Alone in the vacuum-like silence of a snowless February day--the site is quite remote, the house for now unoccupied, as is the stable near where I'm working on a rusty, lichen-encrusted Farmall M. The somber grayness of an old-growth forest surrounds this scene.

A delicate limb of white oak still held a thick cluster of last year's foliage. An occasional breeze would cause the leaves to slap the trunk of the tree, making a sound much like footsteps approaching in the thick blanket of leaves on the forest floor. As the day passed in silence, I would forget the source of the occasional "footsteps" and, startled from some reverie, I would quickly turn my attention in the direction of the sound and see only the dangling cluster of leaves and the open door of the empty stable beyond, staring back, suggesting that something was watching me from the blackness within.

The feeling that I was being watched from the stable grew to the point where it was becoming quite a distraction, and I was determined that it was time to confront whatever it was I imagined to be there. Feeling a little foolish, but with skin crawling and panic approaching (though still at a distance), I marched myself to the darkness and charged in.

Suddenly I caught sight of a skull-like figure staring at me, its sunken eyes of two different sizes, its mouth wide open as if forming a scream! Then blackness crowded my vision, focusing on the figure until it became a bright dot, then disappeared altogether.

I was outside again.

It was summertime. The Farmall was now in two parts, having been separated for a clutch replacement. Beyond that was the stuff of a typical tractorman's nightmare: a confused jumble of unrelated parts, their functioning together unlikely and the purpose of the job uncertain but with the utmost of urgency. Again, the footsteps . . . .

"Nice of this feller to spread out this here tractor so's we kin walk through it instead of havin' to go 'round," said a male voice behind me. I turned to see three men of slight build, dressed in T-shirts and bib overalls that partly obscured obsolete logos: Max Headroom peered around one of the fellows' straps while another's shirt proclaimed something about the Macarena craze. The third man's T-shirt was inside out and thus indecipherable. Their heads were almost hairless but not shaven, and a certain expression in their eyes suggested that the space behind them could have been put to better use.

As they filed between the halves of the M and walked into the forest, I asked them where they might be going.

"There's a pretty young witch that has a cabin next to a pond in the woods," the one in the Max Headroom shirt replied.

"It bein' so hot today, we figgered we'd sneak up and catch her skinny-dippin'," said Inside-Out.

"It kin be right dangerous, though." said the Macarena maestro.

"Yeah, right," I replied. "What's she gonna do, fly over and moon us from her broomstick?"

They stopped and walked slowly, silently, back toward me.

I had been working from the back of the service truck, using the heavy tailgate with vise affixed as my workbench. I glanced at the truck, taking notice that my favorite three foot "cheater bar" was in easy reach.

"Uncle Burtram got turned into a dog." said Inside-out.

"Redbone coonhound," Macarena contributed.

"Good hunter, too." Headroom concluded. "But Uncle Corn got turned into a big hunk o' arn, we had him made inta a flywheel for the old John Deere--painted him greener 'n a gourd."

"Probably the best job he ever had," said Macarena.

"Naw, he worked at Junior Jeeter's gas station for a right good while," replied Inside-out.

"I was meanin' prestige-wise," Macarena continued in a slightly condescending tone.

"Interesting." was the only reply that I could come up with.

"Wanna know why we call him Uncle Corn?" Headroom asked.

I replied in the negative, but Headroom must have sensed my enthusiasm (although I hadn't), and went on to tell how Uncle Corn got his nickname.

"Every time Uncle Corn went into town, he would take along a handful of corn. When he saw a feller walking along wearin' them high rubber boots, he would foller along and toss kernels o' corn into the man's boot tops." He went on in a conspiratory tone. "After a while, the feller'd go to limpin' and squirmin' and Uncle Corn'd lean up against a buildin' and laugh for five-ten minutes."

The three convulsed with suppressed laughter, apparently reliving one of these rich moments.

The thought of a woman (witch or not) alone in the woods with these bozos began to make me uneasy, so I invited myself along. I tried to think of a subtle way to bring the cheater along, but had to settle for the cell phone. I could call in a forest fire or maybe have a SWAT team parachute in if these guys got ugly(er).

We walked the better part of an hour before we came to a long rock outcropping perhaps six feet high. The outcropping stood in contrast to the otherwise gentle landscape, and was not of a type of rock normally found in the area. It was an easy climb to the top. Below was a clear, deep pool of water, fed by a thin waterfall from rocks on the opposite bank. None of this fit the surrounding landscape, and I began to wonder how much the graceful, raven-haired nude swimmer in the pool paid to have this installed near her modest cabin.

It soon became obvious that the men had too great a fear of this woman to advance any farther than the rocks. I felt duty bound to be back at the jobsite, so I climbed down from the rock and took my leave, calling out a loud farewell to the men who were now gesturing frantically for me to keep my voice down.

Suddenly there were three frogs where the men had been. They stared at me for a long moment, then seemed to shrug and hopped happily away toward the pool. Oooops.

I opened my eyes to the darkness of the stable, the soft dirt floor surprisingly comfortable under my back. I looked over to where I had seen the skull-like figure.

The light that had illuminated this fearsome figure had moved on with the day. A stripped-out Briggs and Stratton engine block, positioned with the top of the block facing away from the bench where it rested, stared back in blank innocence: "What? What??".

The valve seats and ports had formed the eyes of the image, the cylinder bore the mouth, a grease rag left therein, the tongue.

I think.

I had had about enough of this place for today. I went out and started loading up my tools. The bare trees were silhouetted against a blood-red sunset, and I began to feel the departing fear stop, look over its shoulder, and start making the trip back. I turned these thoughts of witches to mental images of the late Elizabeth Montgomery, as Samantha in "Bewitched," in various tasteful though scantily clad (anything but that gosh-awful dress!) poses.

It helped. If the character Samantha knew what I was thinking she would probably turn me into one of the gears in the Farmall's transmission. The lonely reverse idler, maybe. It's the gear that has to spin like crazy while the other gears roll slowly the other way.