On a bitter January morning in 1979, Eldon Carver walked into the only John Deere dealership in Cass County, Nebraska, with seventeen dollars in his front pocket and a question he had been rehearsing since before sunrise.
The temperature outside was nine degrees.
Wind came hard across the open ground south of Plattsmouth, carrying loose snow over the highway in thin white sheets.
Eldon had driven twenty-two miles in a 1968 Chevrolet pickup with a heater that worked only when the engine was above two thousand RPM.
Every time he slowed, the cab went cold.
His winter coat had a broken zipper.
He had fastened it closed with a large brass safety pin because replacing a zipper cost money and, at twenty-six, Eldon had already learned there were things a man wanted and things a man actually needed.
A zipper was not yet on the second list.
A tractor was.
He parked near the edge of the dealership lot.
For a while, he stayed inside the truck with both hands on the steering wheel.
Through the windshield, he could see rows of green machines lined neatly beneath a gray Nebraska sky.
Tractors.
Combines.
Planters.
The biggest machines sat closest to the highway where every passing farmer could see them.
The dealership sign read:
PRUITT JOHN DEERE SALES & SERVICE
SERVING CASS COUNTY SINCE 1951
Eldon had driven past that sign his entire life.
His father bought parts there.
His grandfather had bought cultivator teeth there.
When Eldon was ten, Raymond Carver brought him into the service department to pick up a hydraulic hose.
Eldon remembered standing beneath the fluorescent lights staring through an open service bay at a dismantled tractor engine.
He remembered thinking that the mechanics looked like surgeons.
Now he was walking in as a customer.
Or at least he hoped he was.
The showroom floor had been waxed until it reflected the lights.
A brand-new John Deere 4440 stood in the center.
Green paint.
Yellow wheels.
Fresh tires with mold lines still visible.
The machine looked enormous compared with the tired 4020 sitting back at the Carver farm.
Eldon stopped at the edge of the display.
He did not touch it.
The price tag made his stomach tighten.
He had no illusion that he could buy the 4440.
He had come to ask about used equipment.
Financing.
Trade value.
Possibilities.
Anything that might get a dependable tractor onto 280 acres before planting began.
Behind the counter stood Dale Pruitt.
Dale was forty-one.
His father, Vernon Pruitt, had opened the dealership twenty-eight years earlier.
A black-and-white photograph of Vernon standing beside the original building still hung behind the service desk.
Dale had inherited the dealership in 1971.
Those had been good years.
Maybe the best years anybody in Cass County could remember.
Farm incomes were strong.
Land values climbed.
Export markets seemed endless.
A man could buy a tractor on credit and tell himself the next crop would pay for it.
Dale looked prosperous in the way Eldon associated with men whose clothes had never been repaired with safety pins.
Pressed shirt.
Wool vest.
Gold watch.
Clean boots.
Eldon removed his hat.
“Morning.”
Dale looked up.
“Morning.”
“I was wondering if I could ask about a tractor.”
Dale looked past Eldon toward the parking lot as if expecting someone else.
“What tractor?”
“Used.”
“You trading?”
“Maybe.”
“What do you have?”
“Sixty-six 4020.”
“How many hours?”
“Meter stopped years ago.”
Dale gave the smallest smile.
“Running?”
“Mostly.”
That answer got another smile.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Block’s cracked.”
Dale leaned back.
“Then you don’t have much of a trade.”
“I know.”
Eldon swallowed.
“I was wondering about financing something used.”
Dale looked at him more carefully now.
“What ground you farming?”
“Carver place south of Murray.”
“Raymond’s boy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your dad doing all right?”
“Had a stroke in October.”
Dale’s expression softened for perhaps two seconds.
“I heard something about that.”
“He’s home.”
“You running the place?”
“Yes.”
Dale glanced again at Eldon’s coat.
Then at his boots.
Then back toward the old Chevrolet outside.
“How much down payment you got?”
Eldon hesitated.
“Not much.”
“How much is not much?”
“I can probably put twelve hundred together.”
Dale laughed.
Not cruelly at first.
Almost automatically.
Then one of the men at the service counter turned toward them.
Dale realized he had an audience.
He leaned one forearm against the counter.