Read by Michael Flamel

OOh, she’s dead. She is dead.

I mean, she’s had her cantankerous moments before. Those times when she wouldn’t start no matter what. The days when she sputtered around all weak like she’d never get down to any real work. And, of course, she got many a case of the Wraps, making you stop every few feet to untangle the vines, stalks, and strings snarled around the tines.

This time, though, is different.

She wasn’t a big tiller—Yellowbirds never are—but she was a kicker. You see, the tines on a rototiller naturally spin faster than the wheels. Sometimes when those tines couldn’t dig into the ground, they’d start racing the whole machine right over the top of it. If you panicked and followed your natural reflex to push down on the handles, those tines would just scoot you forward all the faster. But if you remembered to lift the handles, the tines would grab air and you’d be right back to the slow stroll the front wheels gave you.

Corners were exciting, too. I suppose I could’ve switched the wheels out of gear when I reached the end of a row. But it was always much more thrilling to lift the tines up and do a quick 180, trying to turn the machine around the other way before the wheels rammed you into the fence—or worse, the raspberries.

I’m going to miss her. She didn’t even die at my own hands. A friend had her on loan. You see, one of the things that endears you to a machine is, after a while, you learn its eccentricities, its quirks. I knew that if my Yellowbird wouldn’t restart after conking out, I could remove the air filter for a second and she’d crank right up. I also knew she was the thirsty type, so you had to check her oil every time you put in some gas. My friend didn’t do that. He let her run dry on oil, and she froze up and died.

I can’t tell you how sad I feel. I know, it’s a machine, Pat, let’s not go into mourning. But I have. Those cute little wheels. That little round choke. Those skinny yellow handlebars—like antennae.

As I’ve begun to age, I’ve discovered that you don’t die all at once. You die in little bits, as parts of who you are fall by the side. The part of me that followed my little yellow tiller through the garden each Spring, well, it’s gone now. I’d like to give it a proper burial, maybe just deep enough so those silly curved handlebars would poke up out of the ground. But, you know, it’s going to be kind of hard now. I don’t have a tiller to help me start the hole.

RIP, little Yellowbird, you’re now one more piece of my past. ❖