“Two thousand.”
The yard seemed to notice him all at once.
The auctioneer stared. “For the whole row?”
“Yes, sir. All fifty. As is. I’ll handle transport.”
Dale Pruitt turned fully around.
Someone laughed behind Isaiah, then stopped when nobody joined him.
The auctioneer looked toward the yard manager. The yard manager shrugged in the particular way of a man who knew unsold equipment cost money every day it remained on the property. The auctioneer tried to coax another bid from the crowd.
“Twenty-five hundred? Somebody save this young man from himself.”
No hands rose.
“Twenty-two?”
Nothing.
He pointed at Isaiah. “Sold. Two thousand dollars.”
The wooden hammer hit the rail.
Isaiah felt no triumph.
Mostly he felt the weight of the decision land in his stomach.
Dale walked past him on the way toward the running equipment. “You got a scrap buyer lined up?”
“No, sir.”
“Parts yard?”
“No, sir.”
Dale stopped. “Then what exactly did you buy?”
Isaiah glanced back at the row.
“I’ll tell you when I know.”
Dale studied him for a moment as if deciding whether the answer was arrogance or ignorance. Then he gave a short laugh and walked away.
The next problem was moving fifty dead tractors.
Isaiah learned before lunch that buying cheap iron and owning cheap iron were two different financial conditions. The auction yard required everything removed within five business days. A commercial hauler quoted him more than he had paid for the tractors. Another wanted payment up front plus a loading surcharge because several machines could not roll.
Isaiah called everyone he knew.
His mother, Denise Callaway, was on the morning shift in the dietary department at Harlow Regional Hospital. She answered on her break with the sound of carts and stainless steel trays behind her.
“You bought what?”
“Tractors.”
“How many?”
There was enough silence after his answer that Isaiah briefly checked whether the call had dropped.
“Fifty.”
Denise closed her eyes on the other end of the line. Isaiah could hear it without seeing her.
“With what money?”
“Mine.”
“All of it?”
“Most.”
“Isaiah.”
“I know.”
“No, baby, I don’t think you do.”
He explained the shared platforms, the engine family, the donor potential. Denise listened because she always listened even when she disagreed. She had spent too many years watching men dismiss her son before he finished a sentence to do the same thing herself.
When he was done, she asked the only question that mattered to her.
“Can you get them home?”
“I’m working on it.”
“That means no.”
“It means not yet.”
By late afternoon, he had pieced together a plan with the help of three people. Curtis Avery at the diesel shop knew a hay hauler whose lowboy would be empty returning from Draymond. A farmer named Luther Gaines loaned Isaiah a chain binder and two wheel dollies. Otis’s old friend Raymond Polk agreed to pull dead tractors around the Callaway yard with his loader once they arrived.