The Tractor Nobody Would Bid On

A son took his own father’s tractor to a sale while the father was in the hospital. The sheriff would say it was a family matter. He would be right.

So I called Dale. Dale had been calling sales in our county since before I moved there.

He had sold Gene’s father’s cattle in 1979. He picked up on the first ring because auctioneers are always up early on sale day.

“Linda,” he said. “How’s Gene doing? We’ve all been praying for him.”

I told him how Gene was doing. Then I told him about lot 40. There was a long quiet on the line.

“Kyle brought it in yesterday afternoon,” Dale said finally. “He signed the consignment sheet. He told me his dad wanted it sold to help with the bills. I had no reason to doubt him, Linda. He’s Gene’s son.”

“I know he is,” I said. “Can you pull it?”

“Not unless the consignor pulls it,” he said. “That’s how it works. The man who brings it in is the man I answer to. If Kyle tells me to pull it, it’s pulled. If he doesn’t, I have to sell it. I’m sorry. Come out and talk to him. Maybe he’ll listen to you.”

I almost laughed at that. Kyle had not listened to me in fourteen years.

But I got dressed. Jeans, a gray sweater, my tan barn coat because the morning was raw. I didn’t do much with my hair.

I keep it short and it doesn’t need much anyway. I sat at the kitchen table for one minute and said the only prayer I had in me.

“Lord, I don’t know what to do,” I said. “You’ll have to show me when I get there.”

Dale’s spring consignment sale was always on a farmstead three miles south of the highway, the Rasmussen place, which had been empty since old Arlen Rasmussen went into the home.

The family let Dale use the yard every April and every September. Half the county came to the spring sale whether they needed anything or not.

The morning was gray and overcast, the clouds low and flat as a lid.

The trees around the yard were still bare, and the gravel was soft mud from three days of rain. There were pickups parked along both sides of the road for a quarter mile.

I parked at the end of the line and walked in. You could smell coffee and diesel and wet ground. The lunch stand from the Lutheran church was already selling sloppy joes out of a roaster.

The machinery was lined up in long rows across the yard, every piece with a lot number on a card wired to it.

The hay wagon Dale used for a stand sat at the end of the main row, so he could move it along with a pickup as the sale went down the line.

And there it was, behind the wagon, in the row of consigned machinery. Gene’s M.

Freshly restored and red as the day it left the factory, the only clean thing in that whole muddy yard. Somebody had wired a card to the steering wheel that said 40.

I walked up to it and put my hand on the rear tire, the same tire Gene had been leaning on when I found him. The rubber was cold and wet.

Two men I knew from the co-op were standing nearby looking it over. They saw me and stopped talking, and one of them touched his cap.

“Linda,” he said. “Didn’t know Gene was selling.”