The Auction

The Honest Season

Chapter 19: The Auction

The Hendricks place was fifteen miles south, on the road that dropped from the tableland into the Missouri breaks, the road that descended through the coulees and the draws and the sandstone outcrops and that arrived at the river bottom where the Hendricks family had farmed 1,200 acres of mixed ground — wheat on the flats, hay in the bottoms, cattle on the breaks — the diversified operation that small farms used as a hedge against the specialization that larger farms could afford, the spreading of the risk across three enterprises so that when the wheat failed the hay might hold and when the hay failed the cattle might hold and the holding of one while the others failed was the strategy, the survival strategy of a family that farmed ground that was not the best ground and that had never been the best ground and that produced not abundance but sufficiency, the thirty-two bushels per acre that the flats yielded and the two tons per acre that the hay bottoms yielded and the calf crop that the breaks supported, the three incomes that combined to produce a living that was not prosperous but was a living, was the thing that a family could survive on if the family was careful and if the weather was not cruel and if the prices held and if the machinery did not break at the wrong time, the cascade of conditions that the Hendricks family managed for forty-seven years until the managing became impossible and the impossible became the auction.

Ruth saw the notice in the Sidney Herald, the weekly newspaper that she read every Thursday, the newspaper that reported the county's business and the county's sports and the county's obituaries and the county's legal notices, the notices that included the auction announcements, the announcements that were the legal requirement of a farm sale, the public notification that a family's life was about to be converted into cash, the notification that was printed in the classified section between the used tractors and the rental listings, the small type that said: FARM AUCTION, HENDRICKS PROPERTY, SATURDAY JULY 26, 10:00 AM, the type that was small and that contained a universe.

She knew the Hendricks family. She knew them the way she knew all the families in the area — by proximity, by the co-op, by the elevator, by the Sunday mornings at Zion Lutheran, by the annual accumulation of encounters that a rural community produced, the encounters that were not friendship but were membership, the shared belonging to a place and a profession that created the bond that was stronger than friendship because it was involuntary, was the bond of adjacency, of shared weather, of shared risk.

Ray Hendricks was sixty-three. His wife, June, was sixty-one. They had three children — two daughters in Billings, one son in Bozeman. The son, Michael, was thirty-two and worked for a construction company and did not want to farm. The not-wanting was the thing. The not-wanting was the end. Because when the children do not want to farm and the parents are sixty-three and sixty-one and the equipment is old and the debt is manageable but not retiring and the body is tired and the body's tiredness is the accumulated tiredness of forty-seven years of work that begins at 4:30 and ends at dark and that does not include vacations or sick days or the particular rest that people who do not farm take for granted, the rest of a weekend, the rest of two days in a row when the work does not call — when all of these things converge, the convergence produces the decision and the decision produces the auction and the auction is the event, the public event, the communal witnessing of a family's departure from the land.

Ruth drove to the Hendricks place on Saturday morning. She drove the F-150. She did not bring Hector. She did not bring Rust. She came alone because the going was not work, was not an errand, was not a task. The going was a witnessing. The going was the attendance at a thing that she needed to see, the thing that might be her future or might not be her future and that she needed to look at directly, the way she looked at the hailstorm directly, the way she looked at the destroyed wheat directly, the looking that was not masochism but was honesty, the honest confrontation with the thing that was possible, the thing that selling looked like.

The Hendricks yard was full. The yard was full of trucks and trailers and the particular vehicles of a farm auction — the pickups of the neighboring farmers who came to buy, the flatbed trailers that would haul the equipment away, the SUVs of the town people who came for the household goods, the van of the auctioneer, the auctioneer from Wolf Point, a man named Stan Kowalski who had been conducting farm auctions in Roosevelt County for twenty-six years and who knew, by the condition of the equipment and the size of the crowd and the weather and the mood, what the auction would produce, the number that the auctioneer could estimate before the first bid because the auctioneer had seen a hundred farm auctions and the hundred auctions had taught him the patterns, the patterns that the market revealed when a family's life was laid out in rows on the grass.

The equipment was arranged in the yard. The tractor — a John Deere 8320, the tractor that Ray bought in 2005 and that had 9,400 hours on the engine, the hours that were the machine's biography, the count of the time the engine ran and the time the engine ran was the time the man worked and the time the man worked was the life the man lived, 9,400 hours of sitting in the cab and driving the fields and pulling the implements, 9,400 hours of the particular vibration that the tractor produced and that the body absorbed and that the body would remember long after the tractor was sold.

The combine — a Case IH 2388, older, the combine that Ray bought used in 2010 and that had served for sixteen harvests, the red machine that was not a John Deere and that Ruth did not know the way she knew John Deere but that she recognized as a working machine, a machine that had done the work, a machine that bore the evidence of the work in the scratches on the header and the dents on the grain tank and the worn rubber on the steps, the evidence that was the machine's record, the machine's resume, the account of sixteen Augusts of cutting wheat and barley and the cutting was written on the machine the way the farming was written on Ray Hendricks's hands.

The drill. The sprayer. The grain cart. The grain truck — a 1992 International, the truck that was older than Ruth's Peterbilt and that had hauled grain for thirty-four years and that would be sold today to whoever bid highest, the truck departing the Hendricks place the way the grain departed — through the gate, down the road, to somewhere else.

The household goods were arranged on tables in the yard. The tables were folding tables, the tables that the auctioneer brought, the surfaces on which the intimate objects of a family's life were displayed for public inspection — the dishes, the pots and pans, the utensils, the small appliances, the lamps, the curtains, the bed linens, the things that a house contains and that a family uses and that become, over forty-seven years, the furniture of a life, the objects that are not valuable in themselves but that are valuable in their association, the association with the meals cooked and the tables set and the beds made and the lights turned on in the evening, the daily acts that the objects enabled and that the objects recorded in their wear, in their chips and scratches and the particular patina that use applies to the surfaces of domestic life.

Ruth walked the rows. She walked past the tractor and the combine and the drill. She did not bid. She was not here to buy. She was here to see. She was here to see what it looked like when a farm was disassembled, when the operating system of a family's life was taken apart piece by piece and the pieces were offered to strangers and the strangers held up numbered cards and the auctioneer called the bids and the bids rose and fell and the hammer came down and the piece was sold and the piece was no longer the Hendricks family's, was no longer part of the system, was separated from the whole the way a stalk of wheat is separated from the field when the combine cuts it, the individual stalk losing its membership in the canopy, the individual piece losing its membership in the operation.

She walked to the household tables. She looked at the dishes. She looked at a set of Corelle, the white Corelle with the blue flowers, the pattern that June Hendricks chose in 1979 and that June Hendricks ate from for forty-seven years and that June Hendricks would not eat from after today because today the dishes would be sold and the selling would transfer the dishes from the kitchen where they were home to the kitchen where they were secondhand, the transition from owned to purchased, from lived-with to acquired.

She looked at the cast-iron skillet. The skillet was black, was seasoned, was the particular black of a cast-iron pan that has been used daily for decades, the black that is not paint but is carbon, is the accumulated residue of a thousand meals, the layer upon layer of cooking that built the surface, the surface that was the Hendricks family's food history, the record of every egg fried and every steak seared and every pancake cooked on Sunday mornings when the kids were small and the kitchen was warm and the skillet was the center of the morning.

Ruth did not pick up the skillet. She did not need to pick it up. She knew what a seasoned cast-iron skillet felt like. She had her own, in her kitchen, on the shelf beside the stove, the skillet that was her grandmother Elsa's and that had been in the family since 1938, the skillet that was not for sale because Ruth was not selling, or was not selling yet, or was deciding whether to sell, and the skillet was one of the thousand things that the decision would affect, one of the thousand objects that would appear on folding tables in the yard if Ruth said yes to Grayson, if Ruth said yes to $4.2 million, if Ruth became the person standing by the truck watching.

The Hendricks family stood by their truck. Ray and June and Michael, the son who did not want to farm, the son whose not-wanting was the reason they were here, the reason the auctioneer was here, the reason the numbered cards were raised and the bids were called and the hammer fell. They stood by their truck — a Ford, older, the farm truck, the truck that would also be sold today — and they watched.

Ray's face was the face of a man who was enduring. Ray's face was not grief and was not relief and was not the particular expression that a person wears when a thing they built is being taken apart. Ray's face was endurance, was the face of a farmer watching the weather do what the weather does, the face of a man who had seen the hail come and the drought come and the price fall and who had absorbed each blow and who was now absorbing this blow, the final blow, the blow that was not weather but was economics, was the arithmetic of a farm that could not support a family without a next generation and a next generation that would not come.

June stood beside Ray. She held his arm. The holding was not support — June was not keeping Ray upright. The holding was presence, was the physical statement of togetherness, the arm-holding that said: I am here, we are together, we are enduring this together the way we endured everything together, the forty-seven years of weather and work and children and the particular intimacy of two people who farmed the same ground for four decades and who were now watching the ground's equipment be sold and the ground's household be dispersed and the ground itself — the 1,200 acres — be transferred to the buyer who had purchased it before the auction, the land sale that was private, that was conducted through the real estate agent in Wolf Point, the land sale that preceded the equipment auction, the sale that was the real event, the event that the auction was the aftermath of.

The land was sold. The equipment was being sold. The household goods were being sold. Everything was being sold because everything was connected and the connection meant that selling the land meant selling everything, meant the total divestiture, the complete unbundling of a life that had been bundled for forty-seven years, the life coming apart at the seams that the years had sewn.

Stan Kowalski stood on the flatbed trailer that served as his stage. He held the microphone. He wore a cowboy hat and a Western shirt and boots and the outfit was not costume but was uniform, was the clothing of a man who conducted auctions in agricultural communities and who dressed in the language of the community, the visual language that said: I am one of you, I understand what is being sold here, I understand that the tractor is not just a tractor and the skillet is not just a skillet and the selling is not just a transaction.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Stan said. "We'll start with the small equipment and work up. Lot one: Stihl chainsaw, MS 250, good condition."

The bidding started. The numbered cards went up. The prices were called. The hammer fell.

Ruth watched. She watched the way she watched the hailstorm — from a distance, with the inability to intervene, with the understanding that the thing happening was happening and could not be stopped and could not be reversed and could only be witnessed, the witnessing that was the community's role, the community's function, the standing-beside that the neighbors provided not as comfort but as presence, the presence that said: we see this, we are here, we know what this costs.

The tractor sold for $87,000. The combine sold for $42,000. The drill sold for $18,000. The numbers were the numbers. The numbers were less than the equipment was worth to the Hendricks family and more than the equipment was worth to the buyers and the gap between the two valuations was the gap of the auction, the gap that the auctioneer bridged, the gap that was the distance between a life and a price.

The household goods sold for less. The dishes sold for $15. The cast-iron skillet sold for $8. The lamps and the curtains and the linens sold for the prices that household goods sell for at farm auctions, which are the prices of objects stripped of their association, the prices of things that are just things, that are no longer the Hendricks family's things but are things, are objects on folding tables in a yard in Roosevelt County on a Saturday in July.

Ruth left before the auction ended. She left after the tractor and the combine, after the major equipment, after the things that mattered mechanically. She did not stay for the household goods. She did not stay to watch the dishes and the skillet and the curtains find their new owners. She had seen enough. She had seen what she came to see, which was the shape of selling, the anatomy of departure, the physical reality of what happened when a farm family said: we are done, we are leaving, the ground can have someone else.

She drove home. She drove the fifteen miles north, the road climbing from the river bottom to the tableland, the road ascending from the Hendricks place to the Enger place, the ascent that was not metaphorical but that felt like ascent, felt like rising, felt like the return to higher ground from lower ground, the return to the place that was hers and that was not yet on a folding table, not yet under an auctioneer's hammer, not yet dispersed.

She pulled into the driveway. She parked. She sat in the truck. She looked at the house and the barn and the bins and the windbreak and the fields, the fields that held wheat that was filling, the fields that were not sold, the fields that were hers.

She thought about the skillet. She thought about Elsa's skillet in her kitchen and June's skillet on the folding table and the difference between the two, the difference that was not material — both were cast iron, both were seasoned, both were the tools of daily cooking — but that was positional, was the difference between a skillet in a kitchen and a skillet on a table, between a tool in use and a tool for sale, between a life being lived and a life being liquidated.

She went inside. She stood in the kitchen. She looked at the table, the ash table that Carl built. She looked at the stove, the stove where the burner on the left had been slow since January. She looked at the coat hook, the hook that held Tom's coat, the Carhartt arctic that she had not moved. She looked at the window, the window that framed the fields. She looked at the kitchen the way she had looked at the Hendricks yard — with the eye of a person assessing, the eye that saw each object and understood that each object was connected to every other object and that the connections were the life and that the selling would sever the connections and the severing would be the ending.

She did not want the ending. She felt this. She felt it in the kitchen, standing at the counter, looking at the room that was her room, the room that forty-seven years from now — no, not forty-seven, she did not have forty-seven more years, she had twenty or twenty-five or if she was lucky thirty — the room that would eventually be someone else's room the way the Hendricks kitchen was now no one's kitchen, the kitchen emptied, the kitchen dispersed, the dishes in a stranger's cupboard, the skillet in a stranger's stove.

But the not-wanting was not the reason. Ruth knew this. The not-wanting of the ending was not the reason to keep the land, the way Sarah's guilt was not the reason and David's logic was not the reason and Tom's memory was not the reason. The not-wanting was the feeling. The reason was something else. The reason was the thing the season was teaching her, the thing the season had not finished teaching, the thing that was still filling, still accumulating, still moving from the leaves to the head, still becoming the kernel, still becoming the grain that would be the answer.

She made tea. She sat at the table. She drank the tea. She sat in her chair, in her kitchen, in her house, on her land. The auction was fifteen miles south and the auction was over and the Hendricks place was sold and the Hendricks family was standing by their truck and the auctioneer was packing his microphone and the folding tables were being folded and the yard was emptying.

Ruth's yard was not emptying. Ruth's yard held the pickup and the barn and the bins and the tractor in the barn and the combine in the corner and the tools on the pegboard and the motor on the workbench and the Peterbilt and the drill and every piece of the operation that was the operation, the system that worked, the system that Tom built and that Ruth maintained and that was not on a folding table and was not under a hammer and was not for sale.

Not yet. Not this season.

She finished her tea. She washed the cup. She set it on the rack. She went to the porch. She sat on the step. Rust was beside her. The evening light was gold. The wheat was gold in the gold light. The fields were hers.

The Hendricks fields were someone else's. The Hendricks fields would produce wheat or hay or cattle or houses or nothing, depending on the buyer, depending on the use, depending on the future that the buyer chose for the ground that the Hendricks family worked for forty-seven years and that the Hendricks family left on a Saturday in July with a check in their pocket and a truck full of the things that did not sell and the particular emptiness of people who have let go of the thing that held them.

Ruth had not let go. Ruth sat on the porch and held the thing that held her. The holding was mutual. The land held Ruth and Ruth held the land and the holding was the thing, the thing that the auction illuminated, the thing that the selling revealed by its absence, the way the hailstorm revealed the value of the standing wheat by destroying it, the way Tom's death revealed the value of his presence by removing it.

The holding was the thing.

She sat on the porch until dark. She went inside. She went to bed. She lay in the cottonwood bed and she thought about Ray and June standing by their truck and she thought about the skillet selling for $8 and she thought about the tractor selling for $87,000 and she thought about none of these numbers being the right number, none of these prices being the right price, because the right price for a life is not a number and the right price for a farm is not a number and the right price for forty-seven years of work is not a sum that an auctioneer can calculate or a bidder can offer or a hammer can confirm.

The right price is the life itself. The right price is the living. The right price is the getting up at 4:30 and the making of the coffee and the walking of the fields and the doing of the work.

Ruth closed her eyes. The wheat filled in the dark. The season continued. The auction was over. The holding held.