Then the auctioneer pointed at him.
And within seconds, nearly everyone gathered outside the abandoned Pennsylvania dairy factory was laughing.
The boy stood beside an enormous rusted cream can that towered above him like a forgotten monument.
It was nearly six feet tall, painted white decades earlier, with a broad faded-red stripe circling its middle. Rust streaked down its curved metal body, and its two heavy iron handles were almost completely brown with corrosion.
The lid looked as though it had not been opened in fifty years.
Nobody wanted it.
Nobody except the boy.
He was twelve years old, white American, thin, with messy light-brown hair, pale blue eyes, and a face that seemed too serious for someone his age.
He wore a mustard-brown canvas work jacket over a navy plaid shirt, faded jeans, and muddy leather boots.
His left hand held a small dented metal coffee tin.
Inside were forty-five dollars.
Not forty-five dollars he had borrowed.
Not forty-five dollars his parents had handed him for entertainment.
It was every cent he had saved over almost two years.
Money earned stacking firewood.
Pulling weeds.
Cleaning tools.
Helping neighbors with small chores.
And collecting bottles from the roadside.
He had counted those dollars eighteen times the previous night.
Now he stood beneath the bright autumn sky, holding the tin against his chest while a hundred adults treated his decision as the funniest thing they had seen all year.
The auctioneer was sixty-eight, white American, heavyset, with thinning white hair, a round flushed face, and a thick gray mustache.
He wore an olive-green work vest over a pale-blue button-down shirt.
His expensive leather boots were freshly polished.
A gold watch flashed beneath his sleeve whenever he waved the wooden auction gavel.
He had spent forty years selling farms, tractors, livestock equipment, household estates, and commercial property throughout the county.
People called him a local institution.
He knew how to entertain a crowd.
He also knew how to make someone feel very small.
And that afternoon, he had chosen a twelve-year-old boy.
"Forty-five dollars?" the auctioneer shouted.
He threw back his head.
"Kid, that rusty old can isn't worth a penny!"