for roosting hens.

They examined it.

It was a Fordson A grimy plate on it read: HENRY FORD & SON, LTD. CORK, IRELAND. MODEL N. It had two large cast-iron wheels with solid rubber rims in the back and two smaller ones in front. It had a belt pulley and a broad, rigid drawbar. It had probably been built some fifteen years before — although it looked older.

Sig inspected the engine. A side-valve four-cylinder unit that would probably run on either gasoline or kerosene.

“Let's try to start her up,” Dirk said. “I'll work the crank.”

Sure, Sig thought cynically. And if we do get the damned thing to run — how about operating it? They taught us to drive anything on wheels from Italian two-ton trucks to Russian baby-buggies — but nobody thought of a Fordson tractor!

They bent to the task of getting the battered tractor started Miraculously, they succeeded.

Rasping, wheezing, knocking and sputtering — it ran.

But not for long.

With a spastic cough — it quit.

Sig inspected the gasoline tank.

It was empty.

He looked at Dirk. He shook his head. Dirk turned to Frau Schrader.

“Have you any gasoline?” he asked “Or kerosene?”

The woman frowned. “I know nothing of this tractor,” she said. “Emil took care of it. I have no knowledge if there is any gasoline.”

“Could we get some? In the village? Buy it?”

“I think not There is little gasoline for us these days. No one will give up what he has. You must come with your truck and take the tractor away.” She looked at him defiantly. “It is yours now.”

Sig and Dirk glanced at one another. That was that.

Suddenly Adam spoke.

“Machine no run,” he said solemnly. “No petrol.”

Thanks a lot, Dirk thought, we just about managed to figure that out for ourselves.

Man take out,” Adam continued.

Dirk looked at him quickly. “Herr Schrader took the gas out of the tractor?” he asked “Siphoned it out?”

Adam looked puzzled. He shook his head. “Man take out,” he repeated.

“Okay, okay,” Dirk said impatiently. “What did he do with it? Where is it? Where?”

“He hide No one will take.”

“Where?”

Adam didn't answer. Instead he walked over to a row of battered milk cans standing against the barn wall. One of them had a piece of old burlap wedged in the opening by the dented lid He pointed at it “Petrol there,” he said.

Dirk was at the can in two strides. He wrested the lid off. He sniffed the opening.

“Gas!” he said.

With his knuckles he rapped down the side of the can until the hollow, booming sound suddenly became a solid thud.

“Ten, twelve liters,” he said to Sig.

“It will be enough, this gasoline?” Frau Schrader asked. “Enough to get you to your truck?”

Dirk nodded.

“Thank you, Frau Schrader,” he said. “It will be enough.”

* * *

The sign said simply.

HECHINGEN

Kreis Stuttgart

Sig and Dirk looked at it. Hechingen. It was more than an ordinary road sign to them. More than a milestone on their path. It was a good omen. They'd made it. Hechingen…

Dirk's foot gave him no serious trouble. Frau Schrader's home remedy and the rest he'd enjoyed riding on the tractor had done the job. They had covered over thirty miles from Oberndorf to the road junction with the Hechingen-Tübingen-Stuttgart highway. They had sold the tractor to a farmer near Balingen before going onto the main road, where it would have been out of place. At first they had thought of simply abandoning it — but that would have led to some sort of investigation when it was found, leading back to Frau Schrader. They could not risk that. But the farmer who bought it had gotten himself a good deal and was unlikely to go around shooting off his mouth. Twelve hundred marks, he'd paid. They had actually made two hundred marks on the transaction! “Just wait till old Corny hears that one,” Dirk had said triumphantly.

Once on the highway, they had quickly thumbed a ride. A truck converted to wood-burning had picked them up. The driver had turned off less than a mile before the town limits of Hechingen, and they had walked the rest of the way, Sig carrying the rucksack so Dirk could go easy on his foot.

Dirk was looking at the signpost marking the town limits. A line… An imaginary line. But — to him — vitally important…

He was eleven years old. His parents had taken him to visit friends from the Old Country who'd settled in a small town on the Ohio-Indiana state line. In fact, the state line ran right through town, right smack through the house where their friends lived. His father had said that every day the lady cooked dinner for her family in Ohio and served it in Indiana! He had been awed, and he had been thrilled each time he walked across the invisible line. He had stood with one foot in each state. It has been magic….