Several men in the crowd began speaking at once.
"Let the kid keep it!"
"He paid for the lot!"
"Get his mother!"
"Somebody call the estate representative!"
The auction staff hurried toward the podium.
A younger employee, a white American man in his early thirties wearing a dark auction-company jacket, approached the giant can.
He looked at the boy.
Then at the auctioneer.
"Sir, perhaps we should stop this until we document what's been found."
The auctioneer glared.
"Nobody asked you."
The employee swallowed.
But he did not move away.
He looked toward the leather case.
"The entire crowd saw it come out of Lot 142."
The auctioneer's expression hardened.
Then a woman's voice cut across the yard.
"What's happening to my son?"
Heads turned.
The boy's mother was pushing through the spectators.
She was thirty-six, white American, with tired hazel eyes, long dark-blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, and the strained expression of someone who had spent the last several months trying to hold a family together after a death.
She wore a faded denim jacket over a gray sweater.
In one hand, she carried the auction receipt.
She had been at the payment desk confirming the purchase when someone told her a crowd had gathered around her son.
Now she looked from the auctioneer to the farmer.
Then toward the leather case.
Her face changed.
"Sweetheart?"
The boy turned.
For one moment, his expression became that of a very frightened child.
Then he hurried toward her.
"Mom!"
She caught him.
He pressed the case between them.
His voice broke.
"Grandpa was right."
She stared.
"What?"
The boy looked up.
"He hid it."
Tears streamed down his cheeks.
"The papers. The ones he kept telling us about."
His mother slowly looked toward the leather case.
The worn brown surface.
The green brass clasp.
The faded family surname.
For several seconds, she could not speak.
Then she reached out.
Her fingers touched the inscription.
Her father-in-law had spoken of such a case.
Sometimes during long evenings.
Sometimes after reading old county documents.
Sometimes when grief and frustration overcame his usual patience.
She had always thought the case was lost.
Perhaps destroyed in the factory's renovations.
Perhaps taken by the finance company.