The Tractor No Hand Went Up For

There is a time for smooth and this was not it. I was past being proud.

I said, his son put this tractor in your sale on Thursday, while his daddy lay there not able to speak or lift a hand. I said, I did not even know it was here. I came up to buy a stock tank.

I said, I cannot prove to you this morning that it is ours. There is no title on a tractor this old.

Earl cannot sign a paper. The law says all of that makes it a family matter, and no business of the sheriff.

I said, so I am not here with a deputy. I am not here to make a scene with that boy, or to shame him in front of you.

I raised him from twelve and I love him still, God help me.

I said, I am only here to ask you, as neighbors. This tractor is not mine to keep from you if you truly want it.

The company is going to sell it in about ten minutes whether I like it or not.

I said, all I can do is stand up here on this wagon and tell you the plain truth, and then let you do what you each think is right. I am not going to say another word about it.

I looked out at all those caps and folded hands and quiet faces. I said, that is all of it.

Thank you kindly for hearing an old woman out. And I climbed down off that wagon with my legs shaking under me.

The auctioneer let a silence sit. He is a sale man, he has seen everything, and even he let it sit.

Then he lifted his microphone back up to his mouth, and he said the words I will hear until I die. He said, folks. We are at lot 40.

Not One Hand

The ring man walked over and took his place beside the M. The auctioneer started the way they always start, with a high number to get the room loosened up and moving. He had done it a thousand times.

He said, who will give me five thousand on this restored Farmall. Five thousand dollar bill, five, five, who will go five.

His voice rolled out fast and easy over the speakers across the field. Nobody moved. Not one man.

He came down off it. Four thousand, four, give me four to start her out. Not a hand went up. Three thousand.

Two thousand. He worked it the way a good auctioneer works a dead lot, cheerful and quick.

A thousand dollars, he said. Who will start her at just one thousand dollars on a tractor worth seven.

He scanned the crowd with his eyes, that practiced sweep that finds the smallest twitch of a card.

Three hundred men stood in the gravel with their bidder cards down at their sides. Not held up.

Not half raised. Down, flat against their legs, every last one of them. I have never seen anything like it.