Unforeseen Events: Day 13

Word Count: 78,058

Summary of Events:

Emil and Sheldon worked on taking more things out of the car to see if they needed repair or replacement while they waited for the engine parts, and Emil was left with a sinking feeling that fixing the car would take longer than he'd thought. Sheldon learned some rather startling things about his mother as a young woman from Emil and Mr. Graham when Mr. Graham stopped by for lunch on his way home from the car show. 

Excerpt of the Day:

"Gingerly Emil grasped at the base and rotated his hand, they were removing all of the electrical, and, from the looks of things, the electrical was in pretty rough shape; not that Emil was really all that surprised.

In truth, he was pretty sure that the condition of the engine had instilled a false sense of optimism in him that the project would be pretty quick. As much as the engine was in impressively good shape for having been sitting for forty five years, pretty much everything else they'd pulled out so far — aside from the transmission, which was obviously what had necessitated the parking — looked like it had been sitting for forty five years.

He carefully removed the headlight and set it in the tray under the stool he was sitting on, being as his knees were too old for kneeling on hard concrete. He moved the stool over to the other headlight and carefully extracted it in the same fashion.

Holding onto the just-extracted light, Emil grabbed the other one from the tray and stood up. Stepping carefully over the front end of the car, he set them both on the workbench, using pieces of masking tape to indicate which one was left and which one was right.

Emil turned around to get the stool out before he lifted the car again and noticed that Sheldon wasn't there. Sheldon had told him he was going to the bathroom a good — he checked the clock — ten minutes ago. Where was he?

He removed the stool so that he didn't forget and headed toward the house. This last week had been milder, hovering more around the twenty degree mark, and there was a little bit of a breeze coming from the northwest, which was keeping all the silage dust from blowing onto his yard, as the rented field across the road was being turned into feed for dairy cows.

The field which bordered Emil's property to the west was in peas that were almost ready to go for likely the same purpose, and the other field to the north and east was in oats, which would probably stay until September or even October.

"No, I don't," Sheldon said, as if responding to someone as Emil stepped inside.

Emil walked over to the kitchen and found Sheldon with the phone to his ear. Sheldon looked at him and looked almost relieved.

"Um, hey, uh, Grandpa just walked in, do you want to talk to him?" Sheldon asked.

Emil wondered who it was that Sheldon would've answered.

"Yeah I mean Emil, he's my grandpa," Sheldon replied.

He lifted the receiver away from his face and held his hand over the mouthpiece.

"I don't know who she is but she won't stop talking," Sheldon said. "I didn't tell her much about me but she has more than enough to say about everyone else."

"Ah," Emil said. "It's Mrs. Walden, our own local conspiracy theorist.""