"Earl Whitaker," he said, and stood, his knees cracking like kindling.
"Whitaker." Gordon squinted. "Ran the repair shop out on the state road? The one with the blue doors?"
"For thirty-one years."
"Sure. Sure, I remember. Good mechanic, people said." Gordon gestured at the row with his clipboard. "Well, Mr. Whitaker, I'll save you some time. I walked this row first thing this morning. I was asked to give the auction house an opinion before they lotted it. You want to know what I told them?"
Earl did not say anything, which Gordon took for a yes.
"Seized engines on at least a third of them. I'd bet more. Hydraulics are ruined across the board. You can see the seals blown from here. Transmissions damaged on more than half, from what I could tell. Tires are shot, every one, and you're looking at serious money just to get them rolling. And you see all those empty mounts?" He pointed at an engine bay with his coffee mug. "Missing parts. Starters, pumps, alternators, radiators. Half these machines don't have what they need to even try to run."
"I see them."
"These came from that rental outfit up north. You hear about that?"
Earl had heard. A farm-equipment rental business had opened about a decade back with big promises and a fleet of used tractors bought cheap. The idea had been to rent machines by the week to small farmers who could not afford to buy. It had worked for a while. Then it had stopped working. Repair costs had climbed, rental income had dropped, and instead of fixing their machines properly, the owners had started pulling parts off one tractor to keep another one running. A pump here. A starter there. A transmission from one unit dropped into another. They had cannibalized their own fleet, piece by piece, until there was nothing left to cannibalize, and then they had gone under.
"They stripped them to keep the rentals going," Gordon said. "Robbed Peter to pay Paul until Peter and Paul were both dead. What's left is what nobody could use. That's not a row of tractors, Mr. Whitaker. That's a row of problems. I told the auction house to call the scrap yard. They said they'd try the sale first, as a courtesy to the bank." He shrugged. "Courtesy's going to cost somebody money."
"Maybe," Earl said.
Gordon looked at him a moment longer, at the notebook, at the pencil, at the black on his fingers. Then he laughed, not unkindly, and clapped Earl on the shoulder.
"Well. Enjoy your reading."
He walked off toward the combines. Earl watched him go, then crouched down beside the twenty-first tractor and wiped the plate clean with his thumb.
---
He finished the row a little after ten. Sixty tractors, sixty sets of numbers, eleven pages of the notebook filled front and back in his small, slanted handwriting. When he was done he walked back to his truck, sat on the tailgate, and read through what he had written. He read it slowly, the way some men read scripture, turning back to earlier pages, running his finger down columns of numbers. Twice he took out the pencil and drew a line connecting one entry to another. Once he made a small star in the margin.
Then he closed the notebook, put it back in his pocket, and sat very still for a long time, looking at nothing.