“Sixty-one.”
His expression changed more.
Hannah smiled for the first time.
“Still want to help?”
He kicked one massive tire.
“That engine sounds terrible.”
“Exhaust leak.”
“Maybe.”
“Hydraulic pump?”
“Pressure felt decent.”
“You ran the controls?”
“During preview.”
Dale looked irritated.
“When?”
“While everybody was looking at the shiny machines.”
Someone behind him laughed.
Not at Hannah this time.
Dale turned.
An equipment hauler named Ray Pritchard stood there smiling.
Ray had known Hannah’s father.
That mattered.
“Need transport?”
Hannah looked at him.
“How much?”
“Four hundred fifty.”
She winced.
Dale laughed again.
“There you go.”
Ray looked toward Dale.
“Still cheaper than the seat in your new grapple machine.”
Dale’s smile disappeared.
Hannah looked at Ray.
“Three fifty.”
“Four twenty-five.”
“Three seventy-five.”
“Four hundred and you help chain it.”
“Done.”
Ray extended his hand.
Hannah shook.
Dale watched.
Then he said:
“You’re going to learn an expensive lesson.”
Hannah wiped mud from one glove.
“Maybe.”
Dale pointed toward the machine.
“That dead thing won’t earn enough to pay the tow bill.”
Hannah reached into her jacket and pulled out the maintenance slip she had removed from a clear holder inside the cab.
She held it toward him.
“Then explain why somebody rebuilt the transmission sixty-one hours before this auction.”
Dale’s grin finally vanished.
That did not mean Hannah had won.
It meant she had purchased the right to discover how wrong she might be.
Four hours later the skidder sat behind Ray’s lowboy on the road toward Mercer Farm.
Hannah followed in her twelve-year-old pickup.
Every few miles, she looked through the windshield at the enormous yellow machine ahead.
From the highway it looked even worse.
One rear tire appeared slightly larger because the opposite tire had lost pressure.
The exhaust stack leaned.
The cab roof had been patched with sheet metal.
Hannah felt increasingly stupid.
That was the part nobody showed in stories about good deals.
The interval between purchase and proof.
The time when confidence becomes impossible to distinguish from delusion.
Mercer Farm covered 184 acres outside Pine Hollow, Wisconsin.
About ninety acres were pasture and hay.
Thirty-seven were leased to a neighbor for corn.
The remaining acreage was mixed woodland, wet ground, old fence lines, farm buildings, and a small maple ridge where Hannah’s father had once talked about building a sugar shack.
Her father, Tom Mercer, had died nineteen months earlier.
Not in an accident.
Not dramatically.
Pancreatic cancer.
Eleven months from diagnosis to funeral.
Hannah had been finishing a two-year technical degree in diesel equipment and farm operations when he became sick.
She returned home.
At first temporarily.
Then permanently.
Her mother moved to Green Bay after Tom died because staying on the farm made every room feel occupied by someone who was no longer there.
Hannah stayed.
Everyone had opinions.
Sell.
Lease.
Keep the house and sell acreage.
Take a job at the Deere dealership.
Finish school.
Do anything except attempt to run a mixed farm alone at twenty-two.
Hannah did some of those things.
She leased cropland.
Reduced cattle from forty-two cows to eighteen.
Worked three days a week at a repair shop.
Finished her certification at night.
And kept the farm.
Barely.
The woodland was supposed to help.
A forester estimated the property held marketable hardwood and pulpwood, but the best trees were scattered.
Selective harvest.