The second bidder shook his head. Six hundred was past his parts calculation. Ray Sutherland, watching from the edge of the crowd, said nothing. He had passed on this lot at preview. He had made his decision. Al Greer began his count. “Six hundred going once.”
Cal raised his hand. Not his bidder number, his hand. Open. The way you raise a hand in a classroom when you have something to say rather than a bid to make. “Son, we’re in the middle of a sale. Do you have a bid?” Cal said, “I have a question first, if that’s all right.”
Al Greer had been calling sales for sixteen years. In sixteen years, nobody had asked a question in the middle of a lot. He looked at Cal, the oversized jacket, the notebook, the seventeen-year-old face, and made the calculation that experienced auctioneers make when something unexpected occurs. Is this a disruption or is this interesting? He decided it was interesting. “Go ahead.”
Cal said, “Has anyone checked the service records? There’s a plastic sleeve behind the seat. Walt Henderson kept records on this machine going back to 1970.” The yard went quiet. Not the polite quiet of people waiting for a bid, the particular quiet of a group of adults who have just been told by a teenager that they may have missed something.
Ray Sutherland crossed his arms. “Son, if there were service records in that tractor, they’d have been in the catalog listing.” Cal said, “They weren’t in the listing. They were behind the seat. I found them during preview.” A beat. “And what do they say?”
Cal opened his notebook. He did not do this dramatically. He opened it the way you open a notebook when you have been keeping careful notes and you want to report accurately, not perform. “Walt Henderson serviced this machine every eight hundred hours without exception. Injector pump calibrated at fourteen hundred hours in 1974 by a Minneapolis-Moline certified technician in Fort Wayne. A hydraulic return line replaced with the revised fitting in 1976. He noted the part number and the installation date. Front axle pivot bearing replaced in 1979. The last entry is March of 1980, oil and filter, two hundred twelve hours before the recorded total.”
Another beat. “The engine has four thousand three hundred hours on it. A properly maintained G705 diesel runs to six thousand without a major rebuild. This machine has seventeen hundred hours of service life remaining at normal use rates.”
Nobody said anything. The parts dealer from Lima was looking at his catalog sheet, then at the tractor, then back at his sheet, as though the numbers had changed while he wasn’t looking. Ray Sutherland walked to the G705 and reached behind the seat. He pulled out the plastic sleeve. He opened it. He stood for a moment reading.