The Tractor Nobody Would Bid On

Men in caps and work coats, every one of them holding the white bidder card with his number on it.

Lot 37 went. Lot 38. I felt my heart in my throat.

I kept thinking of Gene in that bed with the tube in his mouth and the machines breathing for him, and I kept thinking of him on the shed floor saying, listen to it tick.

Lot 39 was a loader bucket. It went for six hundred and fifty dollars to a young man I didn’t know.

Dale’s ringmen started to pull the wagon down the row with the old pickup they used for it.

I don’t remember deciding. I remember my boots in the mud, and then my hands on the edge of that hay wagon, and then I was climbing up onto it.

I am fifty-one years old and not built for climbing onto hay wagons. A man I didn’t know gave me a boost under the elbow without saying a word.

Dale turned around and saw me standing there beside him. He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he held the microphone out to me. He didn’t say a word, and he didn’t stop me either. He just nodded once.

The crowd went quiet. Not all at once. It went quiet from the front to the back, like wind going across a wheat field, until all I could hear was a cow bawling somewhere and the lunch stand’s generator running.

I didn’t make a speech. I’m not a speech person. I just said what was true, as loud as I could say it in that cold air.

“Most of you know me,” I said. “I’m Linda Haugen. I keep the books at the co-op. My husband is Gene Haugen, and he’s been in the ICU in Sioux Falls since Tuesday with a heart attack.”

A murmur went through them. Several of them had already heard. Several hadn’t.

“That’s Gene’s tractor behind me,” I said. “Lot 40. He bought it for four hundred dollars eight years ago and he spent six winters in our shed bringing it back. He rebuilt every part of it with his own hands. Some of you helped him find parts.”

I saw a man near the front nod. I knew him. He had driven to Minnesota with Gene once for a set of fenders.

“Gene didn’t put it in this sale,” I said. “He couldn’t have. He’s had a tube down his throat since Wednesday. I’m not going to tell you who did. I don’t have a single paper to show you, and you know there’s no title on a tractor that old. All I have is my word.”

I took a breath. My voice was shaking and I let it.

“I’m asking you to take my word,” I said. “That’s all. Thank you.”

I handed Dale back his microphone, turned around, and climbed down off that wagon on the far side, the side toward the tractor, and I stood next to the M with my hand on the fender, and I didn’t look at anyone.

Dale stood there a minute. Then he lifted the microphone back up, because he had a sale to run and a consignment sheet with a signature on it, and he was an honest man doing his job the way the job is done.

“Lot 40,” he said. His voice was quieter than it had been all morning. “1950 Farmall M. Restored. Runs good. Who’ll give me five thousand to start?”

Nothing.

“Four thousand,” Dale said.