The Combine That Ran for the Crowd

And with every man who believed him, the price went down, and the price he would have to pay to take it home went down with it.

I went into the shop and stood by the parts washer for a minute with my hands on the cold edge of it.

Ione looked over at me from the roasters and did not ask.

I want to explain why I did not do the things a sensible person might tell me I should have done.

I could have gone to Vance and asked him to stop the sale. But you cannot stop a farm sale with a hundred and fifty people in the yard.

They took off work. They hauled trailers. Half of them would never come back for a second date.

I could have walked over and told Trent to quit it. He would have said he was only telling men what his father told him.

Then it would be his word against mine, and a stepmother arguing with a son over a dead man’s machine looks like exactly what it is.

I could have gone from man to man and said, “It isn’t cracked.” I had already done that, four times.

They nodded and did not believe me. Of course the widow says it isn’t cracked. The widow wants the money.

And I could have called someone afterward, a lawyer or the sheriff or whoever you call.

But afterward, the combine would be gone down the road at thirty-one thousand dollars, and there is no office in the world that can put a crowd back in a bean field.

A lie told at a sale has to be answered at the sale, in front of the same farmers who heard it.

Not months later, in a room, where none of them would ever know.

So I waited, and I thought about how.

The small items sold first, as they always do. Vance’s ring men worked the hay racks, calling out bids, and the clerk wrote down numbers in the trailer.

The log chains went high. The anvil went to a woman from Elmore who said it would be a flower stand.

Sig, who had worked Vance’s sales as a ring man for thirty years, came by me while they moved to the tillage.

He was a big quiet man with a belly and a cane he never used. He bent close and said, “I been hearing things about the combine.”

“I know,” I said. “It isn’t true, Sig.”

“I didn’t think so,” he said. “Orrin wouldn’t have let it sit in that shed cracked. He’d have had it fixed or gone.”

Then he looked toward the end of row three, where Trent stood, and his mouth went flat. He did not say anything else.

The planter brought what it should. The field cultivator brought a little more. The grain cart went to the young couple who rented the ground, which made me happy.

They hugged me after, and the wife cried a little, and so did I.

Then it was just before noon, and the whole crowd walked down the row to the combine.

You have to understand what that looks like. A hundred and fifty people in caps and jackets, holding white bidder cards with black numbers on them, walking slow down a stubble field in the sun, and stopping in a half circle in front of the biggest machine on the place.