The last Saturday in March came in raw.
Gray sky hanging low. Wind out of the north at twenty miles an hour. Sleet spitting sideways off and on. The kind of Nebraska March day that makes you forget there’s any such thing as May.
By a quarter to eleven, there were sixty-some people standing in that gravel yard.
Seed caps. Insulated coveralls. Carhartt coats. A few wives with travel mugs. A young couple from Kearney with a baby in a carrier.
Some of them were there to bid. Most of them were neighbors who came because a homeplace sale is something you go to around here. The way you go to a funeral. Or a wedding.
Denny Kruse had his flatbed hay rack pulled up in front of the machine shed. A folding table on it. A speaker up on a pole.
His wife ran the registration table inside the shed, out of the wind. His nephew, Brad, worked the crowd as the ringman.
Denny went to school with Walt. They’d shown calves against each other at the Buffalo County fair in 1966.
Everybody knew that too.
I registered at the folding table. I showed my driver’s license and Tom Riley’s letter.
Denny’s wife wrote my name in her ledger. Then she handed me a white card with a big black number printed on it.
47.
Luke stood next to me with his hands in his coat pockets.
We’d agreed in the truck on the way out that Luke would do the bidding. It was his family’s place. It should be his hand that went up.
Hailey and Cody stood with Karen and Jeff over by the pickups. Hailey had her poster-board chart rolled up under her arm, for some reason. I never asked her why she brought it.
Then I saw the man from the land company.
Everybody saw him.
He wore a quilted vest over a fleece jacket. Clean boots. He stood a little apart from everybody, over by the cottonwoods.
Somebody said he was from an outfit in Grand Island that bought up farmland for out-of-state investors and rented it back out. They’d picked up three quarter sections in the county that winter alone.
When he stood still, people stood away from him.
At eleven o’clock, Denny climbed up on the hay rack and tapped the microphone.
“Folks, thank you for coming out on a day like this,” he said. “Most of you know this place. Eighty acres. House, barn, machine shed. Well and septic. Possession at closing. Terms are on your sale bill. Let’s sell it.”
He asked for three hundred thousand to start.
Nobody moved.
He asked for two-fifty.
Nobody moved.
He came all the way down to two hundred thousand. And the neighbor who’d rented the cropland for years, Dale Wiese, raised his card.
And the whole yard came alive.
Brad hollered “Yep!” and pointed. Denny’s auction chant rolled out over the gravel. Fast and smooth. The same way I’d heard it at cattle sales my whole married life.
Two-ten. Two-twenty. Two-thirty.
The young couple with the baby jumped in at two-forty. They were out by two-sixty.
Dale Wiese went to two-seventy. Then he shook his head. He put his card in his pocket and looked down at the ground.
The land company man hadn’t lifted a card once.
He just nodded. Every time Denny looked his way, he gave one small nod. And Brad hollered and pointed at him.
At two-seventy, it was down to the land company and us.
I looked at Luke.
His hand was still in his coat pocket.
He wasn’t looking at Denny. He was looking past him. At the porch. At the spot by the back door where his mother used to stand and ring the dinner bell.
“Luke,” I said quietly.
He didn’t answer.
His jaw was tight. His eyes were wet. And his right hand would not come out of that pocket.
I’ve been married to that man for sixteen years.
I know what he looks like when he’s trying with everything he’s got, and his body won’t do what he’s telling it to.
“Two-seventy-five,” Denny was saying. “Who’ll give me two-seventy-five. Two-seventy-five. Folks, I’m about to sell it.”
So I held up 47.
Brad hollered and pointed at me.
Denny’s eyes found me up there from the hay rack. They stayed on me half a second longer than they needed to.
“Two-seventy-five,” he said. “Now eighty.”
The land company man nodded.
“Eighty. Now eighty-five.”
I held up 47.
And this time I didn’t put it back down.
I just held it up. Chest high. In that north wind. With sleet ticking against the card.
I felt Luke’s hand come out of his pocket then.
It didn’t go up.
It went to the small of my back. And it stayed there.
Two-eighty-five.
Two-ninety. The land company man nodded.
Two-ninety-five. Me.
My arm was shaking. I put my other hand under my elbow to hold it steady.
That was when I saw Walt.
He was standing at the very back of the crowd. Down near the end of the driveway. By the mailbox Luke had set in concrete.
He had on his good gray church coat. His hands were down at his sides. He wasn’t bidding. He wasn’t moving.
I don’t know how long he’d been standing there.
He wasn’t looking at Denny. He wasn’t looking at the land company man.
He was looking at me.
Denny dropped down to twenty-five-hundred-dollar jumps.
Two-ninety-seven-five. The land company.
Three hundred. Me.
The sticky note in my coat pocket said three-oh-five.
“Three hundred,” Denny said. “Now three-oh-one. Who’ll give me three-oh-one.”
The land company man looked across the yard at me for a long moment.
Then he nodded.
“Three-oh-one,” Denny said. He turned and looked straight down at me from that hay rack. “Three-oh-two, ma’am?”
My mouth had gone completely dry.
Three-oh-two was under our number. I knew that.
But I could hear Tom Riley’s voice saying not one dollar over. And I could see my daughter’s chart rolled up under her arm. And something in me went careful.
“Half,” I said.
It came out a whisper.
I said it again. Louder.
“Will you take a half?”
“I’ll take a half,” Denny said. “Three-oh-one-five. Now three-oh-two.”
He turned to the land company man.
The man in the quilted vest looked at me.
He looked at Luke’s hand on my back.
Then he looked at the house for a long, long time.
Then he shook his head. Once. And put his hands in his vest pockets.
